The Kingdom of Gods

by N. K. Jemisin

  I crouched at the edge of one of the balconies, bracing one hand on the thin railing, and touched the rough daystone of the floor. Echoes still reverberated in the stone — not echoes of sound, since those had long since moved on, but echoes of event. I closed my eyes and saw again what the stone had witnessed.

  The Nowhere Stair. At the bottom of it, three children holding hands. (I marveled at how small Shahar had been then; already I had grown used to her older shape.) I watched the mortals’ faces change from smiles to alarm, felt the rising rush of wind, saw their hair and clothing begin to whip about as if they’d been caught in a tornado. They screamed as their feet rose from the floor; then they flipped entirely, twisting upside down. Only I did not budge, my feet seemingly rooted to the ground. Only their grip on each other and me held them down.

  And the look on my face! In the memory, I stood with mouth slack, eyes distant and confused, brow ever-so-slightly furrowed and head cocked, as if I heard something no one else could, and whatever I heard had obliterated my wits.

  Then my body blurred, flesh interspersing with white lines. My mouth opened and the stone beneath my fingertips gave one last microscopic shiver as a concussion of force tore loose from my throat. The Nowhere Stair shattered like glass, as did all the daystone around it and beneath it and above it. What saved the children was that the energy blasted outward in a spherical wave; they fell amid the rubble, bleeding and still, but not much of the rubble landed on them.

  And when the dust cleared, I had vanished.

  Taking my fingers off the stone, I frowned to myself. Then I said to the mortal who had hovered somewhere behind me, watching for the past ten minutes, “What do you want?”

  He came forward, preceded by the familiar mingled scent of books and chemical phials and incense; by that I knew what he was before he ever spoke. “My apologies, Lord Sieh. I did not mean to disturb you.”

  I rose, dusting off my hands, and turned to take his measure. An island man of late middle years, with salt-sprinkled red hair and a lined saturnine face that showed a hint of beard stubble. There was a fullblood mark on his brow, but he didn’t look Arameri or even Amn. And fullbloods rarely smelled of hard work. An adoptee, then.

  “You the First Scrivener?” I asked.

  He nodded, obviously torn between fascination and unease. Finally he offered me an awkward bow — not deep enough to be properly respectful but too deep for the kind of disdain a devout Itempan should have shown. I laughed, remembering Viraine’s cool, nuanced poise, and then sobered as I remembered why Viraine had been so good at things like that.

  “Forgive me,” the man said again. “But the servants passed word that you were abroad in the palace, and … I thought … well, it seems natural that you would come to the scene of the crime, so to speak.”

  “Mmm.” I slipped my hands into my pockets, trying very hard not to feel uneasy in his presence. These were not the old days. He had no power over me. “It’s late, First Scrivener, or early. Don’t you Itempans believe in a full night’s rest before your dawn prayers?”

  He blinked; then his surprise faded into amusement. “They do, but I’m not Itempan, Lord Sieh. And I wanted to meet you, which necessitated staying up late, or so my research suggested. You were known to be decidedly nocturnal during your” — his confidence faltered again —“time here.”

  I stared at him. “How can you not be Itempan?” All scriveners were Itempan priests. The Order gave anyone with a knack for magic a single choice: join or die.

  “About — hmm — fifty years ago? The Litaria petitioned the Nobles’ Consortium for independence from the Order of Itempas. The Litaria is a secular body now. Scriveners may devote themselves to whichever god, or gods, they wish.” He paused, then smiled again. “As long as we serve the Arameri, regardless.”

  I looked him up and down, opened my mouth a little to get a better taste of his scent, and was stymied. “So which god do you honor?” He certainly wasn’t one of mine.

  “I honor all the gods. But in terms of spirituality, I prefer to worship at the altars of knowledge and artistry.” He made an apologetic little gesture with his hand, as if he worried about hurting my feelings, but I had begun to grin.

  “An atheist!” I put my hands on my hips, delighted. “I haven’t seen one of you since before the War. I thought the Arameri wiped all of you out.”

  “As well as they did all the other gods’ worshippers, Lord Sieh, yes.” I laughed at this, which seemed to hearten him. “Heresy is actually rather fashionable among the commonfolk, though here in Sky I am more circumspect about it, of course. And the, ah, polite term for people like me is primortalist.”

  “Ugh, what a mouthful.”

  “Unfortunately, yes. It means ‘mortals first’ — neither an accurate nor complete representation of our philosophy, but as I said, there are worse terms. We believe in the gods, naturally.” He nodded to me. “But as the Interdiction has shown us, the gods function perfectly well whether we believe in them or not, so why devote all that energy to a pointless purpose? Why not believe most fervently in mortalkind and its potential? We, certainly, could benefit from a little dedication and discipline.”

  “I agree wholeheartedly!” And if I didn’t miss my guess, there were probably a few of my siblings involved in his mortal-worshipping movement. But I refrained from pointing this out, lest it disturb him. “What’s your name?”

  He bowed again, more easily this time. “Shevir, Lord Sieh.”

  I waved a hand. “I make the Arameri call me ‘lord.’ It’s just Sieh.”

  He looked uneasy. “Er, well —”

  “Arameri is a state of mind. I’ve known some adoptees who fit right into this family. You, sir, are a die among the jacks.” I smiled to let him know that had been meant as a compliment, and he relaxed. “Remath told you all about me, then?”

  “The Lady Arameri informed me of your … condition, yes. I and my staff, including those in the city below, are already hard at work trying to determine what might have caused the change. We’ll inform Lady Remath at once if we find anything.”

  “Thank you.” I refrained from pointing out that telling Remath wouldn’t do me any good unless Remath chose to pass the information along. He probably knew that and was just letting me know where his loyalties lay. Mortals first. “Were you here in Sky, eight years ago?”

  “Yes.” He came to stand beside me, staring avidly at my profile, my posture, everything. Studying me. Knowing his beliefs, I did not mind for once. “I was head of the healing squadron then; it was I and my colleagues who treated Lord Dekarta and Lady Shahar after their injury. I was promoted to First Scrivener for saving their lives.” He hesitated. “The previous First Scrivener was removed from office for failing to realize that a god had visited Sky.”

  I rolled my eyes. “There is no scrivening magic that can detect a god’s presence if we don’t want to be detected.” I had never wanted to be detected.

  “The lady was informed of this.” He was smiling thinly, not bitter at least. I supposed there was no point in laying blame.

  “If you were here back then, you — or your predecessor — would have conducted an investigation.”

  “Yes.” He straightened as if giving a report. “The incident occurred in early afternoon. There was a tremor throughout the palace, and all of the boundary scripts sounded an alarm, indicating unauthorized active magic within the palace’s walls. Guards and service staff arrived to find this.” He gestured at the atrium. The debris had been removed, but that changed nothing; it was painfully clear to anyone who had seen it before that the atrium was really just an enormous sunken pit. “No one knew what had happened until three days later, when first Dekarta, then Shahar awakened.”

  More than enough time for rumors to gain traction and ruin Deka’s life. Poor boy, and his sister, too.

  “What sort of magic was it?” I asked. Scriveners loved to classify and categorize magic, which somehow helped them grasp it with their unmagi
cal mortal minds. There might be something in their convoluted logic that would help me understand.

  “Unknown, Lord —” He caught himself. “Unknown.”

  “Unknown?”

  “Nothing like it has been observed in the mortal realm, at least not within recorded history. The Litaria’s best scholars have confirmed this. We even consulted several of the friendlier godlings of the city; they weren’t able to explain it, either. If you don’t know —” He shut his mouth with an audible snap, in palpable frustration. He had plainly hoped I would have more answers.

  I understood entirely. Sighing, I straightened. “I didn’t intend to hurt them. Nothing that happened makes any sense.”

  “The children’s hands were bloody,” Shevir said, his tone neutral. “Both hands, cut in the same way, inflicted on each other to judge by the angles and depth. Some of my colleagues believed they may have attempted some sort of ritual. …”

  I scowled. “The only ritual involved was one that children the world over have enacted to seal promises.” I lifted my hand, gazing at my own smooth, unscarred palms. “If that could cause what happened, there would be a great many dead children lying about.”

  He spread his hands in that apologetic gesture again. “You must understand, we were desperate to come up with some explanation.”

  I considered this and hoisted myself up onto the railing, reveling in the ability to kick my feet at last. This seemed to make Shevir very uncomfortable, probably because the drop into the atrium was far enough to kill a mortal. Then I remembered that I was becoming mortal, and with a heavy sigh, I dropped back to the floor.

  “So you decided one of the children — Deka — had summoned me, annoyed me, and I blew them to the hells in retaliation.”

  “I didn’t believe that.” Shevir grew sober. “But certain parties would not be put off, and ultimately Dekarta was sent to the Litaria. To learn better control of his innate talents, his mother announced.”

  “Exile,” I said softly. “A punishment for getting Shahar hurt.”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s he like now? Deka.”

  Shevir shook his head. “No one here has seen him since he left, Lord Sieh. He doesn’t come home at holidays or vacation breaks. I’m told he’s doing well at the Litaria; ironically, he turned out to have a genuine talent for the art. But … well … rumor has it that he and Lady Shahar hate each other now.” I frowned, and Shevir shrugged. “I can’t say I blame him, really. Children don’t see things the way we do.”

  I glanced at Shevir; he was lost in thought and hadn’t noticed the irony of talking about childhood to me. He was right, though. The gentle Deka I’d known would not have understood that he was being sent away for reasons that had very little to do with Shahar being injured. He would have drawn his own conclusions about why the friendship oath had gone wrong and why he’d been separated from his beloved sister. Self-blame would have been only the beginning.

  But why had Remath even bothered exiling him? In the old days, the family had been quick to kill any member who’d transgressed in some way or another. They should have been even quicker with Deka, who broke the Arameri mold in so many ways.

  Sighing heavily, I straightened and turned away from the atrium railing. “Nothing in Sky has ever made sense. I don’t know why I keep coming here, really. You’d think being trapped in this hell for centuries would’ve been enough for me.”

  Shevir shrugged. “I can’t speak for gods, but any mortal who spends enough time in a place grows … acclimated. One’s sense of what is normal shifts, even if that place is filled with unpleasantness, until separation feels wrong.”

  I frowned at this. Shevir caught my look and smiled. “Married seventeen years. Happily, I might add.”

  “Oh.” This reminded me, perversely, of the previous night’s conversation with Shahar. “Tell me more about her,” I said.

  I hadn’t specified the “her,” but of course Shevir was as good at parsing language as any scrivener. “Lady Shahar is very bright, very mature for her age, and very dedicated to her duties. I’ve heard most of the other fullbloods express confidence in her ability to rule after her mother —”

  “No, no,” I said, scowling. “None of that. I want to know …” Suddenly I was uncertain. Why was I asking him about this? But I had to know. “About her. Who are her friends? How did she handle Deka’s exile? What do you think of her?”

  At this flood of questions, Shevir raised his eyebrows. Suddenly I realized two horrifying things: first, that I was developing a dangerous attraction to Shahar, and second, that I had just revealed it.

  “Ah … well … she’s very private,” Shevir began awkwardly.

  It was too late, but I waved a hand and tried to repair the damage I’d done. “Never mind,” I said, grimacing. “These are mortal affairs, irrelevant. All I should concentrate on now is finding the cure for whatever’s happened to me.”

  “Yes.” Shevir seemed relieved to change the subject. “Er, to that end … the reason I sought you out was to ask if you might be willing to provide some samples for us. My fellow scriveners — that is, of the palace contingent — thought we might share this information with the previts in Shadow and the Litaria.”

  I frowned at this, unpleasantly recalling other First Scriveners and other examinations and other samples over the centuries. “To try and figure out what’s changed in me?”

  “Yes. We have information on your, ah, prior tenure. …” He shook his head and finally stopped trying to be tactful. “When you were a slave here, immortal but trapped in mortal flesh. Your present state appears to be very different. I’d like to compare the two.”

  I scowled. “Why? To tell me that I’m going to die? I know that already.”

  “Determining how you’re turning mortal may give us some insight into what caused it,” he said, speaking briskly now that he was in his element. “And perhaps how to reverse it. I would never presume that mortal arts can surpass godly power, but every bit of knowledge we can gather might be useful.”

  I sighed. “Very well. You’ll want my blood, I presume?” Mortals were forever after our blood.

  “And anything else you would be willing to give. Hair, nail parings, a bit of flesh, saliva. I’ll want to record your current measurements, too — height and weight and so forth.”

  I could not help growing curious at this. “How could that possibly matter?”

  “Well, for one thing, you appear to be no more than sixteen years old to my eye. The same age as Lady Shahar and Lord Dekarta, now — but initially, I understand, you looked significantly older than both of them. Approximately ten years to their eight. If you had merely aged eight years in the intervening time —”

  I caught my breath, understanding at last. I had grown up before, hundreds of times; I knew the pattern that my body normally followed. I should have been heavier, taller, more finished, with a deeper voice. Eighteen years old, not sixteen. “Shahar and Dekarta,” I breathed. “My aging has slowed to match theirs.”

  Shevir nodded, looking pleased at my reaction. “You do seem rather thin, so perhaps you lacked nourishment while you were … away … and this stunted your growth. More likely, however —”

  I nodded absently, quickly, because he was right. How had such a crucial detail escaped me?

  Because it is the sort of thing only a mortal would notice.

  I had suspected that my condition was somehow linked to the friendship oath I’d taken with Shahar and Dekarta. Now I knew: their mortality had infected me, like a disease. But what kind of disease slowed its progress to match that of other victims? There was something purposeful about that sort of change. Something intentional.

  But whose intent, and for what purpose?

  “Let’s go to your laboratory, Scrivener Shevir,” I said, speaking softly as my mind raced with inferences and implications. “I believe I can give you those samples right now.”

  I was getting hungry by the time I left Shevir’s lab
oratory, just after dawn. It wasn’t bad yet — not the sort of raw, precarious ache I’d known a few times during my slave years, whenever my masters had starved me — but it made me irritable, because it was more proof of my oncoming mortality. Would I starve to death if I ignored it now? Could I still sustain myself with games and disobedience, as I normally did? I was tempted to find out. Then again, I considered as I rubbed my upper arm, where a bandage and healing script concealed the divot of flesh Shevir had taken from me, there was no point in making myself suffer unnecessarily. As a mortal, there would be pain enough in my life, whether I sought it out or not.

  Noise and commotion distracted me from grimness. I stepped quickly to the side of a corridor as six guardsmen ran by, hands on their weapons. One of them carried a messaging sphere, and through this I heard the speaker — their captain, I assumed — issuing rapid commands in a low tone. Something about “clear the north-seven corridors” and “forecourt,” and most clearly, “Tell Morad’s people to bring something for the smell.”

  I could no more resist such temptation than I could Shahar’s summons — maybe less so. So I hummed a little ditty and slid my hands into my pockets and skipped as I headed down a different corridor. When the guards were out of sight, I opened a wall and tore off running.

  I was almost thwarted by the Tree, which had grown through one of the most useful junctures in the dead spaces, and by my stupid, infuriatingly lanky body, which could no longer squeeze through the tighter passages. I knew plenty of alternate routes but still arrived at the courtyard late and out of breath. (That annoyed me, too. I was going to have to make my mortal body stronger, or it would be completely useless at this rate.)

  It was worth it, however, for what I saw.

  Sky’s forecourt had been designed by my late sister, Kurue, who had understood two key elements of the mortal psyche: they hate being reminded of their own insignificance, yet they simultaneously and instinctively expect their leaders to be overwhelmingly dominant. This was why visitors were confronted with magnificence at four cardinal points as they arrived on the Vertical Gate. To the north was Sky’s vaulted, cavernous entryway, taller than many buildings in the city below. To the east and west lay the twin lobes of the Garden of the Hundred Thousand, a mosaic of ordered flower beds each crowned by an exotic tree. Beyond these one could see a branch of the World Tree, wild and miles vast, spreading a million leaves against the blue sky. Kurue had never planned for the Tree, but it was a testament to her skill that it looked like she had. For those who dared to look south, there was nothing. Only the lonely Pier and an otherwise unimpeded view of the landscape and very, very distant horizon.