all godhead and maidenhead, seemingly unassailable. Just out of arms’ reach of
her stood someone not so tall, hardly so fair, dressed in grime and worn plain
cloth with patches, crowned with nothing but much dark curly hair, somewhat
snarled, and armed only with a kitchen knife. They stared at each other for a
moment, Siveni and Mriga, warrior-queen of wisdom and idiot wench. It was the
idiot who had the thoughtful, regretful look, and the Lady of Battles who had
the black eye.
“It’s got to stop,” Mriga said, dropping the knife in the shining dust and
turning away from her otherself. “We tear each other up for nothing. Our town is
going to pieces, and our priest is all alone in the middle of it, and we don’t
dare try to help him until our own business is handled …”
“You don’t dare,” Siveni said scornfully. But she didn’t move.
Mriga sighed. While she had been insane just before she became a goddess, her
madness had not involved multiple personalities-so that when she suddenly
discovered that she was one with Siveni Gray-Eyes, there was trouble. Siveni was
Ils’s daughter, mistress of both war and the arts and sciences, the Ilsig gods’
two-edged blade Herself: both Queen of cool wisdom, and hellion God-daughter who
could take any god in the Ilsig pantheon, save her father, for best two falls
out of three. Siveni had not taken kindly to losing parts of herself into time,
or to seeing the Rankan pantheon raised to preeminence in Sanctuary, or to
coming off a poor second in a street brawl with a mortal. But all of those had