“I’ve got to go back,” she said; Mriga looked unhappily at her. “How?” she said.
“Nothing’s working. You can’t make so much as heat lightning these days.”
“No,” Siveni said. “But have we tried anything really large?”
“After what happened to Ischade…”
Siveni shrugged, a cold gesture. “She has her own problems. They don’t necessarily apply to us.”
“And Stormbringer…” Harran said.
Siveni cursed. The dust on the table began to smoke slightly with the vehemence of it. Siveni noticed it and smiled, approving. “Come on, Harran,” she said.
“The situation was no different when you called me out of heaven, and Savankala and the wretched Rankene gods were running things. You brought me out in their despite. This new god is too busy chasing Mother Bey to care a whit about us hedge-gods.” The smile took on a bitter cast. “And why should He care what we’re doing? We’d be leaving his silly city, not meddling with it further. I think
He’ll be glad to see the back of us.”
“We,” Harran said, and looked sober all of a sudden.
Both Mriga and Siveni looked at him in shock. “Surely you’d be coming with us,”
Mriga said.
Harran said nothing for a moment.
“Harran!”
“There is nothing here for you,” Siveni said. “You’ve thought it a hundred times, you’ve cried about it when you thought we don’t notice. You’ve seen hell, you’ve glimpsed heaven through us; how can mortal things possibly satisfy you anymore? Any more than they satisfy me? Or you,” she said, looking at Mriga.
Mriga stared at the floor.
“Come on!” Siveni said, sounding a touch desperate. “You were bom a clubfooted idiot, you went through a whole life being used as a slave or a pincushion, living like a beast-and what do you do that’s better now? You grind knives in the Bazaar as you always did, and take a little copper for it, but where’s the joy in that? Where’s the life you were going to lead with him in the Fields