The Inheritance Trilogy

by N. K. Jemisin

  “I understand,” I said, very softly.

  Ahad watched me a moment longer, then nodded.

  Glee sighed. “I’m more concerned about this Kahl than any mortal magic. No godling by that name is on any city registry. What do the rest of you know of him?” She looked around the table.

  No one responded. Kitr and Nemmer looked at each other, and at Eyem-sutah, who shrugged. Then they all looked at me. My mouth fell open. “None of you knows him?”

  “We thought you would,” Eyem-sutah said. “You’re the only one who was around when all of us were born.”

  “No.” I chewed my lip in consternation. “I could swear I’ve heard the name before, but…” The memory danced on the edge of my consciousness, closer than ever before.

  forget, whispered Enefa’s voice. I sighed in frustration.

  “He’s elontid,” I said, staring at my own clenched fist. “I’m sure of that. And he’s young—I think. Maybe a little older than the War.” But Madding had been the last godling born before the War. Even before him, Enefa had made few children in the last aeon or so—certainly no elontid. She had lost the heart for childbearing after seeing so many of her sons and daughters murdered in the battle against the demons.

  Would that you were a true child, she would say to me sometimes while stroking my hair. I lived for such moments. She was not much given to affection. Would that you could stay with me forever.

  But I can, I would always point out, and the look in her eyes would turn inward and sad in a way that I did not understand. I will never grow old, never grow up. I can be your little boy forever.

  Would that this were true, she would say.

  I blinked, frowning. I had forgotten that conversation. What had she meant by—

  “Elontid,” said Ahad, almost to himself. “The ones borne of god and godling, or Nahadoth and Itempas.” He turned a speculative look on Lil. She had begun to stroke one of the strawberries on the platter, her bony, jagged-nailed finger trailing back and forth over its curve in a way that would have been sensual in anyone else. She finally looked away from the platter but kept fingering the strawberry.

  “I do not know a Kahl,” she said, and smiled. “But we do not always wish to be known.”

  Glee frowned. “What?”

  Lil shrugged. “We elontid are feared by mortals and gods alike. Not without reason.” She threw me a glance that was pure lasciviousness. “You smell delicious now, Sieh.”

  I flushed and deliberately took something off the platter. Cucumber slathered with maash paste and comry eggs. I made a show of stuffing it into my mouth and swallowing it barely chewed. She pouted; I ignored her and turned to Glee.

  “What Lil means,” I said, “is that the elontid are different. They aren’t quite godlings, aren’t quite gods. They’re”—I thought a moment—“more like the Maelstrom than the rest of us. They flux and wane, create and devour, each in their own way. It makes them… hard to grasp.” I glanced at Lil, and when I did, she scooped up a cucumber slice and downed it in a blur, then stuck her tongue out at me. I laughed in spite of myself. “If any god could conceal his presence in the world, it would be an elontid.”

  Glee tapped a finger on the table, thoughtful. “Could they hide even from the Three?”

  “No. Not if they united. But the Three have had their own problems to worry about for some time now. They are incomplete.” I blinked then, as something new occurred to me. “And the Three could be why none of us remembers this Kahl. Enefa, I mean. She might have made all of us—”

  forget

  Shut up, Mother, I thought irritably.

  “—forget.”

  “Why would she do that?” Eyem-sutah looked around, his eyes widening. “That makes no sense.”

  “No,” said Nemmer softly. She met my eyes, and I nodded. She was one of the older ones among us—nowhere near my age, but she had been around to see the war against the demons. She knew the many strange configurations that could result among the children of the Three. “It makes perfect sense. Enefa—” She grimaced. “She had no problem killing us. And she would do it, if any of her children were a threat to the rest. After the demons, she wasn’t willing to take more risks. But if a child could survive without harming others, and if that child’s survival depended for some reason on others not knowing of its existence…” She shook her head. “It’s possible. She might have even created some new realm to house him, apart from the rest of us. And when she died, she took the knowledge of that child with her.”

  I thought of Kahl’s intimation. Enefa is dead now. I remembered. Nemmer’s theory fit, but for one thing.

  “Where’s this elontid’s other parent? Most of us wouldn’t just leave a child to rot in some heaven or hell forever. New life among our kind is too precious.”

  “It has to be a godling,” Ahad mused. “If it were Itempas or Nahadoth, this Kahl would just be”—his mouth began to shape the word normal, but then Lil turned a glare on him to make Itempas proud, and he amended himself—“niwwah, like the rest of you.”

  “I am mnasat,” Kitr snapped, glaring herself.

  “Whatever,” Ahad replied, and I was suddenly glad the platter’s paring knife was out of Kitr’s reach. Hopefully Ahad would find his nature soon; he wasn’t going to last long among us otherwise.

  “Many godlings died in the War,” said Glee, and we all sobered as we realized what she meant.

  “Gods,” murmured Kitr, looking horrified. “To be raised in exile, forgotten, orphaned… Did this Kahl even know how to find us? How long was he alone? I can’t imagine it.”

  I could. The universe had been much emptier once. There had been no word for loneliness back then, in my true childhood, but all three of my parents—Nahadoth in particular—had worked hard to protect me from it. If Kahl had lacked the same… I could not help but pity him.

  “This complicates things to an unpleasant degree,” said Ahad, sighing and rubbing his eyes. I felt the same. “From what you reported, Sieh, it sounds as though the High Northers and Kahl are working at cross-purposes. He’s using their dimmers to create a mask that turns mortals into gods, for some reason I can’t fathom. And they are using the same art to create masks that somehow kill Arameri.”

  “Or else Kahl has been killing the Arameri, using the masks, and doing it to cast suspicion on the northerners,” I said, remembering the dream conversation I’d had with him. I have already begun, he had said then. It was the oldest of tricks, to sow dissension between groups that had common interests. Good for deflecting attention from greater mischief, too. I contemplated it more and scowled. “And there’s another thing. The Arameri destroy any land that injures them—which guarantees that their enemies will strike decisively, if and when they ever do.” I thought of Usein Darr, proudly stating that she would never kill just a few Arameri. “The High Northers wouldn’t bother with assassins and a lowblood here, a highblood there. They’d bring an army and try to destroy the whole family at once.”

  “There’s no evidence that they’re building an army at all,” said Nemmer.

  There was, but it was subtle. I thought of Usein Darr’s pregnancy and that of her guardswoman, and the woman in Sar-enna-nem who’d had two babies with her, both too young to be eating solid food yet. I thought of the children I’d seen there—belligerent, xenophobic, barely multilingual, and every one of them four or five years old at the most. Darr was famous for its contraceptive arts. Even before scrivening, the women there had long ago learned to time childbearing to suit their constant raiding and intertribal wars. Their war crop, they called it, making a joke of other lands’ reliance on agriculture. In the years preceding a war, every woman under thirty tried her best to make a child or two. The warriors would nurse the babes for a few days, then hand them over to the nonwarriors in the family—who, having also recently borne children, would simply nurse two or three, until all the children could be weaned and handed over to grandmothers or menfolk. Thus the warriors could go off to fight k
nowing that their replacements were growing up safe, should they fall in battle.

  It was a bad sign to see so many Darre breeding. It was a worse sign that the children hated foreigners and weren’t even trying to ape Senmite customs. They certainly weren’t preparing those children for peace.

  “Even if they were building an army,” said Ahad, “there would be no reason for us to interfere. What mortals do to each other is their business. Our concern lies solely with this godling Kahl and the strange mask Sieh saw.”

  At this, Glee’s already-grim look grew positively forbidding. “So you will do nothing if war breaks out?”

  “Mortals have warred with one another since their creation,” Eyem-sutah said with a soft sigh. “The best we can do is try to prevent it… and protect the ones we love, if we fail. It is their nature.”

  “Because it is our nature,” snapped Nemmer. “And because of us, they now have magic as a weapon for their warring. They’ll use soldiers and swords like before the Gods’ War, but also scriveners and these masks, and demons know what else. Do you have any idea how many could die?”

  It would be worse than that, I knew. Most of mortalkind had no idea what war really meant anymore. They could not imagine the famine and rapine and disease, not on such a scale. Oh, they feared it of old, and the memory of the ultimate war—our War—had burned itself into the souls of every race. But that would not stop them from unleashing its full fury again and learning too late what they had done.

  “This will do more than kill,” I murmured. “These people have forgotten what humanity can be like at its worst. Rediscovering this will shock them; it will wound their souls. I have seen it happen before, here and on other worlds.” I met Ahad’s eyes, and he frowned, just a little, at the look on my face. “They’ll burn their histories and slaughter their artists. They’ll enslave their women and devour their children, and they’ll do it in the gods’ names. Shahar was right; the end of the Arameri means the end of the Bright.”

  Ahad spoke with brutal softness. “It will be worse if we get involved.”

  He was right. I hated him more than ever for that.

  In the silence that fell, Glee sighed. “I’ve stayed too long.” She rose to leave. “Keep me informed of anything else you discover or decide.”

  I waited for one of the gods at the table to chastise her for giving them orders. Then I realized none of them were planning to. Lil had begun to lean toward the platter, her eyes gleaming. Kitr had taken the small paring knife and was spinning it on her fingertip, an old habit that meant she was thinking. Nemmer rose to leave as well, nodding casually to Ahad, and suddenly I couldn’t stand it anymore. I shoved back my chair and marched around the table and got to the door just as Glee started to open it. I slammed it shut.

  “Who in the suppurating bright hells are you?” I demanded.

  Ahad groaned. “Sieh, gods damn it—”

  “No, I need to know this. I swore I’d never take orders from a mortal again.” I glared up at Glee, who didn’t look nearly as alarmed by my tantrum as I wanted her to be. What ignominy; I couldn’t even make mortals fear me anymore. “This doesn’t make sense! Why are all of you listening to her?”

  The woman lifted an eyebrow, then let out a long, heavy sigh. “My full name is Glee Shoth. I speak for, and assist, Itempas.”

  The words struck me like a slap—as did the name, and the odd familiarity of her manner, and her Maroneh heritage, and the way my siblings all seemed uneasy in her presence. I should have seen it at once. Kitr was right; I really was losing my touch.

  “You’re his daughter.” I whispered it. I could barely make my mouth form the words. Glee Shoth—daughter of Oree Shoth, the first and, as far as I knew, only mortal friend Itempas had ever had. Clearly they had gone beyond friendship. “His… dear gods, his demon daughter.”

  Glee did not smile, but her eyes warmed in amusement—and now that I knew, all those tiny niggling familiarities were as obvious as slaps to the face. She didn’t look like him; in features, she’d taken more after her mother. But her mannerisms, the air of stillness that she wore like a cloak… It was all there, as plain as the risen sun.

  Then I registered the implications of her existence. A demon. A demon made by Itempas—he who had declared the demons forbidden in the first place and led the hunt to wipe them out. A daughter, allied to him, helping him.

  I considered what it meant, that he loved her.

  I considered his reconciliation with Yeine.

  I considered the terms of his imprisonment.

  “It’s him,” I whispered. I nearly staggered, and would have if I had not leaned on the door for support. I focused on Ahad to marshal my shaken thoughts. “He’s the leader of this crazy group of yours. Itempas.”

  Ahad opened his mouth, then closed it. “ ‘You will right all the wrongs inflicted in your name,’ ” he said at last, and I twitched as I remembered the words. I had been there, the first time they’d been spoken, and Ahad’s voice was deep enough, had just the right timbre, to imitate the original speaker perfectly. He shrugged at my stare and finally flashed his usual humorless smile. “I’d say the Arameri, and all they’ve done to the world, count as one great whopping wrong, wouldn’t you?”

  “And it is his nature.” Glee threw Ahad an arch look before returning her attention to me. “Even without magic, he will fight the encroachment of disorder in whatever way he can. Is that so surprising?”

  I resisted out of stubbornness. “Yeine said she couldn’t find him lately.”

  Glee’s smile was paper-thin. “I regret concealing him from Lady Yeine, but it’s necessary. For his protection.”

  I shook my head. “Protection? From—Gods, this makes no sense. A mortal can’t hide from a god.”

  “A demon can,” she said. I blinked, surprised, but I shouldn’t have been. I’d already known that some demons had survived their holocaust. Now I knew how. Glee continued. “And fortunately, some of us can hide others when we need to. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” She looked pointedly at my hand on the door, which I let fall.

  Ahad had taken out a cheroot and was rummaging absently in his pockets. He threw a lazy glance at Glee, and there was a hint of the old evil in his eyes. “Tell the old man I said hi.”

  “I will not,” she replied promptly. “He hates you.”

  Ahad laughed, then finally remembered he was a god and lit the cheroot with a moment’s concentration. Sitting back in his chair, he regarded Glee with steady lasciviousness as she opened the door. “But you don’t, at least?”

  Glee paused on the threshold, and the look in her eyes was suddenly as familiar as her not-quite-smile had been a moment before. Of course it was. I had seen that same easy, possessive arrogance all my life. The absolute assurance that all was as it should be in the universe, because all of it was hers—if not now, then eventually.

  “Not yet,” she said, and not-smiled again before leaving the room.

  Ahad sat forward as soon as the door shut, his eyes fixed on the door in such obvious interest that Lil began staring at him, finally distracted from the food. Kitr made a sound of exasperation and reached for the platter, probably out of irritation rather than any actual hunger.

  “I’ll see if I can get one of my people into Darr,” said Nemmer, getting to her feet. “They’re suspicious of strangers, though… might have to do it myself. Busy, busy, busy.”

  “I will listen harder to the sailors’ and traders’ talk,” said Eyem-sutah. He was the god of commerce, to whom the Ken had once dedicated their magnificent sailing vessels. “War means shipments of steel and leather and march-bread, back and forth and back and forth…” His eyelids fluttered shut; he let out a soft sigh. “Such things have their own music.”

  Ahad nodded. “I’ll see all of you next week, then.” With that, Nemmer, Kitr, and Eyem-sutah disappeared. Lil rose and leaned over the table for a moment; the platter of food vanished. So did the platter, though Ahad’s table remained untouched. Ahad
sighed.

  “You have become interesting, Sieh,” Lil said to me, grinning beneath her swirling, mottled eyes. “You want so many things, so badly. Usually you taste only of the one endless, unfulfillable longing.”

  I sighed and wished she would go away, though that was pointless. Lil came and went as she pleased, and nothing short of a war could dislodge her when she took an interest in something. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “I didn’t think you cared about anything but food, Lil.”

  She shrugged with one painfully bony shoulder, her ragged hair brushing the cloth of her gown with a sound like dry grass. “This realm changed while we were away. Its taste has grown richer, its flavors more complex. I find myself changing to suit.” Then to my surprise, she came around the table and put her hand on mine. “You were always kind to me, Sieh. Be well, if you can.”

  She vanished as well, leaving me even more perplexed than before. I shook my head to myself, not really noticing that I was alone with Ahad until he spoke.

  “Questions?” he asked. The cheroot hung between his fingers, on the brink of dropping a column of ash onto the carpet.

  I considered all the swirling winds that blew around me and shook my head.

  “Good,” he said, and waved a hand. (This flung ash everywhere.) Another pouch appeared on the table. Frowning, I picked it up and found it heavy with coins.

  “You gave me money yesterday.”

  He shrugged. “Funny thing, employment. If you keep doing it, you keep getting paid.”

  I glowered at him. “I take it I passed Glee’s test, then.”

  “Yes. So pay that mortal girl’s family for room and board, buy some decent clothing, and for demons’ sake, eat and sleep so you stop looking like all hells. I need you to be able to blend in, or at least not frighten people.” He paused, leaning back in his chair and taking a deep draw from the cheroot. “Given the quality of your work today, I can see that I’ll be making good use of you in the future. That is, by the way, the standard salary we offer to the Arms of Night’s top performers.” He gave me a small, malicious smile.