The noise at the erstwhile pavilion entrance picked up a couple notches, and the Earth and Light Archons were seen hustling up the silk-strewn central walkway, where acolytes were still struggling to make those towering pillars of flowers.
“Not enough, not enough,” the Earth Archon said. “Not enough flowers, and in the wrong colors, and they won’t share.” She stopped dead in the walk and pointed. There were two frozen acolytes, these in scarlet robes, who looked on in disbelief.
“They’re not obliged to. Any more than you are obliged to give me white roses or dancing girls,” this was said in that same, dry tone Hawk now recognized as pointed mockery. “Argon will not be offended by your golden roses and ivy…and if he has too much of a problem, tell him that you are out.”
“As you have often said you are out?” Earth said, harshly. “Out of flour, out of silk, out of salt. Out of—”
“I do not keep silks in either green or gold, or red, or yellow, or blue-and-silver. So I am always out.” A theatrical sigh. “But one you cannot argue with. And so you will tell Argon, you have no red roses and no red silks, for it is chance that your pavilions met.”
“Is it chance, Light? Is it?” She asked, sharply. “We have these strangers from the God-World, and now this? Argos comes a-purpose.”
“All the more reason for Him to foot His own bill. No, sister. Do not do it yourself. Send an acolyte to one of His acolytes, make them tell His Archon, who will then tell Him.”
“You wish for me to stand up to a God?” she said, harsh and sharp as a cracking whip.
“No, sister. I want you to stand up for a God. Yours. You do things, not in your own name (which you surrendered a very long time ago) but in your God’s. Nasheth cannot give what is not in Nasheth’s stores. Make your table beautiful, and if your guest hates the cloth, demand he bring his own. Now. Excuse me. I shall take charge of the strangers.”
“But—” Earth said, plaintively.
“What?” Said the Archon. “Do you wish to give them to Firemaster? Let Argon have his sport with the strangers?”
Her shoulders bowed under for one minute as the terrifyingly masked woman struggled with the idea of offending a god. Then she straightened. “No. They are for my Lady. My Life. My Queen! And my God. Yes. Come, with the best of our reserves!” And she plunged forward, shouting orders and generally being poignantly regal. The Light Archon, shaking his head, walked over to Hawk’s little company.
“Formidable woman,” Kaiser said, from his place on the Divian.
The four of them glared at Kaiser, as if rehearsed. Then Em snorted. The Light Archon said, “Yes, rather,” and turned back to Hawk and the others.
“So,” Hawk said, and gestured.
“Shadow and His Beasts have shed blood but taken no lives. What they did gut, however, was her supply house of finery. They didn’t hit any of the things she keeps for her own comfort, but most of her goods for guests—the silks in another God’s colors, for example—are ruined. Food stores were damaged. We are altogether stalled until she finishes her assessment. But wings are away, and with one God already on the field, the others are sure to follow.”
“Not only that, Hawk, but…Kaiser.” Em gestured at the Divian, where the man so named was eating grapes of some sort, one at a time by a round-eyed acolyte who looked overjoyed at her duties. “Our working theory is that the Gods are from our world, right? Naomi Studdard and her teachers?”
“What about it?” Hawk said.
“Teachers. On a teacher’s salary. And fucking Kaiser.” She turned to the Light. “He’s basically one of the richest men in our world. You want it? He can buy it.” Back to Hawk. “Those people are going to be on him like white on rice.”
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“And Naomi would have to trust—does Nasheth trust the other Gods?”
“No further than I can throw this entire pavilion.”
Em nodded, then tilted her head. “Are your Gods limited by time and space?” A puzzled tilt from the Archon’s mask. “Can they travel instantaneously?” she said.
This got an “Oh!” and a nod.
Em turned back to Hawk. “She’ll be here inside of an hour of the others.”
And then there came a fanfare of nearly a hundred primitive trumpets, and horns, symbols and drums, flutes and harps, and an ululation of human voices, as a clot of red entered the green and gold pavilion.
Argon, the FireMaster and God of War, had entered.
***
He was tall, white, and very broad, with curling blond hair that fell in Cupid-like ringlets down his back. His eyes were blue. He had a few tattoos that were very badly faded, and wore red. This was the clinical assessment a very small part of Hawk’s mind could give. The human description. Just so.
The rest of her was overwhelmed.
He was gorgeous. His hair was a shower of gold. His limbs were thick like trees. His eyes were the unfolding of the dawn, his hands were the size of ham hocks. She was suddenly radiantly glad that she was straight and that this attraction was normal for her; she couldn’t imagine someone like Em, who disliked defined genders the way most people dislike spiders, forced to view this display of masculinity with unwilling devotion. Argon carried a gleaming silver battle hammer, thick and heavy across his back. The chain mail he wore—a vest, so that his perfect abs and pecs were visible—was plated in gold, and the scarlet velvet falling from his belt was like a spill of blood across the floor. Here was War, here was Fire, here was imminent incarnate, and he was walking up the green silk walkway like the victor he deserved to be…
And that was where Hawk caught herself. They talked of Gods here, but she’d reacted this way to only one being, and that was the Ape from the first Glass Event. The urge to fawn, to lavish luxuries and care, to carry on your own back until you expire, all felt stronger than the command to breathe. But she knew better. The Ape had been kind and gentle and she’d still recognized the danger this fawn response could bring. This was why she’d felt an instant urge to hide the Ape from Kaiser, why even this dilute meeting was a disaster: He demanded, and got, worship through simply existing.
She could not afford to get sucked down by this man.
Red-robed acolytes danced before him, beautiful women in scarlet silks, limbs supple and refined and sensual in a way that Earth Archon’s women were not. All the dancers Hawk had seen so far, in this series of temporary temples, had been a celebration of movement and beauty, but curiously asexual. These women in their red, red robes were a carnival of sex. She also recognized the danger the Light Archon had tried to warn her about; every one of these women were dark skinned.
One of the dancers collapsed on the way. She was left on the wayside, ignored by Earth’s people as a matter of course, but also ignored by her own. Hawk and Em both started to rise. They were stopped by the Archon.
“Do not go near her. Do not help his dancer. Do not help at all.” His grip on their wrists was very strong.
“She just collapsed,” Em said.
“Yes. And it is a great shame to fall in front of your God. Her punishment is isolation. If you rise to help her, it will be the worse for you both.”
“You’re afraid of him,” Em hissed.
“Anyone with sense is afraid of a God. This one is the God of War and of Sex. You’d be twice the fool, defying him.” And he sat back on the pillows. “Rise to her aid, and you will likely die.”
And Hawk found herself understanding something for the first time. This was how it happened. This was how good men were bent to bad things. It had nothing to do with the quality of character, and everything to do with the quantity of fear. This was absolute control. Love, attraction, devotion, these were all side products, dross from the catalyst. Fear kept people in their places.
Two more dancers fainted on the road to Argon’s throne.
Two young children garbed in red began strewing the green with red rose petals. They threw them up in handfuls and danced in the cloud. Em, seeing this, turned to the Light Archon and said, “How do you people grow roses? There’s no fucking light down here.”
“In a grow-box. With cold-light,” the Archon answered simply.
“That’s the shit flying over head, right?” Em asked.
“It is the magic giving us illumination, yes.” He sounded amused.
“Magic,” Em spat the word out, then turned to Hawk. “It makes sense they’d view it as magic. Hell, that’s how the Glass still looks to us.”
“Glass? As in the stuff for cups, and plates, and windows?” The Archon said.
“No,” Em said. Argon was nearly at the stairs now, and the songs parading him could have melted the heart of a mountain lion. Em spoke the way one would hold to a rosary on the edge of the abyss. “I mean an energy signature that sucks all life out of organic matter. The hole that you live in? Your entire world? It’s killing ours. Your world bleeds out—”
“No,” the Archon whispered. He was splayed back in his own seat, as if he’d taken a blow. “Our world does not bleed. It absorbs.”
But there was no more time. Argon was at the steps, and the Archon of Light rose to greet him. “Blessed One!” he said, and you wouldn’t hear the lie if you didn’t know him well. “Welcome to thy Mother’s House!”