Page 54 of Tidal Creatures

Judy winces, and steps up to match Máni, Chang’e moving smoothly to the forefront. “Anna, please,” she says. “There’s no reason to antagonize your allies when you don’t need to. Máni, I understand why you’re upset.”

“But you’re not surprised,” he snaps. “You knew, didn’t you?”

More lies will only compound the damage already done. “I found out this morning. She was talking about hunting, and Losna’s not a hunter. Artemis is.”

“Hunters kill things.”

That’s an angle she hasn’t considered yet. She looks to Anna, speculatively. Is it truly a coincidence that a minor Lunar died, and almost immediately after, she met Artemis pretending to be someone harmless? Could she have pulled that same ruse on Aske?

“I didn’t kill her,” says Anna. She’s staying as she is, Artemis present but not dominant, making sure she doesn’t look like the biggest threat in the room. It’s a smart call on her part, since Máni looks like he’s just about ready to start breaking things.

Chang’e doesn’t think that would be nearly as much of a smart call, not with the Doctrine of Ethos—both halves, and how did she not know there were two of them? How did she never put it together?—standing right there, watching. If he starts something now, she’s pretty sure Roger and Dodger will finish it, and that things they finish don’t restart.

“We don’t know that.”

“Yes, you do, because I’m telling you the truth,” says Anna. She glances to Roger. “You told us not to lie to your sister. Is that still in effect?”

“Yup,” he says, and drinks more coffee.

“I want to know how you did that. Because I could feel it when it happened, like a net settling over a school of fish, and I knew I was caught, but now I don’t feel it at all.”

“Eh.” He shrugs. “If you were always aware of your underwear, it would start to drive you up the wall before the end of the day.”

“Spoken like a man who’s been forced to understand why I hate thongs so much,” says Dodger.

Roger shudders dramatically. “You are the worst sister. But yes, miss moon god, you are currently forbidden to lie to my sister.”

“Cool.” Anna turns away from Máni, stepping all the way up at the same time, so it’s Artemis who finishes the motion, Artemis who faces the incarnate Doctrine, Artemis who says, in a voice as cool as running water, “Much appreciated. Can we agree that no matter where I’m looking, I’m addressing said sister?”

“Sure,” says Dodger, sounding thoroughly amused.

Roger nods.

Artemis turns back to Máni. “I came to Berkeley because Lunars have been dying, and the alchemists have been in a tizzy all over the continent, but it’s worse here than it is anywhere else. For some reason, the alchemists here are on the verge of bursting into flame from sheer nervous activity, and I want to know why. They must be doing something that has everyone worked up, and given that they’re alchemists, it’s not unreasonable to connect it to the deaths. I said I was Losna because you haven’t had a Losna recently enough for anyone to know what her incarnations are supposed to be like, and I don’t trust your Diana. I can’t truthfully say I’ve never killed anyone—I am a huntress—but I can say that I have not killed a single person since arriving in this city, and the only other Lunar I ever killed was over a decade ago. He attacked me first. Unless you’re planning to come at me with a knife, I’m no danger to you.”

Máni blinks, taking a small step back, then looks to Chang’e. “You’re okay with this?”

“I don’t think it’s up to me,” says Chang’e. “She’s telling the truth. She helped me search for Aske’s body after I didn’t find her inside the everything. She’s a huntress, and there’s something here to hunt, so she came here to go hunting.”

“Is a Diana another kind of moon god?” asks Dodger.

“That is possibly the nicest thing you could have said,” says Artemis. “Chang’e and I are as high in the pantheon as she is, but she goes around acting like she’s the boss of everyone, even when she doesn’t have a leg to stand on. And since she still has so many people who believe in her, you find her in almost every community of Lunars, which gives her a numerical advantage.”

“Hold on, hold on.” Roger pinches the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses up at the same time. “Are you saying you people are composite entities? Some sort of distributed consciousness?”

“Not exactly,” says Artemis. She glances to Chang’e. “You know this guy well enough to have been trying to avoid him. You want to explain?”

“Not particularly, but I’ll do it,” says Chang’e. It’s easier if she avoids looking directly at either half of the Doctrine, if she just acts like she’s talking to a particularly interesting bit of wall. “Lunar gods manifest on a regular basis all over the world. We grow in people who have enough of an affinity for our specific natures that they might eventually be able to hear us calling to them from the moonlight, and when they accept, we join them. We don’t take them over, we don’t replace them, we … share the space. We are them, and they are us; it’s just that the personality travels with the power, so as we step up and down the ladder of divinity, either the god or the host will be more dominant. That means we all tend to begin our growth in the same sort of soil, and our hosts tend to have similar personalities. Any god you meet will have multiple manifestations at any given time. It’s the only way we can be sure there’s enough of us.”

“Enough for what?” asks Roger. He sounds fascinated, and Chang’e isn’t surprised. Judy finds this all fascinating too, even after as long as she’s been living with it. Any place where the world of gods intersects with the world of men is likely to be enthralling: that’s how myths are born, after all. Mortals like to feel like they’re walking along the border of a myth.

Still, she hesitates, unsure how much she should say, how much she’s allowed to say. They never discuss matters of divinity in front of people who aren’t Lunars; their history is rich with cautionary tales about Lunars who made that exact mistake, who thought they could trust a lover or a friend and found themselves betrayed, committed to psychiatric care or, worse, handed over to the nearest group of alchemists to be “cured.” There are reasons so many cultures yoke madness to the moon, and the Lunar tendency to slide into a person’s mind and start speaking plays a large part.

She glances to Artemis and Máni, desperate for salvation that isn’t coming. Máni refuses to meet her eyes, while Artemis nods, very slowly.

Returning her attention to Roger—or, more precisely, to the cabinets beside his head, which don’t watch her with mild gray eyes and occasionally give commands that restructure the way the world is meant to work—Chang’e takes a deep breath.

“We have to be sure there’s enough of us to shine above the Impossible City every night.”