The Inheritance Trilogy

by N. K. Jemisin

  If the day hadn’t already been so strange, I would have marveled at his praise, laced with insults as it was. Instead I merely nodded and slipped the pouch into my shirt, where pickpockets wouldn’t be able to get at it easily.

  “Well, get out, then,” he said, and I left.

  I was five years older, several centuries chastened, and more hated than ever by my siblings, including the one I’d apparently forgotten. As first days on the job went… well. I was still alive. It remained to be seen whether this was a good thing.

  BOOK THREE

  Three Legs in the Afternoon

  I DRIFT THROUGH DREAMING. Since I am not mortal, there are no nightmares. I never find myself naked in front of a crowd, because that would never bother me. (I would waggle my genitals at them, just to see the shock on their faces.) Most of what I dream is memory, probably because I have so many of them.

  Images of parents and children. Nahadoth, shaped like some sort of great star-flecked beast, lies curled in a nest of ebon sparks. This is in the days before mortals. I am a tiny thing half hidden in the nest’s glimmers. An infant. I huddle against her for comfort and protection, mewling like a new kitten, and she strokes me and whispers my name possessively—

  Shahar again. The Matriarch, not the girl I know. She is younger than in my last dream, in her twenties perhaps, and she sits in a window with an infant at her breast. Her chin is propped on her fist; she pays little attention to the babe as it sucks. Mortal, this child. Fully human. Another human child sits in a basket behind her—twins—tended by a girl in priest’s robes. Shahar wears robes, too, though hers are finer. She is high ranking. She has borne children as her faith demands, but soon she will abandon them, when her lord needs her. Her eyes are ever on the horizon, waiting for dawn—

  Enefa, in the fullest glory of her power. All her experiments, all the tests and failures, have reached the pinnacle of success at last. Merging life and death, light and dark, order and chaos, she brings mortal life to the universe, transforming it forever. She has been giving birth for the past billion years. Her belly is an earth of endless vastness and fecundity, rippling as it churns forth life after life after life. We who have already been born gaze upon this geysering wonder in worshipful adoration. I come to her, bringing an offering of love, because life needs that to thrive. She devours it greedily and arches, crying out in agony and triumph as another species bursts forth. Magnificent. She gropes for my hand because her brothers have gone off somewhere, probably together, but that’s all right. I am the oldest of her god-children, a man grown. I am there for her when she needs me. Even if she does not need me very often—

  Myself. How strange. I sit on a bed in the first Sky, in mortal flesh, confined to it by mad Itempas and my dead mother’s power. This is in the early years, I can tell, when I fought my chains at every turn. My flesh still bears the red weals of a whip, and I am older than I like, weakened by the damage. A young man. Yet I sit beside a longer, larger form whose back is to me. Male, adult, naked. Mortal: black hair a tangled mass. Sickly white skin. Ahad, who had no name back then. He is weeping, I know the way shoulders shake during sobs, and I—I do not remember what I have done to him, but there is guilt as well as despair in my eyes—

  Yeine. Who has never borne a child as mortal or goddess, yet who became my mother the instant she met me. She has the nurturing instincts of a predator: choose the most brutal of mates, destroy anything that threatens the young, raise them to be good killers. Yet compared to Enefa, she is a fountain of tenderness, and I drink her love so thirstily that I worry she will run out. (She never has.) In mortal flesh we curl on the floor of the Wind Harp chamber, laughing, terrified of the dawn and the doom that seems inevitable, yet which is, in fact, only the beginning—

  Enefa, again. The great quickening is long done. These days she makes few new children, preferring to observe and prune and transplant the ones she already has, on the nonillion worlds where they grow. She turns to me and I shiver and become a man by her will, though by this point I have realized that child is the most fundamental manifestation of my nature. “Don’t be afraid,” she says when I dare to protest. She comes to me, touches me gently; my body yields and my heart soars. I have yearned for this, so long, but—

  I am dying, this love will kill me, get it away oh gods I have never been so afraid—

  Forget.

  13

  One for sorrow

  Two for joy

  Three for a girl

  Four for a boy

  Five for silver

  Six for gold

  Seven for a secret

  Never to be told.

  MORTAL LIFE IS CYCLES. Day and night. Seasons. Waking and sleep. This cyclical nature was built into all mortal creatures by Enefa, and the humans have refined it further by building their cultures to suit. Work, home. Months become years, years shift from past to future. They count endlessly, these creatures. It is this which marks the difference between them and us, I think, far more than magic and death.

  For two years, three months, and six days, I lived as ordinary a life as I could. I ate. I slept. I grew healthier, taking pains to make myself sleek and strong, and dressed better. I contemplated asking Glee Shoth to arrange a meeting between myself and Itempas. I chose not to, because I hated him and would rather die. Perfectly ordinary.

  The work was ordinary, too, in its way. Each week I traveled wherever Ahad chose to send me, observing what I could, interfering where I was bidden. Compared to the life of a god… well. It was not boring, at least. It kept me busy. When I worked hard, I thought less. That was a good and necessary thing.

  The world was not ordinary, either. Six months after I’d met her, and three months after the birth of her latest lamented son, Usein Darr’s father died of the lingering illness that had incapacitated him for some while. Immediately afterward, Usein Darr got herself elected as one of the High North delegates. She traveled to Shadow in time for the Consortium’s voting season, whereupon her first act was to give a fiery speech openly challenging the existence of Shadow’s delegate. No other single city had a delegate on the Consortium. “And everyone knows why,” Usein declared, then dramatically (according to the news scrolls) turned to glare into the eyes of Remath Arameri, who sat in the family box above the Consortium floor. Remath said nothing in reply—probably because everyone did know why, and there was no point in her confirming the obvious. Shadow’s delegate was in fact Sky’s delegate, little more than another mouthpiece through which the Arameri could make their wishes known. This was nothing new.

  What was new was that Usein’s protest was not struck down by the Consortium Overseer; and that several other nobles—not all northerners—rose to voice agreement with her; and that in the subsequent secret vote, nearly a third of the Consortium agreed that Shadow’s delegate should be abolished. A loss, and yet a victory. Once upon a time, such a proposal would never have even made it to vote.

  It was not a victory so much as a shot across the bow. Yet the Arameri did not respond in kind, as the whispers predicted in the Arms of Night’s parlor and the back of the bakery and even at the dinner table with Hymn’s family each evening. No one tried to kill Usein Darr. No mysterious plagues swept through the stone-maze streets of Arrebaia. Darren blackwood and herbal rarities continued to fetch high prices on the open and smugglers’ markets.

  I knew what this meant, of course. Remath had drawn a line somewhere, and Usein simply had yet to cross it. When she did, Remath would bring such horrors to Darr as the land had never seen. Unless Usein’s mysterious plans reached fruition first.

  Politics would never be interesting enough to occupy the whole of my attention, however, and as the days became months and years, I felt ever more the weight of unfinished, childishly avoided business upon my soul. Eventually one particular urge became overwhelming, and on a slow day, I begged a favor of Ahad. Surprisingly, he obliged me.

  Deka was still at the Litaria. That I hadn’t expected. After Shahar’s
betrayal, I had braced myself to find him in Sky somewhere. She had done it to get him back, hadn’t she? Yet when Ahad’s magic settled, I found myself in the middle of a classroom. The chamber was circular—a remnant of the Litaria’s time as part of the Order of Itempas—and the walls were lined by slate covered in chalk renderings: pieces of sigils with each stroke carefully numbered, whole sigils lacking only a stroke or two, and strange numerical calculations that apparently had something to do with how scriveners learned our tongue.

  I turned and blinked as I realized I was surrounded by white-clad children. Most were Amn, ten or eleven years old; all sat cross-legged on the floor, with their own slates or pieces of reed paper in their laps. All of them gaped at me.

  I put my hands on my hips and grinned back. “What? Your teacher didn’t tell you a godling was dropping by?”

  An adult voice made me turn, and then I, too, gaped as the children did.

  “No,” drawled Dekarta from the lectern. “We’re doing show-and-tell next week. Hello, Sieh.”

  Deka wore black now.

  I had been surprised by this, but that was not the only shock. I stole little looks up at him—he was much taller than me now—as we walked through a brightly lit, carpeted corridor lined with the busts of dead scriveners. His stride was easy, unhurried, confident. He did not look at me, though he must have noticed me watching him. I tried to read his expression and could not. Despite his exile from Sky, he had still mastered the classic Arameri detachment. Blood told.

  Oh, yes, it did. He looked like Ahad.

  Demonshitting, hells-spawned, Yeine-loving ratbastard Ahad.

  So many things made sense now; so many more did not. The resemblance was so strong as to be undeniable. Deka was an inch or two shorter than Ahad, leaner and somewhat unfinished in the manner of young men. He wore his hair short and plain, where Ahad’s was long and elaborate. Deka looked more Amn, too; Ahad’s features leaned more toward the High Norther template. But in every other way, and particularly in this new aura of easy, dangerous strength, Deka might as well have been made as Ahad had: sprung to life full grown from his progenitor, with no mother in the way to gum things up.

  Yet that could not be. Because if Ahad was some recent ancestor of Dekarta’s, then that meant Dekarta, and Shahar, and whichever of their parents carried Ahad’s blood, were demons. Demons’ blood should have killed me the day we’d made the oath of friendship.

  And not like this, slowly, cruelly. I had seen what demons’ blood did to gods. It should have snuffed out the light of my soul like water on a candleflame. Why was I still alive at all, much less in this hobbled form?

  I groaned softly, and at last Deka glanced over at me. “Nothing,” I said, rubbing my forehead, which felt as though it should ache. “Just… nothing.”

  He uttered a low chuckle of amusement. My sweet little Deka was a baritone now, and not at all little anymore. Was he still sweet? That was something only time could tell.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “My laboratory.”

  “Oh, so they let you use one by yourself?”

  He had not stopped smiling; now he developed a smug air. “Of course. All teachers have their own.”

  I slowed, frowning up at him. “You mean you’re a full scrivener? Already?”

  “Shouldn’t I be? The course of study isn’t that difficult. I finished it a few years back.”

  I remembered the wistful, shy child he had been—so unsure of himself, so quick to let his sister take the lead. Could it be that here, beyond the shadow of his family’s disapproval, he had unleashed that wild cleverness of his? I smiled. “Still the arrogant Arameri, in spite of everything.”

  Deka glanced at me, his smile fading just a little. “I’m not Arameri, Sieh. They threw me out, remember?”

  I shook my head. “The only way to truly leave the Arameri is to die. They’ll always come back for you, otherwise—if not for you, for your children.”

  “Hmm. True enough.”

  We had turned a corner in the meantime and headed down another carpeted corridor, and now Deka led me up a wide, banistered stairwell. Three girls carrying reed pens and scrolls bobbed in polite greeting as they came down the stairs and passed us. All three blushed or batted their eyes at Deka. He nodded back regally. As soon as they were out of sight around the corner, I heard their burst of excited giggling and felt a flicker of my old nature respond. Crushes: like butterfly wings against the soul.

  At the top of the stairs, Deka unlocked and opened a pair of handsome wooden doors. Inside, the room was not what I expected. I had seen the First Scrivener’s laboratory in Sky: a stark, forbidding place of white gleaming surfaces that held only ephemeral touches of color, like black ink or red blood. Deka’s lab was Darrwood, deep and brown, and gold Chellin marble. Octagonal in shape, four of its walls were nothing but books—floor-to-ceiling shelves, each stacked two or three deep with tomes and scrolls and even a few stone or wooden tablets. Wide flat worktables dominated the center of the room, and something odd, a sort of glass-enclosed booth, stood on the room’s edge at the juncture of two walls. Yet there were no tools or implements in sight, other than those used for writing. No cages along the wall, filled with specimens for experiments. No lingering scent of pain.

  I looked around the room in wonder and confusion. “What the hells kind of scrivener are you?”

  Deka closed the door behind me. “My specialty is godling lore,” he said. “I wrote my concluding thesis on you.”

  I turned to him. He stood against the closed doors, watching me. For an instant, in his stillness, he reminded me of Nahadoth as much as Ahad. All three had that same habit of unblinking intensity, which in Ahad covered nihilism and in Nahadoth covered madness. In Deka, I had no idea what it meant. Yet.

  “You don’t think I tried to kill you, then,” I said.

  “No. It was obvious something went wrong with the oath.”

  One knot of tension eased inside me; the rest stayed taut. “You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

  He shrugged, ducking his eyes, and for a moment I saw a hint of the boy he’d been. “I still have friends in Sky. They keep me informed of events that matter.”

  Very much still the Arameri, whatever his protestations to the contrary. “You knew I would be coming, then.”

  “I guessed. Especially when I heard about your leaving, two years ago. I expected you then, actually.” He looked up, his expression suddenly unreadable. “You killed First Scrivener Shevir.”

  I shifted from one foot to another, slipping my hands into my pockets. “I didn’t mean to. He was just in the way.”

  “Yes. You do that a lot, I’ve realized from studying your history. Typical of a child, to act first and deal with the consequences later. You’re careful to do that—act impulsively—even though you’re experienced and wise enough to know better. This is what it means to live true to your nature.”

  I stared at him, flummoxed.

  “My contacts told me you were angry with Shahar,” he said. “Why?”

  I set my jaw. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “You didn’t kill her, I see.”

  I scowled. “What do you care? You haven’t spoken to her for years.”

  Deka shook his head. “I still love her. But I’ve been used as a weapon against her once already. I will not let that happen again.” He pushed away from the door abruptly and came toward me, and so flustered was I by his manner that I took a step back before I caught myself.

  “I will be her weapon instead,” he said.

  It took me a shamefully long time, all things considered, to realize that he had spoken to me in the First Tongue.

  “What the hells are you doing?” I demanded, clenching my fists to keep from clapping a hand over his mouth. “Shut up before you kill us both!”

  To my shock, he smiled and began to unfasten his overshirt. “I’ve been speaking magic for years, Sieh,” he said. “I can hear the world and the
stars as gods do. I know when reality listens closest, when even the softest word will awaken its wrath or coax it into obedience. I don’t know how I know these things, but I do.”

  Because you are one of us, I almost said, but how could I be sure of that? His blood hadn’t killed me. I tried to understand even as he continued undressing in front of me.

  Then he got his overshirt open. I knew before he’d unlaced the white shirt underneath; the characters glowed dark through the fabric. Black markings, dozens of them, marched along most of his upper torso and shoulders, beginning to make their way down the flat planes of his abdomen. I stared, confused. Scriveners marked themselves whenever they mastered a new activation; it was the way of their art. They put our powerful words on their fragile mortal skin, using will and skill alone to keep the magic from devouring them. But they used ordinary ink to do it, and they washed the marks off once the ritual was done. Deka’s marks, I saw at once, were like Arameri blood sigils. Permanent. Deadly.

  And they were not scrivening marks. The style was all wrong. These lines had none of the spidery jaggedness I was used to seeing in scrivener work: ugly, but effective. These marks were smooth and almost geometric in their cleanliness. I had never seen anything like them. Yet they had power, whatever they were; I could read that in the swirling interstices of their shapes. There was meaning in this, as multilayered as poetry and as clear as metaphor. Magic is merely communication, after all.

  Communication, and conduits.

  This is something we have never told mortals. Paper and ink are weak structures on which to build the framework of magic. Breath and sound aren’t much better, yet we godlings willingly confine ourselves to those methods because the mortal realm is such a fragile place. And because mortals are such dangerously fast learners.

  But flesh makes for an excellent conduit. This was something the Arameri had learned by trial and error, though they’d never fully understood it. They wrote contracts with us onto their foreheads for protection, calling them blood sigils as if that was all they were, and we could not kill them, no matter how badly worded they were. Now Deka had written demands for power into his own skin, and his flesh gave the words meaning. He had written it in a script of his own devising, more flexible and beautiful than the rough speech of his fellow scriveners, and the universe would not deny him.