The Inheritance Trilogy

by N. K. Jemisin

  I stifled a yawn. “What do you want me to do? Tell you to marry a man you don’t love? Tell you not to marry him? This isn’t a bedtime tale, Shahar. People marry people they don’t love all the time, and it isn’t always terrible. He’s already your friend; you could do worse. And if it’s something your mother wants, you don’t have a choice, anyway.”

  Her hand, braced on the covers in front of me, trembled. My senses throbbed with the waver of her conflicting yearnings. The child in her wanted to do as she pleased, cling to impossible hopes. The woman in her wanted to make sound decisions, succeed even if it meant sacrifice. The woman would win; that was inevitable. But the child would not go quietly.

  With that same trembling hand, she touched my shoulder, pushing until I twisted my torso to face her. Then she leaned down and kissed me.

  I permitted it, more out of curiosity than anything else. It was clumsy this time and did not last long. She was off the center of my mouth, covering mostly the bottom lip. I did not share myself with her, and she sat up, frowning.

  “Does that make you feel better?” I asked. I honestly wanted to know. Shahar’s expression crumpled. She turned away and lay down behind me, her back to mine. I felt her fighting tears.

  Troubled, and worried that I had somehow harmed her, I turned to her and sat up. “What is it that you want?”

  “My mother to love me. My brother back. The world not to hate us. Everything.”

  I considered this. “Shall I fetch him for you? Deka?”

  She tensed, turning over. “Could you do that?”

  “I don’t know.” I could not change my shape anymore. Traveling across distances was not so very different, save that it involved changing the shape of reality to make the world smaller. If I could not do one, I might not be able to do the other.

  As I watched, however, the eagerness faded from her expression. “No. Deka may not love me anymore.”

  I blinked in surprise. “Of course he does.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Sieh.”

  “I’m not,” I snapped. “I can feel the bond between us, Shahar, as clear as this.” I took a curl of her hair in my fingers and pulled on it, gentle but steady. She made a sound of surprise and I let the curl go; it bounced back prettily. “You both pull at me and at each other. Neither of you likes me very much now, but otherwise nothing has changed between the two of you since those days in the underpalace, years ago. You still love him, and he still loves you just as much. I’m a god, all right? I know.”

  I was not strictly telling the truth. It was true that Shahar’s feelings toward me had waned, though they grew stronger with every hour I spent in her presence. Deka’s, however, had grown stronger, too, even with no contact between us for half his lifetime. I didn’t quite know how to interpret that, so I didn’t mention it.

  Her eyes went wide at my words—and then welled with tears. She made a quick, abortive sound: buh. As soon as she uttered it, she clapped a hand to her mouth, but her hand was trembling.

  I sighed and pulled her against me, her face against my chest. It was only when I did this—only when she felt safe from eyes that might look upon her humanity and judge it a weakness—that she let herself break into deep, racking sobs so loud that they echoed from the walls of the apartment. Her tears were hot, though they cooled rapidly on my skin and as they pattered onto the sheets. Her shoulders heaved against my arms, and as the sobs grew worse, her arms went hard around me, squeezing me as if her life depended on my solidity and stillness. So I gave her both, stroking her hair and murmuring soothing things in the language of creation, letting her know that I loved her, too. For I did, fool that I was.

  When her tears finally stopped, I kept stroking her, liking the way her curls went flat and sprang up again as my hand passed, and thinking of nothing. I barely noticed when her arms loosened, her hands coming to stroke my sides and back and hip. I kept thinking of nothing when she eased my shirt up and laid the lightest of kisses on my belly. It tickled; I smiled. Then she sat up to look at me, her eyes red-rimmed but dry, a peculiar intent in her eyes.

  When she kissed me this time, it was wholly different. She nudged my lips apart and touched my tongue with her own, sweet and wet and sour. When I did not react, she slid her hands under my shirt, exploring the flat strangeness of a body that was not her own. I liked this until one of her hands went farther down, her fingers tickling hair and cloth at the edge of my pants, and then I caught her wrist. “No,” I said.

  She closed her eyes and I felt her aching emptiness. It was not lust. Missing her brother had made her feel alone. “I love you,” she said. Not even an admission, this; it was simply a statement of fact, like the moon is pretty or you’re going to die. “I’ve always loved you, since we were children. I tried not to.”

  I nodded, stroking her hand. “I know.”

  “I want to choose. If I have to sell myself for power, I want to give myself first. For love. For a friend.”

  I sighed, closing my eyes. “Shahar, I told you, it’s not good—”

  She scowled and lunged forward and kissed me again. I was stunned silent, the objection dying in my throat. Because this time it was like kissing a god. The quintessence of her came through the opening of my lips and drove itself into my soul before I could stop it. I gasped and inhaled a white shivering sun that pulsed strong and weak but never went out and never blew up. A rocky determination, jumbled but sharp-edged, with the potential to become as solid as bedrock. When I opened my eyes, I was lying back and she was above me, still kissing me, her hands coaxing sighs from me despite my reluctance. I did not stop her because I am supposed to be a child but really I am not and my body was too old to provide me with a child’s defenses against reality. Children do not think about how magnificent it would be to become one with another person. They do not yearn to lose themselves in force and sensation and panting. Children think about consequences, if only to try and avoid them. It takes an adult to abandon such thoughts entirely.

  So when her hand slipped into my pants this time, I did not stop her. And I did not protest while she explored me, first with her fingers and then, oh gods, oh yes, her mouth, her mortal husband could have the rest but I would marry her mouth and fingertips. I murmured without thinking and the walls went dark because there was mischief in what we were doing and that gave me strength. Despite this, I lay there helpless in the dark as she learned to make me whimper. She tormented me with this, tasting every part of my body. She even licked En, where it lay on my chest. Greedy thing, it rolled so that she might try its other side, too, but she didn’t notice.

  I touched her, too. She liked that lots.

  Then she straddled me. There came a moment of lucidity in which I caught her hips and looked up at her and said, “Are you sure—” but she pushed herself down and I cried out because it was so wonderful that it hurt, flesh is not at all a terrible thing, I had forgotten that it could feel good and not just grotesque, it was so nice not to be used. She felt the same as a goddess inside. I whispered this to her and she smiled, rising and falling above me, her mouth open and teeth reflecting the moon, her hair a pale moving shadow. Then we shifted and I was on her, not out of any paltry mortal need on my part to dominate but simply because I liked the sweet mewling sounds she made as I angled my way into her, and also because I was still a god and even a weak god is dangerous to mortals. Matter is such tenuous stuff. So I controlled myself by focusing on her flesh, on her hands stroking my back (inadvertently I purred), on my own clenching tightening quickening excitement, on carrying her only into the good parts of existence and none of the bad ones.

  And when she could bear no more, when I knew it was safe to bring her back to herself, when I was sure I could stay corporeal… only then did I let her go, and myself as well.

  She fainted. That is normal when one of us mates with a mortal. Only the very extraordinary can touch the divine without being overwhelmed by it. I fetched a damp towel from the bathroom and mopped up the sweat and
saliva and so forth, then tucked her against me under the covers so that I could breathe the scent of her hair.

  I felt no regret, but I was sad. She was farther from me now, and I was the one who had sent her away.

  8

  Tell me a story

  Fast as you can

  Make the world and break it

  And catch it in your hand

  I SLEPT AGAIN. This time, though, since Shahar had renewed my godly strength—experimentation and abandon are close enough to childish impulses to suit me—I was able to sleep as gods do, and keep the dreams at bay.

  When I woke, Shahar was not beside me, and it was noon. I sat up to find her near the window, wrapped in one of the sheets, her slim form still and shadowed against the bright blue sky.

  I hopped up, assessed myself to see whether I needed to piss or shit—not yet, though clearly I needed to brush my teeth—and then went over to her. (I was cold again. Damnation.) When she did not move at my approach, lost in thought, I grinned and leaned close and licked a bare spot on the back of her neck, where her hair had not come completely undone during the previous night.

  She jumped and whirled and frowned at me, at which point I belatedly realized that perhaps she was not in a playful mood.

  “Hello,” I said, feeling suddenly awkward.

  Shahar sighed and relaxed. “Hello.” Then she lowered her eyes and turned back to the window.

  I felt very stupid. “Oh, demons. Did I hurt you? That was the first time… I tried to be careful, but—”

  She shook her head. “There was no pain. I… could tell you were being careful.”

  If she wasn’t hurt, then why did she radiate such an ugly, clotted mix of emotions? I struggled to remember my handful of experiences with mortal women from before the War. Was this sort of behavior normal? I thought it might be. What, then, should a lover say at a time like this? Gods, it had been easier when I was a slave; my rapists had never expected me to give a damn about them afterward.

  I sighed and shifted from foot to foot and folded my arms so I would not be so cold. “So… I take it you don’t like what we did.”

  She sighed, and if anything, her mood turned darker. “I loved what we did, Sieh.”

  I was beginning to feel very tired, and it had nothing to do with my mortality affliction. Something had gone wrong; that was obvious. Would she have liked it better if I had become female for her? I wasn’t sure I could do that anymore, but it was such a small change. I would try, for her sake, if that would help. “What, then? Why do you look like you just lost your best friend?”

  “I may have,” she whispered.

  I stared at her as she turned back to me. The sheet had slipped off one of her shoulders, and most of her hair was a fright. She looked out of control and out of her element and lost. I remembered her wildness the night before. She had discarded all thought of propriety or position or dignity, and flung herself into the moment with perfect zeal. It had been glorious, but clearly such abandon had cost her something.

  Then I noticed, below the hand that held the sheet about herself, her free hand. She held it over her belly, fingering the skin there as if measuring its strength. I had seen ten thousand mortal women make the same gesture, and still I almost missed its meaning. Such things are not normally within my demesne.

  Pleased to have finally figured out the problem, I smiled and stepped closer, taking her hand off her belly and coaxing her to open the sheet so that I could step into it. She did so, clumsily adjusting the sheet so that she could hold it around both of us, and I sighed in grateful pleasure at the warmth of her nearness. Then I addressed the unease in her eyes that I thought I understood. Because I was who I was, and I am not always wise, I made it a tease. “Are you planning to kill me?”

  She frowned in confusion. I realized for the first time that she was as tall as I was, growing long and lean like a good Amn girl. I slid an arm around her waist and pulled her close, noting that she did not fully relax.

  “A child,” I said. I put a hand on her belly as she had done, rubbing circles to tease her. “It would kill me, you know.” Then I remembered my current condition and my amusement faded a little. “Kill me faster, anyway.”

  She stiffened, staring at me. “What?”

  “I told you already.” Her skin felt good beneath my hands. I bent and kissed her smooth shoulder right on the divot of bone and thought of biting her there as I rode her like a cat. Would she yowl for me? “Childhood cannot survive some things. Sex is fine, between friends.” I smiled on her skin. “Done without consequences. But consequences—like making a child—change everything.”

  “Oh, gods. It’s your antithesis.”

  I hated that word. Scriveners had come up with it. The word was like them, cold and passionless and precise and overly logical, capturing nothing of what truly made us what we were. “It corrupts my nature, yes. Many things can harm me—I’m just a godling, alas, not a god—but that one is the most sure.” I licked at her neck again, really trying this time, though not holding any great hope of success. Nahadoth had never managed to teach me how to seduce with any real degree of mastery.

  “Sieh!” She pushed at me, and when I lifted my head, I saw the horror in her eyes. “I didn’t use any… preventative… when we were together last night. I…” She looked away, trembling. I regretted my teasing when I realized she was genuinely upset, but it made me happy that she cared so much.

  I laughed gently, relenting. “It’s all right. My mother Enefa realized the danger long ago. She changed me. Do you understand? No children.”

  She did not look reassured—did not feel reassured, her anguish tainting the very air around us. I have siblings who cannot endure mortal emotions. They are sad creatures who haunt the gods’ realm, devouring tales of mortal life and pretending they are not jealous of the rest of us. Shahar would have killed half of them by now.

  “Enefa is dead,” she said.

  That was more than enough to sober me. “Yes. But not all her works died with her, Shahar, or neither you nor I would be standing here.”

  She looked up at me, tense and afraid. “You’re different now, Sieh. You’re not really a god anymore, and mortals—” Her face softened so beautifully. It made me smile, despite the conversation. “Mortals grow up. Sieh, I want you to be sure there’s no child. Can you check somehow? Because… because…” She lowered her eyes, and suddenly it was shame that she felt, sour and bitter on the back of my tongue. Shame, and fear.

  “What?”

  She drew a deep breath. “I didn’t try to prevent a baby. In fact”—her jaw flexed—“I’ve been to the scriveners. They used a script.” She blushed, but forged ahead. “To make it easier, more likely, for three or four days. And once I, with you, I, I’m supposed to go to them. They have other scripts that they say… Even with a god, fertility magic works the same way.”

  Her stammering embarrassment confused me; I couldn’t figure out what she was trying to say at first. And then, like a comet’s icy plume, understanding slashed through me.

  “You wanted a child?”

  She laughed once, bitter. When she turned back to the window, her eyes were hard and older than they should be, and so perfectly Arameri. Then I knew.

  “Your mother.”

  Shahar nodded, still not meeting my eyes. “ ‘If we cannot own gods, then perhaps we can become gods,’ she said. The demons of old had great magic despite their mortality. Or, at the very least, we can gain the greatest demon magic: the power to kill gods.”

  I stared at her, feeling sick, because I should have known. The Arameri had been trying to get their hands on a demon for decades. I should have seen it in Remath’s quest for a godly lover; I should have realized why she’d been so pleased to have me in Sky. Why she’d tried to give me her daughter.

  I shrugged off the sheet and walked away from Shahar, manifesting clothing about myself. Black this time, like my fur when I was a cat. Like my father’s wrath.

  “S
ieh?” Shahar blurted the words, cursed, dropped the sheet and grabbed for a robe. “Sieh, what are you—”

  I stopped and turned back to her, and she froze at the look in my eyes. Or perhaps at my eyes themselves, because I could not become this angry, even in my weakened half-mortal state, without a little of the cat showing.

  I would save the claws, however, for Remath.

  “Why did you tell me?” I asked, and she went pale. “Did you wait until now for a reason?” Some of my magic had come back to me. I touched the world, found Remath within it. Her audience chamber, surrounded by courtiers and petitioners. “Were you hoping I would kill her in front of witnesses so the other highbloods would think you weren’t involved? Was that what you told yourself so it wouldn’t feel like matricide?”

  Her lips turned white as she pressed them together. “How dare you—”

  “Because this wasn’t necessary.” I rode over her words with my own, with my grief, and that drove the anger from her face in an instant. “I told you I would kill her for you, if you asked. All I ever wanted was to be able to trust you. If you had given me that, I would have done anything for you.”

  She flinched as if I’d struck her. Her eyes welled with tears, but this was not like last night. She stood in the slanting afternoon light of Itempas’s sun, proud despite her nakedness, and the tears did not fall, because Arameri do not cry. Not even when they have broken a god’s heart.

  “Deka,” she said at last.

  I shook my head, mute, too consumed with my own nature to follow her insane mortal reasoning.

  She drew another breath. “I agreed to do this because of Deka. We made a bargain, Mother and I: one night with you, in exchange for him. The scriveners would take care of the rest. But when you said that a child would kill you…” She faltered.

  I wanted to believe she had betrayed her mother for my sake. But if that was true, then it meant she had also agreed to sacrifice my love in exchange for her brother.