The Inheritance Trilogy

by N. K. Jemisin

  “Bastard,” I said, clenching my fist around the knife hilt. Death. I held the death of the universe in my fist. “Arrogant, selfish, evil bastard.”

  Itempas merely waited. The knife was small, but I could angle it just so, get it between the ribs easily to prick his heart. Hells, if Oree Shoth had been a demon, too, then her daughter was more than half god. Even a scratch tainted with her blood might do the trick.

  I unfastened the loop, but my fingers were shaking. When I took the hilt in my hand to draw it, I couldn’t. My hands just wouldn’t move. Eventually I let them—and the dagger—drop to my sides.

  “If you want me to die—” he began.

  “Shut up,” I whispered. “Shut up, gods damn you. I hate you.”

  “If you hate me—”

  “Shut up!” He fell silent, and I cursed and threw the dagger to the floor between us. The sound of leather on daystone made an echoing crack from the chamber’s walls. I had begun to cry. I raked my hands through my hair. “Just shut up, all right? Gods, you’re so insufferable! You can’t make me choose something like that! I’ll hate you if I damn well please!”

  “All right.” His voice was soft, soothing. Against my will, I remembered times—rare but precious—when we had sat together in his placid realm, watching time dance. I had always been conscious of the fact that he and I would never be friends. Lovers was out of the question. But father and son? That much we could do.

  “All right, Sieh,” he said now, so gently. He did not change. “Hate me if you like.”

  The urge to love him was so powerful that I shook with it.

  I turned and stormed over to the stair entrance, trotting down the steps. When I looked up, just before my head passed beyond the floor’s threshold, I saw Itempas watching me. He had not picked up the knife. He had, however, changed: his face was wet with tears.

  I ran. I ran. I ran.

  The door to Deka’s apartment was not locked. No servant would invade his privacy unannounced, and no highblood would come near him as yet. He was an unknown commodity. His family feared him, as he’d wished. I should have, too, because he was more powerful than me, but I had always loved strong people.

  He rose from the worktable at which he’d been sitting—not a standard furniture item in Sky. Already he’d made changes. “Who the—Sieh?” He looked exhausted. He’d been up most of the night before, working with the scrivener corps to examine the assassins’ masks. Yet here he was, barefoot and tunicless, hair mussed, still awake. I saw sketches on several scrolls and a stack of sheets marked with the Litaria’s official sigil. Personnel for the new palace, perhaps. “Sieh, what…?”

  “There’s no need to fear me,” I said, coming around the worktable at him. I held his eyes as I would those of any prey. He stared back. So easy to catch them when they wanted to be caught. “I may be older than the world, but I’m also just a man; no god is ever only one thing. If the whole of me frightens you, love whichever part you like.”

  He flinched, confusion and desire and guilt all rising and sinking out of sight in his face. Finally he sighed as I reached him. His shoulders slumped a little in defeat. “Sieh.”

  So much meaning in that one word. The wind, but also lightning, and need as raw as an open wound. I put my arms around him. The power written into his skin pulsed once, whispering warningly to me of pain and slaughter. I pressed my face to his shoulder and clenched my fists on the back of his shirt, wishing it was gone so I could touch those deadly marks.

  “Sieh…” Deka began. He’d gone stiff at my embrace, holding his arms out as if afraid to touch me. “Sieh, gods—”

  “Just let me do this,” I breathed into his shoulder. “Please, Deka.”

  His hands landed on my shoulders, too light, hesitant. That wouldn’t do. I pulled him harder against me and he made a soft, strained sound. Then his arms slid around me, tightening. I felt the scrape of nails through my shirt. His face pressed into my hair. A hand cupped the back of my neck.

  There was a time of stillness. It wasn’t long, because nothing in the mortal realm lasts long. It felt long, however, which was all that really mattered.

  When I’d finally had enough, I pulled back and waited for the questions. Mortals always asked questions. Why did you come here? would be first, I was certain, because he wanted me and probably hoped that I wanted him. That wasn’t it at all, but I would tell him what he wanted to hear.

  A long, awkward silence fell. Deka fidgeted and said, “I need at least a few hours of sleep.”

  I nodded, still waiting.

  He looked away. “You don’t have to leave.”

  So I didn’t.

  We lay in his bed, side by side, chaste. I waited, expecting his hands, his mouth, the weight of his body. I would give him what he wanted. Might even enjoy it. Anything not to be alone.

  He shifted closer and put his hand over mine. I waited for more, but a long while passed. Eventually, I heard long, even breaths from his side of the bed. Surprised, I turned my head. He was dead asleep.

  I gazed at him until I slept, too.

  Cycles.

  Deka woke some time before dawn and shook me awake. Quite without planning, we did what mortal lovers have done since time immemorial, stumbling blearily around each other as we each prepared for the day. While he spoke to the servants, ordering tea and summoning a clerk to distribute messages to the scriveners, assassins, and courtiers he’d chosen to accompany us, I went into the bathroom and made myself presentable. Then while he did the same, I drank the tea and peeked at his desk, where he’d scribbled notes about defensive magic and begun penning some sort of request to the Litaria. He caught me doing this as he emerged from his bedroom, but he didn’t seem to care, walking past me and checking to see how much tea I’d left him. (Not much. This earned me a glower. I shrugged.)

  We proceeded to the forecourt. A group of thirty or so scriveners, soldiers, and various highbloods were already there, including Shahar, who stood dressed in a furred traveling cloak against the brisk morning air. She nodded to us as we arrived, and I nodded back, which made her blink. Servants were arriving, too, carrying trunks and satchels that probably contained more of the highbloods’ belongings than their own. As the eastern horizon grew more solidly pale with the imminence of dawn, Remath arrived—and with her, to my great surprise, came Itempas and Yeine. I saw many of the other assembled folk peer at the latter in confusion, since they were obviously not of the family. Yeine stopped some ways back, turning toward the distant horizon as if hearing its call; this was her time. Itempas broke off from Remath as they reached the group, coming to stand near the rest of us, though not close enough for conversation. He watched Yeine.

  Deka turned, staring at Itempas, and then abruptly his eyes widened. “Sieh, is that—”

  “Yes,” I snapped. I folded my arms and carefully ignored both of them.

  Ramina was there as well, clearly awaiting Remath, as was Morad, who was dressed for travel. That surprised me. Was Remath willing even to give up her lover to this madness? Perhaps they were not so close after all. Morad’s face was impassive, but I suspected she was less than happy about it.

  “Good morning, my friends,” Remath said, though aside from Morad, no one there was her friend. “By now matters have been explained to you. Naturally you will be unhappy at the short notice, but this was necessary for the sake of secrecy and safety. I trust there are no objections.”

  In any other circumstance, there would have been, but these were Arameri, and particularly ones who had been chosen for their wits and value. Silence greeted her in response.

  “Very well. We await one final guest, and then we will proceed.”

  Abruptly the world gave a faint, and deliciously familiar, shudder. It was a delicate thing, yet powerful; even the mortals could feel it. The daystone beneath our feet creaked ominously, while the satinbell trees in the nearby Garden of the Hundred Thousand shivered, shedding some of their perfect dangling blossoms. And I closed my eyes
, inhaling so that I would not whoop for joy.

  “Sieh?” Shahar’s voice, alarmed and puzzled. Her ancestors had known this sensation, but no Arameri in a hundred years had felt it. I opened my eyes and smiled at her, so fondly that she blinked and almost smiled back.

  “My father returns,” I whispered.

  Beyond us, Yeine turned; she was smiling, too. Itempas—he had turned away from us, gazing off toward the palace as if it was suddenly the most interesting of sights. But I saw the stiffness in his shoulders, the effort that it took him to stay relaxed.

  Nahadoth faded into view near Yeine, a storm weaving itself from nothingness into a semblance of mortal flesh. The shape that he took was an homage to his time of suffering: male, pale, the tendrils of his substance bleeding away like drifting, living smoke. (There had been a mortal body within that smoke once: Ahad. Did he shiver now, somewhere in the city below, feeling the nearby presence of his old prisoner?) Nahadoth’s shape was the only thing that had not changed since the days of his enslavement, for I felt his power now, gloriously whole and terrible, a weight upon the very air. Chaos and darkness, pure and unleashed.

  There were murmurs and cries of alarm within the group of Arameri as Nahadoth manifested, though Remath quelled them with a glare. Making an example of herself, she stepped forward. I did not think less of her for pausing to steel herself.

  I did think better of Shahar, though, who took a deep breath and moved away from us, hurrying to her mother’s side. Remath glanced back at her, forgetting to hide her surprise. Shahar inclined her head in taut reply. She had, after all, met Nahadoth before. Together, both women proceeded to join the two gods.

  Deka did not attempt to join them. He had folded his arms and begun to shift from foot to foot, throwing frowns at Itempas and then at me, generally radiating unhappiness. It was not difficult to guess at the source of his distress: the Three walked among us, even if they were not quite complete, and Deka was not stupid enough to believe they had all come merely to build the Arameri’s vacation home. No doubt he guessed now why I had been so upset the night before.

  I came for you, Itempas had said.

  I folded my arms across my chest as well, but this was not defensive. It just took effort to steel myself against hope.

  Then the conversation was done, and Yeine looked up at all of us, nodding once in absent reply to something Remath said. Her eyes met mine across the forecourt just as, beyond her, the horizon flared gold with the sun’s first delicate rays. For just an instant—as fleeting as the dawn itself—her form changed, becoming something indescribable. My mind tried to define it anyway, using images and sensations that its mortal perceptions could encompass. A phantasm of herself drawn in silver-pastel mist. A vast and impossible landscape, dominated by a whole forest of trees as great as the one that cradled us now. The scent and taste of ripe fruit, tooth-tender and succulently sweet. For a moment I ached with most unfilial yearnings: lust for her, jealousy for Naha, and pity for Tempa because he had gotten to taste her only once.

  Then the moment passed, and Yeine was herself again, and her smile was for me alone, her first and favorite son. I would not give up that specialness for all the world.

  “Time to go,” she said.

  And suddenly we were no longer in Sky.

  “We” being all of us, gods and Arameri, right down to the servants and baggage. One moment we were in Sky’s forecourt, and the next, the forty or so of us were somewhere else in the world, transported by a flick of Yeine’s will. It was later here; the dawn had advanced into full morning, but I paid little attention to this. I was too busy laughing at the Arameri, most of whom were stumbling or gasping or otherwise trying not to panic, because we stood atop an ocean. Waves surrounded us, an endless plain of gently heaving emptiness. When I looked down, I saw that our feet dented the water, as though someone had laid a thin and flexible coating between the liquid and our shoes. When the waves bobbed beneath us, we bobbed with them but did not sink. Some of the Arameri fell over, unable to adjust. I chuckled and braced my feet apart, balancing easily. The trick was to lean forward and rely on one’s core, not the legs. I had skated oceans of liquefied gas, long ago. This was not so different.

  “Bright Father help us!” cried someone.

  “You need no help,” Itempas snapped, and the man fell over, staring at him. Tempa, of course, was rock-steady upon the waves.

  “Will this do?” Yeine asked Remath. Remath, I was amused to see, had solved the problem of maintaining balance and dignity by dropping to one knee again.

  “Yes, Lady,” Remath replied. A swell passed beneath us, making everyone rise and then drop several feet. Yeine, I noted, did not move as this occurred; the dent beneath her feet simply deepened as the water rose and flowed around her. And the swell died the instant it drew near Nahadoth, the wave’s force dissipating into scattered, pointless motion.

  “Where are we?” Shahar asked. She had knelt as well, following Remath’s lead, but even this seemed difficult for her. She did not look up as she spoke, concentrating on remaining at least somewhat upright.

  It was Nahadoth who answered. He had turned to face the sun, narrowing his eyes with a faint look of distaste. It did not harm him, however, because it was just one small star, and it was always night somewhere in the universe.

  “The Ovikwu Sea,” he said. “Or so it was last called, long ago.”

  I began to chuckle. Everyone nearby looked at me in confusion. “The Ovikwu,” I said, letting my voice carry so they could all share the joke, “was a landbound sea in the middle of the Maroland—the continent that once existed where we now stand.” The continent that had been destroyed by the Arameri when they’d been foolish enough to try and use Nahadoth as their weapon. He’d done what they wanted, and then some.

  Deka inhaled. “The first Sky. The one that was destroyed.”

  Nahadoth turned—and paused, gazing at him for far too long a breath. I tensed, my belly clenching. Did he notice the familiarity of Deka’s features, so clearly etched with Ahad’s stamp? If he realized what Deka was, what Remath and Shahar were… Would he listen if I pleaded for their lives?

  “The first Sky is directly below,” he said. And then he looked at me. He knew. I swallowed against sudden fear.

  “Not for long,” said Yeine.

  She raised a hand in a graceful beckoning gesture toward the sea beneath us. The Three can bring new worlds into existence at will; they can set galaxies spinning with a careless breath. It took Yeine no effort to do what she did then. She didn’t need to gesture at all. That was just her sense of theater.

  But I think she’d overestimated the mortal attention span. No one noticed her once the first stones burst from the sea.

  It was Deka who murmured for a bubble of air to form around all of us, warding off the now-churning waves and spray. Thus we were safe, able to watch in undisturbed awe as jagged, seaweed-draped and coral-encrusted chunks of daystone—the smallest the size of the Arms of Night—rose beneath and around us. Rubble undisturbed for centuries: it rose now, tumbling upward, stone piling atop stone and fusing, walls forming and shedding debris, courtyards rising beneath our feet to take the place of the heaving waves, structure shaping itself from nothingness.

  Then it was done, and the spray cleared, and we looked around to find ourselves standing atop glory.

  Take a nautilus shell; cut it cross section. Gently elevate its swirling, chambered tiers as they approach the tight-bound center, culminating at last in a pinnacle on which we all stood. Note its asymmetrical order, its chaotic repetition, the grace of its linkages. Contemplate the ephemerality of its existence. Such is the beauty that is mortal life.

  This was not Sky, old or new. It was smaller than both its predecessor palaces and deceptively simpler. Where those earlier structures had been built compact and high, this palace hugged the ocean’s surface. Instead of sharp spires piercing the sky, here there were low, smoothly sloping buildings, joined by dozens of lacy bridges
. The foundation—for the palace had been built atop a kind of convex platform—was many-lobed and odd, with spars and indentations jutting out in every direction. Its surface gleamed in the dawn light, white and nacreous as pearl, the only similarity between it and Sky.

  I could feel the power woven into every sweeping balustrade, keeping the massive edifice afloat—but there was more to it than magic. Something about the structure itself worked to maintain its buoyancy. If I had still been a god, I might have understood it, for there are rules even where we are concerned, and it was Yeine’s nature to seek balance. Perhaps the magic harnessed the ocean’s waves in some new way or absorbed the power of the sun. Perhaps the foundation was hollow. Regardless, it was clear this new palace would float, and with some assistive magic would travel readily across the ocean. It would defend the precious cargo within its walls, if only because no mortal army could assail it.

  While the mortals turned about, most of them speechless with awe, the rest making sounds of shock and delight and incomprehension, I strode across the drying daystone of the central platform. Yeine and Nahadoth turned to face me.

  “Not bad,” I said. “Bit white, though, isn’t it?”

  Yeine shrugged, amused. “You were thinking gray walls? Do you want them all to kill themselves?”

  I looked around, considering the vast but monotonous surrounding oceanscape. Faintly I could hear surf and wind; aside from that there was silence. I grimaced. “Point. But that doesn’t mean they should have to endure the same boring, austere sameness of the previous two palaces, does it? They’re yours now. Find some way to remind them of that.”

  She thought a moment. Nahadoth, however, smiled. Suddenly the daystone beneath our feet softened, turning to thick black loam. Everywhere I looked—on railings, edging the bridges—the daystone had remolded itself into troughs of soil.

  Yeine laughed and went to him, a teasing look in her eye. “A hint?” She extended her hand, and he took it. I could not help noticing the easy camaraderie between them and the sudden softness of Nahadoth’s cabochon eyes when he gazed at her. His ever-changing face grew still, too, becoming a different kind of familiar: brown-skinned and angular and Darren. I fought the urge to glance at Deka, to see if he had noticed.