The Inheritance Trilogy

by N. K. Jemisin

  Hard to focus, amid so many distractions. (My hands itched to play with one of the puppets. It had been so long since I’d had a new toy.) But I had a job to do, so I kept scanning the crowd, holding on to a gutter pipe as I leaned this way and that. I would know when I found what I was looking for. It was only a matter of time.

  Then, just as I had begun to worry, I spotted my quarry. Moving past a tightly packed group of middle-aged women who looked both thrilled and terrified to be among such a crowd: a boy of nine or ten years old. Amn, wearing old clothing that had the look of garments taken from a White Hall tithe pile, with unkempt hair that hadn’t seen a comb in days. He passed one of the women and stumbled, bracing one hand on her back to right himself and apologizing quickly. It was nicely done; he had bowed himself away and into the current of foot traffic almost before the woman realized he’d touched her.

  I grinned, delighted. Then I hopped down from the bin lid (another man immediately claimed my place atop it, throwing a belligerent look at my back) and hurried after him.

  Took half a block to catch up with him; he was small and wove among the members of the crowd as deftly as a river snake among reeds. I was a grown-up and had to be polite. But I’d guessed his destination—a pack of children milling about a stall that sold tamarind-lime juice—and that made it easy to head him off a few feet before he reached them. I caught his thin, wiry arm and stayed ready, because boys his age were not defenseless. They had no compunctions against biting, and they tended to run in packs.

  The boy swore at me in polyglot profanity, immediately trying to pull free. “Leggo!”

  “What’d you take?” I asked, genuinely curious. The woman hadn’t had a purse visible, probably fearing exactly what had happened to her, but there could have been one beneath her clothing. “Jewelry? A shawl or something? Or did you actually manage to get into her pocket?” If the latter, he was a master of his craft and would be perfect for my needs.

  His eyes grew wide. “ ’In’t take nothin’! Who th’ hells—” He jumped suddenly and grabbed at my wrist, which was already emerging from his pocket. I’d gotten only one coin; my hands were too damned big now for proper pocket-picking. But his face turned purple with fury and consternation, and I grinned.

  I lifted the hand that held the coin and closed my fingers around it. Didn’t even need magic for this trick: when I opened my hand again, two coins lay there, his and one from my own pocket.

  The boy froze, staring at this. He did not take either coin, turning a suddenly shrewd and wary look on me. “Wh’you want?”

  I let him go, now that I’d gotten his attention. “To hire you, and any friends you’ve got with similar inclinations.”

  “We don’t want trouble.” The slangy, contracted Senmite he’d been using vanished as swiftly as he had, after lifting the woman’s purse. “Keepers don’t bother us as long as we stick to pockets and wallets. Anything more and they’ll hunt us down.”

  I nodded, wishing I could bless him with safety. “All I want you to do is look,” I said. “Move through the crowd, see what you usually see, do what you usually do. But if you let me, I can look through your eyes.”

  He caught his breath, and for a moment I couldn’t read his face. He was astonished and skeptical and hopeful and frightened, all at once. But he searched my face with such sudden intensity that I realized, far later than I should have, what he was thinking. When I did, I started to grin, and that did it: his eyes got as big as twenty-meri coins.

  “Trickster, trickster,” he whispered. “Stole the sun for a prank.” En pulsed on my breast, pleased to be mentioned.

  “No prayers, now,” I said, cupping his cheek with one hand. Mine. “I’m not a god today, just a man who needs your help. Will you give it?”

  He inclined his head just a hair more formally than he needed to. Ah, he was marvelous. “Your hand,” I said, and he offered it to me at once.

  I still had a few ways of using magic, though they were crude and weak and a betrayal of my pride to employ. The universe did not listen to me the way it once had, but as long as I kept the requests simple, it would grudgingly obey. “Look,” I said in our tongue, and the air shivered around us as I traced the shape of an eye into the boy’s palm with my fingertip. “Hear. Share.”

  The outline flickered briefly, a silver flash like drifting confetti, and then the boy’s flesh was just flesh again. He peered at it, fascinated.

  “Find your friends,” I said. “Touch as many of them as you can with this hand, and send them out among the crowd. The magic will end when the Arameri family head returns to Sky.” Then I closed my free hand and opened it again. This time a single coin sat in my palm: a hundred-meri piece, more than the boy could have stolen in a week, unless he’d gotten very bold or very lucky.

  The boy’s eyes fixed on it, but he did not reach for it, swallowing. “I can’t take money from you.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” I said, and tucked the coin into his pocket before I let him go. “No follower of mine should ever do something for nothing. If you need to change it safely, go to the Arms of Night in South Root and tell Ahad I sent you. He’ll be an ass about it, but he won’t cheat you. Now go.” And because he was staring at me, awe stunting his wits, I winked at him and then stepped back, letting myself vanish amid the crowd. There was no magic to this. It just took an understanding of how mortals moved when they gathered together in great herds like this. The boy did the same thing as part of his pickpocketing, but I had several thousand years’ experience on him. From his perspective, I seemed to disappear. I caught a final glimpse of his mouth falling open, and then I let the traffic carry me elsewhere.

  “Smoothly done,” said Glee when I found her again. She had been waiting in front of a small café, standing as still and striking as a pillar amid the flow of babbling mostly Amn.

  “You were watching?” The café had a bench, which was packed; I didn’t even try to sit. Instead I leaned against a wall, half in Glee’s shadow. Though neither of us were Amn, I was betting no one would notice me with her there. After five minutes I knew I was right; half the people who had passed us glanced at her, and the other half ignored us altogether.

  “Some,” she replied. “I’m not a god. I can’t see without my eyes like you do. But I can see magic, even in a crowd.”

  “Oh.” Demon magic was always strange. I slipped my hands into my pockets and yawned loudly, not bothering to cover my mouth despite the disgusted glances of a passing couple. “So, Itempas around here somewhere, too?”

  “No.”

  I snorted. “What exactly is it that you’re protecting him from? Nothing short of demons’ blood can kill him, and who would do that, given the consequences?”

  She said nothing for a long moment, and I thought she would ignore me. Then she said, “How much do you know about godsblood?”

  “I know the mortals drink it, when they can, for a taste of magic.” My lip curled. During my first few decades in Sky, some of the Arameri had taken blood from me. It had done nothing for them, since my flesh then was more or less mortal, but that hadn’t stopped them from trying. “I know some of my siblings sell it to them, gods know why.”

  Glee shrugged. “Our organization, via Kitr’s group, keeps an eye on such sales. A few months ago, Kitr received a request for some very unusual godsblood. More unusual, anyway, than the standard requests for menstrual flow or heart blood.”

  Now it was my turn to be surprised, mostly because I hadn’t realized any of my sisters bothered menstruating. Why in darkness—Well, it didn’t matter. “Itempas is mortal now. His flesh is, anyway. His blood would only sour some poor mortal’s stomach.”

  “He’s still one of the Three, Sieh. Even without magic, his blood has value. And who’s to say that these mask users can’t find a way to eke magic out of Father’s blood even in his current state? Remember that there is godsblood in the northerners’ masks… and remember that Kahl’s mask is yet incomplete.”

  I cursed
as I understood. I did this strictly in Senmite—too dangerous to speak our tongue under these conditions. No way to know who was listening or what strange magics slept nearby. “This is what comes of gods selling pieces of themselves to mortals.” My stupid, stupid younger siblings! Hadn’t they seen, again and again, that mortals would always find a way to use gods, hurt us, control us, if they could? I slammed a fist against the unyielding stone of the wall behind me and gasped as, instead of cracking the wall, my hand reminded me of its fragility with a white, breathtaking flash of pain.

  Glee sighed. “Stop that.” Coming over, she took my hand and lifted it, turning it this way and that to see whether I’d broken the bone. I hissed and tried to pull away, but she threw me such a quelling glare at me that I stopped squirming and meekly held still. She would be a terrifying mother someday, if she ever had children.

  “For what it’s worth, I agree with you,” she said quietly. “Though I don’t limit my condemnation to mortals. Remember what gods have done with the blood of demons, after all.”

  I flinched at this, my anger evaporating into shame.

  “Not broken,” she pronounced, and let me go. I cradled my hand to my chest since it still hurt, and sulking made me feel better.

  “Gods are not truly creatures of flesh,” Glee continued, nodding toward my injured hand. “I understand this. But the vessels that you wear in this realm contain something of the real you—enough to access the greater whole.” She let out a long, heavy breath. “The Arameri had Nahadoth in their possession for centuries. You know, better than I, how much of his body they might have taken in that time. And while I doubt they have anything of Yeine, they did have a piece of Enefa in their keeping.”

  I inhaled. The Stone of Earth. The last remnant of my mother’s flesh, taken from the corporeal form that had died when Itempas poisoned her with demons’ blood. It was gone now, because Yeine had incorporated it into herself. But for two thousand years it had been a physical object, kept in the exclusive possession of mortals who had already developed a taste for the power of gods.

  “A pound of the Nightlord’s flesh,” Glee said, “and perhaps nothing more than a speck of the Gray Lady’s. Add to that some portion of the Dayfather, and use mortal magic to stir the mix…” She shrugged. “I cannot imagine what would result from such a recipe. Can you?”

  Nothing good. Nothing sane. To mingle the essences of the Three was to invoke a level of power that no mortal, and few godlings, could handle safely. The crater that would be left by such an attempt would be immense—and it would be a crater not on the face of the world but on reality itself.

  “No god would do this,” I murmured, shaken. “This Kahl… he has to know how dangerous this is. He can’t be planning what we think he’s planning.” Vengeance was his nature, but this went beyond vengeance. This was madness.

  “Nevertheless,” Glee said. “The worst case is what we must prepare for. And this is why I don’t intend to let anyone have my father.” The familiar look was there again, in the cold implacability of her voice and the stubborn set of her shoulders. For a moment I imagined a circle of light revolving about her, a white sword in her hands… but no.

  “You’re mortal,” I said softly. “Even if you can somehow keep Itempas hidden from a god, you won’t be able to do it forever. If nothing else, Kahl can wait you out.”

  She looked at me, and for an instant I was painfully aware that only the fragile shield of her skin stood between me and her deadly, demonic blood.

  “Kahl will die before I do,” she said. “I’ll make certain of that.” With that, she turned and walked into the crowd, leaving me alone with my wonder and fear.

  I bought a tamarind juice to console myself.

  After a while, I decided to see whether the seed I’d planted had borne any fruit. Closing my eyes and sitting down on the steps of a closed bookstore, I sought out the boy who bore my mark. It took only a moment, and to my delight I found that he had spread the mark to eight others already, all of whom were now roving through the crowd on both sides of the barricaded street. I could hear through them, too—mostly the ever-present murmur of the crowd, punctuated by the occasional variance: horse hooves as a mounted Order-Keeper passed on the street, music as a busker plied his trade. All of the sights were from a child’s point of view. I sighed in longing and settled in to wait for the festivities to begin.

  Two hours passed. Glee eventually came back and reported that Nemmer—who hadn’t bothered to speak to me—had sent a message that there was no sign of trouble thus far. Better still, Glee handed me a cup of savory ice flavored with rosemary and serry flowers that she’d bought from some vendor; for that alone I would love her forever.

  As I licked my fingers, the crowd abruptly grew tense, and their noise trebled all at once. I had to keep my eyes closed in order to focus on the children’s vision, but through their eyes I saw the first white, waving banners of Dekarta’s procession, which had reached the Avenue of Nobles at last. There came a marching column of soldiers first, several hundred deep. In their midst rode a massive palanquin, gliding smoothly along on the shoulders of dozens of men. Mounted soldiers and Order-Keepers flanked this, some with an air that made me suspect they were scriveners, and more soldiers followed behind. The palanquin was simple and graceful in its design, little more than a railed platform, but it had been constructed of daystone, too, and shone like noonday in this perpetually twilit city.

  And atop this, stunning and stark in black, stood Dekarta. He’d added a heavy mantle to his outfit, which suited his broad shoulders perfectly, and he stood with legs apart and his hands gripping the forward rail as if it were the yoke of the world. No detached gaze for him; his eyes scanned the crowd as the procession traveled, his expression as cool and challenging as I’d ever seen. When the palanquin stopped and the men lowered it to the ground, he did not wait for it to touch the street stones before he stepped off its side and strode forward, purposeful and swift. The soldiers parted clumsily, and his guards scrambled to follow. Deka stopped, however, on reaching the foot of the steps. There he flicked back his cloak and waited, his eyes trained on the World Tree—or perhaps he was gazing at the palace nestled in the lowest fork of its trunk. It was his first sight of home in ten years, after all. If he still considered Sky home.

  The crowd, meanwhile, had gone mad for him. People on either side of the street barriers cheered, shouted, and waved their white pennants. Through one of my spy-children’s eyes, I saw a gaggle of well-dressed merchant girls scream and point at Deka and scream again, clutching each other and jumping up and down. It was more than his beauty, I realized. It was everything: his hauteur, the implied defiance of his clothing, the confidence that seemed to issue from his very pores. Everyone knew his story—born an outsider, the spare who could never be heir. That was part of it, too. He was more like them than a true Arameri, and he was stronger, not weaker, for his difference. They certainly seemed to love him for it.

  But then there was a stir at the other end of the avenue. From somewhere within the Salon, two people emerged. Ramina Arameri, magnificent in a white uniform with the full sigil stark on his brow, and another man I didn’t recognize. Well dressed, Teman, tall for one of that race, with waist-length locks wrapped in silver cuffs and studded with what had to be diamonds. He wore white, too, though not completely. The centerline of his uniform, which otherwise matched Ramina’s, had been accented by a double line of green fabric edged in gold. The colors of the Teman Protectorate. Datennay Canru, Shahar’s husband-to-be.

  They moved to the center of the steps and then stood waiting, their presence enough of a warning that no one missed what followed.

  There was a flicker atop both sets of daystone steps, and in the same instant two women appeared. To the right was Remath, clad in a deceptively simple white satin gown, carrying an object that made my belly clench: a glass scepter, tipped with a spadelike sharp blade. To the left…

  In spite of everything that had happened
, in spite of my resolve to be a man and not a boy about it, I had to open my own eyes to see her for myself. Shahar.

  It was clear that Remath intended for her daughter to be the center of attention. This was not difficult, as like Dekarta, Shahar had only grown in beauty over the years. Her figure had filled out, her hair was longer, and the lines of her face seemed more settled and mature—the face of a woman, at last, rather than a girl. The dress she wore seemed barely attached to her flesh. The base garment was a translucent tube, thin enough that all of Shadow could see her pale skin through its fabric—but at her breasts and hips, enormous silvery flower petals, loose and curling and long as a man’s arm, had been adhered to the material. They drifted behind her like clouds as she came down the steps. There was a collective gasp from the crowd as everyone realized: the petals were real and taken from the World Tree’s flowers. Given the size, however, they could only have been blossoms from very high on the Tree, where the Tree pierced the world’s envelope. No mortal flower collector could climb to such airless heights, and the Arameri no longer had god-slaves. How had they gotten them? Regardless, the effect was perfect: Shahar had become a mortal woman swathed in the divine.

  Shahar’s expression, unlike Remath’s, was everything an Arameri heir’s should be: proud, arrogant, superior. But when she turned to face her mother and they walked toward each other, she lowered her gaze with just the perfect touch of humility. The world was not hers, not yet, not quite. Mother and daughter met between the steps, and Remath took Shahar’s left hand in her right. Then—with such casual grace that they had to have practiced it dozens of times—both women turned toward the Avenue of Nobles and raised their free hands toward Dekarta, in clear welcome.