“If you take my heart, what will I become?”

Lightly, he said, “Who can say?”

As light as his voice might be, I heard eagerness beneath it. “Then my answer is no.”

There was a silence. “No? I will force it from you, then.”

“You said you couldn’t steal it.”

“I can hurt you until you give it willingly.”

“Then why haven’t you?”

In the silence that followed, the answer to my own question occurred to me. “Because that would damage it,” I said.

“Yes,” he acknowledged. “It would no longer taste so sweet.”

“Tell me this country’s history, and then let me decide whether it is worth it to me to accept your bargain.”

“I could kill you,” he said.

“Will my corpse be useful to you?”

The Elysium chirped. The god was silent.

“Tell me,” I said, “did you give the first Lord Protector the idea for the wall? The tithes?”

The god laughed. Once he started, he couldn’t seem to stop. The hem of his robe shuddered across my arm. “Nirrim. I am the Lord Protector. I have always been the Lord Protector. I was the first and the second and all the others that followed. When enough mortal years had passed that the city began to think I should be close to death, I pretended to die, and then stole the city’s knowledge of my appearance. I have done this so many times it wearies me, like a joke told and retold. It was amusing, the first time. And yes, I had the wall built. I promised my acolytes that if they labored to build the wall, I would reward them and their children, and their children’s children, and so I have. The people you call High Kith once worshipped me, and now they worship the things I give them, and if they have forgotten me, why, it is because I have let them.”

“But why did you build the wall? Why do you tithe us?”

“The promise of a god must be kept. I promised my followers riches and delights. God-blood is delightful for them to drink. They revile your kith, of course, but oh how they love all the many parts of you. As for the wall, the half-ones deserved it, just as I deserved my punishment.”

“Why?”

“Murder.”

I remembered my dream of people in the agora killing the god. “The god of discovery.”

“Yes,” he said. “My brother.”

I heard the rustle of feathers.

“He lives on in Elysium birds,” said the god. “This one can sense the god-blood in you. It is drawn to you. I knew, when it called to you during the parade, what you were. You should see how it leans toward you. I must hold it back.” The god sighed. “The murder is my fault.”

“You killed your brother?”

“I may as well have. I, the pitying fool that I am, sought to help the half-ones. I admit Discovery irritated me. The tattletale. Always meddling in my affairs and exposing my schemes. Yet he was my brother, and though I sometimes loathed him, I loved him, too. And I was too clever. I had once stolen tears from the god of death. Take this, I told the half-gods, who had been marked by Discovery and thus had no freedom to scheme, to live, to hide, to be anything other than obviously what they were, and thus became the favorite playthings of the gods and hated and feared by humans. Anoint yourselves with it, and the tears of death will blind Discovery to you.”

His voice grew quiet with intensity. “But one half-god, child of wisdom, took my gift and divined another use for it. He dipped a blade in the tears and thus made a weapon fit to kill a god. The half-gods spilled immortal blood in their agora, and the pantheon will never forgive them—or me—for it. Eradicate them, said Wisdom, or they will multiply through the ages, and one day bear someone fit to overthrow us all. Death lifted his hand. Then the weakest god, the least among us all in power, spoke. Still, the god of sewing said, they are our children. Death studied the Seamstress, whom he loved. The pantheon argued. It was decided that the gods would forsake this island … and that I, as punishment, would protect the rest of the world from it and its unruly god-children.”

“I thought the Lord Protector was called that because he protected us.”

“Lord, or nursemaid? Are you my subjects, or my wards? It was decreed that I must tend to Herrath. That I should clean up the havoc wreaked here, as if it were fully my fault that the gods could not help loving mortals, could not help giving them gifted children. And so I did what I do best. I stole. I stole the half-ones’ knowledge of their gifts. I bribed my acolytes to build a wall around the half-gods, then stole the knowledge of what they had done even as I kept my promise to them. And for many years, all was well. For centuries, I labored in hopes that the pantheon would see my efforts and welcome me home. Eventually I realized that there is no one willing to take my place, and I can never atone enough to be forgiven. Most intriguingly”—his voice came closer, as if he had bent down to look more closely at me—“travelers began to find their way to this island, despite the spell I had cast around it. They began to arrive a few years ago—around the time, I would say, that you began to mature, little Nirrim. Your gift is memory, is it not? Or so the taste of your blood says, and the tricks you tried on me.”

I thought of Sid. I wondered what I would be if she had never come here.

A stone, maybe.

A cloud, floating over everyone, part of nothing.

A gust of wind, trying to burrow into warm places.

I said, “Why did you let the travelers come?”

“I suppose,” he said, “that I longed for something new.”

“Let me see you.”

“No.”

“Please.”

And suddenly, I could. I blinked my eyes, which were stinging from the light. The god had stooped beside me. His bland face looked remarkable now, for its sadness. I said, “I am alone, too.”

“Ah,” he said, “but not for nearly so long as I.” The Elysium bird chirruped. “Well, Nirrim, do you agree to my bargain?”

The strength returned to my body. A little wobbly, I pushed myself up so that I was sitting beside the god.

“Will you release me?” he said.

“And if I say no?”

“Then I steal back everything I have told you. If I let you live, you leave with nothing. I will be Lord Protector until I pretend to die, and then I will be Lord Protector again, and the Half Kith will stay behind the wall and the High Kith will continue to feast on them and the Middlings will serve as go-betweens, longing to be just like the descendants of my acolytes, and relishing their place above the imprisoned children of gods and the stray pure humans unlucky enough to live among them.”