Dreams of Gods & Monsters

Something like that. Razgut remembered the feeling that went into it, if not the precise words, and it wasn’t love, or even the most surface-skimming truth. He’d simply been hedging his bets. If he wasn’tchosen—and what were the chances that he would be, out of so many?—then he could have gone home and pretended relief, and the honey-colored girl would have consoled him in her silkiness, and maybe they even would have married and borne children and lived some kind of drab-happy life in the undertow of his failure.

But he hadbeen chosen.

O glorious day. Razgut was one of twelve in the Long Ago, and glory had been his. The day of the Naming: such glory. So much light in the city as had dazed the night sky, and they couldn’t see the godstars but the godstars could see them, and that was what mattered—that the gods see them and know: They were chosen.

The openers of doors, the lights in the darkness.

Razgut never went back home, and he never saw the girl again, but look. He hadn’t lied to her, had he? He was remembering her now, beyond the shadow of a horizon, in the darkness of a tomorrow he could never have imagined.

“What does she say?”

She.

Jael’s voice broke into Razgut’s reverie. This letter, it was from no silken girl but a woman whom he had never seen—though her name was not unknown to him—and there was no sweetness in her, none at all, and that was all right. Razgut’s tastes had matured. Sweetness was insipid. Let the butterflies and hummingbirds have it. Like a carrion beetle, he was called to sharper scents.

Like gunpowder and decay.

“Guns, explosives, ammunition,” Razgut translated for Jael. “She says that she can get you anything you need, and everything you want, as long as you agree to her condition.”

“Condition!” Jael hiss-spat. “Who is sheto name conditions?”

He’d been like this since the first letter. Jael had no appreciation for a strong woman, except as something to break and keep breaking. The idea of a womanmaking demands? A woman whom he was in no position to humble? It infuriated him.

“She’s your best option is who she is,” replied Razgut. It was one of many possible answers, and the only one Jael needed to hear. She’s a vulture. She’s fetid meat. She’s black powder waiting to ignite.“No one else has managed to bribe their way to you, so here is your choice, today: Keep courting these dour-mouthed heads of state and watch them mince through the minefield of public opinion, fearing their own people more than they fear you, or make this simple promise to a lady of means and have done with all of that. Your weapons are waiting for you, emperor. What’s one little condition next to that?”

53

EYEBROW MASTER CLASS

When Mik and Zuzana stepped into the lobby of the St. Regis grand hotel in Rome, several conversations ceased, a bellhop did a double take, and an elegant matron with a silver bob and surgical cheekbones raised a hand to her pearls and sca

Backpackers did not stay at the St. Regis.

Ever.

And thesebackpackers, they looked… well, it wasn’t easy to put into words. Someone extremely insightful might say they looked as though they had been living in caves, and then been through a battle, perhaps even ridden here astride a monster.

In fact, they had flown by private jet from Marrakesh, but one could be excused for not guessing as much; leaving Tamnougalt in such a hurry, they hadn’t had a chance to take advantage of the shower, and they had no clean clothes between them, and it’s likely that neither had ever been quite this unsightly in their entire lives.

It was presumed, by patrons and staff, that they were going to ask to use a restroom—as, every once in a while, this did happen, the underclasses being ill-educated in the rules—and then most likely filth it up by bathing themselves in the sink. Wasn’t that what these people did?

The doorman who had admitted them kept his eyes fixed on the floor, aware that he had committed a cardinal sin in allowing hoi polloi to breach the perimeter. No doubt, in bygone days, guards had been put to death for just this offense. But what could he do? They claimed to be guests.

Behind the reception desk, the clerks exchanged gladiatorial glances. Do you want to take them, or shall I?

A champion stepped forth.

“May I help you?”

The words spoken may have been: May I help you,but the tone was something more along the lines of: It is my unbearable duty to interact with you, and I intend to punish you for it.

Zuzana turned to meet her challenger. She saw before her a young Italian woman, mid-twenties, sleekly attractive and just as sleekly dressed. Unamused. Nay, unamusable. The woman’s eyes did a quick flick up and down, flaring with something like indignation when they arrived at Zuzana’s dust-caked zebra platform sneakers, and her mouth puckered into a little knob of distaste. She looked rather as though she were preparing to remove a live slug from her arugula.

“You know,” observed Zuzana, in English, “you’d probably be a lot prettier if you didn’t make that face.”

The face in question froze in place. A nostril-flare suggested that offense was taken. And then, as though in slow motion, one of the woman’s fine, plucked eyebrows ascended toward her hairline.

Game. On.

Zuzana Nováková was a pretty girl. She’d often been compared to a doll, or to a fairy, not just because of her slight stature but also her fine, small face—a happy blending of angles and arcs set under skin clear as porcelain. Delicate chin, rounded cheeks, wide glossy eyes, and, though she would a

Deciding to take her on was akin to a fish deciding idly to gobble up that pretty light bobbing in the shadows and then— OH GOD THE TEETH THE HORROR!—meeting the anglerfish on the other side.

Zuzana didn’t eat people. She withered them. And there in the sparkling marble, crystal, and gilded lobby of one of Rome’s most exclusive luxury hotels, in just under two seconds, Zuzana’s eyebrow taught a master class. Its rise was something to behold. The sweep of it, the arch. Contempt, amusement, amused contempt, confidence, judgment, mockery, even pity. It was all there, and more. Her eyebrow communicated directly with the Italian woman’s eyebrow, somehow telling it, We have not stumbled in here to bathe in your sink. You have miscalculated. Tread lightly.

And the eyebrow conveyed the message to its owner, whose mouth promptly lost its slug-in-the-arugula pucker, and even before Mik interceded to say, mildly, almost apologetically, “We’re staying in the Royal Suite?” she was tasting the first sour hint of her mortification.

“The… RoyalSuite?”

The Royal Suite at the St. Regis had hosted monarchs and rock legends, oil sheiks and opera divas. It cost nearly $20,000 a night during ordinary times, and these were notordinary times. Rome was currently center of the world’s attention, filled to the rafters with pilgrims, journalists, foreign delegations, curiosity-seekers, and crazies, and there simply were no vacancies. Families were renting out balconies and cellars—even rooftops—at a premium, and the already overtaxed police were having a time breaking up pilgrim camps in the parks.