GRP Chapter 13

Mariaeks recalled the question he'd just asked. How are you feeling? Mariaeks found herself touching the back of her neck without meaning to. Why does it hurt there. Like she'd been struck once. She had definitely been watching the morning sun, and then the memory just stopped. What had happened?

"I'm glad you're all right."

Samthyeon took the answer she had never given, cleverly helped himself to it, and answered on her behalf. While Mariaeks was still working out why, he pressed on.

"Before I convey the fortress's position, there's something I'd like to ask you first, Mariaeks. Did you at any point indicate a wish to visit our fortress, or arrange a prior appointment?"

Indicate a wish to visit. Arrange an appointment. That was an option? Mariaeks was briefly overwhelmed trying to account for all of the cold, all of the pain of fingers and toes on the verge of falling away, all of the effort of scaling the outer wall—and the realization that it had apparently been unnecessary.

"Did you?"

Samthyeon asked again. Mariaeks forced open a throat cracking with tension and got a word out.

"No."

"I see. Then: you entered the fortress without authorization. You threatened the commander of this fortress and Anir of Olgidphaenn, Garthe, with a formidable dagger. You told him you would kill him. You proceeded, indeed, to attempt to kill him by running that dagger through his heart. Would it be accurate for us to receive those actions not as a miscommunication or a failure of coordination, but as a threat and an act of hostility?"

Mariaeks sat there, expression unchanged, and stayed very still. Threat. Attempted murder. Failure of coordination. Miscommunication. Act of hostility. A banquet of words she knew—and yet, laid out like this all at once, they made her head go distant.

Wait. The one who put the dagger through the heart was—

Wasn’t it the man who said he’d been threatened? The hand around the dagger had certainly been Mariaeks’s, but the act itself had been, if you looked at it carefully, essentially Garthe’s own doing.

“No, that’s—”

She tried to dispute even a fraction of the weight being placed on her, but Samthyeon gave her no gap.

"You may be thinking: it's only one human life. But it is not 'only one human life.' The Anir's health affects the hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of humans living under his protection. This is a very serious matter to us. So I would appreciate a clear answer. What brought you to our fortress?"

Throughout all of this—armed hostility, serious matter—Samthyeon had not once lost his composure. He simply looked mildly strained, and very tired, and spoke with the even-handedness of someone verifying facts. He wanted the facts and nothing else. Mariaeks felt herself shrink. It was a different kind of difficulty than standing in front of someone showing open anger.

"You had the spirits locked up, as I understand it."

"We have not so much as touched a hair on the spirits. You may be assured of that."

He answered while simultaneously directing her attention toward her own culpability.

"They're precious to me. Return them."

"That I cannot do."

He answered quickly, as though he had been waiting.

"The two spirits have been systematically stealing from the people of this fortress. You may not know this, Mariaeks, but provisions meant to last through the winter are not valued simply in money. Their weight is the weight of lives."

Mariaeks swallowed a quiet groan. To her question of where on earth they were getting the ingredients, they had answered: lowly human creatures, awed by the Master's beauty and greatness, lay offerings voluntarily at the altar in worship. But she had wandered for some time along the mountain base and near the border looking for Ullri and Baen, and no such altar had turned up. They had said it was made of gold and marble, the size of a frost giant’s fist—something like that, had it existed, would hardly go unnoticed. Which meant the altar did not exist. Which meant there were no offerings.

Mariaeks thought of the warm meals that had come up every single morning, so reliably, so faithfully and understood that what Samthyeon was saying was true. But she could not blame Ullri and Baen for what they had done. She knew too well who it had been for.

"Do you know why the spirits stole human food? Or did you order them to?"

Mariaeks hesitated.

Needing to eat at regular intervals meant that divine power alone was not enough to sustain her body. No weak god of Heimdrykze fell into this category—not even a newborn spirit. Even among demigods with human blood, there were those who lived on breath alone. A body that absolutely required food—a body that could not sustain itself on divine power alone—was a disgrace Mariaeks had carried privately for a very long time.

But it was not only that she did not want her private vulnerability found out. It is the instinct of living things to press down on what is weaker than themselves. Mariaeks had reasoned that Samthyeon, treating her as a god of Heimdrykze, was affording her a certain reception—even as an intruder.

If it came out that Ullri and Baen had stolen food out of necessity, and her incompleteness was thereby exposed, they would certainly treat her differently. She could already roughly guess what that shift would look like. It always tended to follow the same pattern.

Mariaeks kept her mouth closed and did not answer. Samthyeon watched her and then carried on, treating the question as though it had never been asked.

"This is not the domain of gods—it is the domain of humans, Mariaeks. Olgidphaenn has its own law. By the verdict of Olgidphaenn's Anir, the hero Garthe—"

Samthyeon's gaze moved from Mariaeks to the figure beside her. Mariaeks followed it to Garthe. The hero smiled, the way a villain might.

"Summary execution."

Before she had even fully grasped the meaning of the word, a strange emotion filled the inside of her chest completely. She was angry. She was sad. She was aghast. She was suffocated. None of those simple words fit it, and she was left only with the confusion of not knowing what to call it.

She set the confusion aside and measured what she could actually do in this situation. The answer came quickly. Nothing. So she just sat there. What had she crossed the river for. Whatever courage that had been—it had been hacked to tatters under the man’s gaze, and now it was powder.

Mariaeks studied the human hero. His face showed no discomfort at playing with someone else's life like this, no guilt, not even a base enjoyment of it. He was entirely unbothered. Not performing unbothered—he simply was. Deciding someone else's fate was a natural position for him to occupy, and he had the power to make it so. He had always had that power. It was what it was.

She felt that no blade, however sharp, and no pain, however bone-deep, could leave so much as a scratch on Garthe. Like the other gods of Heimdrykze, he seemed a complete and flawless being. Even the cool, pressing quality of his gaze—the way it weighted everything beneath it—was part of that.

"Our Anir was only joking."

Samthyeon spoke quietly, angling his body so that only Garthe could see his lips form: please be quiet.

“He’s quite the prankster.”

"You're the first person to say that to me," Garthe said.

Samthyeon didn't appear particularly concerned about this either. The only one being tossed about by the situation was Mariaeks, and Mariaeks alone.

"However—whatever the reason—a loss has been incurred on our side, and we cannot simply hand the spirits back. Let me explain why that's complicated. This has happened repeatedly. There may also be incidents we haven't accounted for. The total scale is difficult to estimate. And then there is the matter of emotional and psychological restitution for the Anir, who will require a period of recovery from your visit—which makes determining an equivalent compensation rather difficult, you understand. And even if we arrived at a figure, there is the possibility that the two parties might not reach an amicable agreement."

The more Samthyeon wound his way around his own words, the heavier the situation felt. Mariaeks took it out on the blanket, which had done nothing to deserve it. Samthyeon, watching this from the corner of his eye, shifted his expression—from looking very tired to looking slightly less so. His voice warmed almost imperceptibly.

"So I've prepared one alternative. Olgidphaenn studies the divine realm of Heimdrykze and the many gods who live there. But as you well know, Heimdrykze is a dangerous place—no ordinary human can set foot in it."

Mariaeks gave a small nod.

"And yet, as if by fate, you've come to Olgidphaenn. Which means a different path has opened. If you would agree to assist with our research, the spirits will be returned to you."

"Assist, how?"

"Simply allow us to observe you here, at close range. Answer our questions from time to time. The more actively you cooperate, the sooner the research will be finished. I expect it will take half a year at the quick end, and perhaps a year at the slow end."

Mariaeks blinked.

Half a year. A year. Another god might find those short. To Mariaeks, they stretched impossibly long—and not simply because she disliked humans, or because the place was unfamiliar.

'Sweet Mariaeks. You won't leave me, will you?'

Since she had heard those words, Mariaeks had not crossed the river that marked Heimdrykze's border.

She had not so much as stepped outside the small shrine.