They came with a symphonic tidal crash, several dozen people robed in every shade of blue pouring out of the golden gates. They came with gold in hand, golden chains and golden shields, golden blades topping every weapon. Stupid, she thought, if you wanted to actually defend yourself. But there was gold and it was very pretty, and between the guards and the musician were maybe a dozen very beautiful girls in every shade of flesh, from Ireland pale to the heights of Africa. There was a pole-borne palanquin, just a single one, and the sight of it made Hawk a little furious. She knew who that was intended for, and it wasn’t for her. It, too, seemed made of gold and adorned with blue gems, sapphires and blue topaz, something opaline and something else with a cool blue sheen. It was, in short, precisely the welcome one would expect from a Holian god: opulent to the point of obscenity.

  The crowd flooded around them, singing a paean to the Shadow, “Tamed by our Lady,” said one English verse, and that brought Hawk’s teeth together. She was not going to grind them. She was not jealous of an age-old goddess. Not even when the Shadow’s words, I rebuilt her wall, began resonating around her head. She spotted Illryis’s blue-masked Archon to the left of the palanquin. Anxiety ratcheted itself high. There were silver details on the robes and mask of the Archon. Hawk remembered that Illyris’ Archon’s tended to drown. Several small girls and boys dashed forward, first pouring crystal clear water across the bare stones of the beaten path, and then casting flower petals across the dampened ground. These were fresh-harvested, and glowed. Everything down here had a deep water phosphorescence to it, clean but curiously cloying.

  “My mistress greets the Shadow and invites him to her bower.” The Archon said. They had a softer voice, feminine, but the mask removed all other trace of identity and gender.

  “I avoid her bower as a matter of course, but I’ll accept a welcome into her court, for myself and my companion.”

  At the word companion the entirety of the procession turned to look at Hawk, who looked back with as much bravery as she could muster, and all the trepidation she could not repress. Thank god she was finally in jeans and a T-shirt for this little farce; she’d have been ripping at those goddamn white silk robes otherwise. Her hands were shaking now, and she had nothing to silence them with.

  “Then we greet Shadow’s Companion, and bid for her name that it might be—”

  Shadow’s voice cut through the formality. He spoke in the Holian tongue, clear and sharp, and gasps erupted at the words he spoke. And then to Hawk, more quietly, “I have named you Hawk-of-the-West, Keeper of Earth and God-Slayer. I hope you don’t mind.”

  She did rather mind. She felt the size of that target grow lunar in volume. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “It will, I think, encourage Illyris not to separate us too far. Best to keep both your enemies front and center, and in the same target.”

  But his words had done much more than imperil Hawk. Holian words, shouts and screams, rained down on them like the water strewn across the stones. Questions were shouted in both the Holian tongue and English—the latter stilted and archaic, clearly learned by rote—and no answers were supplied. But repeated, over and over, were the English words God-slayer. Soon it had melded into one, and the eyes that were upon her were equal parts outraged and hopeful.

  It was the Archon who stepped in and held up both their hands for silence. “Her? A god-slayer? How could this be?”

  “She has slain Kali’Mar. He is dead. His body is shattered beyond mending. I would have done it myself, but she held the blade and did the deed with little aid from me.” And the Shadow glanced around as his English words were translated through the crowd.

  “Slain a god? The gods cannot be killed,” The archon said, desperately. “What pretense is this? What lies? Why foul your coming with deception, Shadow? My lady raises no sword against you.”

  “Your lady is the sword,” Shadow said, mildly. “And the hows and whys of this story are only for Illyris’s ears.”

  There was a brief concatenation of priests before the palanquin as they discussed these traumatic and paralyzing revelations. A god? Dead? Unthinkable. Hawk heard her own name, and Kali’Mar’s, and the Shadow’s repeated a multitude of times. And then, when they again separated, the priests looked down at her with fear. “And to what end does a Godslayer seek a god?”

  “To ask for help,” Hawk said. And plea for sanity.

  “My companion has a boon to ask. She will only give it in Illyris’s presence. I gave oath to her that I would give her aid. She is under my protection, as long as we are together.”

  And then, in a move straight out of Alex’s playbook, he turned and winked at her. And even as it sent her heart thrilling, it made her gut go cold. There was only one reason to state something that clearly: He didn’t want them separated, but he wanted these strangers to try.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  They were loaded into the palanquin with much fanfare. The pageantry started almost before Hawk touched the blue chair’s frame. Water was spritzed and sprayed and flicked from bare fingers, and a chorus of carefully synchronized, incomprehensible blessings rained down upon both Hawk and Shadow as they climbed into the palanquin. Lovebombing with the gods is still an attempt at manipulation. Hawk climbed into the delicate-seeming sedan chair across from the Shadow with a shudder.

  The path through the city wound through each of its seven walls, a defensive choice that Hawk could appreciate. A gate was, after all, the greatest weakness in a wall, the way love created a vulnerability in a body. Either way, you let things in. Staggering the gates prevented an invading army from surging up in one straight shot, and gave defenders atop the walls a long, great flank to attack from above. She also noticed that the roads immediately before and after a gate were narrow, close, and tall. The better to prevent a siege machine from proper assembly. Illyris did not seem to rest easy on her laurels.

  “This isn’t just you,” she said. “You said you attacked her once.”

  “The gods have their own fears. Dare I call them insecurities?” He raised a brow mockingly. “Illyris, for whatever reason, has always felt the most precarious of her siblings. She is not. Water is strong. It drowns fire and earth and air alike. But she sees only that she does not burn, or grow, or fly.” He paused. “At least, that is how I see her.”

  Nods. “So how do you want to play this?”

  He made a face. “She has always…appealed to me, as one would appeal a judge. Not quite a penitent prostrate, but she feels guilt most acutely. She seems to see me as an arbiter of some sort of propitiation. Of what, I don’t know. When I have had companions before, she has shut them out.” He paused. “What can you do with that?”

  Shut out, meaning she would not be the focus of Illyris’s attention. She could do a great deal with that. “How does she behave towards you?”

  “Fawning,” he said. “To the point of annoyance and near obscenity, given her position and power.”

  Even better. Hawk had a feeling she knew how this meeting with Illyris would go. As they were walked through the admittedly beautiful streets—still devoid of plant life; a curious absence—Hawk began making her own, slight plans. Her goal was simple: Get enough of a god’s orb that they could heal Henry. Anything that served that goal and minimized harm was worth doing.

  And she only hoped she could cling to that idea in the challenges to come.

  The Palace of Illyris was the first time Hawk had gone to a god’s actual dwelling-place, and not one of the traveling pavilions they used as mobile temples. Her first thought was, it was cold. Beautiful, yes. Made of pale stone with water falling, falling from every height and pooling in every valley. It was a palace made of water, and the stone beneath it—marble, crystal, black malachite, peach-and-garnet granite—was merely the vessel intended to house it. Water wrapped around each columnar tower, roaring down to the ground in frothy white, or else trickling gently down an incline, or curling rapidly in a spiral around a fragile-looking bulwark that would hold, Hawk suspected, no matter what one hurled at it. But it was all cold. There was no life in that water. There could be no life; it all moved too fast, too theatrically. Trying to put living things in all that beauty would be like trying to keep goldfish in a mall fountain. The only thing missing was the scent of chlorine. And there were no plants. No Riccia, no duckweed, no java ferns, nor even macroalgea like kelp. She felt as if she were falling into someone’s idealized vision of Water, the way she’d felt trapped by Kali’Mar’s ostentatious, apostrophe-strewn vision of godhood. Not a great comparison.

  The seventh and final wall was made of pure white marble, and instead of being topped by soldiers and battlements, it held an aqueduct that spilled about the final gate with the loudest roar of all. Perhaps Niagara Falls could have rivaled it. Hawk would have been more impressed had she seen a single tree beneath all this blue light. It should have felt soothing and calm. She felt depressed and put-upon, and ready to kill for the color yellow.

  The courtyard was also white marble, bordered by water in lapis channels. The Shadow was helped from the palanquin despite his not needing it. Hawk was left to hobble out of the damned chair herself. When the Shadow paused to help her down first, she refused his assistance with a small shake of the head, twist of the wrist. She didn’t care about her greeting; she wanted to see what an unfettered Illyris would do. And clearly the answer was “Leave the competition in the cold.” The Shadow was immediately surrounded by acolytes in pale blue and deep purple. There were about three people between her and him, now. One of these noticed her for the first time and said, “Does the Shadowmaster have any baggage?”

  “Other than me, you mean?” She quipped, and smiled. “No. And I’m perfectly fine.”

  Her suspicion that she was viewed as competition only increased as they were lead into a throne room. Her own small house, ashes now, could have fit in here multiple times over. She was glad this place was medieval in technology. She’d have hated to see their heating bill. And there were falls of pale white and blue silk banners, like water in themselves, embroidered with the fish and water plants so very absent in the sterile reality. There was a table laden with food, all of it blue washed by the light and a bit unappealing. Nobody, she thought, wanted a blue chicken roasted with blue mushroom sauce.

  And there was the throne, made of cut crystal with water pouring out of every possible side, save the seat, which was filled by a woman in a frothy blue, form-fitting gown. It was silk and it was lace and it was beautiful, and it accented the beauty of the woman wearing it perfectly. Plunging décolletage with a net of sapphires over both shoulders. Her hair was black. Her skin was as pale as ivory (as the ivory trade, Hawk thought) and Her eyes matched the stones around her neck.

  “Greetings!” Illyris said. “Welcome! Salutations to my rival…and lover.”