Page 96 of Inkpot Gods

“Oh, sparrow, we all have to go in our time. Some of us get a chance to come back, in one way or another. I did. I’ve lived more than any ten women could wish for, and I’ve seen things change in ways a hundred women couldn’t even begin to dream. I’ve seen you come, and you’re going to remake the world. I know you are. Maybe what you make will be kinder. Maybe it will be crueler. Either way, the men who make monsters like me will burn, and that’s all I can really hope for.”

“Why— Was my uncle doing something special to sustain you that you never told me about? Do you need a new heart? New lungs? Human blood? Gods’-blood?” Asphodel hasn’t summoned a god since Phaesyle. She knows enough of divinity to fear the wrath of Dionysus should she ever remind the pantheon that she exists. Her father may have been enough to buy her a single indulgence, but that mercy won’t extend to a second sacrifice.

And she doesn’t care. If Miss Cottingsly says a sacrifice will sustain her, Asphodel will lure any god her companion chooses down from the heavens and slit their throat with a smile. She’ll do anything to stop the inevitable from unfolding.

“It’s not so simple, child,” says Miss Cottingsly.

“So make it simple,” snaps Asphodel. “I’ve created life itself! I’ve reshaped the world according to my own desires. I can keep you here with me.”

“It’s the life you’ve created that’s allowing me to die.”

Asphodel freezes, feeling her heart go cold. “What?”

“I lied to you when I told you all my grandchildren were already gone. Eliza—the one who lived before the grave—was my last grandchild. Surely you guessed we were connected in some way when I led you directly to her body. I already knew that losing her would let me go. The sympathies have been snapped. Her father is dead. Her mother’s blood is none of mine—I would have called her a daughter had I lived to see their wedding, and maybe that would have been enough, but I was dead and gone before they even met. I never knew her, and so she couldn’t feed into the universal affection it takes to stabilize the ordinary dead in this world.”

“Why did you…?”

Miss Cottingsly turns her face toward Asphodel, and there is a kindness to her expression that violates a hundred years of common wisdom regarding the auf. Even with the sympathies broken, she looks at Asphodel like she cares about her.

“You needed a fresh body, and you needed something to strive for,” she says. “I could offer you both, and I’ve seen the storm raging in your heart. I already knew some of what you would be capable of. I may never have known the girl in life, but I still cared for her in death, and you were her best chance at coming back.”

“You drained her veins yourself. You pushed the blood from her body.”

“I did. It was necessary for the resurrection to succeed. You made something new, Asphodel. You created life. You didn’t just write about it. Your quill was dry when you set it to the paper, and still, you scribed a symphony. Let the rest of them play. Those inkpot gods are going to regret shunning you.”

“I still don’t understand what I did.”

“You bled, Asphodel. The lightning in the storm and the lightning inside you came together, and like a cuckoo laying its egg in a cowbird’s nest, you made something new. Eliza is gone. The girl who lives inside her skin now has no memory of her. But that doesn’t make your achievement any less brilliant.”

“If I’d managed to bring her back as an ordinary auf, could you stay?”

Miss Cottingsly sighs. “I know you too well, sparrow. Killing the girl won’t restore Eliza’s sympathy, and even if it did, I’ve lasted this long because of the living. An ordinary auf wouldn’t be able to anchor me here. Let go. Fly free, and be brilliant—and don’t offer to kill gods for anyone else. You did it for the Congress. That was a time too many.”

Asphodel glances away, and doesn’t mention Deborah, little moon goddess bleeding silver and scarlet beneath the stairs. Lunars are barely gods, anyway. They’ve traded away most of their divinity in their endless bid to remain manifest in a world that’s rapidly outgrowing them. Lunars don’t count. No more than the seasons do.

“The girl is all you have now,” says Miss Cottingsly. “She’s your first cuckoo. Watch her, study her, understand her—and for the love of the art, don’t lose her. Do you know where she is now?”

Normally, Asphodel would see the trap in Miss Cottingsly’s question. But right now, she’s exhausted and she’s grieving—not just the impending loss of her companion, but the loss of the life she had planned for herself for most of her life. She’ll still be an alchemist, but she won’t be a Congressional alchemist. She’ll have to forge her own path, unsupported and alone.

She’s been unsupported before. She’s been alone. She killed a goddess with no one beside her but an auf, she brought back the rain, and she can do this. She can.

Asphodel rises. “I’ll go find her,” she says. “Rest. We’ll talk more when I return.”

Miss Cottingsly nods approvingly, but doesn’t say anything, only watches as Asphodel walks away, plucking her shawl from the chair beside the door as she makes her exit.

Once she’s alone, the old auf closes her eyes. “It’s time to fly, sparrow,” she says. “It’s time to burn everything those terrible men have done to ash and dust, and see it scattered before you.”

Then she sighs, one final time, and exhales.

She doesn’t breathe in again.

Asphodel steps into the sunlight, blinking rapidly as she waits for her eyes to adjust. The air is crisp and chill, September’s weather all too aware of its position in the hierarchy of the year. Winter will be here soon enough, and her memory of the winters of her early childhood, while fuzzy, tells her it will be even more brutal than the snows that fall in Boston. Without the brick walls and gas heaters to break the back of the cold, the winds are free to rage, the snows to sear.

She hasn’t heard anything about a coronation since she served her young lover up like a lamb for the slaughter. The old Winter King still sits astride the throne, and he’s unlikely to hold her killing of a potential heir against her. Given the way in which the seasons keep their house, he may honestly have seen it as a favor, something done to court his good graces. He’s unlikely to target her for special torments just because she baited the trap.

Still, Eliza has very little experience with anything. She remembers speech and some of her letters, can move and play and curtsey as prettily as any child, but she remembers nothing of her life before the lightning. She’s a blank slate waiting to be scribed, and she’ll be a perfect canvas for what Asphodel intends.

Or will she? Asphodel herself illustrates the problem Eliza will face: the world is still balanced against the feminine sex, is still inclined to see them as lesser due to the accident of their birth. Eliza will make a poor apprentice-heir, because the doors that are closed against Asphodel will also be closed against her.