The Awakened Kingdom

by N. K. Jemisin

  He blinked, then for the first time since the raid, he smiled in a good way.

  After a moment he sighed. “Very well, then, Lady Shill.” He extended his hand; not quite sure what else to do, I took it. “I suppose you’ve been helping me all along, lately. We might as well formalize the relationship. Only until Beba assigns you a proper enulai, though. And only if you tell no one; I’m in enough trouble as it is.”

  I gasped in delight. An enulai! A secret enulai, all mine! “OK!”

  “In the meantime—” He tilted his head with perfect grace. “Home, please?”

  “OK!” I was so happy that I took his hand and did exactly what he wanted, right then and there.

  OK OK OK OK WAAAAAIT. (This is how Mama Yeine likes to tell stories. I don’t tell Papa Tempa that I like her storying, too, even if it is not the Proper Way.)

  Now I will tell you about other stuff that was happening, because mortal stuff is very tiny stuff compared to everything else that’s always going on. And this other stuff is important! You need to know it, too, because you are really new, like me.

  THERE IS A BIG HOLE IN EXISTENCE. Can you see it? Mortals can’t, but you can. Look right there. Look look look! Now tilt your head and squint. And now laheelishrinjael jyama, shu enwa owamehikach. Ashkayeerikajishge ichttu. Ichttu, ichttu! No, your other left. See it now?

  Yes, it is really big. That is where the Maelstrom punched through. The Three have patched over the hole, and it is healing; Naha says it should be fine in a couple billion years. But right now it is still a big hole and actually you should not ever go too close to that hole because there are still bits of Maelstrom stuck in it and they will eat you. That is why I told you about it. I’m a good big sister!

  Now look here and here and here and here, and there. Those are smaller holes. They will not hurt you. They’re hard to see, even, right? But they hurt existence. Those are the holes that are left behind when godlings die. We are not very important, not like the Three. The universe does not come apart if we die. It does get kind of messed up, though. Especially when one of the very old ones dies, because they’ve been around long enough that existence has sort of grown around them, and leaned on them a little. Without them, it cracks and maybe stumbles. Then in a few eons it’s fine again.

  Everything was already stumbly when the Maelstrom came. The Demons’ War killed demons, and they do not leave holes the way godlings do, but maybe they left little itchy bumps because then later everybody got cranky and had the Gods’ War. That one was really bad, because lots of godlings died in it—mostly young ones, but a few old ones, too. And maybe that is why it was so easy for Kahl to call the Maelstrom, and why Sieh changed and died—because when existence is shaky, all kinds of things can happen, good and bad.

  (Like me! OK, that is not really why I happened. I happened because my parents had sex.)

  Anyway so when Sieh died and the hole was there, everything in the universe got…drifty. Galaxies spun loose, with stars flying everywhichway. Wandering planets barged into solar systems without even asking! Even the dark matter has been getting snitty; it keeps shrinking down and trying to make pocket universes. The Three have to keep telling it to settle down.

  Some of that was because of the big hole. But some of it was because Sieh was gone. All the planets and moons used to like Sieh. The suns didn’t like him as much because he stole planets sometimes, but they listened to him, and did what he asked. Every other god, they give attitude.

  That is what a trickster does, see. Shifts things around, stirs things up, makes the strong weak and the weak strong, makes people mad in good times so they won’t get madder in bad ones.

  Tricksters are important, see. They are not always funny, not always cruel, not always childish; there are many kinds of tricksters, and Sieh was not the only one. But he was the Trickster, the one who keeps existence on its toes, and without him, things keep going, but they don’t go well.

  Tricksters are really, really important.OK so there.

  WHEEEEEEE WHEEEEEEEE WHEEEEEEwhat? But that part was fun! I wanted to tell you about it so you would know how fun!

  Oh, fine. I will skip the stuff that is not important, but I think you are being a storybully, and you should maybe just relax.OK. So Eino slept really really late the next day and I got bored with watching him, so I went to a couple of other planets nearby and found a big gassy one that had really fast winds that were fun to skate on. There were little dancing creatures in the wind so I danced with them, and deeper inside the planet there were big boxes floating that had lots of long-dead mortals inside but you are BORING and don’t want to know about that so I will skip ahead.

  After I came back Eino was still asleep so I sat down outside his room because I thought there might be more interesting things to look at in the hallway, and that is how I found out I was not supposed to be near his room. When people in the house began to stir, a boy I did not know saw me sitting in front of Eino’s door. He gasped really loud and ran off. (I was pretty sure that was not my fault.) Then Arolu came and found me and asked me to come with him.

  We sat down in the house’s kitchen, where all the mortal food kept distracting me because it smelled so interesting, so finally Arolu asked another boy to get me a plate of food, and while I tried to figure out how to eat it, he talked. “I see you’ve met my son, Eino.”

  “Oh! He’s your son?” I watched the other boy, who sat at the far end of the long table from me and Arolu. He used a small knife and a fork to shovel food into his mouth, so I tried to imitate him. Also I wondered why nobody had introduced me to him or to the boy who’d tattled on me. Maybe they were waiting for me to say hi first? “You and he aren’t much alike, though. He’s not very nice.”

  Arolu chuckled. “Boys that age do tend to be…high-strung.” He spread his hands, as if in apology. “But along those lines…Lady Shill, it’s important that you not be seen alone with him. Especially not in intimate places, like his bedchamber.”

  Bedchambers were intimate? “Why?” A piece of fruit slid off the knife; I giggled.

  “Because you are female, Lady Shill, and he is male, and because you look older today than you did yesterday. I would have put you at seven then; now you look, hmm, ten.”

  I looked down at myself, pleased to find that I had, indeed, gotten bigger. Being in the mortal realm was making me so much better! But—“Why does it matter that I look older now?”

  “Because it is a reminder to everyone who meets you that your childlike appearance does not necessarily make you a child.”

  “But I am a child!”

  “For now.” Arolu reached over to a pot of liquid and poured some into a little cup, which he then offered to me. I sipped it and then kicked my feet because it was amazing! Sweet and sort of bitey, which made me grin at him. He smiled back. “Ginger juice, with a bit of serry-flower pulp. A Darren specialty; I’m told we sell quite a lot of it in northern Senm.”

  “It’s good! Thank you!” He really was nice. I hoped Eino grew up to be more like him.

  He inclined his head with perfect grace. “What I mean, Lady Shill, is that not only could you choose to look like an adult if you wanted, but you are maturing in fact, rapidly, as your appearance suggests. That is a dangerous thing.”

  I stopped in the middle of sipping my juice, frowning. “I’m going to try really hard not to hurt anybody.”

  His smile was suddenly sad. “I’m glad to hear that. But the fact remains you might hurt someone, for all your best intentions. Eino is impressionable, and even a young godling can be…impressive.”

  I put my juice down, completely mystified. “Eino’s really strong, though. He’s even stronger than me in a lot of ways.” I felt this instinctively. “That’s why I want to stay near him, so I can get strong like that.”

  “Yes.” Arolu stopped smiling. “You could use him that way. But what does he gain from the exchange? Will he grow stronger too?” When I inhaled, because I had never thought of it as using, Arol
u sighed. “Study the history of gods and mortals on this world, Lady Shill. I suspect I cannot keep you from Eino; I’ve lived among enulai too long not to understand something of your kind and your natures. You must be what you are—but please, try not to make the same mistakes as others of your kind. That’s all I ask.”

  With that, he patted my hand and got up and went away upstairs. I sat there a little while longer, trying to understand what that whole conversation had been about, but I didn’t. Then one of the boys came over and said, “May I take your plate, Lady?”

  I blinked up at him. He was small, almost as small as me, and his hair was only to his shoulders; he’d braided it back. He didn’t have on a complicated robey thing the way Eino and Arolu did; his was simpler and plainer-colored, with narrow sleeves that had been pushed up to the elbow. He kept his eyes turned down, which I didn’t like, so I said, “Hello! I’m Shill. Who are you?”

  He looked surprised. “Oh—um. I’m Juem, Lady. Just a servant.”

  I knew the word servant. It was sort of like the way some mortals tried to do things we wanted, except we never asked them to. I wondered why. And I really wished he would look up! “Hey, do you want some juice?” I picked up the pot Arolu had used. There wasn’t much left so I made more until the pot was full, and then I made some cups, and then I stood up to try and pour the juice into them the way Arolu had done. The other boy was over by the fire, looking at me oddly; Juem just stared, gape-mouthed. I don’t know why. It was hard pouring the juice. I spilled some, then gasped and tried to find something to wipe it up with, and Juem reached for a rag on another table, and but then I just vanished it away and tried to pretend I hadn’t spilled it. Juem started laughing behind his hand, and I ducked my head. “Um. Sorry.”

  The other boy—the one who’d told Arolu about me being outside Eino’s room—came over and took the pot from my hands with a graceful little bow. “It’s all right, Lady. That’s our job, anyway. It takes practice.”

  “It’s a hard job!” They both giggled at this, but I felt better, because I didn’t think they were laughing at me. “Um, hello. I’m Shill.”

  The other boy looked amused. He was older than Juem, but looked a lot like him, and I could feel the kinship between them. Siblings! “I heard. I’m Erem. Honored to meet you, Lady.”

  “OK.” I wasn’t sure what else to say when people said stuff like that. “Do you want some too?” So we all sat down and had juice together.

  “This is good,” Juem said as we relaxed. “We should do a fermented version of this for the wedding feast.”

  “What?” Erem looked shocked.

  “What?” I asked, confused.

  Juem chuckled at Erem. “The old lady announced it yesterday; didn’t you hear? She’s picked Mikna. ’S’why Eino stormed out all afire before mid-meal. She said who she’d picked, he asked her for a private talk in her study, all prim and calm as you please—and then Heshna at the Dallaq clan house said he could hear Eino yelling. That’s two houses away.” He grinned at both of us; I blinked. “They say he didn’t even come home ’til the middle of the night!”

  Anything about Eino interested me. I knew that mid-meal was a time when humans liked to feed themselves, in the middle of the day. I had appeared in the market around midday! So I had met Eino right after he had yelled at Fahno, then gone looking for a way to sneak his scroll into the Raringa.

  Erem inhaled, sitting forward. “Only he could get away with that.”

  “Maybe. Rumor has it he was at Yukur, with a bunch of other boys breaking curfew, all of ’em cavorting like traitors of old!”

  “No!”

  I was not supposed to tell, so I bit my bottom lip. But I was so curious! Maybe I could ask about things that weren’t about the anatun? “I don’t understand,” I said, carefully. “Why was Eino upset? What is a Mikna?”

  They looked at each other, Erem suddenly squirming. “This is just servant gossip, Lady,” Erem said. “We shouldn’t have brought it up in front of you. It’s nothing of import.”

  “I’m forty days old,” I said solemnly, and they blinked. “Oh! Forty-one. It is important to me.”

  They stared, then giggled behind their hands, and I smiled, too, even though I didn’t think it was that funny. Finally Juem sighed. “Mikna’s a who, not a what,” he said. “She’s another enulai practicing in Darr, one of Fahno’s protégés.”

  “But not the only other enulai practicing in Darr,” Erem interjected. “Darr is blessed with three, though we’ve only got maybe seven godlings altogether living in the country.”

  “Two again,” said Juem. “Fahno’s retired.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Mikna,” I said, hoping they would get to the point.

  Juem chuckled at me. “Mikna is by all accounts the better enulai. Older, stronger, with a bigger stable of godlings. And she’s old Darre—from an old clan, that is, with conqueror roots and traditional ways. Always had a bit of magic, but a few years back a godling took up with a boy from the clan, and decided to make a daughter with him. Godlings aren’t much for raising demons, so she gave the child to the clan, and they’ve been enulai ever since.”

  I nodded. “Eino.”

  “I was getting there!” He grinned at my impatience. “Eino’s old enough to be married off, see. More than, but Fahno-enulai’s better than most clan matriarchs; she didn’t want him going off to be a father when he was barely more than a boy himself. But he’s just gotten prettier with the extra years, and word’s out about how strong his magic is. That usually means the demon blood is strong, too—which makes our Eino the perfect sire for the next generation of enulai, in any clan.”

  “But then there’s the other enulai clan in Darr,” said Erem, leaning forward so I would know that what he had to say was important, too. “That’s Lumyn’s people. Lumyn’s not much for the enulai art; the blood runs weak in her, probably because they’ve been breeding with foreigners for years. Amn and such.” They both grimaced; I nodded, though I had only the vaguest idea of what he was talking about. “Lumyn even trained outside Darr, down somewhere in Senm. But she’s of marrying age, too, and she came a-courting Eino as well—and Eino seems to like her better.”

  It was a little confusing, but I understood. Sort of. “If they both want babies from Eino, why doesn’t he just give them both babies?” It seemed the simplest solution.

  They both stared at me. “They want husbands, not just the children those husbands will make,” said Juem, finally, once he stopped looking appalled. “Who else is going to bathe the children and feed them and teach them the ways of two clans, and protect them if the home’s invaded? Women risk their lives enough to bear children and provide for them by tool or by blade; the least men can do is handle things after that.”

  “Oh.” I frowned, wondering if Eino was much interested in feeding babies. He would be really good at protecting them, though!

  “So,” Juem continued, reaching for more serry juice, “now there’s two clans fighting hard for our little Eino. And he doesn’t want the one his beba’s picked.”

  “It’s done,” said Erem, shaking his head. “If you said she’s picked Mikna—”

  “Now, when have you ever known Eino to give in to what somebody else wanted?”

  Yeah, that didn’t sound like Eino at all.

  But—“I don’t know if Eino wants either of them,” I said, frowning to myself. I thought maybe Eino really just wanted to dance, and maybe be an enulai himself, and do other things that men long ago used to do. Maybe men got married back then, but if so they got married, and it sounded like Fahno and these other women wanted Eino to marry .

  Erem belched. “He doesn’t have a choice. Fahno’s got no heirs, see.”

  I must have frowned in confusion, because Juem explained: “She had three sons, but they went off to marry into other families, like boys do. She had a daughter, Tehno, but Tehno didn’t get much of the blood—the demon blood, you know? Not enough to become enulai after Fahn
o. But Tehno married Arolu, and they made Eino, who did have it. It’s a throwback sort of thing like that sometimes.”

  “OK,” I said, trying to parse it all.

  “And that would be fine; Tehno wasn’t an enulai, but she’d proven herself capable of bearing children with the gift, and that would’ve been enough for her to inherit. But then Tehno went off and got herself killed a few years ago, trying to do business with the Litaria.” He sighed. “Damned criminals.”

  “What’s a Litaria?”

  “Bad people.” He scowled.

  Erem nodded. “Back in the days of the Bright, they were the only people allowed to use magic. Nowadays there’s lots of people and godlings to do magic—but the Lit’s still got the strongest mortal stuff, called scrivening. So they throw their weight around, run a lot of black market and shady magic ventures. Tehno wasn’t demon enough to become an enulai, but she was demon enough that her blood was still poison to gods—if enough of it was taken, and distilled.” His face hardened. “So they lured her to a meeting place for some deal they’d worked out, and then they killed her for her blood. It was a big scandal because enulai are supposed to keep the Lit from running amok, not make deals with them.” He sighed. “Poor Fahno. She wiped out the branch of the Lit that did it, but…” He spread his hands.

  I inhaled. “Enulai have to be demons so they can kill gods if they have to…but people try to hurt them for being demons?”

  Juem nodded. “Another reason why enulai look after godlings; they help godlings and their godlings help them, usually. But Tehno didn’t have any watching her back.” He sighed heavily. “And if Fahno can’t make or adopt another heir, then her clan will dissolve when she dies. The house and all her assets will go to the Council, and Arolu and Eino will end up on the street with nothing. Fahno’s only chance is to marry Eino off, adopt one of their daughters, and continue the clan that way.”

  It was too much mortally stuff. I was getting bored. Only one thing mattered. “Eino could be Fahno’s heir,” I said, carefully. “He’s got lots of magic, and probably the scary blood, too.”