follow me around, keeping tabs on the Paladin. Gods know what else he learned, what Simeon or Tomas was telling the Alexians behind our backs. And now he has us falsely accused and on the run. And the people believe him! They're anxious for the trial, anxious to see the Cult of Morgan put down. They believe him!'
She peeled my hand off her cloak, one finger at a time, then pushed the bully away from her belly.
'Are you ready to trust an Amonite now?'
'I'm not ready to trust anyone, anywhere. Tell me what you've found, or get out.'
She sighed and sat down by her damned machine. 'Where did this thing come from?' she asked.
'We don't know. Just appeared in the Strength one day.'
'That's what your Elders told you, at least. Fair enough. And you don't know who sent it to you?'
'I said as much.'
She nodded. 'Someone is trying to send you a message. A warning, really. They could have been more direct about it, but I don't think you would have trusted them if they had been.'
'Who? And what message?'
'I don't know who. And I'm not sure of the message.'
I spat. 'You're being a hell of a lot of help here. Do you have anything that will help me prove the Elders are innocent? Anything that will save their lives?'
She turned and powered down the archive, then folded her arms and leaned back against the machine.
'It's a matter of belief, Eva. You're being led on a path, by some hidden agency. I don't know if they're the ones killing your friends, or if someone is doing that to drive you away. I don't know why I was the one chosen to interpret this device, why Barnabas gave his life to protect me. I think he knew what the device meant, but couldn't decipher it. Couldn't bear the message.'
'Yeah, I'm going to barrel out of here and start shooting whiteshirts if you don't hurry the hell up.'
She smiled and nodded. 'Okay, okay. Let me explain, and then you can decide who needs shooting. I get the feeling it's going to be more people than even you're comfortable with.'
'You'd be surprised.'
She stood and fished out the cylinder of cigarettes. I hadn't seen her smoke since we'd left the Strength. When she was lit, she paced in a slow arc across the platform, trailing a blue haze.
'Amon discovered the Feyr device that we think of as the impellor, in the days after this city had been taken from the Feyr. Like I said, it appeared that the Feyr were just shooting them up into the sky. No real apparent purpose. Most of the devices were destroyed, or had shot down into the lake when their towers collapsed in the fighting. Amon retrieved what he could, and began to study them.' She paused and toked a couple times, her hands shaking with the nicotine rush. 'What do you know about godhood?'
'That there were three gods, and that we're down to one.'
'And before us, before the Brothers Immortal rose up from their humble childhoods and led the tribes of man against the Feyr-who was god then?'
'There was no god. Just stories of gods, from ancient days.'
'Yes and no. The ancient gods were from the race of the Titans. In their time, the Titans were just people, and a few among them ascended to godhood. Just like the Brothers, in their own way. They had more than three gods, so many in fact that most people don't realize there were regular Titans as well. Only the names of the gods come to us through history, and the mythologies of the Feyr.'
'How do you know all this?' I asked.
'The archives of Amon. He studied such things. Especially in the early days of the Brothers, when they were just… becoming. He wanted to understand what was happening to them, in a very rational sense. And, of course, it wasn't a very rational thing. But he tried.'
'Okay. So, many Titan gods, and then no gods, and then the Brothers. What's your point?'
'I didn't say no gods. The Feyr rose up against the Titans and overthrew them. Right here, in fact, in the city of Ash. They burned the city, and then they drowned the city. And in time, they tried to atone for that. I don't think they ever stopped trying to atone for it, actually. One of the reasons they fell to us so easily.'
'Easily? Hundreds of thousands died in those wars.'
'Yes. But how many would you expect to die in a battle with the gods?'
'Gods? They weren't gods, they were just… just the Feyr. Just funny little people.'
She leaned against a steel spar and peered out between the slats of the cladding. The rain had passed, at least here, and the sun shone on her face, and on the aura of smoke that hung around her.
'They were more than that, I think. It's not clearly defined, but godhood seems to be… some kind of power. Power in the air, in the earth, in us. The Brothers assumed godhood by their actions, and by their actions we honor them. The Titans were the same way, raising gods from among their own, elevating them to godhood by their actions and their deeds. The Feyr did not take that route. They had no individual gods. They were a race of little gods.'
'What?'
She shook her head and grimaced. 'It's hard to explain. Godhood is a power that settles in people. It builds up in great people, making it easier for them to build up even more power. Someone becomes famous, and the power of god gathers in them, and then they are able to do more marvelous things, becoming more legendary, gathering more power. It's a cycle. But like any power, there are limits. There are capacities that can be exceeded.'
'You make this all sound very rational. Are these Amon's theories?'
'No. These are the things he learned from the Feyr. While studying the impellors.' She moved away from the sun and stubbed out her cigarette. 'If you take a battery and keep charging it, it holds more and more power until it can't hold any more. And then what? Either you discharge some of that power or it explodes. The Titans had many gods, so they were able to hold the power for a long time. Their divinity was distributed across many people. Maybe it wasn't enough. Maybe they were losing control of it, and that's why the Feyr rebelled against them. Either way, when the Feyr assumed the mantle of godhood, they realized you couldn't just hold it in a couple people. You had to spread it out. And they figured, hey, why not spread it out across all of us?'
'They didn't seem like gods. Hell, they're still alive, still have some power.'
'Very little, because they were only very little gods. But they were able to hold that power for a very long time, and gather a great deal of it.'
I crossed my arms, my pistol forgotten, and sat down.
'So what happened when we threw them down, and the mantle of godhood came to us?'
'We had our three Brothers Immortal, and that's all.'
'And now we're down to one?'
'Yeah. The math is terrible.'
We were quiet for a while, listening to the airships and the wind. Finally, I stood and stared down at the archive.
'Something I don't understand. What the hell does this have to do with the impellors? And why does it mean people want to kill my Cult?'
'The Feyr used the impellors as a kind of pressure valve. They invented them late in their empire, when their numbers were dwindling and the accumulated power was overwhelming them.' She lit another cigarette and blew a long, deep breath out into the room. 'They were venting god.'
'Do the impellors still do that?'
'Who knows? And as for why anyone would want to kill your Cult over this? Well, here we have proof that Amon knew about how godhood worked, and that you had to have multiple gods to keep it from destroying those who held that power.'
'So?'
'So,' she whispered, then turned and looked me in the eyes, 'why would he want to kill his brother Morgan, if the idea was to have more gods, not fewer?'
I sat up and stared in confusion. My mind was unhinging at the implication.
'You're saying Amon didn't kill Morgan. That he wasn't the Betrayer.'
'I am. Leaving only-'
'Alexander,' I breathed, trembling. 'Godking of Ash.'
