“It’s a hard truth, I know.” Ogden added, as though he thought it might help, “Most likely, youareZal, and one of your parents or grand-parents had . . . a tryst with a Firstborn field operative.”
Seth rowed on without a word, and Jacen did not dare try to sense what he felt. He dearly wished someone would say something—anything.
“My contacts in the Shrouded City are aware of your heritage,” Ogden said. “I thought it best that you heard it before we arrived.”
Another reason for them to hate him. Jacen was beginning to feel lightheaded. “What does this mean for me?”
“They might find you too useful to kill,” said Ogden. “Telepaths of your caliber are terribly rare.”
“Physically,” Jacen managed to elucidate. If he was not quite human . . . The notion was too abstract to fully grasp. He looked outwardly ordinary enough, but what legacies had his monstrous ancestors left lurking beneath his skin?
“I don’t know,” Ogden admitted. “You may live longer than your species’ norm.”
Jacen had wanted this answer, hadn’t he? He wrung his fingers together, stifling a sudden impulse to count them. Urien noticed. He frowned at Jacen’s hands and seemed about to speak but stopped himself.
“What is it?” Jacen demanded.
“I’d expect you to be . . . well, a bit more like me.” Urien looked askance and demurred, “But I’m no geneticist.”
Jacen gritted his teeth. For gods’ sake, he was a telepath. He knew Urien was leaving something out, something he wasn’t comfortable saying aloud.
“Please.” Jacen struggled to keep his voice level. “Just tell me.”
Urien shifted in his seat. “Most of my people never have any interaction with yours, let alone set foot on this planet. What’s more, there are . . . certain traits you possess which do not occur naturally in us.” He lifted a four-fingered hand. “Five digits, for instance. Some of our great houses have engineered it into their genomes for the dexterity advantage. Also, considering your size and strength . . .” He cleared his throat. “It’s likely—a certainty, even—that your parentage comes from one of those great houses.”
A violent shudder ran through Jacen. Seth had begun to row with a vengeance. Nines openly stared at Jacen, deep in thought.
Even Ogden was taken aback. “I don’t recommend sharing that theory with our friends in the Shrouded City.” He sighed. “I’ve had a difficult enough time keeping him alive.”
Jacen ignored him, focused on Urien. The strange little man beheld him with a blend of pity, curiosity, and fear. Thatfearwas unmistakable to a telepath, and Urien’s was familiar. Jacen had felt it that night in the clinic. When Urien had frozen at the sight of him, Jacen had thought it odd, but . . . Perhaps the true object of Urien’s fear was someone else, someone of whom Jacen reminded him.
“Of your great houses,” Jacen said slowly. “How many individuals have visited this planet?”
“That I know of?” Urien exhaled. “Only six.”
28
MARTYR
JACEN
Jacen watched the deepriver flow by as they drifted through the dark, scarcely penetrated by lantern light. They passed stalactites and stalagmites, strange fungi, coves and whirlpools and deeper, narrower branches of Esh down which their map warned never to go. Far from the wasteland above, even the darkness—especiallythe darkness—was alive.
The Zal tongue had more than a dozen different words fordarkness,andEshwas one. Though it roughly signifiedabyss,Standard had no direct equivalent. Esh was an unending black, a great mystery, an unknown so profound, one might drown in it.
The others’ emotions created a grating cacophony around the fringes of Jacen’s consciousness. Nines tucked herself against the back of the boat, as close to the side as she could manage. Ogden sat hunched over, folded hands pressed to his forehead. He’d put his gloves back on since Nines would not stop staring at his metal fingers. Jacen couldn’t blame either of them. His head felt unbearably full.
Other worlds, uncounted thousands of them. No gods at all, but visitors from the stars. And Jacen was their offspring.
To even think the words still felt like blasphemy of the highest order: Jacen’s own lineage included one of the gods. Or—one of his parents or grandparents, born under another sun had been given as a child to host an ancient demon.
He could not decide which manner of describing it seemed worse. Which of the Six, then? Could it have been Rakalem, the Lord of Fear, in whose presence Jacen had stood only days earlier? Might he be a son of Ileth? Or Nabatar—the Lord of Sickness, who had carried out Elyas’s death sentence? When the scavenger brought it to his chapel, could Jacen have held his own father’s skull?
Whatever Urien had guessed, he hadn’t shared, and Jacen was uninclined to press. He tried not to wonder, lest he make himself sick. He found himself trying to glimpse his reflection in the water as he rowed, in case it had changed when he wasn’t paying attention. When they stopped to rest, he ran his hands over his round ears, searching for traces of scar tissue where they might have been cut or reshaped, until he caught the others watching and stopped.
He slept little that night. The entire paradigm through which he approached reality had shifted. It was as though he had spent his life in a dark room, fumbling at what he believed to be a rope. Then someone lit a torch and he realized it was a kirikil’s tail and he had never been in a room at all—but, rather, on the edge of a cliff. And then someone had shoved him off it.
It was dizzying. His first inclination was to clamp his hands over his head and scream. His second was to drink until it no longer mattered. Had there been any liquor available, he would have been unconscious by now.
