I watched the door to the little hut with unflagging intensity, trying not to show my anxiety on my face. Never let them see you bleed. I didn't know where I had heard that, but it was true. I couldn't show weakness, not for a single moment. I wasn't just a leader here; I was a god. Gods were calm and self-assured. Gods always had a plan. I sure as shit didn't feel calm or self-assured right now. The crazy old tech shaman ducked out of the hut a moment later, a satisfied half-smile in his eyes, contrasted sharply by the otherwise ferocious expression twisting the rest of his race. He looked around at all of us, gathered at the fire pit outside his hut, poking at the embers of a mushroom stalk blaze. "The young ranger will recover." Everyone gathered breathed a collective sigh of relief.

We had all been pretending to eat the food that the severely cowed priesthood had insisted on serving us. No one was hungry, though. In the space of just a half of an hour, the entire Erinye government had been turned on its head. The High Priest, Vassa, was locked in a cell beneath the stone of the mountain, awaiting judgment from an Elder Council that didn't exist anymore. Lot was being watched very closely by an order of very angry Stormcallers, who had been pulled back from the brink of rebellion by an impassioned Nissikul. They would be fine, but they needed something to vent their spleen upon. I didn’t need a few dozen stir-crazy, angry mages rampaging around the village. I would need to find them something to do. No one seemed to know what to make of the Deepseeker, who had been accused by the others of being corrupted by the Dark Ones around the same time that my camp had been attacked and destroyed. With Vassa clearly corrupted and Lot suspected of the same, everyone seemed ready to kill the strange old shaman too, just to be safe. Only Elder Perwik was still in power, and traditionally he only involved himself in the business of the rangers. Now he was nominally wrangling all four branches of the Erin-Vulur government. It wasn’t the clean, mostly bloodless coup that I had hoped for. But it had worked a lot better than simply kicking in the front door and murdering Elder Lot would have.

Perwik was eating in silence, staring up at the frozen ceiling of the village's great ice cavern. Thukkar sat cross-legged beside him, picking at his claws with a knife far too large for the task. He was studiously avoiding looking at Nissikul. The one-armed Stormcaller was sitting naked to the waist, utterly unconcerned. She had dispelled the witch-ice simulacrum arm she had worn for most of the previous day, and now was working some foul-smelling poultice into the stump with single-minded determination. I watched the Deepseeker come down from his hut and join us around the pitiful fire. Finally, I quit stalling and blurted, "Will Volistad walk again?"

The tech shaman snorted as if the idea was patently ridiculous. I opened my mouth, with an angry snarl already on my lips, but he cut me off with a dismissive wave. "Of course he will walk again, silly godling. I didn't bring that boy back from the brink of the abyss just to watch him die the first time some brute broke his neck." He pointed a dirty, chipped claw at me, completely ignoring Nissi's warning growl. "That daft boy is about as hard to kill as you are. Probably heals faster, too. You two have more in common than you think." He pointed to my heart. "You aren't the only one with part of a god for a heart."

“Wait, what?”

But the Deepseeker just kept speaking as if he hadn’t just casually suggested that Volistad was also some kind of god. “Now we need to discuss this plan of yours, Storm Queen, and we need to do it soon. I’ve been keeping an eye on that old spirit of yours, and he’s up to no good. We don’t have a lot of time.”

"My plan was to kill him," I snapped, irritated. "I find Barbas, the Erin-Vulur hold off any horrible creations he's made, and I kill him. I knock down the tower he's building, and I take him down to Ravanur's temple. I tear out his heart and seal it in one of those god-cells. Done."

The Deepseeker laughed, his voice crackling like breaking ice. "Ah yes, that always was the old bint's plan. Containment. Well, look where that got us." He leaned in close, one eye open wider than the other, which seemed to have started twitch so hard that he was having a hard time aiming it at me. "Let me ask you something, godling." Nissikul twitched, but I waved her off, annoyed. The Deepseeker didn't appear to have noticed. "Storm Queen, have you ever considered just killing all of the miserable bastards?"