His junior grimaced. “Evil? You insult me. Mere evil is tedious, but the missteps that lead to tragedy—those are worthy of note. It’s the unconscious villainy of well-meaning people that interests me. But I don’t need to tell you about that, do I, Chance? Or should I call you Yao?”

Chance blinked, incredulous. “Are you actually blaming Patience?”

“Who else but she, who made me as I am?”

“She made us all as we are,” Chance stated, unmoved. “Why this conscious villainy on your part? What is your reason?”

“Why bother to ask? You know how it felt, being me not so long ago. The trials of humanity do not matter to such as you and I. I wanted to get your attention. I believe I have succeeded in that. It is true that I might have gotten some use out of the man, but he was a poor alternative for what would have been best—what is best.”

The rogue undying one stood and took a swift single step from the throne’s dais to stand before Chance. “So much was taken from you, kept from you for so long. Accept me again. Imagine it: fully human, fully undying, unfettered by duty. We could conquer worlds beyond both space and time. Nothing could stop us.”

“Accept you? After all this?”

“All this is nothing more than what you could have done,” the other said.

“Could is not would. I will not accept you. You are something beyond me now. What good or ill you have done is yours, not mine. You have made your own path.”

“Be careful, Yao,” said the junior, and he smiled with satisfaction when Chance winced slightly at the second use of his human name. “Terrible things happen when parents reject their offspring.”

Chance recovered and smiled. “Really? Shouldn’t you be saying that to Patience?”

It was the other’s turn to twitch.

“You are afraid of her,” Chance stated with satisfaction. “You have been trying to hide from her from the beginning.”

A feeling of excitement began to build in him like the tingle in the air before a lightning strike. Stripping away his disguise, he gathered the Trickster’s substance and collected it in cupped palms. When he clenched his fists, it squeezed through his fingers like a living shadow, flowing over and around his hands and stopping at his wrists like thin, close-fitting gloves. They stood facing each other, mirrored twins save for the white peasant cotton and the white chief’s linen, and between them Chance’s outstretched hands as black as if dipped in ink.

“Come see her now,” he said and seized his doppelgänger.