“Hereherehereherehere!” She could barely separate the words one from another. She smiled and stood as TEL scrambled into the room.
The thing—it wasn’t really a he, though she often thought of it that way—wore the shape of a rabbit. A rabbit made completely of entwined brambles, colored like dead brush. It crackled as TEL moved, hopping through the door at a bolt.
“Stop!” she snapped at the thing.
“Master has returned,” TEL said. “Master lives. Oh, this is very good. Very good.”
The brambles suddenly collapsed and a small man-shaped thing made out of wood—matching the floor—crawled out of what was left. TEL took the substance of things he touched, and changed shape at will.
She kept feeling she should be able to find a way to use that more than she did. The thing didn’t like to listen to her, however. She could barely get it to do scouting duty.
“He’s upstairs,” Isa said. “But give him time to get done with the person I just sent up.”
“How much does he remember?” TEL asked, dancing from one foot to the other, like a child needing to piss. “Is it bad, very bad?”
“I don’t know,” Isa said.
He seemed different from the man she remembered—but then again, it had been two years.
“I need to speak with him,” TEL said, moving toward the stairs. She stepped up to stop him, but hesitated as boots thumped on the steps.
“Back so quickly?” Isa asked Drel as he appeared on the steps.
“Well, he’s . . . um, not up there.”
“What?”
“He’s not up there, sir.”
She hated being called “sir.” “My Lady” was far worse, though. She was not, and had never wanted to be, a lady. Confused, Isa stalked up the steps. TEL pushed past her, scrambling up more quickly.
Siris wasn’t in his room. Isa felt a moment of panic. Had an assassin attacked?
Don’t be an idiot, she thought at herself, entering the room. He’s immortal. Who cares about assassins?
She crossed the room, and noticed the door to the balcony cracked open. TEL joined her as she stepped outside.
“So you’re saying,” Siris said from down below, “that being ‘it’ is a mark of dishonor? But if only one person can be ‘it,’ is the position not one of distinction and exclusivity?”
A child’s voice replied. “You’ve gotta chase people when you’re it.”
“And in so doing, emulate the predator,” Siris’s voice replied. “Rather than the prey. Why doesn’t everyone want to be this ‘it’? That seems the preferred mode to me.”
“If everyone wanted to be it,” another young voice said, “then the game would be stupid!”
“But—”
“Just run, mister!” another child said.
Giggling followed. TEL moved toward the steps, but Isa stooped and grabbed him. “Wait a moment,” she ordered quietly.
Amazingly, he obeyed. Isa moved to the edge of the balcony, and found Siris—immortal, Deathless, Sacrifice, and possibly the world’s greatest living swordsman—playing a game of tag with various children of camp.
Isa leaned down, crossing her arms on the balcony railing, watching. Seeing him again had raised an entire host of emotions. Hope that this thing she had begun might actually have a chance at success. Embarrassment for the way she’d treated Siris, all those months ago.
And also hatred and betrayal, deep down. Emotions she didn’t like, but which she also couldn’t control. He was Deathless.
Watching him play tag helped change some of those feelings.
He played for a long while, though eventually the children ran at the dinner announcement. Siris watched them go, wiping his brow, then turned to climb the balcony steps. Only then did he see her.
He stopped halfway up. “Oh! Um.” He looked over his shoulder at the children. “I never—”
“‘Never got to play games as a child,’” Isa said. “I know.”
“Not that I remember, anyway,” he said, climbing the steps to join her. “TEL!” he said, noticing the small creature for the first time.
Isa cocked her eye as Siris ran up. He was more excited to see the golem than he had been to see her? It was hard not to feel a little offended by that.
“Master, you’ve been reborn too many times,” TEL said. “Oh, this is bad.”
“It is bad and good, TEL,” Siris said, sighing. He reached the top of the balcony, and turned to watch the children as they ran toward the dining hall.
“Isa,” he said. “Tell me of Siris.”
“What? Yourself?”
He nodded.
“Uh . . . you’re kind of strange? You are also Deathless, and rather tall. And . . .”
“No,” he said. “Tell me of the man they think I am. Tell me what you told them, the ‘extrapolations,’ as you put them. Tell me the person I need to be.”
She collected herself, gathering her thoughts. “You want stories of Siris, do you?” she began. “Stories of the Deathless who fought for ordinary men?”
He looked to her quizzically.
“It’s how I start,” she said. “You want to hear it as they did? The stories? Well, stories I have. Too many stories. Stories like rats in the wheat, fat and glutted upon my thoughts and memories. It’s time that you heard them.”
DEVIATION
THE SEVENTH
URIEL CRADLED his son’s limp body. Rain pelted him. Tears from far above.
Adram stood to the side, a trail of blood washing from the cut on his head and streaming down his face. He raised his hands beside his head, blabbering nonsense, eyes wide.
“Jori . . . Jori . . .” Uriel whispered, shaking.
“I didn’t see him!” Adram screamed. “The rain! I couldn’t see him!”
The too-red car rested with one tire up on the curb, the other on the mangled remains of Jori’s bicycle.
“This is your fault, Uriel!” Adram bellowed into the rain. “You . . . you should have stayed at work! You were supposed to stay late! You did this! You forced this!”
“Yes. I did.” Uriel laid down the broken body. “Cause and effect.”
“Yeah . . .” Adram said. “Cause . . . cause and effect . . .”
“No emotions,” Uriel said, risi
ng.
Killing a man turned out to be more difficult than Uriel would have expected. Even as Uriel had Adram pinned up against the car, hands around his neck, the man fought back. Adram was wounded, dazed from the wreck, but he was still stronger than Uriel and managed to batter his way free.
As he was running away, Adram slipped on the grass, just as Uriel noticed a large wrench in the passenger seat of the man’s car. Presumably for “tweaking the engine,” as Adram always said. Uriel picked it up, hefting it, feeling its weight. It would do for fixing other problems.
As Adram scrambled to get to his feet, Uriel stepped behind him and slammed the weapon down. Heavy as the wrench felt, it still took a good five hits to break the man’s skull open.
Fortunately, the rain washed the blood away. That kept things neater. Cleaner.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
RAIDRIAR FIDDLED with the machine parts of the abomination he’d slain. Behind him, the carcass slumped where it had fallen, mouth open, one tattered wing toward the air. Teeth had begun to fall out of the mouth with a sound like dropping pebbles. Lacking the machinery to sustain it, the thing was literally falling apart.
Raidriar pulled out some wires. This was why he’d always preferred independent organic minions, crafted through Q.I.P. mutation. The best of them could even breed true. Independent, capable of thought. That was true creation. This sloppy piece, this was nothing more than a monument to mediocrity.
Eves approached. The High Devoted bore a few new scratches on his face, but had otherwise survived the collapse of the tunnel. His nephew, however, was another matter.
“Your funeral service was properly morose, I presume,” Raidriar said, twisting two wires together.
“I commended his spirit to your care, great master,” Eves said softly. “Your wisdom was profound in letting him survive to see your return before taking him.”
Raidriar grunted, twisting the ring from his pouch into the center of the wires. He eyed the Devoted.
“It was for the best, Eves,” he said.