The Broken Kingdoms it-2

by N. K. Jemisin

  They assured him that they did not in tones of such slavish eagerness that I immediately loathed all of them. But when Hado left, I made my way to the work crew's designated leader, a young Ken woman named S'miya. "Let me handle the mopping," I said. "I feel like working hard today." So she handed me the bucket.

  The handle of the mop was much like a walking stick in my hands. I felt more secure with it, in control of myself for the first time since I'd come to the House of the Risen Sun. This was an illusion, of course, but I clung to it, needed it. The dining hall was huge, but I put my back into the work and paid no heed to the sweat that dripped down my face and made my shapeless tunic stick to my body. When S'miya finally touched my arm and told me we were done, I was surprised and disappointed it had gone so quickly.

  "You do Our Lord proud with such effort," S'miya said in an admiring tone.

  I straightened to ease my aching back and thought of Shiny. "Somehow I doubt that," I said. This earned me a moment of puzzled silence, and more when I laughed.

  With that done, one of the older initiates led me to the baths, where a good soak helped ease some of the soreness I would certainly feel the next day. Then I was led back to my room, where a hot meal waited on the table. They still locked the door, and there was only a fork to eat with, no knife. But as I ate, I reflected on how quickly one could grow used to this sort of captivity-the simplicity of honest labor, soothing hymns echoing throughout the halls, free food and shelter and clothing. I had always wondered why anyone would join an organization like the Order, and now I began to see. Compared to the complexities of the outside world, this was easier on the body and the heart.

  Unfortunately, this meant that once I'd bathed and eaten, the silence closed in. But as I sat miserable in my chair at the window, my head leaning against the glass as if that would somehow ease the ache in my heart, Hado returned. He had another person in tow, a woman I had not met before.

  "Go away," I said.

  He stopped. The woman paused as well. He said, "We're in a mood, I see. What's the problem?"

  I laughed, once and harshly. "Our gods hate us. Aside from that, everything's right as rain."

  "Ah. A philosophical mood." He moved to sit somewhere across from me. The woman, whose perfume was quite unpleasantly strong, took up position near the door. "Do you hate the gods?"

  "They're gods. It doesn't matter if we hate them."

  "I disagree. Hate can be a powerful motivator. Our whole world is the way it is because of a single woman's hate."

  More proselytizing, I realized. I didn't feel like talking to him, but it was better than sitting alone and brooding, so I replied. "The mortal woman who became the Gray Lady?"

  "One of her ancestors, actually: the founder of the Arameri clan, the Itempan priestess Shahar. Do you know of her?"

  I sighed. "Nimaro might be a backwater, Master Hado, but I did go to school."

  "White Hall lessons skim the details, Lady Oree, which is a shame, because the details are so very delicious. Did you know she was Itempas's lover, for example?"

  Delicious, indeed. My mind tried to conjure an image of Shiny-stony, coldhearted, indifferent Shiny, indulging in a passionate affair with a mortal. Or anyone, for that matter. Hells, I couldn't even imagine him having sex. "No, I didn't. I'm not sure you know that, either."

  He laughed. "For now, let's simply assume it's true, hmm? She was his lover-the only mortal he ever saw fit to honor in that way. And she truly loved him, because when Itempas fought his sibling gods, she hated them, too. Much of what the Arameri did after the war-forcing the Bright on every race, persecuting those who'd once worshipped Nahadoth or Enefa-is the result of her hate." He paused. "One of the gods we've captured is your lover. Isn't that also true?"

  I made a great effort and did not react or speak.

  "Apparently, you and Lord Madding were quite an item. Word is your relationship ended, but it doesn't escape me that you ran to him when you were in need."

  From across the room, the woman who'd come in with Hado made a faint sound of disgust. I'd almost forgotten she was there.

  "How do you feel now that someone's attacked him?" Hado asked. His voice was gentle, compassionate. Seductive. "You said the gods hate us, and for the moment I think you hate them, too, at least a little. Yet somehow I find it hard to believe your feelings have changed so completely toward the one who shared your bed."

  I looked away. I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to think at all. Why had Hado and the woman come, anyhow? Didn't a Master of Initiates have other duties?

  Hado leaned forward. "If you could, would you fight us to save your lover? Would you risk your life to set him free?"

  Yes, I thought immediately. And just like that, the doubts I'd felt since my conversation with Serymn faded.

  Someday, when Madding and I were free of this place, I would ask him about his treatment of mortals. I would ask about his role in the Gods' War. I would find out what he did to people who failed to repay. I had been remiss in not doing this before. But would it make a difference, in the end? Madding had lived thousands of years to my few. In that time, he had surely done things that would horrify me. Would knowing about those things make me love him any less?

  "Whore," said the woman.

  I stiffened. "Excuse me?"

  Hado made a sound of annoyance. "Erad, Brightsister, you will be silent."

  "Then hurry up," she snapped. "He wants the sample as soon as possible."

  I was already tense, ready to throw some harsh words-or the chair under me-at Erad. This caught my attention. "What sample?"

  Hado let out a long sigh, plainly considering a few choice words of his own. "The Nypri's request," he said finally. "He has asked for some of your blood."

  "Some of my what?"

  "He's a scrivener, Lady Oree, and you have magical abilities no one has ever seen. I imagine he wants to study you in depth."

  I clenched my fists, furious. "And if I don't want to give a sample?"

  "Lady Oree, you know full well the answer to that question." There was no patience left in Hado now. I considered resisting, anyway, to see whether he and Erad were prepared to use physical force. That was stupid, though, because there were two of them and one of me, and there could easily be more of them if they just opened the door and called for help.

  "Fine," I said, and sat down.

  After a moment-and probably a last warning look from Hado-Erad came over and took my left hand, turning it over. "Hold the bowl," she said to Hado, and a moment later I gasped as something stabbed me in the wrist.

  "Demons!" I cried, trying to jerk away. But Erad's grip was firm, as if she'd been expecting my reaction.

  Hado gripped my other shoulder. "This won't take long," he said, "but if you struggle, it will take longer." I stopped fighting only because of that.

  "What in the gods' names are you doing?" I demanded, yelping as Erad did something else, and it felt like my wrist was stabbed again. I could hear liquid-my blood-splattering into some sort of container. She had jabbed something into me, opening the wound further to keep the blood flowing. It hurt like the infinite hells.

  "Lord Dateh requested about two hundred drams," muttered Erad. A moment passed, and then she sighed in satisfaction. "That should be enough."

  Hado let go of me and moved away, and Erad took the painful thing out of my arm. She bandaged my wrist with only marginally more gentleness. I snatched my arm away from her as soon as her grip lessened. She uttered a contemptuous snort but let me go.

  "We'll have someone bring you dinner shortly," Hado said as they both went to the door. "Be sure to eat; it will prevent weakness. Rest well tonight, Lady Oree." Then they closed the door behind them.

  I sat where they'd left me, cradling my aching arm. The bleeding hadn't quite stopped; a stray droplet had seeped through the bandage and begun to thread its way down my forearm. I followed the sensation of its passage, my thoughts meandering in a similar way. When the droplet fe
ll off my arm to the floor, I imagined its splatter. Its warmth, cooling. Its smell.

  Its color.

  There was a way out of the House of the Risen Sun, I understood now. It would be dangerous. Possibly deadly. But was it any safer for me to stay and find out whatever they planned to do with me?

  I lay down, my arm tucked against my chest. I was tired-too tired to make the attempt right then. It would take too much of my strength. In the morning, though, the Lights would be busy with their rituals and chores. There would be time before they came for me.

  My thoughts as dark as blood, I slept.

  11

  "Possession" (watercolor)

  SO, THERE WAS A GIRL.

  What I've guessed, and what the history books imply, is that she was unlucky enough to have been sired by a cruel man. He beat both wife and daughter and abused them in other ways. Bright Itempas is called, among other things, the god of justice. Perhaps that was why He responded when she came into His temple, her heart full of unchildlike rage.

  "I want him to die," she said (or so I imagine). "Please, Great Lord, make him die."

  You know the truth now about Itempas. He is a god of warmth and light, which we think of as pleasant, gentle things. I once thought of Him that way, too. But warmth uncooled burns; light undimmed can hurt even my blind eyes. I should have realized. We should all have realized. He was never what we wanted Him to be.

  So when the girl begged the Bright Lord to murder her father, He said, "Kill him yourself." And He gifted her with a knife perfectly suited to her small, weak child's hands.

  She took the knife home and used it that very night. The next day, she came back to the Bright Lord, her hands and soul stained red, happy for the first time in her short life. "I will love you forever," she declared. And He, for a rare once, found Himself impressed by mortal will.

  Or so I imagine.

  The child was mad, of course. Later events proved this. But it makes sense to me that this madness, not mere religious devotion, would appeal most to the Bright Lord. Her love was unconditional, her purpose undiluted by such paltry considerations as conscience or doubt. It seems like Him, I think, to value that kind of purity of purpose-even though, like warmth and light, too much love is never a good thing.

  ***

  I woke an hour before dawn and immediately went to the door to listen for my captors. I could hear people moving about in the corridors beyond my door, and sometimes I caught snatches of the Lights' wordless, soothing song. More morning rituals. If they followed the pattern of previous mornings, I had an hour, maybe more, before they came.

  Quickly I set to work, pushing aside the room's table as quietly as I could. Then I rolled aside the small rug to bare the wooden floor, which I inspected carefully. It was smoothly sanded, lightly finished. Dusty. It felt nothing like a canvas.

  Neither had the bricks at the south promenade, though, the day I'd killed the Order-Keepers.

  My heart pounded as I went through the room, collecting the items I'd marked or hidden as potentially useful. A piece of cheese and a nami-pepper from a previous meal. Chunks of melted fakefern wax from the candles. A bar of soap. I had nothing that felt or smelled like the color black, though, which was frustrating. I had a feeling I would need black.

  I knelt on the floor and picked up the cheese, and took a deep breath.

  Kitr and Paitya had called my drawing a doorway. If I drew a place I knew and opened that doorway again, would I be able to travel there? Or would I end up like the Order-Keepers, dead in two places at once?

  I shook my head, angry at my own doubts.

  Carefully, clumsily, I sketched Art Row. The cheese was more useful as texture than color, because it felt rough, like the cobbles I'd walked across for the past ten years. I yearned for black to outline the cobbles but forced myself to do without. The candlewax ran out first-too soft-but between it and the soap I managed to suggest a table, and beyond that another. The pepper ran out next, its juice stinging my fingers as I ground it to a nub trying to depict the Tree's greenscent in the air. Finally, though I used my own saliva and blood to stretch it and properly color the cobbles, the cheese crumbled to bits in my fingers. (To get my blood, I'd had to scratch off the scab from the previous night's bloodletting. Inconveniently, I was not menstruating.)

  When it was done, I sat back to gaze at my work, grimacing at the ache in my back and shoulders and knees. It was a crude, small drawing, only two handspans across since there hadn't been enough "paint" to do more. More impressionistic than I liked, though I had created such drawings before and seen the magic in them nevertheless. What mattered was what the depiction evoked in the mind and heart, not how it looked. And this one, however crude, had captured Art Row so well that I felt homesick just looking at it.

  But how to make it real? And then, how to step through?

  I put my fingers on the edge of the drawing, awkwardly. "Open?" No, that wasn't right. At the south promenade I had been too terrified for words. I closed my eyes and said it with my thoughts. Open!

  Nothing. I hadn't really thought that would work.

  Once, I had asked Madding how it felt for him, using magic. I'd had a bit of his blood in me at the time, making me restless and dreamy; that time, the only magic that had manifested in me was the sound of distant, atonal music. (I hadn't forgotten the melody, but I'd never once hummed it aloud. All my instincts warned against doing that.) I'd been disappointed, wishing for something more grandiose, and that had gotten me wondering what it felt like to be magic, not just taste it in dribs and drops.

  He'd shrugged, sounding bemused. "Like walking down the street feels for you. What do you think?"

  "Walking down the street," I had informed him archly, "is nothing like flying into stars, or crossing a thousand miles in one step, or turning into a big blue rock whenever you get mad."

  "Of course it's the same," he'd said. "When you decide to walk down a street, you flex the muscles in your legs. Right? You feel out the way with your stick. You listen, make sure there's no one in the way. And then you will yourself to move, and your body moves. You believe it will happen, so it happens. That's how magic is for us."

  Will the door open, and it will open. Believe, and it will be. Nibbling my bottom lip, I touched the drawing again.

  This time, I tried imagining Art Row as I would one of my landscapes, cobbling together the memories of a thousand mornings. It would be busy now, the area thick with local merchants and laborers and farmers and smiths beginning their daily business. In some of the buildings just beyond my drawing, courtesans and restaurants would be opening their books for evening appointments. The pilgrims who'd prayed with the dawn would be giving way to minstrels singing for coins. I hummed a Yuuf tune that had been a favorite of mine. Sweating stonemasons, distracted accountants; I heard their hurrying feet and tense breath and felt their purposeful energy.

  I was not aware of the change at first.

  The Tree's scent had been thick around me since I'd been brought to the House of the Risen Sun. Slowly, subtly, it changed-becoming the fainter, more distant scent I was used to. Then that scent mingled with the smells of the Promenade, horseshit and sewage and herbs and perfumes. I heard murmuring voices and dismissed them… but they were not coming from within the House.

  I did not notice the change at all, really, until the drawing opened up beneath my hands and I nearly fell into it.

  Startled, I yelped and stumbled back. Then I stared. Blinked. Leaned close and stared more.

  The cloth on the nearest Row table: it moved. I could not see people-perhaps because I hadn't drawn any figures-but I could hear the gabble of a crowd in the distance, moving feet, rattling wheels. A breeze blew, tossing a few fallen Tree leaves across the cobbles of the Promenade, and my hair lifted off my neck, just a little.

  "Intriguing," said the Nypri, behind me.

  Yelping in shock, I tried to simultaneously jump to my feet and scoot away from the voice. Instead I tripped over the ro
lled-up rug and went sprawling. While I struggled upright, grabbing for the bed to get my bearings, I realized too late that I had heard him enter, and had dismissed it. He had been standing in the room, watching me, for quite some time.

  He came over, taking my hand and helping me to my feet. I snatched my hand away as soon as I could. Beyond him, I realized in dismay, the drawing had not only stopped being real, but also it had faded from view entirely, its magic gone.

  "It takes great concentration to wield magic in a controlled fashion," he said. "Impressive given that you've had no training. And you did it with nothing but food and candlewax. Truly amazing. Of course, it means we'll have to watch you eat from now on, and search your quarters regularly for anything bearing pigment."

  Damn! I clenched my fists before I thought to stop myself. "Why are you here?" I asked. It came out far more belligerent than it should have, but I couldn't help it. I was too angry over my lost chance.

  "I came, ironically enough, to ask you to demonstrate your magical abilities for me. I'm still a scrivener, even if I've left the Order. Unique manifestations of inherited magic were my particular field of study." He sat down in one of the room's chairs, oblivious to my seething fury. "I should note, however, that if you meant to escape through that portal, your efforts would've ultimately been futile. The House of the Risen Sun is surrounded by a barrier that prevents magic from entering or leaving. A variation on my Empty, actually." He tapped the wooden floor with his foot. "If you had tried passing through it via that portal… Well, I'm not certain what would've happened. But you, or your remains, would not have gotten far."