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sends invitations to the sorts of people he wants as clients and turns away most who come soliciting. This must be a thing of privilege, he thinks, feels instinctively—but not the sort of privilege that can be bought with money or fortune of birth. When clients come, he charges whatever they can afford. Once, on impulse, he brings in a homeless woman, who does nothing but weep in his arms all night. That’s all she needs. When she is done, though, she’s better. Not healed, but happy. He hires her as the housekeeper.
    He names the house the Arms of Night . Perhaps Nahadoth finds it amusing, if Nahadoth is paying attention at all.
    (He sometimes wishes he’d taken Yeine’s hand. She does not return to him again. Beyond this regret, he feels nothing. It is safer this way.)
    Meanwhile, the house’s reputation grows. His criminal enterprise does, too, until his power rivals that of the Arameri. He works mostly through proxies now, having long since turned over management of the syndicate and his various businesses to others (because it got boring), though he retains direct proprietorship of the Arms (because it isn’t). One day there are overtures from a rival group, seeking alliance. He ignores them. The rival group sends him a message anyway—via his own shadow, which comes to life and speaks to him. They are an organization of godlings, and they have a proposition that they are certain will interest him. Curiosity outweighs annoyance. He agrees.
    The woman who walks into his office is everything he should hate. She radiates strength like a shroud of flame and wears her beauty as a shield for the blades of her tongue and mind. The way that she looks at him puts him instantly on edge. Arameri looked at him like that, back when he belonged to them. But then he sees her frown and twitch her gaze away, and instantly he understands. Mortals should not have natures, not like gods, but this one almost does. She is so much her father’s daughter that she wants him instantly—he is the shadow of her father’s lover, after all. But. She is so much her mother’s daughter that she rejects that echoed desire as simplistic and base.
    How interesting that she refuses to merely lust for him. A perverse part of him wants to test this. Seduction will not work, he guesses at once; she will reject that, too. But something more than seduction perhaps…? Something he has never tried before. He will befriend her, then, if she can be friended. He will… like her. As an academic exercise.
    Ah, and she tries the same with him. She will not lust, will not be driven like an animal by half-divine instincts…but she will consider . She will, if she finds him worthy, choose.
    The proposal she brings is ridiculous. He’s not interested in protecting gods or mortals; let them all kill each other. It’s laughable that Itempas has chosen this method for his atonement. It will never work.
    He agrees anyway so that he can see her again.
    *  *  *
    The Maelstrom pays a visit. The world doesn’t end. Alas. Sieh does end, though; stupid, ridiculous Sieh. Took him long enough.
    Glee gives him a name.
    Perhaps being immortal…is not wholly pointless.
    *  *  *
    Much, much later, the god whose name no one else will ever know stands atop the Pier of Sky, which now is little more than a shard of rubble jutting out from the world’s most magnificent grave cairn. It’s not very stable, but he’ll be all right. He’s a god. That’s…all right, too. Not terrible, at least. Could be better.
    He knows the manifestation of his other, former self the way he knows his own skin. (When he has skin.) It’s strange, and always will be, to see a face that so reflects his own, though of course his is the inferior copy. For countless aeons they communicated with each other only through messages written on fogged mirrors and the like. (Toward the end, the only thing he ever wrote was, “How much longer?” And Nahadoth would answer, “Not long now.”)