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I blink. “I don’t quite understand what you’re saying, but I feel like you have something there.”
Lamin eagerly moves closer. “You were correct when you said you needed your mother’s things. Specifically, you’ll need something that carries her scent, since scent is what spurs the most powerful memories.”
“Can’t we get that from here?” Li asks.
“Wha part of ‘she’s a wraith, only her spirit is on this island’ do ye not understand?” Britta retorts.
Li holds up his hands. “It was just a suggestion.”
Lamin ignores the pair as he continues: “Once you have something with her scent on it, all you have to do is expand your senses to search for her essence. You should be able to follow its traces to her body.”
Britta glowers at him. “An’ when were ye planning to mention this? After we’d scoured the entirety of Otera?”
Lamin has the good sense to seem chastened. “It just occurred to me,” he says sheepishly. “I’ve become so used to being a warrior, I’ve forgotten to use my training as a godsworn.” When I frown at him, he expands: “All godsworn are trained to understand the workings of their deities and all the gods in general. I spent most of my childhood learning. That’s why I know so much about your combat state.”
“An’ ye never saw fit to tell us any of this before?” Britta sputters. “Give us the benefit of yer understanding of the gods?”
“Divine covenant,” he reminds her calmly.
“Covenant, my arse.” Britta sniffs. “Ye just wanted to remain loyal to yer keepers here.”
As she glares at him, Keita turns to me again. “And what about the actual death of the Oteran gods? Will the Maiwurians aid you in killing them?”
I shake my head. “Apparently they cannot. Interacting with their kin would expose them to corruption and hasten the ending of the world.”
“The ending of the world.” Keita blinks. “Did I mishear or did you just say ‘the ending of the world’?”
I still. There it is, the truth I didn’t want to share. I sigh. “The shadow vales are, apparently, just a herald. The world is tearing at its seams. If the Oteran gods are not destroyed soon, their corruption will spread across the world and end all life as we know it.”
“Ye mean eventually, right?” Britta moves closer, her eyes desperate. “Tell me ye mean eventually, as in hundreds of thousands of years.”
I shake my head, those horrible feelings surging again. “I can’t,” I whisper, tears pricking my eyes. “The gods back home may not be able to acknowledge the truth, or even see it, but what they’re doing, their war with each other, is killing not only Otera but Maiwuri as well. The entire world is suffering because of their folly, and soon—perhaps in years, perhaps even in months—everything will come to an end because of them.”
A low whistle cuts the silence as Belcalis leans heavily back in her chair. “And the gods of Maiwuri want you to just ride back to Otera and fix it all for them.”
“Yes.” I don’t even bother to try to prettify my answer.
“You, Deka of Irfut.”
“Yes.”
“Ye, Deka, who only a few years ago thought ye were human.” Britta reenters the conversation, her eyes blinking fast now, as if she’s trying to understand, trying to comprehend.
But there is no comprehending this—only trying to survive it.
“Yes,” I say, “I’m the one they want to fix this. Me, you—all of us.”
Britta seems to sit with this for a moment, then tears glaze her eyes—tears not so much of sadness but of frustration. I know this because of how red she gets, how tightly her hands clench into fists. “After everything we’ve done. Everything. I can’t…I just…” She pounds the table, the single blow so hard, she breaks a chunk off the side.
“Britta,” I begin, but she’s already rushing off, then hiding behind a cluster of leaves, her gasping sobs audible even from a distance.
When I begin to stand, Li shakes his head. “I’ll go get her,” he says quietly.
As he rushes to her side, worry in his eyes, I watch, thankful: I’m no longer Britta’s only person. Li is here as well. It’s his job to hold her now, his job to comfort her. And it’s a relief. Given how I’m feeling, I don’t have it in me to comfort anyone else.
Once they’ve disappeared, Belcalis gulps down the rest of her drink. “Well,” she says dryly, “that’s one way to react to news of the world ending.”
“Is there any other?” Lamin seems genuinely curious. But that might be because he’s digesting things too. What I’ve said is a lot for anyone to absorb, much less comprehend.
