The Inheritance Trilogy

by N. K. Jemisin

  After I came back Eino was still asleep, so I sat down outside his room because I thought there might be more interesting things to look at in the hallway, and that is how I found out I was not supposed to be near his room. When people in the house began to stir, a boy I did not know saw me sitting in front of Eino’s door. He gasped really loud and ran off. (I was pretty sure that was not my fault.) Then Arolu came and found me and asked me to come with him.

  We sat down in the house’s kitchen, where all the mortal food kept distracting me because it smelled so interesting, so finally Arolu asked another boy to get me a plate of food, and while I tried to figure out how to eat it, he talked. “I see you’ve met my son, Eino.”

  “Oh! He’s your son?” I watched the other boy, who sat at the far end of the long table from me and Arolu. He used a small knife and a fork to shovel food into his mouth, so I tried to imitate him. Also I wondered why nobody had introduced me to him or to the boy who’d tattled on me. Maybe they were waiting for me to say hi first? “You and he aren’t much alike, though. He’s not very nice.”

  Arolu chuckled. “Boys that age do tend to be… high-strung.” He spread his hands, as if in apology. “But along those lines… Lady Shill, it’s important that you not be seen alone with him. Especially not in intimate places, like his bedchamber.”

  Bedchambers were intimate? “Why?” A piece of fruit slid off the knife; I giggled.

  “Because you are female, Lady Shill, and he is male, and because you look older today than you did yesterday. I would have put you at seven then; now you look, hmm, ten.”

  I looked down at myself, pleased to find that I had, indeed, gotten bigger. Being in the mortal realm was making me so much better! But—“Why does it matter that I look older now?”

  “Because it is a reminder to everyone who meets you that your childlike appearance does not necessarily make you a child.”

  “But I am a child!”

  “For now.” Arolu reached over to a pot of liquid and poured some into a little cup, which he then offered to me. I sipped it and then kicked my feet because it was amazing! Sweet and sort of bitey, which made me grin at him. He smiled back. “Ginger juice, with a bit of serry-flower pulp. A Darren specialty; I’m told we sell quite a lot of it in northern Senm.”

  “It’s good! Thank you!” He really was nice. I hoped Eino grew up to be more like him.

  He inclined his head with perfect grace. “What I mean, Lady Shill, is that not only could you choose to become an adult in appearance, but you are maturing in fact—rapidly, as your recent change suggests. That is a dangerous thing.”

  I stopped in the middle of sipping my juice, frowning. “I’m going to try really hard not to hurt anybody.”

  His smile was suddenly sad. “I’m glad to hear that. But the fact remains you might hurt someone, for all your best intentions. Eino is impressionable, and even a young godling can be… impressive.”

  I put my juice down, completely mystified. “Eino’s really strong, though. He’s even stronger than me in a lot of ways.” I felt this instinctively. “That’s why I want to stay near him, so I can get strong like that.”

  “Yes.” Arolu stopped smiling. “You could use him that way. But what does he gain from the exchange? Will he grow stronger too?” When I inhaled, because I had never thought of it as using, Arolu sighed. “Study the history of gods and mortals on this world, Lady Shill. I suspect I cannot keep you from Eino; I’ve lived among enulai too long not to understand something of your kind and your natures. You must be what you are—but please, try not to make the same mistakes as others of your kind. That’s all I ask.”

  With that, he patted my hand and got up and went away upstairs. I sat there a little while longer, trying to understand what that whole conversation had been about, but I didn’t. Then one of the boys came over and said, “May I take your plate, Lady?”

  I blinked up at him. He was small, almost as small as me, and his hair was only to his shoulders; he’d braided it back. He didn’t have on a complicated robey thing the way Eino and Arolu did; his was simpler and plainer-colored, with narrow sleeves that had been pushed up to the elbow. He kept his eyes turned down, which I didn’t like, so I said, “Hello! I’m Shill. Who are you?”

  He looked surprised. “Oh—um. I’m Juem, Lady. Just a servant.”

  I knew the word servant. It was sort of like the way some mortals tried to do things we wanted, except we never asked them to. I wondered why. And I really wished he would look up! “Hey, do you want some juice?” I picked up the pot Arolu had used. There wasn’t much left so I made more until the pot was full, and then I made some cups, and then I stood up to try and pour the juice into them the way Arolu had done. The other boy was over by the fire, looking at me oddly; Juem just stared, gape-mouthed. I don’t know why. It was hard pouring the juice. I spilled some, then gasped and tried to find something to wipe it up with, and Juem reached for a rag on another table, but then I just vanished it away and tried to pretend I hadn’t spilled it. Juem started laughing behind his hand, and I ducked my head. “Um. Sorry.”

  The other boy—the one who’d told Arolu about me being outside Eino’s room—came over and took the pot from my hands with a graceful little bow. “It’s all right, Lady. That’s our job, anyway. It takes practice.”

  “It’s a hard job!” They both giggled at this, but I felt better, because I didn’t think they were laughing at me. “Um, hello. I’m Shill.”

  The other boy looked amused. He was older than Juem, but looked a lot like him, and I could feel the kinship between them. Siblings! “I heard. I’m Erem. Honored to meet you, Lady.”

  “OK.” I wasn’t sure what else to say when people said stuff like that. “Do you want some too?” So we all sat down and had juice together.

  “This is good,” Juem said as we relaxed. “We should do a fermented version for the wedding feast.”

  “What?” Erem looked shocked.

  “What?” I asked, confused.

  Juem chuckled at Erem. “The old lady announced it yesterday; didn’t you hear? She’s picked Mikna. ’S’why Eino stormed out all afire before mid-meal. She said who she’d picked, he asked her for a private talk in her study, all prim and calm as you please—and then Heshna at the Dallaq clan house said he could hear Eino yelling. That’s two houses away.” He grinned at both of us; I blinked. “They say he didn’t even come home ’til the middle of the night!”

  Anything about Eino interested me. I knew that mid-meal was a time when humans liked to feed themselves in the middle of the day. I had appeared in the market around midday! So I had met Eino right after he had yelled at Fahno, then gone looking for a way to sneak his scroll into the Raringa.

  Erem inhaled, sitting forward. “Only he could get away with that.”

  “Maybe. Rumor has it he was at Yukur with a bunch of other boys breaking curfew, all of ’em cavorting like traitors of old!”

  “No!”

  I was not supposed to tell, so I bit my bottom lip. But I was so curious! Maybe I could ask about things that weren’t about the anatun? “I don’t understand,” I said, carefully. “Why was Eino upset? What is a Mikna?”

  They looked at each other, Erem suddenly squirming. “This is just servant gossip, Lady,” Erem said. “We shouldn’t have brought it up in front of you. It’s nothing of import.”

  “I’m forty days old,” I said solemnly, and they blinked. “Oh! Forty-one. Everything is important to me.”

  They stared, then giggled behind their hands. I smiled, too, even though I didn’t think it was that funny. Finally Juem sighed. “Mikna’s a who, not a what,” he said. “She’s another enulai practicing in Darr, one of Fahno’s protégés.”

  “But not the only other enulai practicing in Darr,” Erem interjected. “Darr is blessed with three, though we’ve only got maybe seven godlings altogether living in the country.”

  “Two again,” said Juem. “Fahno’s retired.”

  “Oh. Right.�
��

  “Mikna,” I said, hoping they would get to the point.

  Juem chuckled at me. “Mikna is by all accounts the better enulai. Older, stronger, with a bigger stable of godlings. And she’s old Darre—from an old clan, that is, with conqueror roots and traditional ways. Always had a bit of magic, but a few years back a godling took up with a boy from the clan, and decided to make a daughter with him. Godlings aren’t much for raising demons, so she gave the child to the clan, and they’ve been enulai ever since.”

  I nodded. “Eino.”

  “I was getting there!” He huffed at my impatience. “Eino’s old enough to be married off, see. More than, but Fahno-enulai’s better than most clan matriarchs; she didn’t want him going off to be a father when he was barely more than a boy himself. But he’s just gotten prettier with the extra years, and word’s out about how strong his magic is. That usually means his demon blood is strong, too—which makes our Eino the perfect sire for the next generation of enulai, in any clan.”

  “But then there’s the other enulai clan in Darr,” said Erem, leaning forward so I would know that what he had to say was important, too. “That’s Lumyn’s people. Lumyn’s not much for the enulai art; the blood runs weak in her, probably because they’ve been breeding with foreigners for years. Amn and such.” They both grimaced; I nodded, though I had only the vaguest idea of what he was talking about. “Lumyn even trained outside Darr, down somewhere in Senm. But she’s of marrying age, too, and she came a-courting Eino as well—and Eino seems to like her better.”

  It was a little confusing, but I understood. Sort of. “If they both want babies from Eino, why doesn’t he just give them both babies?” It seemed the simplest solution.

  They both stared at me. “They want husbands, not just the children those husbands will make,” said Juem, finally, once he stopped looking appalled. “Who else is going to bathe the children and feed them and teach them the ways of two clans, and protect them if the home’s invaded? Women risk their lives enough to bear children and provide for them by tool or by blade; the least men can do is handle things after that.”

  “Oh.” I frowned, wondering if Eino was much interested in feeding babies. He would be really good at protecting them, though!

  “So,” Juem continued, reaching for more serry juice, “now there’s two clans fighting hard for our little Eino. And he doesn’t want the one his beba’s picked.”

  “It’s done,” said Erem, shaking his head. “If you said she’s picked Mikna—”

  “Now, when have you ever known Eino to give in to what somebody else wanted?”

  Yeah, that didn’t sound like Eino at all.

  But—“I don’t know if Eino wants either of them,” I said, frowning to myself. I thought maybe Eino really just wanted to dance, and maybe be an enulai himself, and do other things that men long ago used to do. Maybe men got married back then, but if so they got married when they wanted, and it sounded like Fahno and these other women wanted Eino to marry now.

  Erem belched. “He doesn’t have a choice. Fahno’s got no heirs, see.”

  I must have frowned in confusion, because Juem explained: “She had three sons, but they went off to marry into other families, like boys do. She had a daughter, Tehno, but Tehno didn’t get much of the blood—the demon blood, you know? Not enough to become enulai after Fahno. But Tehno married Arolu, and they made Eino, who did have it. It’s a throwback sort of thing like that sometimes.”

  “OK,” I said, trying to parse it all.

  “And that would be fine; Tehno wasn’t an enulai, but she’d proven herself capable of bearing children with the gift, and that would’ve been enough for her to inherit. But then Tehno went off and got herself killed a few years ago, trying to do business with the Litaria.” He sighed. “Damned criminals.”

  “What’s a Litaria?”

  “Bad people.” He scowled.

  Erem nodded. “Back in the days of the Bright, they were the only people allowed to use magic. Nowadays there’s lots of people and godlings to do magic—but the Lit’s still got the strongest mortal stuff, called scrivening. So they throw their weight around, run a lot of black market and shady magic ventures. Tehno wasn’t demon enough to become an enulai, but she was demon enough that her blood was still poison to gods—if enough of it was taken, and distilled.” His face hardened. “So they lured her to a meeting place for some deal they’d worked out, and then they killed her for her blood. It was a big scandal because enulai are supposed to keep the Lit from running amok, not make deals with them.” He sighed. “Poor Fahno. She wiped out the branch of the Lit that did it, but…” He spread his hands.

  I inhaled. “Enulai have to be demons so they can kill gods if they have to… but people try to hurt them for being demons?”

  Juem nodded. “Another reason why enulai look after godlings; they help godlings and their godlings help them, usually. But Tehno didn’t have any watching her back.” He sighed heavily. “And if Fahno can’t make or adopt another heir, then her clan will dissolve when she dies. The house and all her assets will go to the Council, and Arolu and Eino will end up on the street with nothing. Fahno’s only chance is to marry Eino off, adopt one of their daughters, and continue the clan that way.”

  It was too much mortally stuff. I was getting bored. Only one thing mattered. “Eino could be Fahno’s heir,” I said, carefully. “He’s got lots of magic, and probably the scary blood, too.”

  Juem coughed, in a polite sort of way. “He’s a boy, Lady Shill. There are boy enulai, of course, but not here in Darr.”

  Ohhhh!! Was that why they’d told Eino he didn’t have the temperament to be an enulai? But boy-temperaments were not different from girl-temperaments, or whatever mortals called Naha-temperaments. And was that why Eino wanted the people in the Raringa to consider letting boys inherit stuff? If they changed the rules, he would be able to stay with his own clan.

  We finished the ginger-serry juice, talking about nothing after that. Then I left the kitchen and went to see if Eino was awake yet. His room was empty, so I followed his scent-feel to the bathroom, where there was water still on the floor with some of the sweat from his dance the night before in it. After that I tracked him to another room where there were lots of pretty, elaborate robes hanging on racks. One of them was gone, and the scent of perfume was in the air, with Eino’s smell still strong underneath. I grinned, because Find Eino was a fun game even if it was kind of easy! I followed his smell to another room, where he’d eaten some things—and then finally down a long corridor I saw him! He was standing at the end of it, looking into a big room beyond; he did not see me. His shoulders were very tight and his face had gone hard and blank like a mask again.

  I was thinking about running up behind him and surprising him, when suddenly people started yelling in the room beyond!

  “—completely improper—” That was Arolu. He sounded mad!

  “I think I’m done with propriety, thank you, Arolu-wo.” A strange woman!

  “Fahno-enulai will not approve!”

  “Let her proceed,” said another strange woman. She sounded bored, and maybe annoyed. “It’s a pitiful gesture, but if she feels compelled to make it, who are we to stand in her way?”

  Confused, I came to the doorway beside Eino. He didn’t look at me, though Arolu did. Only for a second, though; he was focused on the two strange women in front of him. I wasn’t sure why at first—until I caught both the women’s scents, and realized they smelled a little like Eino, and Fahno: their own scents were underlain by a peculiar bitterness, like something maybe a little bit dangerous. Did that mean they were demons, too? And probably enulai, too! That meant these must be the women that the servants had told me about: Mikna, who had been chosen to marry Eino, and Lumyn, whom Eino liked better.

  One of the women was stocky and darker-skinned, standing near the door with one hand on her hip and a look of contempt on her face. The other woman was already crossing the room to Eino and pressing s
omething into his hands. She was older than him—they both were—and taller than any Darren woman I’d seen, paler brown and narrower in frame. She dressed in more colors than most Darren women, too: usually they stuck to tight-fitting blacks and grays, while boys wore loose color. But above her black leggings she had on a vest that was as green as the forest. It was very pretty, and almost matched her eyes, which were a pale version of the same shade.

  “For you,” she said firmly, to Eino. Her voice shook with emotion as she held Eino’s hands. “Gods grant that one day we can use it together.” Just as quickly she pulled away, and turned to face the other woman.

  Eino stared back at the woman in green in a way that… I frowned and touched his arm, and he jumped and stared at me as if it had hurt. No one but him and Arolu had even noticed me. He was almost crying! And he felt awful inside, buzzy and angryhurt like there were bees in his soul. He clutched the thing she’d given him, a small cloth-wrapped parcel, to his breast.

  I didn’t know what it meant that he was so upset! I didn’t like that these strange women had hurt him. Then Fahno-enulai came into the room from the other doorway, and everything got way, way worse. Um, and maybe some of that was my fault.

  “Lumyn-enulai,” she said to the tall woman. I had never seen Fahno look so angry. “If you had a courting-gift to offer for Eino, the traditional thing to do would have been to give it to his father, or me.”

  The tall woman let out a harsh laugh. “If I had, he’d never have received it. I’ve no patience for tradition, Fahno-enulai; didn’t you tell me that was my failing, once? And it wasn’t a courting-gift.” She shrugged; it felt like a lie, somehow, and I did not like her for that. “It was simply a trinket I found, and which I thought your grandson might like. Will you begrudge him something so unimportant?”