"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 happened; and the first, though now mending in timelessness, irked her most.

When gods become snared in time and its usages-as had many of Sanctuary's gods their attributes tend to leach across the barrier, into time, and embed themselves in the most compatible mortal personality. In Siveni's case, that had been Mriga. Even as a starving idiot-beggar she had loved the edge on good steel. Sharpening swords and spears was the work to which Harran had most often put her, after he found her in the Bazaar, dully whetting a broken bit of metal on a rock. Clubfooted and feeble-willed as she was, she had somehow "managed" to be found by the last of Siveni's priests in Sanctuary, "managed" to be taken in by him as the poor and mad had always been taken into her temple before. And when Harran went out one night to work the spell that would set Siveni free of time and bring her back into the world, to the ruin of the Rankan gods, Mriga was drawn after him like steel to the magnet.

The spell he had used would infallibly bring back the lost. It did, not only bringing back Siveni to her temple, but also retrieving Harran's lost divinity and Mriga's lost wits. Harran, blindly in love with his goddess in her whole and balanced form, had been shocked to find himself dealing not with the gracious maiden mistress of the arts of peace, but with a cold fierce power made testy and irrational by the loss of vital attributes. Siveni had been quite willing to pull all Sanctuary down around all the gods' ears if the deities of Ranke would not meet her right in battle. Harran tried to stop her-for vile sink though it was, Sanctuary was his home-and Siveni nearly killed him out of pique.

Mriga, though, had stopped her. She had recovered the conscious godhead every mortal temporarily surrenders at birth, and was therefore in full control of the attributes of wise compassion and cool judgment that Siveni had lost into time. She and her otherself fought, and after Mriga won the fight, both saw swiftly that they were one, though crippled and divided. They needed union, and timeless-ness in which to achieve it. Neither was available in the world of mortals. With that knowledge they had turned, as one, to Harran. They took their leave of him, healing the hand maiming that Siveni had inflicted on him, and then departed for those fields mortals do not know. Of course they planned to come back to him-or for him-as soon as they were consolidated.

But even in timelessness, union was taking longer than either had expected. Siveni was arrogant in her recovered wisdom, angry about having lost it, and bitter that it had found nowhere better to lodge than an ignorant cinder-sitting house-slut. Mriga was annoyed at Siveni's snobbery, bored with her constant anecdotes about her divine lineage-she told the same ones again and again-and most of all tired of fighting. Unfortunately she too was Siveni: when challenged she had to fight. And being mortal and formerly mad, she knew something Siveni had never learned: how to fight dirty. Mriga always won, and that made things worse.

"If you just wouldn't-"

"Oh stop," Mriga said, waving her hand and sitting down on the crude bench that appeared behind her. In front of her appeared a rough table loaded down with meat and bread and watered wine of the kind Harran used to smuggle for them from the Stepsons' store. Now that she was a goddess, and not mad, Mriga could have had better; but old habits were hard to break, and the sour wine reminded her of home. "Want some?"

"Goddesses," Siveni said, looking askance at the table, "don't eat mortal food. They eat only-"

"'-the gods' food and drink only foaming nectar.' Yes, that's what I hear. So then how am I sitting here eating butcher's beef and drinking wine? Who could be here but us goddesses? Have some of this nice chine."

"No."

Mriga poured out a libation to Father Ils, then applied herself to a rack of back ribs. "The world of mortal men," she said presently, while wiping grease off one cheek, "mirrors ours, have you noticed? Or maybe ours mirrors theirs. Either way, have you noticed how preoccupied both of them are just now with cat fighting? The Beysa. Kama. Roxane. Ischade. If all that stopped-would ours stop too? Or if we stopped-"

"As if anything mortals do could matter to the gods," Siveni said, annoyed. She thumped the ground with her spear and an elegant marble bench appeared. She seated herself on it; a moment later a small altar appeared, on which the thigh bones of fat steers, wrapped attractively in fat and with wine poured over, were being burned in a brazier. She inhaled the savor and pointedly touched none of the meat.

"What a waste," Mriga said. "... That's just what Harran said, though. The gods became convinced that time could bind them-and so it did. They became convinced that other gods could drive them out-and so it happened. If we could convince men that the pantheons were willing to get along together, and that they should stop killing each other in gods' names ... then maybe the fighting would stop up here. Mirrors...."

Mriga was becoming better at omniscience-another attribute Siveni had lost to her-and so heard Siveni thinking that idiocy was one of those conditions that transcended even immortality. Mriga sighed. It was harder than she'd thought, this becoming one. Siveni didn't really want to share her attributes ... and Mriga didn't really want to give them up. Hopeless.... Then she caught herself staring at the rib bone in her hand, and by way of it became aware of an emptiness in the universe. "I miss my dog," Mriga said.

Siveni shrugged coolly. Most of her affections and alliances lay with the winged tribes, birds of prey or oracular ravens. But as the silence stretched out, she looked over at Mriga, and her face softened a bit.

"Goddess!-"

Mriga looked up at Siveni in surprise. The voice caught at both their hearts as if hooks had set deep there. Startled, the two of them looked around them and saw no one; then looked out of timelessness into time....

... and saw Harran go down under the hooves of Stepsons' horses, with half his head missing.

"My master," Mriga said, stricken. "My priest, my love-"

"Our priest," Siveni said, and sounded as if she could have said something else, but would not. She got up so quickly that the marble bench fell one way and the elegant brazier the other. Her spear leapt into her hand, sizzling. "I'll-"

"We'll," Mriga said, on her feet now. It was odd how eyes so icy with anger could still manage tears that flowed. "Come on."

Thunder cracked about them like sky ripping open. The neighbors all around turned in their direction and stared. Uncaring, two goddesses, or one, shot earthward from the bright floor of heaven, which, behind them, hesitated, then furtively turned to dirt.