“You smell,” he said, “and you’re filthy, and you look like horseshit. Since you’re too useless to take yourself out of here as you should, I have no choice but to put you up for the night. But don’t get used to it; I want you living somewhere else after this.” He got up and went away, I assume to find a servant and make arrangements for my stay.

When he came back, I had managed — barely — to sit on my knees. I was still shaky. Insanely, my stomach now insisted that it needed to be filled again. In or out, I told it, but it did not listen.

Ahad crouched in front of me again. “Interesting.”

I managed to lift my eyes to him. His expression betrayed nothing, but he lifted a hand and conjured a small hand mirror. I was too tired even for envy. He lifted the mirror to show me my face.

I had grown older. The face that gazed back at me was longer, leaner, with a stronger jawline. The hair on my chin was no longer downy and barely visible; it had grown darker, longer, the wispy precursors of a beard. Late adolescence, rather than the middling stage of it I’d been in. Two years of my life gone? Three? Gone, regardless.

“I should be flattered, perhaps,” Ahad said. “That you remember the old days with such fondness.” His words skirted the edge of danger, but I was too tired for true fear. He could kill me anytime he wanted, and would’ve done it by now if he’d really meant to. He just liked flaunting his power.

Suddenly this seemed monumentally unfair. “I hate this,” I whispered, not caring if he heard me. “I hate that I’m nothing now.”

Ahad shook his head, less annoyed than unsurprised. His hand seized the back of my shirt and pulled me to my feet. “You’re not ‘nothing.’ You’re mortal, which is far from nothing. The sooner you accept that, the better off you’ll be.” He took one of my arms, holding it up, and made a sound of disgust. “You need to eat. Start taking care of your body if you want it to last for the few years you have left. Or would you rather die now?”

I closed my eyes, letting myself dangle from his grasp. “I don’t want to be mortal.” I was whining. It felt good to realize I still could, however much I’d grown up. “Mortals lie when they say they love you. They wait until you trust them, then shove the knife in, and then they work it around to make sure it kills you.”

There was a moment of silence, during which I closed my eyes and honestly contemplated having a good cry. It ended wheneig ma the office door opened and two servants came in, and when Ahad gave me a slap on the cheek that was not quite gently chiding.

“Gods do that, too,” he snapped, “so you’re damned whichever way you turn. Shut up and deal with it.”

Then he shoved me into the servants’ waiting arms and they hauled me away.

11

I L-O-V-E, love you

I’ll K-I-S-S, kiss you

Then I pushed him in a lake

And he swallowed a snake

And ended up with a tummy ache

The servants took me to a large sumptuous bathchamber with lovely benches that reeked of sex despite their freshly laundered cushions. They stripped me, throwing my old clothes into a pile to be burned, and scrubbed me with careless efficiency, rinsing me in perfumed water. Then they put me into a robe and took me to a room and let me sleep the whole day and well into the night. I did not dream.

I woke up thinking that my sister Zhakkarn was using my head as a pike target, though she would never do such a thing. When I managed to sit upright, which took doing, I contemplated nausea again. A long-cold meal and a pitcher of room-temperature water sat on a sideboard of the room, so I decided on ingestion rather than ejection and applied myself grimly. It helped that the food tasted good. Beside this sat a small dish holding a dab of thick white paste and a paper card, on which elegant blocky letters had been written: eat it. The hand was familiar, so I sighed and tasted the paste. The alley rat had been more rancid but not by much. Still, as I was a guest in Ahad’s home, I held my breath and gulped the rest down, then quickly ate more food in an attempt to disguise the bitter taste. This did not work. However, I began to feel better, so I was pleased to confirm it was medicine, not poison.

Fresh clothing had been set out for me, too. Pleasantly nondescript: loose gray pants, a beige shirt, a brown jacket, brown boots. Servant attire, most likely, since I suspected that would suit Ahad’s sense of cruelty. Thus arrayed, I opened the door of the room.

And promptly stopped, as the sounds of laughter and music drifted up from downstairs. Nighttime. For a moment the urge to play a dozen bawdy, vicious tricks was almost overwhelming, and I felt a tickle of power at the thought. It would be so easy to change all the house’s sensual oils into hot chili oil or make the beds smell of mildew rather than lust and perfume. But I was older now, more mature, and the urge passed. I felt a fleeting sadness in its wake.