The Inheritance Trilogy

by N. K. Jemisin

  I stiffened. “What?”

  “When Dekarta wants magic done, he uses us. None of us sent the plague to your land.”

  “But if you didn’t—”

  No. Oh, no.

  There was another source of magic in Sky besides the Enefadeh. Another who could wield the gods’ power, albeit weakly. The Death had killed only a dozen people in Darr that year; a minor outbreak by all the usual standards. The best a mortal murderer could do.

  “Viraine,” I whispered. My hands clenched into fists. “Viraine.”

  He had played the martyr so well—the innocent used and abused by my scheming mother. Meanwhile he had tried to murder my father, knowing she would blame Dekarta and not him. He had waited in the corridors like a vulture while she came to plead with Dekarta for her husband’s life. Perhaps he had revealed himself to her afterward and commiserated with her over Dekarta’s refusal. To lay the groundwork for wooing her back? Yes, that felt like him.

  And yet my father had not died. My mother had not returned to Sky. Had Viraine pined for her all these years, hating my father—hating me for thwarting his plans? Had Viraine been the one to raid my mother’s chest of letters? Perhaps he had burned any that referred to him, hoping to forget his youthful folly. Perhaps he’d kept them, fantasizing that the letters contained some vestige of the love he’d never earned.

  I would hunt him down. I would see his white hair fall around his face in a red curtain.

  There was a faint, skittering sound nearby, like pebbles on the hard Skystuff floor. Or claw tips—

  “Such rage,” the Nightlord breathed, his voice all deep crevasses and ice. And he was close, all of a sudden, so close. Right behind me. “Oh, yes. Command me, sweet Yeine. I am your weapon. Give the word, and I will make the pain he inflicted on me tonight seem kind.”

  My anger was gone, frozen away. Slowly I took a deep breath, then another, calming myself. No hatred. No fear of whatever the Nightlord had become thanks to my carelessness. I fixed my mind on the dark and the silence, and did not answer. I did not dare.

  After a very long while I heard a faint, disappointed sigh. Farther away this time; he had returned to the other side of the room. Slowly I allowed my muscles to unclench.

  Dangerous to continue this line of questioning right now. So many secrets to discover, so many pit-traps of emotion. I pushed aside thoughts of Viraine, with an effort.

  “My mother wanted to save my father,” I said. Yes. That was a good thing to understand. She must have grown to love him, however strangely the relationship had begun. I knew he’d loved her. I remembered seeing it in his eyes.

  “Yes,” said Nahadoth. His voice was as calm as before my lapse. “Her desperation made her vulnerable. Of course we took advantage.”

  I almost grew angry, but caught myself in time.

  “Of course. So you persuaded her then to allow Enefa’s soul into her child. And…” I took a deep breath. Paused, marshaling my strength. “My father knew?”

  “I don’t know.”

  If the Enefadeh did not know what my father thought of the matter, then no one here would know. I dared not go back to Darr to ask Beba.

  So I chose to believe that Father knew and loved me anyway. That Mother, beyond her initial misgivings, had chosen to love me. That she had kept the ugly secrets of her family from me out of some misguided hope that I would have a simple, peaceful destiny in Darr… at least until the gods came back to claim what was theirs.

  I needed to stay calm, but I could not hold it all in. I closed my eyes and began to laugh. So many hopes had been rested on me.

  “Am I allowed none of my own?” I whispered.

  “What would you want?” Nahadoth asked.

  “What?”

  “If you could be free.” There was something in his voice that I did not understand. Wistfulness? Yes, and something more. Kindness? Fondness? No, that was impossible. “What would you want for yourself?”

  The question made my heart ache. I hated him for asking it. It was his fault that my wishes would never come true—his fault, and my parents’, and Dekarta’s, and even Enefa’s.

  “I’m tired of being what everyone else has made me,” I said. “I want to be myself.”

  “Don’t be a child.”

  I looked up, startled and angry, though of course there was nothing to see. “What?”

  “You are what your creators and experiences have made you, like every other being in this universe. Accept that and be done; I tire of your whining.”

  If he had said it in his usual cold voice, I would have walked out in affront. But he truly did sound tired, and I remembered the price he had paid for my selfishness.

  The air stirred nearby again, soft, almost a touch. When he spoke, he was closer. “The future, however, is yours to make—even now. Tell me what you want.”

  It was something I had never truly thought about, beyond vengeance. I wanted… all the usual things that any young woman wanted. Friends. Family. Happiness for those I loved.

  And also…

  I shivered, though the chamber was not cold. The very strangeness of this new thought made me suspicious. Was this some sign of Enefa’s influence?

  Accept that and be done.

  “I…” I closed my mouth. Swallowed. Tried again. “I want… something different for the world.” Ah, but the world would indeed be different after Nahadoth and Itempas were done with it. A pile of rubble, with humanity a red ruin underneath. “Something better.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.” I clenched my fists, struggling to articulate what I felt, surprised by my own frustration. “Right now, everyone is… afraid.” Closer, yes. I kept at it. “We live at the gods’ mercy and shape our lives around your whims. Even when your quarrels don’t involve us, we die. What would we be like if… if you just… went away?”

  “More would die,” said the Nightlord. “Those who worship us would be frightened by our absence. Some would decide it was the fault of others, while those who embrace the new order would resent any who keep the old ways. The wars would last centuries.”

  I felt the truth of his words in the pit of my belly, and it left me queasy with horror. But then something touched me—hands, cool and light. He rubbed my shoulders, as if to soothe me.

  “But eventually, the battles would end,” he said. “When a fire burns out, new things grow in its wake.”

  I felt no lust or rage from him—probably because, for the moment, he felt none from me. He was not like Itempas, unable to accept change, bending or breaking everything around him to his will. Nahadoth bent himself to the will of others. For a moment the thought made me sad.

  “Are you ever yourself?” I asked. “Truly yourself, not just the way others see you?”

  The hands went still, then withdrew. “Enefa asked me that once.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “No.” There was sorrow in his voice. It never faded, for him. How terrible to be a god of change and endure grief unending.

  “When I am free,” he said, “I will choose who shapes me.”

  “But…” I frowned. “That isn’t freedom.”

  “At the dawn of reality I was myself. There was nothing and no one else to influence me—only the Maelstrom that had given birth to me, and it did not care. I tore open my flesh and spilled out the substance of what became your realm: matter and energy and my own cold, black blood. I devoured my mind and reveled in the novelty of pain.”

  Tears sprang to my eyes. I swallowed hard and tried to will them away, but abruptly the hands returned, lifting my chin. Fingers stroked my eyes shut, brushing the tears away.

  “When I am free I will choose,” he said again, whispering, very close. “You must do the same.”

  “But I will never be—”

  He kissed me silent. There was longing in that kiss, tangy and bittersweet. Was that my own longing, or his? Then I understood, finally: it didn’t matter.

  But oh gods, oh goddess, it
was so good. He tasted like cool dew. He made me thirsty. Just before I began to want more, he pulled back. I fought not to feel disappointment, for fear of what it would do to us both.

  “Go and rest, Yeine,” he said. “Leave your mother’s schemes to play themselves out. You have your own trials to face.”

  And then I was in my apartment, sitting on the floor in a square of moonlight. The walls were dark, but I could see easily because the moon, bright though just a sliver, was low in the sky. Well past midnight, probably only an hour or two before dawn. This was becoming a habit for me.

  Sieh sat in the big chair near my bed. Seeing me, he uncurled from it and moved onto the floor beside me. In the moonlight his pupils were huge and round, like those of an anxious cat.

  I said nothing, and after a moment he reached up and pulled me down so that my head rested in his lap. I closed my eyes, drawing comfort from the feel of his hand on my hair. After a time, he began to sing me a lullaby that I had heard in a dream. Relaxed and warm, I slept.

  23

  Selfishness

  TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT, the Nightlord had said.

  Something better for the world, I had replied.

  But also…

  In the morning I went to the Salon early, before the Consortium session began, hoping to find Ras Onchi. Before I could, I saw Wohi Ubm, the other High North noblewoman, arriving on the Salon’s wide, colonnaded steps.

  “Oh,” she said after an awkward introduction and my inquiry. I knew then, the instant I saw the pitying look in her eyes. “You haven’t heard. Ras died in her sleep just these two nights past.” She sighed. “I still can’t believe it. But, well; she was old.”

  I went back to Sky.

  I walked through the corridors awhile, thinking about death.

  Servants nodded as they passed me and I nodded back. Courtiers—my fellow highbloods—either ignored me or stared in open curiosity. Word must have spread that I was finished as an heir candidate, publicly defeated by Scimina. Not all of the stares were kind. I inclined my head to them anyhow. Their pettiness was not mine.

  On one of the lower levels I surprised T’vril on a shadowed balcony, dangling a clipboard from one finger and watching a passing cloud. When I touched him, he started guiltily (fortunately catching the clipboard), which I took to mean he had been thinking about me.

  “The ball will begin at dusk tomorrow night,” he said. I had moved to stand at the railing beside him, absorbing the view and the comfort of his presence in silence. “It will continue until dawn the next morning. That’s tradition, before a succession ceremony. Tomorrow is a new moon—a night that was once sacred to the followers of Nahadoth. So they celebrate through it.”

  Petty of them, I thought. Or petty of Itempas.

  “Immediately after the ball, the Stone of Earth will be sent through the palace’s central shaft to the ritual chamber, in the solarium spire.”

  “Ah. I heard you warning the servants about this last week.”

  T’vril turned the clipboard in his fingers gently, not looking at me. “Yes. A fleeting exposure supposedly does no harm, but…” He shrugged. “It’s a thing of the gods. Best to stay away.”

  I could not help it; I laughed. “Yes, I agree!”

  T’vril looked at me oddly, a small uncertain smile on his lips. “You seem… comfortable.”

  I shrugged. “It isn’t my nature to spend all my time fretting. What’s done is done.” Nahadoth’s words.

  T’vril shifted uncomfortably, flicking a few stray windblown hairs out of his face. “I’m… told that an army gathers along the pass that leads from Menchey into Darr.”

  I steepled my fingers and gazed at them, stilling the voice that cried out within myself. Scimina had played her game well. If I did not choose her, I had no doubt she had left instructions for Gemd to begin the slaughter. Gemd might do it anyhow once I set the Enefadeh free, but I was counting on the world being preoccupied with survival amid the outbreak of another Gods’ War. Sieh had promised that Darr would be kept safe through the cataclysm. I wasn’t sure I entirely trusted that promise, but it was better than nothing.

  For what felt like the hundredth time, I considered and discarded the idea of approaching Relad. Scimina’s people were on the ground; her knife was at Darr’s throat. If I chose Relad at the ceremony, could he act before that knife cut a fatal wound? I could not bet my people’s future on a man I didn’t even respect.

  Only the gods could help me now.

  “Relad has confined himself in his quarters,” T’vril said, obviously thinking along the same lines as me. “He receives no calls, lets no one in, not even the servants. The Father knows what he’s eating—or drinking. There are bets among the highbloods that he’ll kill himself before the ball.”

  “I suppose there’s little else interesting here to bet on.”

  T’vril glanced at me, perhaps deciding whether to say more. “There are also bets that you will kill yourself.”

  I laughed into the breeze. “What are the odds? Do you think they’d let me bet, too?”

  T’vril turned to face me, his eyes suddenly intent. “Yeine—if, if you—” He faltered silent and looked away; his voice had choked on the last word.

  I took his hand and held it while he bowed his head and trembled and fought to keep control of himself. He led and protected the servants here; tears would have made him feel weak. Men have always been fragile that way.

  After a few moments he took a deep breath. His voice was higher than usual as he said, “Shall I escort you to the ball tomorrow night?”

  When Viraine had offered the same thing, I had hated him. With T’vril, the offer made me love him a little more. “No, T’vril. I want no escort.”

  “It could help. To have a friend there.”

  “It could. But I will not ask such a thing of my few friends.”

  “You aren’t asking. I’m offering—”

  I stepped closer, leaning against his arm. “I’ll be fine, T’vril.”

  He regarded me for a long while, then shook his head slowly. “You will, won’t you? Ah, Yeine. I’ll miss you.”

  “You should leave this place, T’vril. Find yourself a good woman to take care of you and keep you in silks and jewelry.”

  T’vril stared at me, then burst out laughing, not strained at all this time. “A Darre woman?”

  “No, are you mad? You’ve seen what we’re like. Find some Ken girl. Maybe those pretty spots of yours will breed true.”

  “Pretty—freckles, you barbarian! They’re called freckles.”

  “Whatever.” I lifted his hand, kissed the back of it, and let him go. “Good-bye, my friend.”

  I left him there, still laughing, as I walked away.

  But…?

  But that was not all I wanted.

  That conversation helped me decide on my next move. I went looking for Viraine.

  I had been of two minds about confronting him ever since the previous night’s conversation with Nahadoth. I believed now that Viraine, not Dekarta, had killed my mother. I still did not understand it; if he had loved her, why kill her? And why now, twenty years after she’d broken his heart? Part of me craved understanding.

  The other part of me did not care why he’d done it. This part of me wanted blood, and I knew that if I listened to it I might do something foolish. There would be blood aplenty when I got my vengeance on the Arameri; all the horror and death of a second Gods’ War unleashed. That much blood should have been enough for me… but I would not be alive to see it. We are selfish that way, we mortals.

  So I went to see Viraine.

  He did not answer when I knocked at the door to his workshop, and for a moment I wavered, debating whether to pursue the matter further. Then I heard a faint, muffled sound from within.

  Doors in Sky do not lock. For highbloods, rank and politics provide more than enough security, as only those who are immune to retaliation dare invade another’s privacy. I, condemned to die in slightly
more than a day, was thus immune, and so I slid the door open, just a bit.

  I did not see Viraine at first. There was the workbench where I had been marked, its surface empty this time. All of the benches were empty, in fact, which seemed strange to me. So were the animal cages at the back of the room, which was stranger yet. Only then did I spot Viraine—in part because he stood so still and in part because with his white hair and garments, he matched his pristine, sterile workplace so thoroughly.

  He was near the large crystal globe at the back of the chamber. I thought at first that he leaned against it in order to peer into its translucent depths. Perhaps this was how he had spied on me, in my lone, abortive communication with my assigned nations. But then I noticed that he stood slumped, one hand braced against the globe’s polished surface, head hanging. I could not see his free hand through the white curtain of his hair, but there was something about its furtive movements that rang an instant note of recognition within me. He sniffed, and that confirmed it: alone in his workshop, on the eve of his god’s once-in-a-lifetime reaffirmation of triumph, Viraine was crying.

  It was weakness unbecoming of a Darre woman that this quieted my anger. I had no idea why he was crying. Perhaps all his evils had revived the tatters of his conscience for one moment. Perhaps he had stubbed his toe. But in the moment that I stood there, watching him weep as T’vril had managed not to, I could not help wondering: what if even one of those tears was for my mother? So few people had mourned her besides me.

  I slid the door shut and left.

  Foolish of me.

  Yes. Even then, you resisted the truth.

  Do I know it?

  Now, yes. Then, you did not.

  Why—

  You’re dying. Your soul is at war. And another memory preoccupies you.

  Tell me what you want, the Nightlord had said.

  Scimina was in her quarters, being fitted for her ball gown. It was white—a color that did not suit her well. There was not enough contrast between the material and her pale skin, and the overall result made her look faded. Still, the gown was lovely, made of some shining material that had been further enhanced by tiny diamonds studding the bodice and the lines of the skirt. They caught the light as she turned on her dais for the tailors.