The Inheritance Trilogy

by N. K. Jemisin

  Even if he had not become a god, he was the last person to whom I would have willingly revealed my condition. Yet there was no hiding it, now that he’d seen me. He knew me better than anyone else in this realm, and he would be that much more vicious if I tried to hide it.

  I sighed and waved a hand to clear some of the drifting smoke from my vicinity. It came right back. “Something has happened,” I said. “I was in Sky, yes, for a few days. The Arameri heir—” No. I didn’t want to talk about that. Better to get to the worst of it. “I seem to be”—I shifted, put my hands into my pockets, and tried to seem nonchalant—“dying.”

  Hymn’s eyes widened. Ahad—I hated that stupid name of his already—looked skeptical.

  “Nothing can kill a godling but demons and gods,” he said, “and the world’s fresh out of demons, last I heard. Has Naha finally grown tired of his little favorite?”

  I clenched my fists. “He will love me until time ends.”

  “Yeine, then.” To my surprise, the skepticism cleared from Ahad’s face. “Yes, she is wise and good-hearted, but she didn’t know you back then; you played the innocent boy so well. She could make you mortal, couldn’t she? If so, I commend her for giving you a slow, cruel death.”

  I would have gotten angrier, if my own cruel streak hadn’t come to the fore. “What’s this? Have you got a baby-god crush on Yeine? It’s hopeless, you know. Nahadoth’s the one she loves; you’re just his leftovers.”

  Ahad kept smiling, but his eyes went black and cold. He had more than a little of my father still in him; that much was obvious.

  “You’re just mad neither of them wants you,” he said.

  The room went gray and red. With a wordless cry of rage, I went for him—meaning, I think, to rip him open with my claws, and forgetting for the moment that I had none. And forgetting, far more stupidly, that he was a god and I was not.

  He could have killed me. He could have done it by accident; newborn godlings don’t know their own strength. Instead he simply caught me by the throat, lifted me bodily, and slammed me onto the top of his desk so hard that the wood cracked.

  While I groaned, dazed by the blow and the agony of landing on two paperweights, he sighed and sucked more smoke from the cheroot with his free hand. He kept me pinned, easily, with the other.

  “What does he want?” he asked Hymn.

  As my vision cleared, I saw she had gotten to her feet and was half ducked behind her chair. At his question, she straightened warily.

  “Money,” she said. “He got me into trouble earlier today. Said he needed to make it up to me, but I don’t need any of his tricks.”

  Ahad laughed, in the humorless way he had done for the last dozen centuries. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt true amusement from him. “Isn’t that just like him?” He smiled down at me, then lifted a hand. A purse appeared in it; I heard heavy coins jingle within. Without looking at Hymn, he tossed it. Without blinking she caught it.

  “That enough?” he asked when she tugged open the pouch’s string to look inside. Her eyes widened, and she nodded. “Good. You can go now.”

  She swallowed. “Am I in trouble for this?” She glanced at me as I struggled to breathe around Ahad’s tightening hand.

  “No, of course not. How could you have known I knew him?” He threw her a significant look. “Though you still don’t know anything, you understand. About me being what I am, him being what he is. You never met him, and you never came here. Spend your money slowly if you want to keep it.”

  “I know that.” Scowling, Hymn made the pouch disappear. Then to my surprise, she glanced at me again. “What are you going to do with him?”

  I had begun to wonder that myself. His hand was tight enough to feel the pounding of my pulse. I reached up and scrabbled at his wrist, trying to loosen it, but it was like trying to loosen the roots of the Tree.

  Ahad watched my efforts with lazy cruelty. “I haven’t decided yet,” he said. “Does it matter?”

  Hymn licked her lips. “I don’t do blood money.”

  He looked up at her and let the silence grow long and still before he finally spoke. His words were kinder than his eyes. “Don’t worry,” he said. “This one is a favorite of two of the Three. I’m not stupid enough to kill him.”

  Hymn took a quick, deep breath—for strength, I thought. “Look, I don’t know what’s happened between you two, and I don’t care. I never would have… I didn’t mean to—” She stopped, took a deep breath. “I’ll give you back the money. Just let him come with me.”

  Ahad’s hand tightened until I saw stars at the edges of my vision. “Don’t,” he said, sounding far too much like my father in that instant, “ever command me.”

  Hymn looked confused, but of course mortals do not realize how often they speak in imperatives—that is, ordinary mortals do not. Arameri long ago learned that lesson when we killed them for forgetting.

  I fought back fear so that I could concentrate. Leave her alone, damn you! Play your games with me, not her!

  Ahad actually started, throwing a sharp glance at me. I had no idea why—until I remembered just how young he was, in our terms. And that reminded me of my one advantage over him.

  Closing my eyes, I fixed my thoughts on Hymn. She was a hot bright point on the darkening map of my awareness. I had found the power to protect her when the muckrakers came. Could I now protect her from one of my own?

  Wind shot through the hollows of my soul, cold and electric. Not much; not nearly as much as there should have been. But enough. I smiled.

  And reached up to grip Ahad’s hand. “Brother,” I murmured in our tongue, and he blinked, surprised that I could talk. “Share yourself with me.”

  Then I took him into my self. We blazed, white green gold, through a firmament of purest ebony, down, down, down. This was not the core of me, for I would never trust him in that sweet, sharp place, but it was close enough. I felt him struggle, frightened, as all that I was—a torrent, a current—threatened to devour him. But that was not my intention. As we swirled downward, I dragged him closer to me. Here without flesh, I was the elder and the stronger. He did not know himself and I overpowered him easily. Gripping the front of his shirt, I grinned into his wide, panicked eyes.

  “Let’s see you now,” I said, and thrust my hand into his mouth.

  He screamed—a stupid thing to do under the circumstances. That just made it easier. I compacted myself into a single curved claw and plunged into the core of him. There was an instant of resistance, and pain for both of us, because he was not me and all gods are antithetical to each other on some level. Then there was the briefest plume of strangeness as I tasted his nature, dark but not, rich in memory yet raw with his newness, craving, desperate for something that he did not want and did not know that he needed—but it latched on to me with a ferocity I had not expected. Young gods are not usually so savage. Then I was the one being devoured—

  I came out of him with a cry and twisted away, curling in on myself in agony while Ahad stumbled and fell across the empty chair. I heard him utter a sound like a sob, once. Then he drew deep breaths, controlling himself.

  Yes, I had forgotten. He was not truly new. He wasn’t even young, like Yeine. As a mortal, he had seen thousands of years before his effective rebirth. And he had endured hells in that time that would have broken most mortals. It had broken him, but he’d put himself back together, stronger. I laughed to myself as the pain of nearly becoming something else finally began to recede.

  “You never change, do you?” My voice was a rasp. He’d left finger marks in the flesh of my neck. “Always so difficult.”

  His reply was a curse in a dead language, though I was gratified to hear weariness in his voice as well.

  I pushed myself up, slowly. Every muscle in my body ached, along with the bump to the back of the head I’d taken. At the corner of my vision there was movement: Hymn. Coming back into the room, after quite sensibly vacating it while two godlings fought. I wa
s surprised, given her knowledge of us, that she hadn’t vacated the house and neighborhood, too.

  “You done?” she asked.

  “Very,” I said, pulling myself to sit on the edge of the desk. I would need to sleep again soon. But first I had to make my peace with Ahad, if he would allow that.

  He was glaring at me now, from the chair. Nearly recovered already, though his hair was mussed and he had lost his cheroot. I hated him more for a moment, and then sighed and let that go. Let it all go. Mortal life was too short.

  “We are no longer slaves,” I said softly. “We need no longer be enemies.”

  “We weren’t enemies because of the Arameri,” he snapped.

  “Yes, we were.” I smiled, which made him blink. “You wouldn’t have even existed if not for them. And I—” If I allowed it, the shame would come. I had never allowed it before, but so much had changed since those days. Our positions had reversed: he was a god; I wasn’t. I needed him; he didn’t need me. “I would have at least… would have tried to be a better…”

  But then he surprised me. He had always been good at that.

  “Shut up, you fool,” he said, getting to his feet with a sigh. “Don’t be any more of an ass than you usually are.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  Ahad stalked over to me, surprising me further. He hadn’t liked being near me for centuries. Planting his hands on the desk on either side of my hips, he leaned down to glare into my face. “Do you really think me so petty that I would still be angry after all this time? Ah, no—that isn’t it at all.” His smile flickered, and perhaps it was my imagination that his teeth grew sharper for a moment. I hoped it was, because the last thing he needed was an animal nature. “No, I think you’re just so gods-damned certain of your own importance that you haven’t figured it out. So let me make this clear: I don’t care about you. You’re irrelevant. It’s a waste of my energy even to hate you!”

  I stared back at him, stunned by his vehemence and, I will admit, hurt. And yet.

  “I don’t believe you,” I murmured. He blinked.

  Then he pushed away from the desk with such force that it scooched back a little, nearly jostling me off. I stared as he went over to Hymn, grabbed her by the scruff of her shirt, and half dragged her to the door, opening it.

  “I’m not going to kill him,” he said, shoving her through hard enough that she stumbled when he let her go. “I’m not going to do a damned thing other than gloat over his prolonged, humiliating death, which I have no reason whatsoever to hasten. So your money’s clean and you can wash your hands of him in good conscience. Be glad you escaped before he could ruin your life. Now get out!” And he slammed the door in her face.

  I stared at him as he turned to regard me, taking a long, slow breath to compose himself. Because I knew his soul, I felt the moment that he made a decision. Perhaps he had already guessed at mine.

  “Would you like a drink?” he asked at last, with brittle politeness.

  “Children shouldn’t drink,” I said automatically.

  “How fortunate that you’re not a child anymore.”

  I winced. “I, ah, haven’t had alcohol in a few centuries.” I said it carefully, testing this new, fragile peace beneath us. It was as thin as the tension on a puddle’s surface, but if we tread delicately, we might manage. “Do you have anything, er…”

  “For the pathetic?” He snorted and went over to a handsome wood cabinet, which turned out to hold a dozen or so bottles. All of them were full of strong, richly colored liquids. Stuff for men, not boys. “No. You’ll have to sink or swim, I’m afraid.”

  Most likely I would sink. I looked at the bottles and committed myself to the path of truce with a heavy sigh.

  “Pour on, then,” I said, and he did.

  Some while later, after I had unfortunately remembered too late that vomiting is far, far more unpleasant than defecating, I sat on the floor where Ahad had left me and took a long, hard look at him. “You want something from me,” I said. I believe I said it clearly, though my thoughts were slurred.

  He lifted an eyebrow in genteel fashion, not even tipsy. A servant had already taken away the wastebasket splattered with my folly. Even with the windows open, the stench of Ahad’s cheroot was better than the alternative, so I did not mind it this time.

  “So do you,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said, “but my wants are always simple things. In this case I want money, and since I really wanted it for Hymn and you’ve already given it to her, that essentially solves the problem. Your wants are never simple.”

  “Hmm.” I didn’t think this statement pleased him. “And yet you’re still here, which implies you want something more.”

  “Care during my feeble senescence. It will take me another fifty or sixty years to die, during which I will require increasing amounts of food and shelter and”—I looked at the bottle on the desk between us, considering—“and other things. Mortals use money to obtain these things; I am becoming mortal; therefore, I will need a regular source of money.”

  “A job.” Ahad laughed. “My housekeeper thought you might make a good courtesan, if you cleaned up a little.”

  Affront penetrated the alcohol haze. “I’m a god!”

  “Nearly a third of our courtesans are godlings, Sieh. Didn’t you feel the presence of family when you came in?” He gestured around the building, his hand settling on himself, and I flushed because in fact, I had not sensed him or anyone else. More evidence of my weakness. “A goodly number of our clients are, too—godlings who are curious about mortals but afraid or too proud to admit it. Or who simply want the release of meaningless, undemanding intercourse. We aren’t so different from them, you know, when it comes to that sort of thing.”

  I reached out to touch the world around me as best I could, my senses numbed and unsteady as they were. I could feel a few of my siblings then. Mostly the very youngest. I remembered the days when I had been fascinated by mortalkind—especially children, with whom I had loved to play. But some of my kind were drawn to adults, and with that came adult cravings.

  Like the taste of Shahar’s skin.

  I shook my head—a mistake, as the nausea was not quite done with me. I said something to distract myself. “We’ve never needed such things, Ahad. If we want a mortal, we appear somewhere and point at one, and the mortal gives us what we want.”

  “You know, Sieh, it’s all right that you haven’t paid attention to the world. But you really shouldn’t talk as though you have.”

  “What?”

  “Times have changed.” Ahad paused to sip from a square glass of fiery red liquid. I had stopped drinking that one after the first taste because mortals could die of alcohol poisoning. Ahad held it in his mouth a moment, savoring the burn, before continuing. “Mortalkind, heretics excepted, spent centuries believing in Itempas and nothing else. They don’t know what happened to him—the Arameri keep a tight grip on that information, and so do we godlings—but they know something has changed. They aren’t gods, but they can still see the new colors of existence. And now they understand that our kind are powerful, admirable, but fallible.” He shrugged. “A godling who wants to be worshipped can still find adherents, of course. But not many—and really, Sieh, most of us don’t want to be worshipped. Do you?”

  I blinked in surprise, and considered it. “I don’t know.”

  “You could be, you know. The street children swear by you when they speak any god’s name at all. Some of them even pray to you.”

  Yes, I had heard them, though I’d never done anything to encourage their interest. I’d had thousands of followers once, but these days it always surprised me that they remembered. I drew up my knees and wrapped my arms around them, understanding finally what Ahad meant.

  Nodding as if I’d spoken my thoughts aloud, Ahad continued. “The rest of our clients are nobles, wealthy merchants, very lucky commoners—anyone who’s ever yearned to visit the heavens before death. Even our mortal courtesans have
been with gods enough to have acquired a certain ethereal technique.” He smiled a salesman’s smile, though it never once touched his eyes.

  “That’s what you’re selling. Not sex, but divinity.” I frowned. “Gods, Ahad, at least worship is free.”

  “It was never free.” His smile vanished. It hadn’t been real, anyway. “Every mortal who offered a god devotion wanted something in exchange for it—blessings, a guaranteed place in the heavens, status. And every god who demanded worship expected loyalty and more, in exchange. So why shouldn’t we be honest about what we’re doing? At least here, no god lies.”

  I flinched, as he had meant me to. Razors. Then he went on.

  “As for our residents, as we call them, there is no rape here, no coercion. No pain, unless that’s mutually agreed upon by both client and resident. No judgments, either.” He paused, looking me up and down. “The housekeeper usually has a good eye for new talent. It will be a shame to tell her that she was so far off in your case.”

  It was not entirely due to the alcohol that I straightened in wounded pride. “I could be a marvelous whore.” Gods knew I had enough practice.

  “Ah, but I think you would be unable to keep yourself from contemplating the violent murder of any client who claimed you. Which, given your nature and the unpredictability of magic, might actually cause such death to occur. That’s not good for business.” He paused, and I did not imagine the cold edge to his smile. “I have the same problem, as I discovered quite by accident.”

  There was a long silence that fell between us. This was not recriminating. It was simply that such statements stirred up sediment of the past, and it was natural to wait for that to settle before we moved on.

  Changing the subject helped, too. “We can discuss the matter of my employment later.” Because I was almost certain he would hire me. Unreasoning optimism is a fundamental element of childishness. “So what is it, then, that you want?”