The Inheritance Trilogy

by N. K. Jemisin

  “Let’s play a game, then,” I said, and smiled.

  Deka got to his feet, looking torn between fear and a desire to defend his sister; he hovered where he was, uncertain. There was no fear in Shahar’s eyes, though some of her anger faded into wariness. She wasn’t stupid. Mortals always knew to be careful when I smiled a certain way.

  I stopped in front of her and held out a hand. In it, a knife appeared. Because I was Yeine’s son, I made it a Darre knife, the kind they gave to their daughters when they first learned to take lives in the hunt. Six inches straight and silvery, with a handle of filigreed bone.

  “What is this?” she asked, frowning at it.

  “What’s it look like? Take it.”

  After a moment she did, holding it awkwardly and with visible distaste. Too barbaric for her Amn sensibilities. I nodded my approval, then beckoned to Dekarta, who was studying me with those lovely dark eyes of his. Remembering one of my other names, no doubt: Trickster. He did not come at my gesture.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I said to him, making my smile more innocent, less frightening. “It’s your sister who kicked me, not you, right?”

  Reason worked where charm had not. He came to me, and I took him by the shoulders. He was not as tall as I, so I hunkered down to peer into his face. “You’re really very pretty,” I said, and he blinked in surprise, the tension going out of him. Utterly disarmed by a compliment. He probably didn’t get them often, poor thing. “In the north, you know, you’d be ideal. Darre mothers would already be haggling for the chance to marry you to their daughters. It’s only here among the Amn that your looks are something to be ashamed of. I wish they could see you grown up; you would have broken hearts.”

  “What do you mean, ‘would have’?” asked Shahar, but I ignored her.

  Deka was staring at me, entranced in the way of any hunter’s prey. I could have eaten him up.

  I cupped his face in my hands and kissed him. He shivered, though it had been only a fleeting press of lips. I’d held back the force of myself because he was only a child, after all. Still, when I pulled back, I saw his eyes had glazed over; blotches of color warmed his cheeks. He didn’t move even when I slid my hands down and wrapped them around his throat.

  Shahar went very still, her eyes wide and, finally, frightened. I glanced over at her and smiled again.

  “I think you’re just like any other Arameri,” I said softly. “I think you’ll want to kill me rather than let me murder your brother, because that’s the good and decent thing to do. But I’m a god, and you know a knife can’t stop me. It’ll just piss me off. Then I’ll kill him and you.” She twitched, her eyes darting from mine to Deka’s throat and back. I smiled and found my teeth had grown sharp. I never did this deliberately. “So I think you’ll let him die rather than risk yourself. What do you think?”

  I almost pitied her as she stood there breathing hard, her face still damp from her earlier tears. Deka’s throat worked beneath my fingers; he had finally realized the danger. Wisely, though, he held still. Some predators are excited by movement.

  “Don’t hurt him,” she blurted. “Please. Please, I don’t—”

  I hissed at her, and she shut up, going pale. “Don’t beg,” I snapped. “It’s beneath you. Are you Arameri or not?”

  She fell silent, hitching once, and then—slowly—I saw the change come over her. The hardening of her eyes and will. She lowered the knife to her side, but I saw her hand tighten on its hilt.

  “What will you give me?” she asked. “If I choose?”

  I stared at her, incredulous. Then I burst out laughing. “That’s my girl! Bargaining for your brother’s life! Perfect. But you seem to have forgotten, Shahar, that that’s not one of your options. The choice is very simple: your life or his—”

  “No,” she said. “That’s not what you’re making me choose. You’re making me choose between being bad and, and being myself. You’re trying to make me bad. That’s not fair!”

  I froze, my fingers loosening on Dekarta’s throat. In the Maelstrom’s unknowable name. I could feel it now, the subtle lessening of my power, the greasy nausea at the pit of my belly. Across all the facets of existence that I spanned, I diminished. It was worse now that she had pointed it out, because the very fact that she understood what I had done made the harm greater. Knowledge was power.

  “Demonshit,” I muttered, and grimaced ruefully. “You’re right. Forcing a child to choose between death and murder—there’s no way innocence can survive something like that intact.” I thought a moment, then scowled and shook my head. “But innocence never lasts long, especially for Arameri children. Perhaps I’m doing you a favor by making you face the choice early.”

  She shook her head, resolute. “You’re not doing me a favor; you’re cheating. Either I let Deka die, or I try to save him and die, too? It’s not fair. I can’t win this game, no matter what I do. You better do something to make up for it.” She did not look at her brother. He was the prize in this game, and she knew it. I would have to revise my opinion of her intelligence. “So… I want you to give me something.”

  Deka blurted, “Just let him kill me, Shar; then at least you’ll live—”

  “Shut up!” She snapped it before I would have. But she closed her eyes in the process. Couldn’t look at him and keep herself cold. When she looked back at me, her face was hard again. “And you don’t have to kill Deka, if I… if I take that knife and use it on you. Just kill me. That’ll make it fair, too. Him or me, like you said. Either he lives or I do.”

  I considered this, wondering if there was some trick in it. I could see nothing untoward, so finally I nodded. “Very well. But you must choose, Shahar. Stand by while I kill him, or attack me, save him, and die yourself. And what would you have of me, as compensation for your innocence?”

  At this she faltered, uncertain.

  “A wish,” said Dekarta.

  I blinked at him, too surprised to chastise him for talking. “What?”

  He swallowed, his throat flexing in my hands. “You grant one wish, anything in your power, for… for whichever one of us survives.” He took a shaky breath. “In compensation for taking our innocence.”

  I leaned close to glare into his eyes, and he swallowed again. “If you dare wish that I become your family’s slave again—”

  “No, we wouldn’t,” blurted Shahar. “You can still kill me—or… or Deka—if you don’t like the wish. Okay?”

  It made sense. “Very well,” I said. “The bargain is made. Now choose, damn you. I don’t feel like being—”

  She lunged forward and shoved the knife into my back so fast that she almost blurred. It hurt, as all damage to the body does, for Enefa in her wisdom had long ago established that flesh and pain went hand in hand. While I froze, gasping, Shahar let go of the knife and grabbed Dekarta instead, yanking him out of my grasp. “Run!” she cried, pushing him away from the Nowhere Stair toward the corridors.

  He stumbled a step away and then, stupidly, turned back to her, his face slack with shock. “I thought you would pick… you should have…”

  She made a sound of utter frustration while I sagged to my knees and struggled to breathe around the hole in my lung. “I said I would be good,” she said fiercely, and I would have laughed in pure admiration if I’d been able. “You’re my brother! Now go! Hurry, before he—”

  “Wait,” I croaked. There was blood in my mouth and throat. I coughed and fumbled behind me with one hand, trying to reach the knife. She’d put it high in my back, partially through my heart. Amazing girl.

  “Shahar, come with me!” Deka grabbed her hands. “We’ll go to the scriveners—”

  “Don’t be stupid. They can’t fight a god! You have to—”

  “Wait,” I said again, having finally coughed out enough blood to clear my throat. I spat more into the puddle between my hands and still couldn’t reach the knife. But I could talk, softly and with effort. “I won’t hurt either of you.”

 
“You’re lying,” said Shahar. “You’re a trickster.”

  “No trick.” Very carefully I took a breath. Needed it to talk. “Changed my mind. Not going to kill… either of you.”

  Silence. My lung was trying to heal, but the knife was in the way. It would work its way free in a few minutes if I couldn’t reach it, but those minutes would be messy and uncomfortable.

  “Why?” asked Dekarta finally. “Why did you change your mind?”

  “Pull this… mortalfucking knife, and I’ll tell you.”

  “It’s a trick—” Shahar began, but Dekarta stepped forward. Bracing a hand on my shoulder, he took hold of the knife hilt and yanked it free. I exhaled in relief, though that almost started me coughing again.

  “Thank you,” I said pointedly to Dekarta. When I glared at Shahar, she tensed and took a step back, then stopped and inhaled, her lips pressed tightly together. Ready for me to kill her.

  “Oh, enough with the martyrdom,” I said wearily. “It’s lovely, just lovely, that you two are all ready to die for each other, but it’s also pretty sickening, and I’d rather not throw up more than blood right now.”

  Dekarta had not taken his hand from my shoulder, and I realized why when he leaned to the side to peer at my face. His eyes widened. “You weakened yourself,” he said. “Making Shahar choose… It hurt you, too.”

  Far more than the knife had done, though I had no intention of telling them that. I could have willed the knife out of my flesh or transported myself away from it, if I had been at my best. Shaking off his hand, I got to my feet, but I had to cough one or two times more before I felt back to normal. As an afterthought, I sent away the blood from my clothing and the floor.

  “I destroyed some of her childhood,” I said, sighing as I turned to her. “Stupid of me, really. Never wise to play adult games with children. But, well, you pissed me off.”

  Shahar said nothing, her face hollow with relief, and my stomach did an extra turn at this proof of the harm I’d done her. But I felt better when Dekarta moved to her side, and his hand snaked out to take hers. She looked at him, and he gazed back. Unconditional love: childhood’s greatest magic.

  With this to strengthen her, Shahar faced me again. “Why did you change your mind?”

  There had been no reason. I was a creature of impulse. “I think because you were willing to die for him,” I said. “I’ve seen Arameri sacrifice themselves many times—but rarely by choice. It intrigued me.”

  They frowned, not really understanding, and I shrugged. I didn’t understand it, either.

  “So, then, I owe you a wish,” I said.

  They looked at each other again, their expressions mirrors of consternation, and I groaned. “You have no idea what you want to wish for, do you?”

  “No,” said Shahar, ducking her eyes.

  “Come back in another year,” said Dekarta, quickly. “That’s more than enough time for us to decide. You can do that, can’t you? We’ll…” He hesitated. “We’ll even play with you again. But no more games like this one.”

  I laughed, shaking my head. “No, they’re not much fun, are they? Fine, then. I’ll be back in a year. You’d better be ready.”

  As they nodded, I took myself away to lick my wounds and recover my strength. And to wonder, with dawning surprise, what I’d gotten myself into.

  2

  Run away, run away

  Or I’ll catch you in a day

  I can make you scream and play

  ’Til my father goes away

  (Which one? Which one?

  That one! That one!)

  Just run, just run, just run.

  AS ALWAYS WHEN I WAS TROUBLED, I sought out my father, Nahadoth.

  He was not difficult to find. Amid the vastness of the gods’ realm, he was like a massive, drifting storm, terrifying for those in his path and cathartic in his wake. From any direction, one could look into the distance and there he was, defying logic as a matter of course. Almost as noticeable were the lesser presences that drifted nearby, drawn toward all that heavy, dark glory even though it might destroy them. I beheld my siblings in all their variety and sparkling beauty, elontid and mnasat and even a few of my fellow niwwah. Many lay prostrate before our dark father or strained toward the black unlight that was his core, their souls open for the most fleeting droplets of his approval. He played favorites, though, and many of them had served Itempas. They would be waiting a long time.

  For me, however, there was welcome on the wind as I traveled through the storm’s outermost currents. The layered walls of his presence shifted aside, each in a different direction, to admit me. I caught the looks of envy from my less-favored siblings and gave them glares of contempt in return, staring down the stronger ones until they turned away. Craven, useless creatures. Where had they been when Naha needed them? Let them beg his forgiveness for another two thousand years.

  As I passed through the last shiver, I found myself taking corporeal form. A good sign, that; when he was in a foul mood, he abandoned form altogether and forced any visitors to do the same. Better still, there was light: a night sky overhead, dominated by a dozen pale moons all drifting in different orbits and waxing and waning and shifting from red through gold through blue. Beneath it, a stark landscape, deceptively flat and still, broken here and there by line-sketched trees and curving shapes too attenuated to qualify as hills. My feet touched ground made of tiny mirrored pebbles that jumped and rattled and vibrated like frenzied living things. They sent a delicious buzz through my soles. The trees and hills were made of the glittering pebbles, too—and the sky and moons, for all I knew. Nahadoth was fond of playing with expectations.

  And beneath the sky’s cool kaleidoscope, shaping himself in an aimless sort of way, my father. I went to him and knelt, watching and worshipping, as his shape blurred through several forms and his limbs twisted in ways that had nothing to do with grace, though occasionally he grew graceful by accident. He did not acknowledge my presence, though of course he knew I was there. Finally he finished, and fell, purposefully, onto a couchlike throne that formed itself as I watched. At this, I rose and went to stand beside him. He did not look at me, his face turned toward the moons and shifting only slightly now, mostly just reacting to the colors of the sky. His eyes were shut, only the long dark lashes remaining the same as the flesh around them changed.

  “My loyal one,” he said. The pebbles hummed with the low reverberations of his voice. “Have you come to comfort me?”

  I opened my mouth to say yes—and then paused, startled, as I realized this was not true. Nahadoth glanced at me, laughed softly and not without cruelty, and widened his couch. He knew me too well. Shamed, I climbed up beside him, nestling into the drifting curve of his body. He petted my hair and back, though I was not in the cat’s shape. I enjoyed the caresses anyhow.

  “I hate them,” I said. “And I don’t.”

  “Because you know, as I do, that some things are inevitable.”

  I groaned and flung an arm over my eyes dramatically, though this only served to press the image into my thoughts: Yeine and Itempas straining together, gazing at each other in mutual surprise and delight. What would be next? Naha and Itempas? All three of them together, which existence had not seen since the demons’ time? I lowered my arm and looked at Nahadoth and saw the same sober contemplation on his face. Inevitable. I bared my teeth and let them grow cat-sharp and sat up to glare at him.

  “You want that selfish, thickheaded bastard! Don’t you?”

  “I have always wanted him, Sieh. Hatred does not exclude desire.”

  He meant the time before Enefa’s birth, when he and Itempas had gone from enemies to lovers. But I chose to interpret his words more immediately, manifesting claws and digging them into the drifting expanse of him.

  “Think of what he did to you,” I said, flexing and sheathing. I could not hurt him—would not even if I could—but there were many ways to communicate frustration. “To us! Naha, I know you will change, must cha
nge, but you need not change this way! Why go back to what was before?”

  “Which before?” That made me pause in confusion, and he sighed and rolled onto his back, adopting a face that sent its own wordless message: white-skinned and black-eyed and emotionless, like a mask. The mask he had worn for the Arameri during our incarceration.

  “The past is gone,” he said. “Mortality made me cling to it, though that is not my nature, and it damaged me. To return to myself, I must reject it. I have had Itempas as an enemy; that holds no more appeal for me. And there is an undeniable truth here, Sieh: we have no one but each other, he and I and Yeine.”

  At this I slumped on him in misery. He was right, of course; I had no right to ask him to endure again the hells of loneliness he had suffered in the time before Itempas. And he would not, because he had Yeine and their love was a powerful, special thing—but so had been his love with Itempas, once. And when all Three had been together… How could I, who had never known such fulfillment, begrudge him?

  He would not be alone, whispered a small, furious voice in my most secret heart. He would have me!

  But I knew all too well how little a godling had to offer a god.

  Cold white fingers touched my cheek, my chin, my chest. “You are more troubled by this than you should be,” said Nahadoth. “What is wrong?”

  I burst into frustrated tears. “I don’t know.”

  “Shhhh. Shhhh.” She—Nahadoth had changed already, adapting to me because she knew I preferred women for some things—sat up, pulling me into her lap, and held me against her shoulder while I wept and hitched fitfully. This made me stronger, as she had known it would, and when the squall passed and nature had been served, I drew a deep breath.

  “I don’t know,” I said again, calm now. “Nothing is right anymore. I don’t understand the feeling, but it’s troubled me for some while now. It makes no sense.”

  She frowned. “This is not about Itempas.”

  “No.” Reluctantly I lifted my head from her soft breast and reached up to touch her more rounded face. “Something is changing in me, Naha. I feel it like a vise gripping my soul, tightening slowly, but I don’t know who holds it or turns it, nor how to wriggle free. Soon I might break.”