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conversation to lapse, however. She’d been arguing the point for several minutes now, and it wouldn’t be proper to continue. Proper. Rarely before had Vivenna felt so frustrated at having to be proper. Her emotions were growing rather...inconvenient.
    “What of Siri?” she found herself saying. “You’re happy that this happened to her?”
    Fafen looked up, then frowned a little to herself. She had a tendency to avoid thinking things through unless she was confronted with them directly. Vivenna felt a little ashamed for making such a blunt comment, but with Fafen, there often wasn’t any other way.
    “You do have a point,” Fafen said. “I don’t see why
anyone
had to be sent.”
    “The treaty,” Vivenna said. “It protects our people.”
    “Austre protects our people,” Fafen said, moving on to another bush.
    Will he protect Siri?
Vivenna thought. Poor, innocent, capricious Siri. She’d never learned to control herself; she’d be eaten alive in the Hallandren Court of Gods. Siri wouldn’t understand the politics, the backstabbing, the false faces and lies. She would also be forced to bear the next God King of Hallandren. Performing that duty was not something Vivenna had looked forward to. It would have been a sacrifice, yet it would have been
her
sacrifice, given willingly for the safety of her people.
    Such thoughts continued to pester Vivenna as she and Fafen finished with the berry picking, then moved down the hillside back toward the village. Fafen, like all monks, dedicated all of her work to the good of the people. She watched flocks, harvested food, and cleaned houses for those who could not do it themselves.
    Without a duty of her own, Vivenna had little purpose. And yet, as she considered it, there
was
someone who still needed her. Someone who had left a week before, teary-eyed and frightened, looking to her big sister with desperation.
    Vivenna wasn’t needed in Idris, whatever her father said. She was useless here. But she
did
know the people, cultures, and society of Hallandren. And—as she followed Fafen onto the village road—an idea began to form in Vivenna’s head.
    One that was not, by any stretch of the imagination, proper.
     
    Annotations for Chapter 2
     

Three
    Annotations for Chapter 3
     
    Lightsong didn’t remember dying.
    His priests, however, assured him that his death had been extremely inspiring. Noble. Grand. Heroic. One did not Return unless one died in a way that exemplified the great virtues of human existence. That was why the Iridescent Tones sent the Returned back; they acted as examples, and gods, to the people who still lived.
    Each god represented something. An ideal related to the heroic way in which they had died. Lightsong himself had died displaying extreme bravery. Or, at least, that was what his priests told him. Lightsong couldn’t remember the event, just as he couldn’t remember anything of his life before he became a god.
    He groaned softly, unable to sleep any longer. He rolled over, feeling weak as he sat up in his majestic bed. Visions and memories pestered his mind, and he shook his head, trying to clear away the fog of sleep.
    Servants entered, responding wordlessly to their god’s needs. He was one of the younger divinities, for he’d Returned only five years before. There were some two dozen deities in the Court of Gods, and many were far more important—and far more politically savvy—than Lightsong. And above them all reigned Susebron, the God King of Hallandren.
    Young though he was, he merited an enormous palace. He slept in a room draped with silks, dyed with bright reds and yellows. His palace held dozens of different chambers, all decorated and furnished according to his whims. Hundreds of servants and priests saw to his needs—whether he wanted them seen to or not.
    All of this
, he thought as he stood,
because I couldn’t figure out how to die.
Standing made him just a bit dizzy. It was his feast day. He would lack strength