Garo spoke, blessedly providing a distraction from her horror.
“Evera believes that she can stand apart from this.” He looked very deliberately at his companions. “She is hopelessly wrong. This is not the kind of carriage you jump off in the middle of a journey. We decided to kill Tivelo. All of us did, whether you personally wielded the knife or simply watched from a distance. If Evera wants to pretend, let her. The rest of us, if we want to live, must discover how to kill Tivelo.”
“He should already be dead,” Chalik said. “That was the point of this whole plot.” She sounded agitated. Her eyes swept from Garo to Alogun as if uncertain who to blame.
Garo decided on Alogun. “I followed your plan,” he said. “So why is he alive?”
Alogun scratched his head. “You made a mistake somewhere.”
“I did not -”
“You made a mistake.” There was unshakeable conviction in his tone. “The plan I gave you was unimpeachable. Tivelo is driven by love. Without something to love, he should fade away.”
“He managed before Achi was born.” Chalik said.
Alogun turned to her. “There’s a difference between a child you’re expecting and a child who is dead. No. If Garo had followed my plan, Tivelo would be dead.”
Aria felt mildly worried that they would detect her presence, but they did not seem worried about discovery. There were no attendants in the room or within a few hundred feet of it. So, clearly, they intended their discussion to be private. Still, she felt no barrier to her intrusion.
“Tell me what you did,” Alogun sighed with irritation. “I’ll find out how you botched it.”
“Maybe he found something else to love.”
He waved off Chalik’s comment and motioned for Garo to speak.
Garo stared down at the prince’s body, nudging it with one of his toes as he spoke.
“I gathered a thousand of my most devoted priests. I tested them with feats of strength and devotion. They killed babies and drank their blood. Their devotion was unimpeachable.”
Chalik looked disgusted. Alogun did as well, but he also seemed more detached.
“I had them perform the ritual as you gave it to me,” Garo said. “Afterward, I confirmed that it had succeeded. There was not a spark of divinity left in them. When they had children, I confirmed that the children were similarly deformed. Like you said, it was always inherited.”
Alogun nodded. “Go on.”
Garo’s face took on a tone of disgust. “I did my best to encourage their breeding but then Tivelo discovered the plan.”
“Like I said he would,” Alogun said. “But it had already spread far, correct?”
“No. It was only the tenth generation. I had to release the plague early.”
Alogun shrugged. “I would have released it earlier, to be safe. But you made it work. Let’s move on. You released the plague and all the unmodified mortals were dead before he could stop it.”
“Actually, he saved a few.”
“What?!”
“I couldn’t come to you for advice!” Garo was shouting. “Every one of you fools thought to pin the plan on me. You erased your memories. I did my best, but I’m a god of war, not whatever freak of nature you are. He saved a few. It didn’t matter. In the end, I had ninety-nine percent of the population modified. There was a ninety-nine percent chance that she would come from my line. If you wanted a hundred percent, you should have been more involved.”
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“Fine, fine.” Alogun swore. “Fine. Tell me the rest.”
“That was the plan,” Garo said. “I erased my memories, so he would not know who had started the plague, and just waited.”
“He probably decided that we all participated in the plan,” Alogun sighed.
“Why didn’t he kill us then,” Chalik asked.
“Justice,” Alogun smiled. “He could not punish us unless he was certain we were guilty. And he could not be certain because there was no evidence. He probably decided to wait and see if those he saved would produce the girl. There was a ten percent chance, afterall. If they did, then our whole plan would have been for nothing.”
“Well, that was the end of my participation,” Garo said. “I didn’t recall anything of the plan till Achi died yesterday.” he gestured at Aria’s body lying before them. “I’ve confirmed that she has no divine spark. So, the plan worked. She killed Achi. Tivelo should be dead.”
“Hmm,” Alogun chewed on his lip. With a burst of energy, he was on his feet and pacing the room, leather shoes slapping against the stone floor. “I never scripted the end because there were so many variables. Achi could have died when he realized his true love would never be born. Or he could have tried to accept her and lived a miserable life with a mismatched spouse. Either way, our plan should have eventually led to his demise. And Tivelo should have been swept along.”
He fell silent.
After a long, uncomfortable minute, Garo snapped. “Has your brain finally run out of ideas?”
“Hmm?” Alogun shook his head as if waking from a dream. “No, I was just debating the pros and cons of joining Evera. Chalik was right. She is more intelligent than us.”
The cryptic comment infuriated Garo. “Speak clearly or I’ll kill you and find a mortal soothsayer to dazzle me with puzzles.”
“That Tivelo did not die means one thing only: he still has someone to love. Now, it could be someone else, but I would bet all my power that it is still Achi. That means Achi is either not dead,” he glanced at the corpse on the floor, “ or not permanently dead.”
He strode back to where Aria’s body lay on the ground, pressed a hand to her chest and then withdrew it sharply. The body jerked, rising about an inch from the ground and then fell back. In his hand, Alogun held her a glassy orb.
“What are you doing?” Chalik asked.
Alogun closed his palm, and the orb shattered into millions of shards. “Achi is like his father,” he said. “If he is not permanently dead, that means there is still hope for his lover.”
“Destroy her soul,” Chalik said.
“I don’t know how to do that,” Alogun said. “Do you?” Neither deity replied. “So,” Alogun walked over to Garo, took the other god’s hand and deposited a significant portion of the dust into Garo’s hand. “We divide its remains into three parts and each keep a part.” He went to Chalik and repeated the process. “I, personally, plan to divide my portion into a further hundred parts, hide them in a hundred different places, and have them guarded so well that even I cannot enter them. I suggest you do the same.”
The joke’s on them. Aria almost laughed. They can’t even tell a fake soul from a real one.
Alogun kept his hands closed around the dust while the others looked down at theirs. “Do the same for Achi’s body. Cremate it. Split the ash and hide it separately from the soul. You can’t burn Tivelo while he’s alive. Don’t try to chop him up. He’ll probably just detach from the body and cause you more trouble. Keep him in one place, well guarded. And maybe all of this will save us.”
Chalik’s mouth fell open. “How are they supposed to recover from this?”
Alogun gave her a humorless smile. “Oh, you doubt the power of love? Anyway, it’s not their bodies that concern me. It’s the one scenario you two dimwits have not yet considered, but which Evera has.”
Garo leaned closer. “Which is?”
“That your incompetence has doomed us all. That Achi might be dead, but there is still hope for him because his lover is not because she has not been born yet. This girl,” he gestured at Aria’s body, “was supposed to be it. But, thanks to our machinations, she is only a damaged imitation. The one percent you let escape still has the divine spark. The real girl can still be born.”
Horror spread on their faces as they suddenly recognized their danger.
“At this moment,” Alogun said, “Evera is trying to decide if she should find and protect the girl or join us in hunting her down. Fortunately for us, she will decide to join our course. Tivelo will not spare her simply because she turned cowardly halfway through. It won’t be as easy as before. Your old plague will likely not work. In fact, I suspect that Tivelo identified the most likely bloodlines and hid them. So, we’re in for a merry hunt. Hide this girl’s soul in case she is the one. Then, find and exterminate everyone with a divine spark. Do it properly this time, Garo.”