The Broken Kingdoms it-2

by N. K. Jemisin

  "Sieh," Shiny said suddenly. His hand tightened more on mine, on the threshold of pain. I set my teeth and bore it, afraid to interrupt. I felt him draw in a breath.

  "Never apologize to me," Sieh said. He spoke very softly, perhaps sensing the same thing that I did. His face had gone cold, devoid of anything but a skein of anger. "What you did can never be absolved by mere words. To even attempt it is an insult-not just to me, but to my mother's memory."

  Shiny went stiff. Then his hand twitched on mine, and he seemed to draw strength from the contact, because he spoke at last.

  "If not words," he said, "will deeds serve?"

  Sieh smiled. I was almost sure his teeth were sharp now. "What deeds can make up for your crimes, my bright father?"

  Shiny looked away, his hand loosening on my own at last. "None. I know."

  Sieh drew in a deep breath and let it out heavily. He shook his head, glanced at me, shook his head again, and then turned away.

  "I'll tell Mother you're doing well," Sieh said to T'vril, who had sat silent throughout this conversation, probably holding his breath. "She'll be glad to hear it."

  T'vril inclined his head, not quite a bow. "And is she well, herself?"

  "Very well, indeed. Godhood suits her. It's the rest of us who are a mess these days." I thought I saw him hesitate for a moment, almost turning back to us. But he only nodded to T'vril. "Until the next time, Lord Arameri." He vanished.

  T'vril let out a long sigh in his wake. I felt that this spoke for all of us.

  "Well," he said. "With that business out of the way, we are left with only one matter. Have you considered my proposal, Eru Shoth?"

  I had latched on to one hope. If I lived and let the Arameri use me, I might someday find a way free. Somehow. It was a thin hope, a pathetic one, but it was all I had.

  "Will you settle things with the Order of Itempas for me?" I asked, trying for dignity. Now it was I who clung to Shiny for support. It was easier, somehow, to give up my soul with him there beside me.

  T'vril inclined his head. "Already done."

  "And"-I hesitated-"can I have your word that this mark, the one I must wear, will do nothing but what you said?"

  He lifted an eyebrow. "You have little room to bargain here, Eru Shoth."

  I flinched, because it was true, but I clenched my free hand, anyhow. I hated being threatened. "I could tell the godlings what I am. They'll kill me, but at least they won't use me the way you mean to."

  The Lord Arameri sat back in his chair, crossing his legs. "You don't know that, Eru Shoth. Perhaps the godling you tell will have her own enemies to get rid of. Would you really risk exchanging a mortal master for an immortal one?"

  That was a possibility that had never occurred to me. I froze, horrified by it.

  "You will not be her master," Shiny said.

  I jumped. T'vril drew in a deep breath, let it out. "My lord. I'm afraid you weren't privy to our earlier conversation. Eru Shoth is aware of the danger if she remains free." And you are in no position to negotiate on her behalf, his tone said. He did not have to say it aloud. It was painfully obvious.

  "A danger that remains if you lay claim to her," Shiny snapped. I could hardly believe my ears. Was he actually trying to fight for me?

  Shiny let go of my hand and stepped forward, not quite in front of me. "You cannot keep her existence a secret," he said. "You can't kill enough people to safely make her your weapon. It would be better if you had never brought her here-then at least you could deny knowledge of her existence."

  I frowned in confusion. But T'vril uncrossed his legs.

  "Do you intend to tell the other gods about her?" he asked quietly.

  And then I understood. Shiny was not powerless. He could not be killed, not permanently. He could be imprisoned, but not forever, because he was supposed to be wandering the world, learning the lessons of mortality. At some point, inevitably, one of the other gods would come looking for him, if only to gloat over his punishment. And then T'vril's plan to make me the Arameri's latest weapon would come apart.

  "I will say nothing," Shiny said softly, "if you let her go."

  I caught my breath.

  T'vril was silent for a moment. "No. My greatest concern hasn't changed: she's too dangerous to leave unprotected. It would be safer to kill her." Which would erase Shiny's leverage, besides ending my life.

  It was a game of nikkim: feint against feint, each trying to outplay the other. Except I had never paid attention to such games, because I could not see them, so I had no idea what happened if there was a draw. I definitely didn't like being the prize.

  "She was safe until the Order began to harass her," Shiny said. "Anonymity has protected her bloodline for centuries, even from the gods. Give that to her again, and all will be as it was." Shiny paused. "You still have the demon blood you took from the House of the Risen Sun before you destroyed it."

  "He took-" I blurted, then caught myself. But my hands clenched. Of course they would never have let such a valuable resource go to waste. My blood, Dateh's blood, the arrowheads-perhaps they had even learned Dateh's refining method. The Arameri had their weapon, with or without me. Damn them.

  Shiny was right, though. If the Lord Arameri had that, then he didn't need me.

  T'vril rose from his chair. He descended the steps and walked past the guards, moving to stand at one of the long windows. I saw him pause there, gazing out at the world that he owned-and at the black sun, warning sign of the gods who threatened it. He clasped his hands behind his back.

  "Make her anonymous, you say," he said, and sighed. At that sigh, my heart made an uneasy leap of hope. "Very well. I'm willing to consider it. But how? Shall I kill anyone in the city who knows her? As you say, that would require more deaths than is practical."

  I shuddered. Vuroy and the others from Art Row. My landlord. The old woman across the street who gossiped to the neighbors about the blind girl and her godling boyfriend. Rimarn, the priests of the White Hall, a dozen nameless servants and guards, including the ones standing here listening to all this.

  "No," I blurted. "I'll leave Shadow. I was going to do it anyway. I'll go somewhere no one knows me, never talk to anyone, just don't-"

  "Kill her," Shiny said.

  I flinched and stared at his profile. He glanced at me. "If she is dead, her secrets no longer matter. No one will look for her. No one can use her."

  I understood then, though the idea made me shiver. T'vril turned to look at us over his shoulder. "A false death? Interesting." He thought for a moment. "It would have to be thorough. She could never speak to her friends again, or even her mother. She could no longer be Oree Shoth at all. I can arrange for her to be sent elsewhere, with resources and a concocted past. Perhaps even hold a magnificent funeral for the brave woman who gave her life to expose a plot against the gods." He glanced at me. "But if my spies hear any rumor, any hint of your survival, then the game ends, Eru Shoth. I will do whatever is necessary to prevent you from falling into the wrong hands again. Is that understood?"

  I stared at him, and at Shiny, and then at myself. At the body that I could see, as a shadowy outline against the constant glow of Sky's light. Breasts, gently rolling. Hands, fascinatingly complex as I lifted them, turned them, flexed the fingers. The tips of my feet. A spiraling curl of hair at the edge of my vision. I had never seen myself so completely before.

  To die, even in this false way, would be terrible. My friends would mourn me, and I would mourn even more the life I'd already lost. My poor mother: first my father and now this. But it was the magic, the strangeness of Shadow, all the beautiful and frightening things that I had learned and experienced and seen, that would hurt most to leave behind.

  I had once wanted to die. This would be worse. But if I did it, I would be free.

  I must have stayed silent too long. Shiny turned to me, his heavy gaze more compassionate than I had ever imagined it could be. He understood; of course he did. It was a hard thing, sometimes, to li
ve.

  "I understand," I said to the Lord Arameri.

  He nodded. "Then it shall be done. Remain here another day. That should be sufficient time for me to make the arrangements." He turned back to the window, another wordless dismissal.

  I stood there unmoving, hardly daring to believe it. I was free. Free, like old times.

  Shiny turned to leave, then turned back to me, radiating irritation at my failure to follow. Like old times.

  Except that he had fought for me. And won.

  I trotted after him and took his arm, and if it bothered him that I pressed my face against his shoulder as we walked back to my room, he did not complain.

  19

  "The Demons' War" (charcoal and chalk on black paper)

  IT SHOULD HAVE ENDED THERE. That would have been best, wouldn't it? A fallen god, a "dead" demon, two broken souls limping back toward life. That would have been the end that this tale deserved, I think. Quiet. Ordinary.

  But that wouldn't have been good for you, would it? Too lacking in closure. Not dramatic enough. I will tell myself, then, that what happened next was a fortunate thing, though even now it feels anything but.

  ***

  I slept deeply that night, despite my fear of what was to come, despite my worry about Paitya and the others, despite my cynical suspicion that the Lord Arameri would find some other way to keep me under his graceful, kindly thumb. My arm had healed completely, so I stripped off the bandages and the sling and the sigil-script, took a long, deep bath to celebrate the absence of pain, and curled up against Shiny's warmth. He shifted on the bed to make room for me, and I felt him watching me as I fell asleep.

  Sometime after midnight, I woke with a start, blinking in disorientation as I rolled over. The room was quiet and still; Sky's magical walls were too thick to let me hear movement in the halls beyond, or even the sound of the wind that must surely be fierce outside, up so high. In that, I preferred the House of the Risen Sun, where at least there had been small sounds of life all around me-people walking through the corridors, chanting and songs, the occasional creaking and groaning of the Tree as it swayed. I would not miss the House, or its people, but being there had not been wholly unpleasant.

  Here there was only the quiet, bright-glowing stillness. Shiny was asleep beside me, his breathing deep and slow. I tried to remember if I'd had a nightmare but could recall nothing. Pushing myself up, I looked around the room because I could. There would be things I'd miss about Sky, too. I saw nothing, but my nerves still jumped and my skin still tingled, as if something had touched me.

  Then I heard a sound behind me like tearing air.

  I whirled, my thoughts frozen, and it was behind me: a hole the height of my body, like a great, open mouth. Stupid, stupid. I had known he was still out there but thought myself safe in the stronghold of the Arameri. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  I was halfway across the bed, dragged by the hole's power, before I could open my mouth to cry out. Convulsively, my hands locked on the sheets, but I knew it was futile. In my mind's eye, I saw the sheets simply pull free of the bed, fluttering uselessly as I disappeared into whatever hell Dateh had built to hold me.

  There was a jerk, so hard that friction heat burned my knuckles. The sheets had caught on something. A hand wrapped around my wrist. Shiny.

  I shot backward into the terrible metal roar, and he came with me. I felt his presence even as I screamed and flailed, even as the feel of his hand on my wrist faded into cold numbness. We tumbled through trembling darkness, falling sideways into-

  Sensation and solidity. I struck the ground-ground?-first, hard enough to jar the breath from my body. I felt the breath. Shiny landed nearby, uttering a grunt of pain, but at once he rolled to his feet, pulling me up, too. I caught my breath and looked around wildly, though I could see only darkness.

  Then my eyes caught on something: a faint, blurry form, curled and fetal, hovering amid the dark. Dateh? But it did not move, and then I saw the shimmer of something between me and the form. Like glass. I turned again, trying to comprehend, and saw another murky form, hovering in the dark beyond the glass. This one I recognized by her brown skin: Kitr. She did not move. I reached for her, but when my hands encountered the glassy dark, they stopped. It was solid, enclosing us entirely above and around, a bubble of normality carved out of the Empty's hellish substance.

  I turned again, and there was Dateh.

  He was closer to us than the blurry forms, on the other side of the wide room that the bubble formed. I wasn't sure he knew we were there (though his will had brought us here), because his back was to us, and he crouched amid sprawled bodies. I could not see the bodies, except where their dimness occluded my view of Dateh, but I could taste blood in the air, thick and sickly and fresh. I heard the sounds I had hoped never to hear again: tearing flesh. Chewing teeth.

  I stiffened and felt Shiny's hand tighten on my wrist. So he, too, could see Dateh, which meant there was light in this empty world. And it meant Shiny could see which of his children lay around us, sprawled and desecrated, the magic of their lives long gone.

  Tears of helpless rage pricked my eyes. Not again. Not again. "Gods damn you, Dateh," I whispered.

  Dateh paused in whatever he was doing. He turned to us, still in a crouch, moving in an odd, scuttling manner. His mouth, robes, and hands were stained dark, and his left hand was closed around a dripping lump. He blinked at us like a man coming out of a fugue. I could not see the demarcation between pupil and iris in his eyes; they looked like a single dark pit, too large, carved into the white.

  He seemed to recall himself slowly. "Where is Serymn?" he asked.

  "Dead," I snapped.

  He frowned at this, as if confused. Slowly he rose to his feet. He drew a breath to speak again, then paused as he noticed the heart in his hand. Frowning, he tossed it aside and stepped closer to us. "Where is my wife?" he asked again.

  I scowled, but behind my bravado, I was terrified. I could feel power sluicing off him like water, pressing against my skin, making it crawl. It shimmered around him, making the whole chamber flicker unsteadily. He had been missing since the Arameri raid on the House of the Risen Sun. Had he spent all that time hiding here, killing and eating godlings, making himself stronger? And madder?

  "Serymn is dead, you monster," I said. "Didn't you hear me? The gods took her to their realm for punishment, and she deserved it. They'll find you, too, soon."

  Dateh stopped. His frown deepened, and he shook his head. "She isn't dead. I would know."

  I shuddered. So the Nightlord had been in a creative mood after all. "Then she will be. Unless you mean to challenge the Three now?"

  "I have always meant to challenge them, Lady Oree." Dateh shook his head again, then smiled with bloody teeth. It was the first hint of his old self I had seen, but it chilled me nevertheless. He had eaten the godlings in hope of stealing their power, and it seemed he had managed to do so. But something else had gone very, very wrong. That was plain in his smile and in the emptiness of his eyes.

  It is bad, very bad, for a mortal to eat one of us, Lil had said.

  He turned, surveying his handiwork. The bodies seemed to please him, because he laughed, the sound echoing within the space of his bubble. "We demons are the gods' children, too, are we not? Yet they have hunted us nearly to extinction. How is that right?" I jumped at the last, because he shouted it. But when he spoke again, he laughed. "I say that if they fear us so, we should give them something to fear: their despised, persecuted children, coming to take their place."

  "Don't be absurd," said Shiny. He still gripped my wrist; through this I felt the tension in his body. He was afraid-but along with the fear, he was angry. "No mortal can wield a god's power. Even if you could defeat the Three, the very universe would unravel under your feet."

  "I can create a new one!" Dateh cried, delighted, demented. "You hid yourself within my Emptiness, didn't you, Oree Shoth? Untrained, in terror, with nothing but instinct, you carved out a safer
realm for yourself." To my horror, he held his hand out as if he actually expected me to take it. "It is why Serymn hoped to win you to our cause. I can create only this one realm, but you've already built dozens. You can help me build a world where mortals need never live in fear of their gods. Where you and I will be gods, in our own right, as we should be."

  I stumbled back from his outstretched hand and stopped as I felt the solid curve of Dateh's barrier behind me. Nowhere to run.

  "Your gift has existed before among our kind," said Dateh. He gave up reaching for me but watched me around Shiny's shoulder with a hunger that was almost sexual. "It was rare, though-even when there were hundreds of us. Only Enefa's children possessed it. I need that magic, Lady Oree."

  "What in the Maelstrom are you talking about?" I demanded. I frantically groped along the hard surface behind me, half hoping to find a doorknob. "You've already made me kill for you. What, you expect me to eat godling flesh and go mad with you, too?"

  He blinked, startled. "Oh… no. No. You were a godling's lover. I never believed you could be trusted. But your magic need not be lost. I can consume your heart and then wield your power myself."

  I froze, my blood turning to ice. Shiny, however, stepped forward, in front of me.

  "Oree," he said softly. "Use your magic to leave this place."

  I started out of horror and fumbled for him, finding his shoulder. To my confusion, he was not tense at all, unafraid. "I… I don't-"

  He ignored my babbling. "You've broken his power before. Open a door back to Sky. I will make certain he doesn't follow."

  I could see him, I realized. He had begun to glow, god-power rising as he committed himself to protecting me.

  Dateh bared his teeth and spread his arms. "Get out of my way," he snarled.

  I blinked, squinted, flinched. He had begun to glow as well, but with a jarring, sickening clash of colors, more than I could name. It made my stomach churn to look at him. The colors were bright, though, so bright. He was more powerful than I had ever dreamt.