Divine Rivals(4)
Author: Rebecca Ross

 

“I understand, Mr. Autry. It won’t happen again, though.”

 

Her boss was quiet for a beat. “Over the past few months, I’ve published eleven articles of Kitt’s. I’ve published ten of yours, Winnow.”

 

Iris braced herself. Was it truly going to come down to the numbers? That Roman had written slightly more than her?

 

“Do you know that I was going to simply give the position to Kitt after he got his feet wet here?” Zeb continued. “That is, until your essay won the Gazette-in-Winter Competition. Out of the hundreds of essays I sifted through, yours caught my eye. And I thought, Here is a girl who has raw talent, and it would be a shame if I let that slip away.”

 

Iris knew what came next. She had been working at the diner, washing dishes with muted, broken dreams. She hadn’t once thought the essay she submitted to the Gazette’s annual competition would amount to anything, until she returned home to find a letter from Zeb with her name on it. It was an offer to work at the paper, with the tantalizing promise of columnist if she continued to prove herself exceptional.

 

It had completely changed Iris’s life.

 

Zeb lit a cigarette. “I’ve noticed that your writing hasn’t been as sharp lately. It’s been quite messy, in fact. Is there something happening at home, Winnow?”

 

“No, sir,” she answered, too swiftly.

 

He regarded her, one eye smaller than the other. “How old are you again?”

 

“Eighteen.”

 

“You dropped out of school this past winter, didn’t you?”

 

She hated thinking about her broken promise to Forest. But she nodded, sensing that Zeb was digging. He wanted to know more about her personal life, which made her tense.

 

“You have any siblings?”

 

“An older brother, sir.”

 

“And where is he, now? What does he do for a living?” Zeb pressed on.

 

Iris glanced away, studying the black and white checkered floor. “He was a horologist’s apprentice. But he’s at war now. Fighting.”

 

“For Enva, I presume?”

 

She nodded again.

 

“Is that why you dropped out of Windy Grove?” Zeb asked. “Because your brother left?”

 

Iris didn’t reply.

 

“That’s a pity.” He sighed, releasing a puff of smoke, although Iris knew Zeb’s opinion on the war, and it never failed to irk her. “What about your parents?”

 

“I live with my mother,” she replied in a curt tone.

 

Zeb withdrew a small flask from his jacket and poured a few drops of liquor into his tea. “I’ll think about giving you another assignment, although that’s not how I usually do things around here. Now, I want those obituaries on my desk by three this afternoon.”

 

She left without another word.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Iris set the finished obituaries on his desk an hour early, but she didn’t leave the office. She remained at her cubicle and began to think of an essay to write, just in case Zeb did give her a chance to counter Roman’s assignment.

 

But the words felt frozen inside of her. She decided to walk to the sideboard to pour herself a fresh cup of tea when she saw Roman Conceited Kitt walk into the office.

 

He had been gone all day, to her relief, but he now had that annoying bounce in his stride, as if he were teeming with words he needed to spill across the page. His face was flushed from the chill of early spring, his coat speckled with rain as he sat at his desk, rummaging through his messenger bag for his notepad.

 

Iris watched as he fed a page to his typewriter and began to furiously type. He was lost to the world, lost to his words, and so she didn’t take the long way back to her desk, as she often did, to avoid passing him directly. He didn’t notice her walking by, and she sipped her overly sweetened tea and stared at her blank page.

 

Soon everyone began to leave for the day, save for her and Roman. Desk lamps were being turned off, one by one, and yet Iris remained, typing slowly and arduously, as if every word had to be pulled from her marrow, while Roman two cubicles away was pounding into the keys.

 

Her thoughts drifted to the gods’ war.

 

It was inevitable; the war always seemed to simmer at the back of her mind, even if it was raging six hundred kilometers west of Oath.

 

How will it end? she wondered. With one god destroyed, or both of them?

 

Endings were often found in beginnings, and she began to type what she knew. Snippets of news that had drifted across the land, reaching Oath weeks after they had happened.

 

It began in a small, sleepy town surrounded by gold. Seven months ago, the wheat fields were ready for harvest, nearly swallowing a place called Sparrow, where sheep outnumber people four to one, and it rains only twice a year due to an old charm cast by an angry—and now slain—god, centuries ago.

 

This idyllic town in Western Borough is where Dacre, a defeated Underling god, was laid to sleep in a grave. And there he slept for two hundred and thirty-four years until one day, at harvest time, he unexpectedly woke and rose, sifting through the soil and burning with fury.

 

He came upon a farmer in the field, and his first words were a cold, ragged whisper.

 

“Where is Enva?”

 

Enva, a Skyward goddess and Dacre’s sworn enemy. Enva, who had also been defeated two centuries ago, when the five remaining gods fell captive beneath mortal power.

 

The farmer was afraid, cowering in Dacre’s shadow. “She is buried in the Eastern Borough,” he eventually replied. “In a grave not unlike your own.”

 

“No,” Dacre said. “She is awake. And if she refuses to greet me … if she chooses to be a coward, I will draw her to me.”

 

“How, my lord?” the farmer asked.

 

Dacre stared down at the man. How does one god draw another? He began to

 

 

 

“What’s this?”

 

Iris jumped at Zeb’s voice, turning to see him standing nearby with a scowl, trying to read what she had typed.

 

“Just an idea,” she replied, a bit defensive.

 

“It’s not about how the gods’ war began, is it? That’s old news, Winnow, and people here in Oath are sick of reading about it. Unless you have a fresh take on Enva.”