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Iona wrang her tear-damp handkerchief between shaking hands. A smile was plastered onto her face and her shoulders were pulled back, chin high and proud, in a facsimile of normalcy. What even was normal, though?
Iona was in her thirteenth month of marriage to Kind Haider, and each day drew her nearer to discard, just like his previous wives. He wanted an heir more than he wanted a partner, after all. And, so far, he’d been disappointed by seven fruitless marriages. Whispers seeped through the court, that Haider was the problem – not his wives – but it was easier to blame the queen, wasn’t it?
Haider turned to look over his shoulder at Iona, then he and his hunting party left. They’d be gone for three weeks. It would be the first rest Iona would get from his obsession with the idea of a legacy, an heir, in months. The first nights without fear or expectation, too.
Haider wasn’t all bad. If anything, he was a fearful, small man, afraid of being the last of his line. His cruelties were unintentional, products of his fears.
Iona suffered no less, knowing that he didn’t mean to be cruel, but she held onto the small comfort that Haider was ultimately a mostly-good man, under all that fear. It wouldn’t save her from the dishonour of marital annulment, and it wouldn’t keep her or her brother fed after she’d been discarded, but even the small comfort was something.
Iona stood on the parapet, watching the king leave, until the last of his hunting party was out of sight.
She stood strong and straight and queenly, as she’d been taught to, even as the last vestiges of her hope and confidence were draining toward the soles of her feet.
“Yona?”
Iona turned, smile a bit frozen, to her brother. “I’m fine,” she said. Then she swept past him. She took every single step with prim, calculated poise. “You have impending lessons, do you not?” she paused, turning to almost – but not quite – look over her shoulder. “Ismail?”
“Yona—”
“Don’t leave your tutors waiting, Ismail. The King pays good coin to have you educated to the highest standards.” She turned her attention back to her measured steps. She could feel Ismail’s gaze on the back of her head, but she resisted the urge to turn and look at him, again.
She knew that her brother worried for her.
She couldn’t stand that her brother worried for her.
–
“Lady of Light, hear my call,” Iona prayed. Her hands, folded in supplication, shook before her, where she was knelt before the matrimonial goddess’s altar. She’d already supplicated the matrimonial goddess so many times. And the hearth and home goddex. And the familial, protective god. She’d touched and knelt before and prayed to each common altar in the temple district. “Lady of Light,” she repeated, quieter. “Please.”
She wasn’t ready to risk human intervention. Humans might tell on her, for whatever reward it was worth.
(It would be so much easier to take a lover, just long enough to become with child, and then try to pass the child off as the king’s – but there was so much risk, especially with how many eyes were constantly on her.)
She stayed there, knelt before the matrimonial goddess’s altar, until her knees couldn’t take it anymore, then accepted the help of her handmaiden in order to get back to her feet.
Her handmaiden said nothing – but her concern was clear.
Jolie reminded her of Ismail, sometimes. He got the same little crease of concern between his eyebrows, when he was concerned. Iona couldn’t bear that soft look of concern on the handmaiden’s face.
“Thank you, Jolie,” Iona said.
“Of course, My Lady.” Jolie folded her hands politely. “Is there anything I can do for you, My Lady?”
“Not unless you know where I might seek other gods,” Iona tossed her a soft smile, to show that she was only joking.
Jolie hesitated.
Iona turned to her more fully, smile falling away. “Jolie?”
“My Lady,” Jolie pursed her lips, thoughtfully. “If you wish it… there are folk gods whose altars are not within the temple district.”
Folk gods. She’d forgotten about the unsanctioned gods. Iona glanced around, at the giant gold and silver and marble and onyx statues of the popular gods. The sanctioned altars. This temple was to gods of house and home. Iona frequented this temple most because it most closely aligned with what she needed.
“The unnamed gods,” Iona murmured. “My grandmother served a goddex of cure. My great-grandfather served a god of household cleanliness.”
“My mother serves the One of the Dealings,” Jolie said softly.
Iona turned to her, eyes wide.
“He charges a heavy price for his aid,” Jolie continued.
“I know,” Iona turned away, again. “I have to think.”
“Of course, My Lady.”
“Let us return.”
“Yes, My Lady.”
–
“Yona, what are you thinking?” Ismail smiled at her.
“What?” Iona plastered on a smile.
Whatever she might do, it would be less for herself and more for Ismail. He was so young, still, and deserved more than the hand they’d been dealt. Before Haider, Iona and Ismail had been alone, nearly homeless. It was luck that brought them into the royal household – she didn’t know if it was good luck, however. It was seeming more and more like it might have been truly bad luck.
“You’ve hardly touched your food.”
Iona glanced down at her plate. “Oh, I ate in my rooms.” She smiled over at Ismail, again, the lie coming a little too easily. “Fruit and honey. I’m afraid I indulged.”
Ismail looked at her doubtfully, then turned back to his own food.
For Ismail, Iona would take on a debt as great as her life. She was his older sister, his protector, and she modelled her entire purpose after making sure he got the life he deserved.
Iona nodded to herself, mind made up.
She turned to one of her handmaidens. “Dear, would you fetch Jolie for me?”
The handmaiden looked at her for a moment, confused, then curtsied and left to find Jolie. Servants weren’t allowed to ask questions. Ismail, on the other hand—
“Why Jolie?” Ismail asked.
Iona turned to him, her smile feeling stretched and fake. “Jolie? I adore her. I like to think we are friends, after a sort.”
Ismail looked… Iona had seen him make a similar face when he’d bitten into a fruit that was too tart, not ripe enough. He looked like he was swallowing something that had a bad taste to it, but the thing he was swallowing was Iona’s lies, which he no doubt hoped weren’t lies. (But he’d always known her too well.)
“I’m glad you’re making friends,” Ismail finally said.
Jolie walked into the room, demurely. She curtsied. “My Lady.”
“Jolie, I will be going into town.” Iona stood and walked over to the handmaiden. “I require my travel cloak.”
Jolie curtsied again, then followed Iona out of the room.
–
Jolie’s mother was blind.
Iona tried not to be horrified when she realized. Not because blind people scared her, but because of the bandages over the folk priestess’s eyes. They were bloody, with layers of dried, half-dried, and still-wet blood. Shades upon shades of red.
“She will always bleed,” Jolie said. “It’s her curse. She tried to get out of the deal she’d made.”
“Oh?” Iona tried to turn to Jolie, but found her gaze locked on Jolie’s mother.
“She made a deal to serve the God of Last Resort,” Jolie said. “The God of Dealings. I don’t know what she wanted in exchange, but the god kept his side of the deal. She kept her side of the deal until I was born.”
“And then?”
“And then she tried to leave His service. She’s bled ever since. It wasn’t an alternate deal, though. She’d promised her life in service to the god. She has to continue, now. For the rest of her life.”
Iona nodded slowly.
“Do you still wish to supplicate the God of Dealings?” Jolie asked.
Iona clasped her shaking hands together and stepped forward. For Ismail. She could make the deal for Ismail. And for her future child. And for Haider’s peace of mind, in having a legacy. It would be worthwhile, surely.
“Mother,” Jolie turned to the woman.
The woman turned toward them, he bandages slowly leaking blood down the front of her face.
Iona recoiled slightly.
“Oh, Mother.” Jolie sighed. She turned to Iona. “Do you mind if I help her clean that up? Change her bandages?”
“Of course.”
“In the meantime, you could speak privately at His altar.” Jolie motioned to a small altar, nearly subsumed by offerings. It looked like last resorts tended to be expensive, anyway, if the gifts were anything to go by.
“Yes, I think I will,” Iona said.
She waited until Jolie and her mother had left the room, then knelt before the altar, hands folded in traditional supplication. The floor, here, was not marble. It was packed dirt under fresh hay. The hay must have been replaced just that day, and was perhaps replaced almost daily, in order to give the little temple the upkeep that the god no doubt wished for.
Gods liked well-kept temples. Right?
“Oh, God of Last Resort,” Iona murmured. “Hear me, please, and lend your aid.”
And she sat there, the way she sat before previous altars, hands folded neatly, head bowed, and eyes closed. She swallowed hard, impatient and scared and worried and all sorts of other emotions, mushed together into something not quite quantifiable.
Iona breathed out shakily. She wondered if she should make her request, itself, aloud. She’d never dealt with this folk god. They weren’t all dark or dangerous or anything, but this one was. She’d always known he was. Everything came with trades or prices – except gifts and mercy – but the God of Last Resort was called that for a reason.
Iona gave in, unfolded her hands, and stood, then took the time to brush the hay from her skirts. She didn’t want to risk walking back into the castle with hay stuck to her. It wouldn’t be proper. More importantly, Ismail might notice, and he’d have questions. Iona wasn’t sure how many more lies she could feed to Ismail. Before either he stopped trusting or or she stopped being the person she wanted to be for her brother.
“I have helped Mother,” Jolie said. She gave a demure curtsey as Iona turned toward her. “Does My Lady require anything?”
“No. I… I think I will go home,” Iona said. “Perhaps I will visit again. Later.”
“Whatever you wish, My Lady,” Jolie said.
–
It was after Iona had retired to her rooms for the night, and dismissed her handmaidens. Her rooms were quiet and mostly dark. She had a few dim candles about the room. Her fire was down to coals, but the temperature – inside and out – was decent enough that Iona didn’t think that she would require that the fire be rebuilt.
The only thing between Iona and sleep was a journal entry. Iona wrote in a meticulously neat hand, laying out her thoughts in tidy, neat lines across the page of a journal bound just for her.
She was nearly done writing her entry when the draft whispered over her.
Iona frowned. The windows should have been closed.
She looked up, and then startled to her feet, dropping her pen and tipping the inkpot across the table and the page of her journal. She clutched at her throat in surprise, more than fear, as she faced her window and the young man standing in the open pane.
For a moment, he seemed endlessly tall, casting a shadow that took over the entirety of Iona’s sitting room. Then she blinked and he was about Ismail’s height and he didn’t have a shadow inside the room, yet, because the light flickered inside the room and cast shadows outward, not inward.
He stepped down into her room.
“Don’t scream,” the man said. He flicked dark hair behind his shoulder. “Or do, if you wish. I can’t say I care, one way or another.”
“Who are you?”
“What name would you know me by?” he asked in return.
Iona waited, hand still on her throat. She could feel her pounding pulse under her fingertips.
“I am here to answer your supplication,” he gave a sarcastic bow. “Some call me the Dark God of Dealings. Some call me The God of Last Resort. Sometimes the ‘dark’ is in the other name. Sometimes it’s in neither. You may call me Zephandrael.”
Iona’s pulse increased. “It’s not funny,” she whispered, shakily.
“What, pray?”
“It’s not funny to pretend to be a god. Gods could become angry with the whole of the city—”
“No one willingly tests the God of Dealings, silly Queen,” the man waved her off.
Iona bit her lip. The God of Dealings didn’t have a name. Many gods had secret names, only told to their priests, priestexes, and priestesses, some had common names, but the Dark God of Dealings was a god whose name had been lost to the annals of history. Making up a name for him was… unwise.
“Out with it, Little Queen.”
“With what?” she wondered if she should curtsey to him. Even if he wasn’t a god, he was brave enough to pretend to be one. That meant that she shouldn’t test him. He might be dangerous, for all she knew.
“Is it the name? Is Zephandrael too long for you? We are not friends, mind, but you might call me Zephas if you can’t manage Zephandrael.”
“The name,” Iona agreed, voice still shaking. She steeled herself, to prevent further show of weakness. She even dropped her hand to her side and tilted her chin up, assuming a more queenly air. “The Lost God of Choices doesn’t have a name.”
“Of course I have a name,” Zephandrael sneered.
“Queen, do you think just anyone could get to your window? Past the walls, the towers, and up three windows’ heights? Clearly I am at least beyond the ken of normal man. Beyond mortality, even, if not at the very least dismissive of it.” He let that sit in for a long, slow moment.
He was either a god or a very dangerous man.
No, there were other options. But only Jolie, Jolie’s mother, and Iona herself knew that Iona had even supplicated the God of Dealings. Yes? “Say I believe you…”
“Will you make a deal with me, Little Queen?” He stepped closer. He was shorter than Iona, in actuality, but he had so much presence that she couldn’t help but perceive him as bigger and more important. “What do you desire?”
“A child,” Iona said.
Zephandrael hummed thoughtfully, turning away from her. “You are not barren,” he told her.
Her heart leapt. She had thought it might be the king, but here was a possible god telling her that it wasn’t her womb’s inability to produce fruit.
“Why do you seek a child through supplication of the gods?” he eyed her with knowledge in his eyes. He didn’t need her to say her reason aloud.
“The king requires an heir.” She said it, anyway.
“He is impotent,” Zephandrael glanced away again and started to circle her in a wide circle, vaguely threatening, but far enough away that he didn’t seem to be an active danger. “I think he knows that, deep down. Not that it matters.”
“I… I know,” Iona murmured.
“You want to have his child, though. There’s security in that. For him, in that he has an heir – I could promise you a male child, if you like, to make certain of his happiness – and for you and your brother, in that you would continue to have the safety and luxury of your current life,” Zephandrael said.
“Yes,” Iona said.
“Why not sleep with some other man? The Captain of the Guard eyes you with insatiable hunger. Your brother’s history tutor would die for you if only you smiled upon him. The stable boy that tacks your horse – he would be easy to convince…”
“No, I can’t risk it. I could be found out,” Iona wrang her hands at the wrists for a moment, then caught herself and put her hands down, once more, folded neatly.
The god nodded slowly. “What would you give, Little Queen? For the chance to bear a child?”
“Anything,” Iona said quickly. She flinched. She should have known better than to offer anything. “I’m sorry—I should have said—”
“A life for a life is fair,” Zaphandrael interrupted. “Wouldn’t you say?”
Iona flattened her lips into a thin line. She nodded, very slowly. Hadn’t that been what she’d thought, before? That she’d give up as much as her life, it meant helping Ismail? “Yes,” she said. “A life for a life is fair.”
“Fair shall be the god-child you will bear,” Zephandrael said.
“What?”
“If you won’t have human seed, other than the King, for fear of discovery. Then. You must have godly seed. Do not mistake me for a creation goddex, Little Queen. Your options are few – I could retrieve you a child from the orphaned masses, I could find you a human candidate and bless your union with luck, or I could take the task upon myself, creating a god-child.”
Iona tightened the hold of her clasped hands in front of her. She had thought of giving up her life, but not her body.
Zephandrael stopped his pacing and stepped up to her. He stayed a reasonable three steps away from her and extended his hand. “Will you bear my child, Little Queen? And give him to the king as blood of his blood? Will you provide the heir to soothe his concerns? Will you cement your place here?”
She could do it. For Ismail.
Iona hesitated, then shook Zephandrael’s hand.
The candles went out as soon as their hands touched. The window closed, the curtains drew closed. Even the embers in the fireplace went dark.
Iona was finally certain of the god’s identity.
–
Iona woke up the next morning. She felt the shadow of betrayal about the previous night’s actions, a desecration of the marital bed. But she knew it would lead to the successor that the king so badly wanted – and which Zephandrael had confirmed that the king would never be able to produce.
“Good morning, Little Queen.”
Iona drew her sheets close about her, even though she weren’t indecent – Zephandrael hadn’t needed to remove her nightdress to do what had needed doing, after all.
“I will remain,” Zephandrael said.
Iona felt the colour draining from her face.
“Do not be so afraid, Little Queen. No one will suspect my presence, least of all your husband the king. Hm? I will bed you twice more, a suitably ritualistic number, I think, and then I will remain through the nine months before the child is born. I will ensure his health and wholeness, and bless his birth as I have his conception,” Zephandrael said.
Iona looked down at her bedspread. Guilt crept up the back of her neck, but she felt it would be worth it.
–
If nothing else, Zephandrael was a god of his word.
Iona and Zephandrael coupled twice more, and then Zephandrael didn’t so much as touch her without permission. Not that he didn’t have permission for their couplings, of course. Iona had had to agree to them, after all. But he was not invasive with her personal space after they’d accomplished the third coupling.
After that, Zephandrael was simply around.
Iona would see him in corners, or out in the yard or the garden. He would be in the kitchen possibly most often, making small deals with children – harmless deals that told Iona that he wasn’t all dark.
But he was a god of his word and Iona had traded a life for a life.
She came to terms with that pretty quick.
Ismail tried to talk to Iona about Zephandrael, once or twice, at first. She hadn’t quite brushed him off, but she was rather disturbed that Ismail noticed his out-of-placeness when no one else seemed to.
–
The king returned, at the end of his hunt, and Iona told another lie. She told him, so as to keep from sharing the marital bed in futile attempts to conceive a child, that she’d missed her moon blood, already, and therefore was with child.
Haider sat down heavily and cried in relief.
It was, all in all, the best evening they spent together in a long while, what with that weight of either of their shoulders.
Iona was almost sad to think she’d only have nine more months with Haider, before Zephandrael collected his toll.
–
There was an unforeseen development, sometime after the first month of Zephandrael’s tenure with the royal family.
Ismail gravitated to him.
Iona watched it with concern. Zephandrael was a little shorter than Ismail, and relatively unassuming when compared to the guards and servants. But Iona knew what lay in that slender form, and she knew that he was dangerous.
She wanted to warn Ismail. But then Ismail would wonder why she knew that Zephandrael was more than what he seemed. He would probably realize, if Iona told him that Zephandrael was the God of Dealings, that Iona had made a deal. And he would want to know what deal she made.
Iona couldn’t do that to him.
So. She didn’t try to separate Ismail and Zephandrael. Nor did she try to warn Ismail about what Zephandrael was. A folk god, and one of the most dangerous and powerful folk gods. A forgotten popular god of bygone eras, perhaps, who had survived on the tips of the tongues of the lower classes, who needed his help most often.
It worried her, though.
From Zephandrael’s knowing smirk, Iona had a feeling that he knew exactly the kind of discomfort he was causing in her.
–
“Zephas helped me find the tome I needed, in order to prove my tutor wrong,” Ismail said.
Zephas this, Zephas that.
Iona was more and more disturbed by how familiarly Ismail referred to Zephandrael. And she knew that her brother knew that “Zephas’” full name was Zephandrael. She’d heard him say it.
“He talks so strangely, sometimes, Yona,” Ismail sighed, looking up at the clouds.
They continued down the garden path. Iona waited Ismail out.
“He talks… he talks like he witnessed all of history, sometimes. Like when he’s arguing with Amos—”
“Professor Amos,” Iona corrected, gently.
“Yeah. When Zephas corrects Professor Amos. Just the other day, Amos was instructing me on various upheavals in history, here and in the lands surrounding. For every uprising he mentioned, Zephas has something to add or correct. And when Amos challenged him, Zephas knew exactly what dusty tome would support his position. Always.”
Iona hummed, in an attempt to sound interested.
“The fires of the Jillian Revolt, for example. Amos said that the peasants started it, but then the fires burnt down their farms and livelihoods. Amos told it like the fires in the fields and the fires that burnt down their homes was their just, divine retribution for their attempts to burn down the estates of those richer than them.”
“Oh?” Iona had to admit that… that sounded rather harsh.
“Zephas, though, said that the fires were started by a poor man, who had no home, and who was paid to do so by the merchants. They sacrificed the home of a merchant who was travelling, in order to make it look like the townfolk had done it. It was a framing, so that the rulers would impose greater punishments on lawbreakers, and create stricter laws that would keep the folk in their place.”
“That sounds… fanciful,” Iona said.
“Amos argued with him, of course. He had scholarly sources and history books. Zephas, though, directed him to old ledgers, a preserved journal, and other primary sources that hadn’t been touched in decades, but which proved him right. Amos hardly even listens to Zephas anymore, because it would mean being challenged and trying to prove himself. Zephas always seems to come out on top, in those situations.”
“Mm.” Iona acknowledged.
Ismail went on, practically waxing poetic about “Zephas.”
Iona had a bit of a sinking feeling about it, if only because Zephandrael wouldn’t be around forever. Right? Folk gods often tired of mortals quickly. They were flighty, hard to pin down, and the only reason that Zephandrael was around was because he gave his word to be there until the birth of the child Iona was carrying.
Right?
–
The child was born during a storm, at the witching hour.
Jolie played the midwife, at Zephandrael’s insistence – Jolie recognized him as the god that her mother served, and did as he said – Iona insisted to the rest of the royal household, of course, as they didn’t know Zephandrael as anyone of power, but Iona was their queen.
Zephandrael was the first person, besides Jolie, to hold the child.
As Zephandrael held the child, murmuring blessings over him – it was a boy as he’d promised, of course – Iona had the sudden fear that the life that Zephandrael was meaning to take was going to be the child. It was barely a breath before she remembered that Zephandrael was a god of his word, though, and Zephandrael had said that the child’s birth would be the relief of Haider. An heir.
Haider couldn’t be relieved before he knew that he had a son, of course, and he was on another trip.
Zephandrael would not take the child.
“Name him Ismail,” Zephandrael said.
Iona’s blood went cold. “You’re meant to take me,” she murmured.
“Name him Ismail,” Zephandrael walked around her bedside and placed the child in her arms. “In memory of your lost brother.”
“You can’t have Ismail!” Iona clutched the child close. “Please!”
“I promise to treat him well, Little Queen. But I will have him. He will be mine and you will never see him again, except perhaps in passing.”
“Has he told you he would go with you?!”
“He made a deal,” Zephandreal hushed.
“What?” Iona looked down at the newborn. “Ismail made a… deal?”
“He traded himself for Haider,” Zephandrael said. “I was going to take your husband, Little Queen. And he would have been nothing to me. I would have discarded Haider. Perhaps made him a gift to one of the other gods.”
“Haider.”
“Yes, your husband,” Zephandrael repeated. “Your brother, though. He’s smart. Observant. I tipped my hand on purpose, to see if he’d notice – he did. And he asked my purpose. I made my first deal with him, there. A kiss for the answer he wanted.”
“You touched my brother?” Iona asked.
“He was more than willing. He’d already kissed me several times before I’d offered the answer in exchange for another kiss, Little Queen. But yes. I told him my purpose. He made me a deal. Himself for Haider. Himself to leave your family in peace—”
“Ismail is my family!”
“Don’t argue with him, My Lady,” Jolie murmured.
“It’s fine. I promised Ismail I wouldn’t hurt her, no matter how much she tried to backtrack or make a new deal with me,” Zephandrael said, without looking at Jolie. “Far be it for me to make such a poor impression on him, when I will soon part him from his family, forever.”
“Please…”
“I will make him a god, Little Queen.”
Iona felt tears slipping out of her eyes.
“He will be powerful, healthy, safe. And so will you and your son, Ismail’s namesake.”
Iona bent her head to cry over the newborn.
–
Zephandrael met Ismail outside the queen’s chambers. He smiled. “Do you wish to say a farewell? I will allow that much.”
“No, I left a note. Yona would make it too hard for me to go.”
Zephandrael nodded, “Then so we leave.”