The Kingdom of Gods

by N. K. Jemisin

  A week after I woke, when I was feeling strong enough, I left Echo. Some godling — don’t know which — had stretched a tongue of daystone from the palace’s entrance to the lakeshore, wide enough for carriages and pack animals. Nowhere near as elegant as Sky’s Vertical Gate, but it worked. Deka, who needed a break from the frenetic work of the past few weeks, decided to come with me. I considered trying to persuade him otherwise, but when I turned to him and opened my mouth, he gave me such a challenging look that I closed it again.

  It took us an hour to walk over the bridge, and we spoke little on the way. In the distance we could see the humped, distorted shape of the fallen Tree through the morning haze. Neither of us looked in that direction often. Closer by, a fledgling city had already begun to develop around Echo and its lake. Not all the survivors wanted to live in Echo, so they had built tents and makeshift huts on the shore in order to stay close to family or new-made friends in the palace. A kind of market had developed amid this camp as a result, not far from the bridge’s terminus. Deka and I rented two horses from a caravanner who’d set up a stall — two fine mounts for the young man and his grandfather, the proprietor said, trying to be friendly — and began our journey, which would supposedly take only a day. We had no escorts or guards. We were not that important. Just as well; I wanted privacy to think.

  The road we’d chosen to take, once the main thoroughfare between the city and its surrounding provinces, was badly damaged. We rode across humped pavement and patches of rubble that forced us to dismount frequently and check the horses’ hooves for stones. In one place the road simply split, falling away into a chasm that was unpleasantly deep. I was fine with going around it; there was nothing but ruined farmland in the vicinity, so it wasn’t as though the detour would take long. Deka, however, in a rare show of temper, spoke to the rocks and got them to form a narrow, solid bridge across the gap. We crossed before I muttered something to Deka along the lines that he should really be less quick to use magic to solve problems. He only looked at me, and I hunched. It had just seemed like the sort of thing an older man should say to a younger one.

  We moved on. By afternoon, we reached the outskirts of the city. It was harder going here, and the damage slowed us down. Every street that had once been cobbled was rubble; the sidewalks were death traps, where we could even find streets. I caught a glimpse of the utter ruin that was South Root and despaired. There was a chance, a slim one, that Hymn and her family had gotten out before Skyfall. I would pray for Yeine to watch over them, alive or dead.

  We did not want the city itself in any case, so it was easier to skirt around the worst parts, using the outlying districts to make our way. These had been the homes and estates of the middling wealthy — too poor to build onto the World Tree’s trunk but rich enough to buy the better sunlight that could be had farther from the roots. This made things easier, because they had wide lawns and dirt paths that the horses could manage. There was plenty of sunlight now.

  Eventually we reached the trunk itself, a long, low mountain laid along the earth, as far as the eye could see. We surprised our first survivors here, since the rest of the area had been thoroughly abandoned: scavengers, picking through the ruins of the mansions that had once been attached to the Tree. They glared at us and pointedly fingered hatchet handles and machetes. We courteously gave them a wide berth. Everyone was happy.

  Then we reached Sky. Where, to my surprise, we were not alone.

  We smelled Ahad’s reeking cheroot before we saw him, though the scent was different this time. My nose was not what it had been, so it was only when I got close that I understood he’d put cloves in the thing to make the smell less offensive. I realized why when I noticed that the smoke was mingled with Glee Shoth’s hiras-flower perfume.

  They likely heard the horses before we came into sight but did not bother to alter their position, so we found Ahad draped atop one of the nearer, smaller piles of rubble as though it was a throne. Behind him was Glee. He leaned back against her, his head pillowed on her breasts. She had propped one elbow on a smooth piece of daystone, her free hand idly combing his loose hair. His expression was as cold as usual, but I didn’t buy it this time. There was too much vulnerability in his posture, too much trust in the way he’d let Glee hold his weight. I saw too much wariness in his eyes. He could not hide some things from me, which was probably why he hadn’t bothered to try. But he would kill me, I suspect, if I dared to comment on it. So I didn’t.

  “If you’ve come to dance on this grave, you’re too late,” he said as we dismounted and came to look up at them. “I already did it.”

  “Good,” I said, nodding to Glee, who nodded silently back. (She, unlike Ahad, did not bother to hide the pride she felt in him. And there was a decided smug possessiveness in the way she stroked his hair that reminded me fleetingly of Itempas, back when he’d held Nahadoth’s affections.) I stretched and grimaced as my knees twinged after the long ride. “I’m not really up to dancing anymore.”

  “Yes, you do look like shit, don’t you?” He exhaled a long, curling stream of smoke, and I saw him consider whether to hurt me further. There were so many ways he could have done it with a casual comment. So it turns out you’re an even worse father than I thought, or perhaps Glad to know I wasn’t your first mistake. I braced myself as best I could, though there was really nothing I could do. According to Deka, I was still aging faster than I should have been, perhaps ten days for every one. Merely knowing that I was a father was a relentless poison that would kill me in a year, two at the most. Not that any of us had so long to wait.

  Ahad said nothing, to my relief. Either he was feeling magnanimous, or Glee had begun to mellow him. Or perhaps he simply saw no point under the circumstances.

  “Hello,” said Deka. He was staring at Ahad, and belatedly I remembered that I’d never gotten around to telling him about his origins. My long-lost son’s attempt to destroy the universe had been a bit distracting.

  Ahad sat up, eyeing the boy. After a moment, a slow smile spread across his face. “Well, well, well. You would be Dekarta Arameri.”

  “I am.” Deka said this stiffly, trying and failing to conceal his fascination. They did not look wholly alike, but the resemblance was close enough to defy coincidence. “And you are?”

  Ahad spread his arms. “Call me ‘Grandpa.’”

  Deka stiffened. Glee threw an exasperated look at the back of Ahad’s head. I sighed and rubbed my eyes. “Deka … I’ll explain later.”

  “Yes,” he said. “You will.” But he folded his arms and looked away from Ahad, and Ahad uttered a sigh of disappointment. I wasn’t sure whether he really minded Deka’s disinterest or was just using another opportunity to needle the boy.

  We fell silent then, as was proper at graveside.

  I gazed at the great piles of tumbled daystone and slipped my hands into my pockets, wondering at the feelings within me. I had loathed Sky for all the years of my incarceration. Within its white walls I had been starved, raped, flayed, and worse. I had been a god reduced to a possession, and the humiliation of those days had not left me despite a hundred years of freedom.

  And yet … I remembered my orrery, and En pulsed in gentle sympathy against my chest. I remembered running through Sky’s wild, curving dead spaces, making them my own. I had found Yeine here; without thinking, I began to hum the lullaby I had once sung her. It had not been all suffering and horror. Life is never only one thing.

  Ahad sighed above me. Sky had been his home once. Deka touched my hand; same for him. None of us mourned alone, for however long that mourning might last.

  Above us, halfway between the sun and the faint, early risen moon, we could all see the peculiar smudge that had grown steadily larger since the day of Kahl’s victory. It was not a thing that could be described easily, in either Senmite or the gods’ language. A streaking transparency. A space of wavering nothingness, leaving nothingness in its wake. We could feel it, too, like an itch on the skin. Hear it, like
words sung just out of hearing — but it would not be long now before we all heard it, more clearly than any sane being would want. Its roar would eclipse the world.

  The Maelstrom. Kahl had summoned It, and It was coming.

  After a time, during which the sun set and the early stars began to show, Ahad sighed and got to his feet, turning to help Glee to hers. They flickered to the ground, which made Deka start, then inhale as his suspicions were confirmed. Ahad winked at him, then sobered as he turned to me.

  “The others think they can ride out whatever happens in the gods’ realm,” he said softly. “I have my doubts, but I can’t blame them for trying.” He hesitated, then glanced at Glee. “I’m staying here.”

  It was an admission I would never have expected from him. Glee was mortal; she could not survive in our realm. When I glanced at Glee, to see if she understood how profound a change she had worked on him, she nodded minutely, lifting her chin in a blatantly protective challenge. Ahad was not the only one of us who could cause pain with a comment.

  I had no interest in hurting Ahad, however. I’d done enough to him.

  “Perhaps a more productive line of conversation is saving this realm, rather than fleeing it,” said Deka, and by the edge in his voice, I knew I would get an earful when we were alone. But Ahad shook his head, growing uncharacteristically serious.

  “There’s no saving it,” he said. “Not even the Three can command the Maelstrom. At best, they can stand aside while It punches through the realms, and rebuild from whatever’s left. Not that that does us much good.” He shrugged and sighed, looking up at the sky. The smudge was just as visible at night, a waver against the carpet of stars. Beyond it, however, the stars were gone. There was nothing but black void.

  “My father believes it is worthwhile to try and save this realm,” said Glee. Deka stared at her, probably guessing more secrets. I really should have told him everything beforehand. More stupidity on my part.

  “Yeine and Nahadoth, too, if I know them at all.” I sighed. “But if they could have stopped it, they would have done so by now.”

  I did not add that I had prayed to both, more than once, in the preceding nights. They had responded with silence. I tried not to worry about what that meant.

  “Well, we’d better get going. Just came to wish the old hell good-bye.” Ahad’s cheroot had finally burned down. He dropped the butt to the ground and stubbed it out with his toe, throwing one final glance at Sky’s tumbled bulk behind us. The daystone still glowed at night, ghostly soft radiance to contrast the torn emptiness in the sky above. A fitting marker for mortalkind’s grave, I decided. Hopefully Yeine and Naha would find some way to preserve it when the world was gone.

  And Itempas, my mind added to Yeine’s and Naha’s names, though of course that was less certain. Perhaps they would let him die with the rest of us. If they were going to, this would be the time.

  “We will see you again,” Glee said. I nodded, noticing at last that they were holding hands.

  Then they vanished, leaving me alone with Deka. “Explain,” he snapped.

  I sighed and looked around. It was well and truly night. I hadn’t figured on the journey taking as long as it had. We had no supplies with which to make camp. It would be horse blankets on the ground instead. My old bones were going to love that.

  “Let’s get comfortable first,” I said. His jaw flexed as though he would have preferred to argue, but instead he turned to the horses, bringing them closer to the daystone pile so that they could have some shelter from the wind.

  We set up on what had been the foundation of a house, blown clean away by the force of the Tree’s fall. A few small pieces of daystone had landed here, so we gathered them into a pile for light, and Deka murmured a command that made them generate heat as well. I laid out our blankets separately, whereupon Deka promptly moved his over next to mine and pulled me into his arms.

  “Deka,” I began. We had shared his bed since my last mortaling, but both of us had been too tired for anything but sleep. Convenient for putting off necessary conversations, but they could not be put off forever. So I took a deep breath and prayed briefly to one of my brothers for strength. “You don’t have to pretend. I know how it is for young men, and —”

  “I think,” he said, “you’ve been stupid enough lately, Sieh. Don’t make things worse.”

  At this I tried to sit up. I couldn’t because he wouldn’t let me and because my back complained fiercely when I tried. Too much time on horseback. “What?”

  “You are still the child,” he said quietly, and I stopped struggling. “And the cat, and the man, and the monster who smothers children in the dark. So you’re an old man, too; fine. I told you, Sieh, I’m not going anywhere. Now lie down. I want to try something.”

  More out of shock than any real obedience, I did as he bade me.

  He slid a hand under my shirt, which made me blush and splutter. “Deka, gods —”

  “Be still.” His hand stopped, resting on my chest. It was not a caress, though my stupid old body decided that it was and further decided that perhaps it was not so old after all. I was grateful; at my age there were no guarantees that certain bodily processes still worked.

  Deka’s expression was still, intent. I had seen the same concentration from him when he spoke magic or drew sigils. This time, however, he began to whisper, and his hand moved in time with his words. Puzzled, I listened to what he was saying, but they were not words. It was not our language, or any language. I had no idea what he was doing.

  I felt it, though, when words began tickling their way along my skin. When I jumped and tried to sit up, Deka pressed me down, closing his eyes so that my twitching would not distract him. And I did twitch, because it was the most peculiar sensation. Like ants crawling over my flesh, if those ants had been flat and made of sibilance. That was when I noticed the soft black glow of Deka’s marks — which were more than tattoos, I realized at last. They always had been.

  But something was not right. The marks he whispered into my flesh did not linger. I felt them wend around my limbs and down my belly, but as soon as they settled into place, they began to fade. I saw Deka’s brow furrow, and after a few moments of this he stopped, his hand on my chest tightening into a fist.

  “I take it that didn’t go as expected,” I said quietly.

  “No.”

  “What did you expect?”

  He shook his head slowly. “The markings should have tapped your innate magic. You’re still a god; if you weren’t, your antithesis wouldn’t affect you. I should be able to remind your flesh that its natural state is young, malleable, embodied only by your will. …” His jaw tightened, and he looked away. “I don’t understand why it failed.”

  I sighed. There had been no real hope in me, probably because he hadn’t told me what he was doing ahead of time. I was glad for that. “I thought you wanted me mortal.”

  He shook his head again, his lips thinning. “Not if it means you dying, Sieh. I never wanted that.”

  “Ah.” I put my hand over his fist. “Thank you for trying, then. But there’s no point, Deka, even if you could fix me. Godlings are fragile compared to the Three. When the Maelstrom breaks this universe, most likely we —”

  “Shut up,” he whispered, and I did, blinking. “Just shut up, Sieh.” He was trembling and there were tears in his eyes. For the first time since his childhood, he looked lost and lonely and more than a little afraid.

  I was still a god, as he had said. It was my nature to comfort lost children. So I pulled him to me, intending to hold him while he wept.

  He pushed my hands aside and kissed me. Then, as though the kiss had not been sufficient reminder that he was no child, he sat up and began tugging my clothes off.

  I could have laughed, or said no, or pretended disinterest. But it was the end of the world, and he was mine. I did what felt good.

  We would all die in three days, but there was so much that could be done in that time. I was not a t
rue mortal; I knew better than to take Enefa’s gift for granted. I would savor every moment of my life that remained, suck its marrow, crunch its bones. And when the end came … well, I would not be alone. That was a precious and holy thing.

  In the morning, we returned to Echo. Deka went to look in on his scriveners and ask again whether they had found some miracle that could save us all. I went in search of Shahar.

  I found her in the Temple, which had finally been dedicated as such. Someone had put an altar in it, right on the spot where Deka and I had first made love. I tried not to think lewd thoughts about human sacrifice as I stopped before it, because I refused to be a dirty old man.

  Shahar stood beyond the altar, beneath the colored swirl that now cast faintly blue light on us, like that of the cloudless sky outside. Her back was to me, though I was certain she’d heard me approach. I’d had to speak to four guards just to get into the room. She did not move until I spoke, however, and then she started, coming out of whatever reverie she’d lapsed into.

  “Friends lie,” I said. I spoke softly, but my voice echoed in the high-ceilinged chamber. It was deeper now, with a hoarse edge that would only get worse as I grew older. “Lovers, too. But trust can be rebuilt. You are my friend, Shahar. I shouldn’t have forgotten that.” She said nothing. I sighed and shrugged. “I’m a bastard, what do you expect?”

  More silence. I saw the tightness of her shoulders. She folded her arms across her chest. I had seen enough women cry that I recognized the warning signs and decided to leave. But just as I reached the doorway, I heard, “Friends.”

  I stopped and looked back. She held up her right hand — the one that had held mine, years ago when we’d taken our oath. I rubbed a thumb across my own tingling palm and smiled.

  “Friends,” I said, raising my own. Then I left, because there was something in my eyes. Dust, probably. I would have to be more careful in the future. Old men had to take good care of their eyes.