The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(96)
I blinked against the blindness. I wished I could see his face. I had no idea what his expression was as he stared down at me. “I have no parents.”
“Of course you do.”
“I was abandoned,” I said. “I am an orphan.”
“If I give you to the god of death, there will be nothing left for me to steal. And to be honest, I am in trouble enough with my brethren without tempting their wrath by killing one of their favorites, whosesoever you are.”
“Are there more gods hidden in this city? Where are they?”
“Gone,” he said.
“But you are here.”
“As punishment.”
“For what?”
“I killed my brother.”
“Why?”
“Nirrim, why did you wish to read my book?”
“Because I need to know what happened here.”
“Why?”
“So I understand why things are the way they are.”
“Why?”
I struggled to move my dead muscles. I strained to see. Yet, although blind to his expression, I sensed his curiosity, and sensed that this curiosity kept him, at least for now, from being cruel. It was hopeless to believe he would truly strike a bargain with me and let me go unharmed, but at least I could breathe; at least my life wasn’t slowly dwindling out of me as it had been a moment ago, my lungs burning with pain. So I answered honestly: “I want to know where magic comes from. I want to know why the Half Kith are walled off from the rest of the city, and anything can be taken from them at any time.” Like me right now, I thought, at the mercy of the god of thieves. “If I know, I can change things.”
“How?” His voice was thoughtful.
“I will explain the city’s history to the Half Kith so that we can seize the source of magic.”
“Will you be believed?”
Slowly, I said, “I don’t know.”
“Revolution is a messy matter, and those who rebel may find themselves crushed under rebellion’s wheels. I was. Ethin is as it is. I warn you—against my own best interests, I might add—to leave it that way.”
I wanted to shake my head, but couldn’t.
“No?” he said. “Then hear my bargain. I will tell you your city’s history, and mine. But if you wish to leave this library with what you have learned, you must tithe something precious unto me.”
At the word tithe, my skin crawled. “Will I be able to live without it?”
“Oh, yes.”
“What is it?”
“Your heart.”
I blinked rapidly against the darkness. “Impossible. I can’t live without a heart.”
“Not that lump of muscle beating in your chest. I mean what humans mean when they say heart: your delectable mix of worry and awe and love. I mean what makes you you.”
“Why?”
“It is useful to me. With it, I may leave this wretched island, you wretched people. I have been cast out of the pantheon, Nirrim, for my sin. But I know of a god who would welcome me home, would help reinstate me among my kin, for the gift of a god-blooded human’s heart.”
“Me, god-blooded?”
“You.”
“You mean … I am a god’s child? Are we called the Half Kith because we are half-gods?”
He laughed. “The ignorant arrogance! Once, yes, the Half Kith were, before they were walled off and forgot their own powers. But that was long ago, and their god-blood has thinned since the gods forsook this island, and half-gods had children with pure mortals, and their children did the same. Now the Ward holds mostly ordinary humans. There are no true half-gods now, though the blood runs strong in you.”
“If you take my heart, what will I become?”
Lightly, he said, “Who can say?”
As light as his voice might be, I heard eagerness beneath it. “Then my answer is no.”
There was a silence. “No? I will force it from you, then.”
“You said you couldn’t steal it.”
“I can hurt you until you give it willingly.”
“Then why haven’t you?”
In the silence that followed, the answer to my own question occurred to me. “Because that would damage it,” I said.
“Yes,” he acknowledged. “It would no longer taste so sweet.”
“Tell me this country’s history, and then let me decide whether it is worth it to me to accept your bargain.”
“I could kill you,” he said.
“Will my corpse be useful to you?”
The Elysium chirped. The god was silent.
“Tell me,” I said, “did you give the first Lord Protector the idea for the wall? The tithes?”
The god laughed. Once he started, he couldn’t seem to stop. The hem of his robe shuddered across my arm. “Nirrim. I am the Lord Protector. I have always been the Lord Protector. I was the first and the second and all the others that followed. When enough mortal years had passed that the city began to think I should be close to death, I pretended to die, and then stole the city’s knowledge of my appearance. I have done this so many times it wearies me, like a joke told and retold. It was amusing, the first time. And yes, I had the wall built. I promised my acolytes that if they labored to build the wall, I would reward them and their children, and their children’s children, and so I have. The people you call High Kith once worshipped me, and now they worship the things I give them, and if they have forgotten me, why, it is because I have let them.”