8

An Unremarkable Man

When Onyena was ordered to serve her sister Surazem at the birth she became angry, and cried out that she would find some way to have vengeance on Sveros the Twilight, so when the three brothers were being born from Surazem’s blessed womb Onyena stole some of the old god’s essence. She went away in secret and used the seed of Sveros to make three children of her own, but she raised them to hate their father and all he made.

—from The Beginnings of Things
The Book of the Trigon

AT TIMES LIKE THIS, when Pinimmon Vash had to look directly into his master’s pale, awful eyes, it was hard to remember that Autarch Sulepis had to be at least partly human.

“All will be done, Golden One,” Vash assured him, praying silently to be dismissed and released. Sometimes just being near his young ruler made him feel queasy. “All will be done just as you say.”

“Swiftly, old man. She has tried to escape me.” The autarch’s gaze slid upward until he seemed to be staring intently at something invisible to anyone else. “Besides, the gods…the gods are restless to be born.”

Confused by this strange remark, Vash hesitated. Was it something that needed to be understood and answered, or was he at last free to scurry away on his errand? He might be the paramount minister of mighty Xis, the old courtier reflected with some bitterness, and thus in theory more powerful than most kings, but he had no more real authority than a child. Still, being a minister who must jump to serve the autarch’s every whim was much better than being a former minister: the vulture shrines atop the Orchard Palace’s roofs were piled high with the bones of former ministers. “Yes, the gods, of course,” Vash said at last, with no idea of what he was agreeing to. “The gods must be born, it goes without…”

“Then let it be done now. Or heaven itself will weep.” Despite his harsh words, Sulepis began to laugh in a most inappropriate way.

Even as Vash hurried so swiftly from the bath chamber that he almost tripped over his own exquisite silk robes, he found himself hoping that one of the eunuchs shaving the autarch’s long, oiled limbs had accidentally tickled him. It would be disturbing to think the man with life-and-death power over oneself and virtually every other human being on the continent had just giggled like a madman for no reason.

Partly human, Vash reminded himself. He must be at least partly human. Even if the autarch’s father Parnad had also been a living god, the autarch’s mother must surely have been a mortal woman, since she had come to the Seclusion as the gift of a foreign king. But whatever was mixed in with the heritage of godlike (although now fairly inarguably dead) Parnad, few mortal traits had made their way down to the son. The young autarch was as bright-eyed, remorseless, and inscrutable as his family’s heraldic falcon. Sulepis was also full of inexplicable, seemingly mad ideas, as proved by this latest strange whim—the errand on which Vash now bustled toward the guard barracks.