Shades in Shadow

by N. K. Jemisin

  Well. That’s something new.

  It is fascinating. There are intimacies to be courted here, too, the bonds that keep hard people together in a hard business, and those bonds are strong—like family, like comrades in war, like love, though leavened with generous portions of resentment and ambition and greed. He mostly lets them do whatever they like so long as they don’t hurt too many people and don’t destroy the business. Despite such careless control, the organization thrives and grows wealthy and strong.

  There’s a problem one day. The lieutenants report it and he grows curious enough to go and investigate. In one area of town where he has found no pimps to kill, there are many whores. They run themselves and have fought hard for their independence. When he approaches their spokeswoman, she curses him, tells him they would rather die than be owned. “Yes,” he says admiringly, and feels the first surge of something that must be his nature. It is too unfocused for him to grasp.

  The passion of his response surprises her into silence. (It surprises him, too.) He asks the woman what she and her comrades want. She gives him a list of demands that would make most criminal lords laugh. Her hand trembles as she hands it to him, in fact. She expects to die—but she did not lie; she is willing, if by her death her comrades can be protected. Yes, yes, gods yes. He considers the logistics only long enough to figure out how it might be done, vanishes and has a few conversations, then comes back and offers her his hand. Bemused, she takes it. “Partners?” he suggests, and when she nods, that flutter is there again. He feels good. This is good for him. He wants more.

  He gives his new partner everything she wants. He buys houses all over the city and lets her choose the staff. The whores may live in them or off-site as they choose. Their housing is paid for—because after all, their beds are a place of work. Their medical care is paid for. He hires servants to see to their material needs, nannies to tend their children. His foot soldiers are permitted to visit the houses only if they can behave. He kills the ones who don’t; he has precious little patience. They mostly behave anyway, because they already know this about him.

  Thugs gossip like fishermen. They go away satisfied and awed and spread the word, and others quickly begin to come. Some are hungry to sample whores who regard themselves and are treated as people—such a rare thing in this world. Some are merely curious. His women have stretch marks and fat rolls, and his men don’t have giant prehensile penises or lantern jaws, but the sex is apparently amazing anyway. There’s a house for everyone: those who crave simple pleasures and those whose driving impulses are more complex. Those who need and those who have only vague interest. If there is pain, it is by mutual agreement. If there is perversion…well, that is a matter of perspective.

  He stops calling them whores. What they do is too skillful a thing for such a simplistic word. They are the residents who make these houses homes; they are sexual engineers; they are artisans of flesh and emotion. He is unsurprised, therefore, when one of his godling siblings comes to him, sheepishly requesting aid. She has always been curious, but mortals make her nervous. So delicate, so strange. He pairs her with his partner, that so-wise woman who demanded the earth from him and got the heavens…and then it all goes wrong.

  They fall in love.

  They fall in love, damn it.

  It’s so wrong. How can she do this to him? He has given her everything. He accepts his partner’s resignation with bitter, bitter grace; it is only another betrayal. She should know better. Her lover will only turn on her. Lovers always do. He tells her this, along with a choice few other cruel things, until she gives him a look so pitying that it shuts him up.

  “You have to try anyway,” she says gently. “Even if you know they’ll hurt you. That’s the whole point.”

  But he was trying.

  It hurts so much when she leaves that he is sick with it. He curls alone in the room he rarely visits, in the enormous bed that he never sleeps in—he hates sleep—and shakes for hours, with the door and windows sealed shut and blackened so that no one will see.

  Time heals. The god without a name recovers, slowly. Not fully.

  Other godlings come, after the first one’s glowing report. Some want to be clients and some want to join the artisans, and finally he realizes he’ll have to do something about this.

  So he sets up one last house, this one in the poorest area of the city—but quietly, because he is perverse, he makes it the most special of them. He works magic into the walls as they are built: whatever the clients bring with them will be returned threefold. Beauty for beauty, contempt for contempt. He requires the godlings to learn their trade from the mortals. The mortals think this is hilarious, but it is only wisdom; mortals are the experts in this. Mortals are strong…and he knows, better than anyone, how utterly useless gods can be.

  But the experiment, the experiment! He glories in it, quietly. Once his special house is ready, he sends invitations to the sorts of people he wants as clients and turns away most who come soliciting. This must be a thing of privilege, he thinks, feels instinctively—but not the sort of privilege that can be bought with money or fortune of birth. When clients come, he charges whatever they can afford. Once, on impulse, he brings in a homeless woman, who does nothing but weep in his arms all night. That’s all she needs. When she is done, though, she’s better. Not healed, but happy. He hires her as the housekeeper.

  He names the house the Arms of Night. Perhaps Nahadoth finds it amusing, if Nahadoth is paying attention at all.

  (He sometimes wishes he’d taken Yeine’s hand. She does not return to him again. Beyond this regret, he feels nothing. It is safer this way.)

  Meanwhile, the house’s reputation grows. His criminal enterprise does, too, until his power rivals that of the Arameri. He works mostly through proxies now, having long since turned over management of the syndicate and his various businesses to others (because it got boring), though he retains direct proprietorship of the Arms (because it isn’t). One day there are overtures from a rival group, seeking alliance. He ignores them. The rival group sends him a message anyway—via his own shadow, which comes to life and speaks to him. They are an organization of godlings, and they have a proposition that they are certain will interest him. Curiosity outweighs annoyance. He agrees.

  The woman who walks into his office is everything he should hate. She radiates strength like a shroud of flame and wears her beauty as a shield for the blades of her tongue and mind. The way that she looks at him puts him instantly on edge. Arameri looked at him like that, back when he belonged to them. But then he sees her frown and twitch her gaze away, and instantly he understands. Mortals should not have natures, not like gods, but this one almost does. She is so much her father’s daughter that she wants him instantly—he is the shadow of her father’s lover, after all. But. She is so much her mother’s daughter that she rejects that echoed desire as simplistic and base.

  How interesting that she refuses to merely lust for him. A perverse part of him wants to test this. Seduction will not work, he guesses at once; she will reject that, too. But something more than seduction perhaps…? Something he has never tried before. He will befriend her, then, if she can be friended. He will…like her. As an academic exercise.

  Ah, and she tries the same with him. She will not lust, will not be driven like an animal by half-divine instincts…but she will consider. She will, if she finds him worthy, choose.

  The proposal she brings is ridiculous. He’s not interested in protecting gods or mortals; let them all kill each other. It’s laughable that Itempas has chosen this method for his atonement. It will never work.

  He agrees anyway so that he can see her again.

  * * *

  The Maelstrom pays a visit. The world doesn’t end. Alas. Sieh does end, though; stupid, ridiculous Sieh. Took him long enough.

  Glee gives him a name.

  Perhaps being immortal…is not wholly pointless.

  * * *

  Much, much later, the god whose name n
o one else will ever know stands atop the Pier of Sky, which now is little more than a shard of rubble jutting out from the world’s most magnificent grave cairn. It’s not very stable, but he’ll be all right. He’s a god. That’s…all right, too. Not terrible, at least. Could be better.

  He knows the manifestation of his other, former self the way he knows his own skin. (When he has skin.) It’s strange, and always will be, to see a face that so reflects his own, though of course his is the inferior copy. For countless aeons they communicated with each other only through messages written on fogged mirrors and the like. (Toward the end, the only thing he ever wrote was, “How much longer?” And Nahadoth would answer, “Not long now.”) They stand in silence awhile, looking at each other for the second time.

  “You’ve found yourself,” Nahadoth says.

  “Mmm-hmm. Even got a name now.” Two, actually, one of them bestowed upon him by his fellow godlings. He hates it: Beloved. But at least he has the other name. It is precious. With it, everything is easier to endure.

  Nahadoth nods. “I’m glad to see you well.”

  “And I you.” He gazes at the god as hungrily as he gazes at the night sky—not that there’s a real difference. He can never get enough of such terrible beauty. But there are courtesies to be exchanged, commiserations. “So. About Sieh.”

  “He is dead.” The words are careless, and the god’s voice is inflectionless. It is a lie. Nahadoth’s head tilts up, toward the mirror of the starry sky. “I think.”

  “You think?”

  “There is…something.” The god’s eyes have narrowed, as though he is squinting across an unimaginable distance in an effort to see something he can barely make out. “A suspicion, on the other side of nothingness.”

  Sieh was a horrible father and a wretched friend and a barely competent employee, completely unworthy of being missed or mourned. But. “What do you suspect?”

  That luminous head shakes. “I will not discuss it. The most minute possibilities are affected by observation.” As if to emphasize this, Nahadoth then pins him with a glance. “What are your intentions now?”

  How amusing to see the living embodiment of darkness and chaos change the subject. But this conversation with Nahadoth is interesting enough that Nahadoth’s shadow decides to play along. “Now? I intend to live, as Yeine bade me.”

  As if speaking her name summons her, there is a flicker and Yeine appears, too. For the god whose name is a precious, secret thing, this makes him happier than he will ever let either of them see.

  “About time,” she says. She’s smiling.

  He shrugs. The shrug is another lie. He’s gotten it honestly. “Well, I’m not very good at having parents. You can’t expect me to listen to everything you say.” This makes her laugh, and he feels warm inside.

  “Itempas’s daughter will not last,” Nahadoth says suddenly, as if he can’t help but cast a shadow over any moment of brightness.

  It would be worse to have never met her. “She’ll die when she dies. When that happens, I’ll move on.” He has promised her this. “She might get tired of me before that, anyway.” That will hurt, too, if it happens. But he has to try, even if he knows she’ll hurt him. That’s the whole point.

  Yeine steps closer to Nahadoth. They don’t touch in flesh, but the drifting smoke of him twitches toward her, and she lifts a hand to twirl it ’round one finger. This isn’t really an idle gesture; there’s power in it. Her other fingers begin to move, weaving the smoke she’s spun, and she grins. “I don’t think you’ll be rid of her that easily.”

  Damn meddling. He narrows his eyes. “What are you doing?”

  “She cannot be made immortal,” Nahadoth says, watching Yeine’s fingers form ever-more-complex one-handed cats’ cradles out of his substance. “We learned that long ago, with our other mortal children.”

  “But the skein of her life can be spun a bit longer,” Yeine suggests, lifting her other hand now, doing something he can’t see with her thumbs. “Stretched to its natural limit, so to speak. Do you think she’ll mind?”

  “Perhaps you should ask her.” Of course they will not. Gods.

  “She knows how to end herself, should she feel the need.” This is a boon that only he out of all of them understands fully, having endured life without that escape option. Yeine’s brow furrows in concentration. “It helps that she has so much of Itempas in her. She is steadiness, stability…Ah. There.” She drops her hands, the weave vanishing before he can fathom more than a few strands of it. “This is not just for you, mind.”

  Because Glee is valuable in her own right—to the world that Yeine values so much, and for Nahadoth, as a weapon against Itempas. That is a cynical interpretation, perhaps, but it is also true. Still…he starts to ask how much more time they’ve given Glee, then closes his mouth. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Every moment will be a blessing.

  But he licks his lips, unsure of what to say. He has reason to be suspicious of favors.

  Nahadoth looks amused. Yeine looks sour. “It wouldn’t kill you to show gratitude,” she says. “Though I suppose I’ll have to get used to your terrible manners. With Sieh gone…” She falters, just a little, then pushes on. Her smile is genuine, if tinged with sadness. “Well. In most families, it’s the youngest who ends up spoiled.” They vanish then, leaving him alone with his discomfiture.

  He is still uncertain if he likes being a god at all, let alone a god in this pantheon.

  He doesn’t hate it anymore, though, and that is something. He likes being alive, too. That feeling is new and altogether strange, and he knows it won’t last forever. Nothing good ever does. But perhaps…he can learn to like being happy. While it lasts.

  (Though he will never say any of this out loud. He has a reputation to maintain.)

  Conjuring a cheroot, he stands, stretches, and heads home to the life he has made.

  THE THIRD WHY

  In her hands was the white-bladed sword that Itempas had used to cleave apart Nahadoth’s chaos and bring design and structure to the earliest iteration of the universe. No one could wield it but him; hells, no one else had ever been able to get near the damned thing, not in all the aeons since he’d created time. But Itempas’s daughter held it before her in a two-handed grip, and there was no doubt in my mind that she knew how to use it.

  “Control,” said Itempas. I was near enough to hear this, though his voice was low and urgent. He had stepped back, quite sensibly, to avoid dying again. But he leaned as close as he could, anxious to advise his daughter. “Remember, Glee, or the power will destroy you.”

  “I will remember,” she said.

  —The Kingdom of Gods, chapter 22

  * * *

  On the morning of her eighteenth birthday, Glee decides to go and find her father.

  She goes downstairs to inform her mother of this. Her mother is unsurprised. “If you were anyone else,” says Mother, “I would accuse you of being impulsive.” There is a hint of irony in her voice as she says this, but Glee ignores it. She is aware that her mother does not laugh out of cruelty. It’s simply her way of appreciating that which makes Glee different.

  Because Glee does not have impulses. She makes carefully considered decisions, having weighed their benefits and consequences and informed herself as to the alternatives. She often does this with a speed that most mortals would consider unseemly at best, impossible at worst—or impulsive. But there is no impulse involved. She has no intuition, ignores any “gut feelings” she experiences, if she’s ever had one. Certainty, or at least the comfort of high probability, is what she prefers.

  Her mother understands this, and likewise understands that it’s pointless to try and talk Glee out of any decision she’s made. But she does ask one question, and it is the one that Glee has been dreading. “Why?”

  There is an answer to this question, even if it is not the answer: “Because I can.” Oh, but it is a weak answer, unsatisfying even to Glee herself, and she is ashamed of herself for having no
thing better.

  Mother shakes her head. Then she offers what aid she can, pressing a pouch of coins into Glee’s hands and sharing any clues and rumors she’s heard. Glee needs neither the money nor the information, but she understands that accepting these gifts will ease her mother’s fears and half-developed desires to come along. It is also a kind of ritual to be performed at the leave-taking of a child, and Glee respects ritual. Rituals give order to life, which is inherently chaotic. But when Mother stops talking, her hands shaking a little, Glee takes those hands in her own. Her mother is blind; she needs to know things through touch and sound. And Glee wants her mother to know this:

  “I’ll come back.” Whether she finds her father or not; whether she chooses to bring him home or not. (She has not decided yet if that is a good idea, even if it’s possible.) “I will come back.”

  “I believe that,” Mother says. “You’ve said it, so of course I do. But when?”

  That question Glee cannot answer, either. So unsatisfying, these little mortal uncertainties. Mother sighs a little, but then she walks Glee to the door.

  Glee goes east, following the sunrise. This is only partially symbolic. The town in which she was conceived and raised is situated at the northwestern edge of the continent; on foot, the only ways to go are east or south. He probably went in the direction of the sunrise, in the same way that a right-handed person is likely to have turned right. And she is aided by the fact that he is who he is, no matter how human he appears to be. He has a presence. Even nineteen years later, when she goes to the places a penniless traveler would visit and asks after a man with her skin and white hair and a face that, according to her mother, would rather break than smile, people laugh—but remember. He leaves a deep impression on the universe, even now, with his fragile-fleshed feet.