#zarin

“Oh. You’re here.” Stooping to set down her valise in the doorway, Zarin froze and stared at Siavash.

“Maman!” Her son, Kyrash, pajama-clad and wild-haired, ran full-tilt across the ceiling of his grandparents’ entryway and threw his arms around her head in an upside-down hug.

“What in the Dawnflower’s name—“

“Just a little fun.” Siavash took the boy by the armpits, flipped him over and set him gently on the floor.

Over Kyrash’s shoulder Zarin again gave her little brother the strangest stare, and then their parents arrived to welcome her back from her stay in Absalom and in the fuss and chatter whatever had alarmed her seemed forgotten.

Until she cornered him in the kitchen.

Down the hall in Siavash’s old bedroom Kyrash’s grandparents were helping him pack but by the sound of things Aivu was helping him unpack just as fast.

Zarin stood in the space between the table and the door to prevent Siavash from escaping.

He popped a grape in his mouth and angled for the far side of the table. “How was Absalom?”

“Enlightening. Don’t you dare. Stay right where you are.”

“What? Am I in trouble?”

Her dark eyes were round and anxious. “I’m afraid you might be.”

He guessed what was coming and had a fully prepared deflection on hand, but as she went on he began to experience a sinking feeling like he was a kid again, caught red-handed with his fist in the cookie jar.

“In Absalom I visited the opening celebrations of the Temple of the Lark. Don’t say a word until I’m finished. There are only two explanations: either people have taken this way too far and you’re letting it happen, which is—“

“I can’t stop them. I’ve tried. Anyway, it gives them hope.”

“Sia. I’m not finished. Either that, or you really did ascend. Which is crazy.”

“Yeah, imagine that.”

“They’re healing in your name.”

“Who is? What? There must be some—“

“Clenna, your High Priestess, for one. Gods Sia, she’s barely older than Ky. And there is no doubt in her mind where the power she’s channeling is coming from. It’s you.”

“And you believe that. She’s nine years older than Ky, by the way.”

“Will you stop?” Her hand blocked his from reaching for the grapes again. “Just answer me. What have you done?”

Whenever he was having fun, Zarin’s concern for him had always felt like a bucket of cold water, but now he was so conscious of it radiating out of her that it made him shiver. Maybe it was time. Why in his heightened state of awareness and wisdom was this so difficult?

“Fine.” He drew a deep breath. A demigod should not feel this unsteady. Like pulling a tooth in one sharp motion he said, “All right. I ascended. With my crusade friends at Threshold. There. Now you know.”

Zarin let out a breath and reached out to steady herself on the cupboard.

“Don’t ask how, because I’m bound to secrecy and you wouldn’t understand anyway,” he went on. “The choice—“

“You chose to.”

“Yes. The mythic powers were foisted on me but the decision to ascend was ours.”

“Why?”

“To save my friends and the crusaders. To close the Worldwound without dying and leaving Woljif alone. To continue helping people who need me.” Because it sounded fun at the time?

“Dawnflower. What have you done?” She had gone alarmingly pale. “Sia.”

The temptation was strong to reach out with his divine magic and comfort her, to infuse her artificially with hope and joy. Yet therein lay the catch. That was exactly what she was most afraid of: his good intentions unleashed upon the world.

“You stupid, stupid, silly boy. What have you done?” she repeated, reaching to cradle his face in her hands and look gravely into his eyes as if with her Rahadoumi medical training she could detect the hairline fractures in his mind.

“Zarin, it’s all right. I knew what I was doing.”

Her lips pinched at the corners just like when they were little and she was not crying. “You stumbled on some sort of mythic power, led the Crusade to victory, and it went to your head. Of course it did. Poor, foolish child.” She released him and stood hugging her elbows.

Unconsciously he imitated the gesture. As a boy he hated being scolded by Zarin because she was almost always right. But she couldn’t be right about this—because if she was, he’d made a mistake too monumental to imagine. The kitchen curtains billowed in a sudden breeze.

“And Woljif too. He followed you. You do realize?”

“He freely chose it, and so did our friends. He even helped appropriate the realms of—uh, to create our domain for us.”

“He chose freely? When his best friend, his Commander—his lover—chose it, he freely chose it too?”

“Don’t patronize him. He knew what he was getting into.”

She gave a snort. “Do you? Of course you don’t. Stupid boy.”

“Don’t tell Mom and Dad,” he blurted.

Later after she and Kyrash took a carriage home he could sense her crying and realized that it wasn’t that she never cried as a child. It was just that she never let anyone see.

In a puff of shadow Woljif appeared on the roof of the Almas townhouse and perched next to him. “What’s Zarin so upset about?”

Siavash hesitated. Woljif’s eyes flicked to the wine bottle in his hand, the guitar across his lap, and the twilight shadow in his eyes.

“She knows,” he sighed, looking away toward the sunset over the Andoshen.

“Oh.” Woljif leaned back on his elbows. “Then why’s she so upset?”

“Oh, you know.” Siavash tipped the bottle up and took a long drink. “She’s an eldest sister. She worries.”

“We’re demigods. What’s there to worry about?”

Siavash’s glance was like a cornered rabbit’s. He took another sip of wine and waved vaguely. “I guess she still sees me as her baby brother. She thinks I’m in over my head. That this will… you know what I mean.”

“I dunno. What do you mean?”

“Why do you say she’s upset? What happened?”

“Just looked at me like my puppy died. Looked like her puppy died too. But you didn’t answer my question. That this will what, chief?”

 Siavash gave another vague shrug but Woljif could see the tears pooling in his eyes.

She thinks he can’t handle it, Woljif realized. And now he thinks he can’t handle it.

“Woljif, do you remember what you were thinking at the time? Why you did it?”

“Why wouldn’t I? Power, wealth, eternal youth. What’s better?”

“Be serious for a minute.”

“I am serious. What are you—oh, I get it. You talked to Zarin and now you need to clear your conscience. Well, listen chief. You did get me into this, but I was happy to go along every step of the way, because if I wasn’t I’d a’ been long gone. So you can put that to rest.”

“But it’s already gotten us into hot water more than once, to put it lightly.”

“Yeah. We’re on new turf. It’ll take a while to figure out the rules. So we can break ‘em.”

“Without facing eternal torture.”

“Sheesh. Whatever happened to ‘It’ll be fine?’”

This “real family” stuff was more complicated than Woljif ever imagined, and to make things worse he wasn’t the one with diplomat training. Nothing for it but to try.

“Oh! You scared me.” Zarin dropped her book in alarm.

“Well now that you know, I reckon I don’t gotta bother with stairs and doors anymore. What’d you say to him?” Woljif half-sat on the piano, arms folded.

“That I think he made a hasty decision in an understandable state of mania and that I’m afraid it will have devastating consequences for him. And you. And possibly Golarion.”

“Well, now he’s out there doubtin’ himself. And before when he doubted himself it was just a bottle a’ wine or two and the next mornin’ he was up happy as a lark again. But now, he starts gettin’ the blues there’s a windstorm and all the flowers start dyin’.”

“If he’s that fragile he shouldn’t have that kind of power!”

“He ain’t that fragile. He just cares what you think. You’re his big sis.”

“I’m not going to pretend I’m not scared, Woljif.”

“You oughtta be the opposite a’ scared. He’s lookin’ out for you, and Ky, and everybody.” As soon as it was out of his mouth Woljif realized just how true it was, and just how crushed the chief must feel under it all. Underneath his breezy, cheerful persona. It still struck Woljif as weird that thoughts like that—the chief staggering to his knees in the mud like an overloaded mule and tryina act like it was all fine—hurt him almost physically.

Zarin seemed to read his thoughts. “You see why I’m upset?”

Woljif heaved a great sigh and frowned at his own boots as if steeling himself. “You know, Zarin, back when I lived in Kenabres nobody never gave me credit. Not that I gave ‘em any reason to. I was a low-down shifty liar and a thief, and a coward to boot and I never lived up to nothin’. And then the chief—Siavash came along, and I remember he said to me, ‘We could use somebody with your talents,’ and I thought, yeah, I got talents. Talents for savin’ my own hide. But he smiled at me.” He glanced up at her and away again in embarrassment. “You know, that smile. And I started thinkin’ crazy things like what happens if I live up to it for once. So I stuck around just a little longer, and just a little longer. And I messed up. Don’t you think it was easy. But he let me mess up and let me try again, and… after a while people started givin’ me credit. Not just him. Lotsa people.

“You get what I mean.”

“I think so.”

He was more used to Siavash asking him to explain, so he went ahead and did. “I just needed somebody to trust me for once. And not like, rube trust. More like, I’m-watchin’-you-but-I-know-you-can-do-it-if-you-try trust.”

Zarin shook her head. “I lived in Rahadoum for a couple of years and I wasn’t totally converted but I did acquire what I consider a healthy skepticism, and Siavash trusting you to have his back is not at all the same thing as trusting him to live up to the power of divinity.”

“Yes it is. Question a’ faith.”

At that she blanched. Before her with his midnight face, yellow eyes and clever grin stood much more than her cute brother-in-law, but a demigod. “You’re saying if enough people believe in him he’ll live up to it.”

“That’s right. And us mortals gotta stick together. You lived in Rahadoum, you get it.”

“But—you’re not mortals.”

“Sure we are. And demigods. A little a’ both,” he said. “And that’s the key to the whole thing. Freedom.”

Hearing that word, something she learned in Absalom clicked. “You. You’re the Crow.”

“Well, I prefer ‘Prince of Shadow and Gold’, but fine, yeah, that’s one a’ my uh, monikers.”

There was talk about him in Absalom—a certain caper he’d pulled off. A lot of things were starting to make sense to her, but it was no comfort. “Freedom. The other gods must not be too thrilled with what you two are up to.”

“Eh, they don’t care about us small fry. Not yet, anyway.”

“Woljif. Don’t get yourselves in any farther over your heads than you already have.”

“Somebody’s gotta stick up for the little guy, y’know. The poor, helpless mortals a’ the world.”