The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

10. Family

After Sieh left i rose early, intent upon finding T’vril before the day’s visit to the Salon. Despite his reassurance that I’d already met everyone who mattered, that had been in reference to the contest of heirs. In the matter of my mother, I hoped someone might know more about the night of her abdication.

But I turned left where I should have turned right, and didn’t take the lift far enough down, and instead of T’vril’s office I found myself at the palace entrance, facing the forecourt where my life’s most unpleasant saga had begun.

And Dekarta was there.

When I was five or six, I learned about the world from my Itempan tutors. “There is the universe, ruled by the gods,” they told me. “Bright Itempas is chief among these. And there is the world, where the Noble Consortium rules with the guidance of the Arameri family. Dekarta, the Lord Arameri, is chief among them.”

I had said to my mother, later, that this Lord Arameri must be a very great man.

“He is,” she’d said, and that was the end of the conversation.

It was not the words that had stuck in my mind, but the way she said them.

Sky’s forecourt is the first sight that visitors see, so it is calculated to impress. Besides the Vertical Gate and the palace entrance—a cavernous tunnel of concentric arches, around which stands the intimidating bulk of Sky itself—there is also the Garden of the Hundred Thousand, and the Pier. Of course nothing docks at this Pier, as it juts out from the forecourt over a half-mile drop. It has a thin, elegant railing, about waist-high. This railing would do nothing to stop a person intent on suicide, but I suppose it provides some reassurance to everyone else.

Dekarta stood with Viraine and several others at the foot of the Pier. The group was some ways off, and they had not yet seen me. I would have turned at once and headed back into the palace if I hadn’t recognized one of the figures with Dekarta and Viraine. Zhakkarn, the warrior goddess.

That made me pause. The other people present were Dekarta’s courtiers; I remembered some of them vaguely from my first day. Another man, not nearly as well-dressed as the rest, stood a few paces onto the Pier, as if gazing at the view—but he was shivering. I could see that even from where I stood.

Dekarta said something, and Zhakkarn lifted a hand and conjured a gleaming silver pike. Pointing this at the man, she took three steps forward. The pike’s tip hovered, rock-steady despite the wind, a few inches from the man’s back.

The man took a step forward, then looked back. Wind whipped his hair in a wispy cloud about his head; he looked Amn, or of some sister race. I recognized his manner, though, and his wild, defiant eyes. A heretic, flouter of the Bright. Once there had been entire armies like him, but now there were only a few left, hiding in isolated pockets and worshipping their fallen gods in secret. This one must have been careless.

“You cannot keep them chained forever,” the man said. The wind carried his words toward me and away, teasing my ears. The protective magic that kept the air warm and calm within Sky apparently did not operate on the Pier. “Not even the Skyfather is infallible!”

Dekarta said nothing to this, though he leaned forward and murmured something to Zhakkarn. The man on the Pier stiffened. “No! You can’t! You can’t!” He turned and tried to move past Zhakkarn and the jutting pike, his eyes fixed on Dekarta.

Zhakkarn merely moved the pike’s tip, and the man impaled himself.

I cried out, putting my hands to my mouth. The palace entrance amplified the sound; Dekarta and Viraine both glanced back at me. But then came a sound that dwarfed my cry, as the man began to scream.

It went through me like Zhakkarn’s pike. Hunched around the pike and clutching its shaft, the man’s body shivered even harder than before. Belatedly I realized that some other force besides his cry shook him, as his chest began to glow red-hot around the pike’s tip. Smoke rose from his sleeves, his collar, his mouth and nose. His eyes were the worst of it, because he was aware. He knew what was happening to him, knew it and despaired, and that, too, was part of his suffering.

I fled. Skyfather help me, but I could not bear it; I ran back into the palace and ducked around a corner. Even that did not help, for I could still hear him screaming, screaming, screaming as he burned from the inside out, on and on until I thought I would go mad and hear nothing more for the rest of my life.

Thank all the gods, even Nahadoth, that it eventually ended.

I don’t know how long I crouched there with my hands over my ears. After a time I became aware that I was no longer alone, and I lifted my head. Dekarta, leaning heavily on a dark polished cane whose wood might have come from Darr’s forests, stood watching me, Viraine beside him. The other courtiers had dispersed down the corridor. Zhakkarn was nowhere to be seen.

“Well,” said Dekarta, his voice thick with derision, “we see the truth of it now. It is her father’s cowardice that flows strongest in her, not Arameri courage.”

That replaced my shock with fury. I leapt up from my crouch.

“The Darre were famous warriors once,” said Viraine, before I could speak and damn myself. Unlike Dekarta, his expression was neutral. “But centuries under the Skyfather’s peaceful rule have civilized even the most savage races, my lord, and we cannot blame her for that. I doubt she has ever seen a man killed.”

“The members of this family must be stronger,” said Dekarta. “It is the price we pay for our power. We cannot be like the darkling races, who gave up their gods to save their necks. We must be like that man, misguided though he was.” He pointed back toward the Pier, or wherever the dead heretic’s corpse was now. “Like Shahar. We must be willing to die—and kill—for our Lord Itempas.” He smiled; my skin crawled. “Perhaps I should have you deal with the next one, Granddaughter.”

I was too upset, too angry, to even try to control the hatred in my face. “What strength does it take to kill an unarmed man? To order someone else to kill him? And like that—” I shook my head. The scream still rang in my ears. “That was cruelty, not justice!”

“Was it?” To my surprise, Dekarta actually looked thoughtful. “This world belongs to the Skyfather. That is indisputable. That man was caught distributing forbidden books, books which denied this reality. And every one of those books’ readers—every good citizen who saw this blasphemy and failed to denounce it—has now joined in his delusion. They are all criminals in our midst, intent on stealing not gold, not even lives, but hearts. Minds. Sanity and peace.” Dekarta sighed. “True justice would be to wipe out that entire nation; cauterize the taint before it spreads. Instead, I’ve merely ordered the deaths of everyone in his faction, and their spouses and children. Only those who are beyond redemption.”

I stared at Dekarta, too horrified for words. Now I knew why the man had turned back to impale himself. Now I knew where Zhakkarn had gone.

“Lord Dekarta did give him a choice,” Viraine added. “Jumping would have been the easier death. The winds usually spin them into the palace’s support column, so nothing hits the ground. It’s… quick.”

“You…” I wanted to put my hands over my ears again. “You call yourselves servants of Itempas? You’re rabid beasts. Demons!”

Dekarta shook his head. “I am a fool to keep looking for anything of her in you.” He turned away then and began moving down the hall, slow even with the cane. Viraine fell in beside him, ready to assist if Dekarta stumbled. He looked back at me once; Dekarta did not.

I pushed myself away from the wall. “My mother lived truer to the Bright than you ever could!”

Dekarta stopped, and for a heartbeat I felt fear, realizing I had gone too far. But he did not turn back.

“That is true,” Dekarta said, his voice very soft. “Your mother wouldn’t have shown any mercy at all.”

He moved on. I leaned back against the wall and did not stop trembling for a long time.

I skipped the Salon that day. I couldn’t have sat there beside Dekarta, pretending indifference, while my mind still rang with the heretic’s screams. I was not Arameri and would never be Arameri, so where was the point in my acting like them? And for the time being, I had other concerns.

I walked into T’vril’s office as he was filling out paperwork. Before he could rise to greet me, I put a hand on his desk. “My mother’s belongings. Where are they?”

He closed his mouth, then opened it again to speak. “Her apartment is in Spire Seven.”

It was my turn to pause. “Her apartment is intact?”

“Dekarta ordered it kept that way when she left. After it became clear that she would not return…” He spread his hands. “My predecessor valued his life too much to suggest that the apartment be emptied. So do I.”

He added then, diplomatic as ever, “I’ll have someone show you the way.”

My mother’s quarters.

The servant had left me alone on my unspoken order. With the door closed, a stillness fell. Ovals of sunlight layered the floor. The curtains were heavy and had not stirred at my entrance. T’vril’s people had kept the apartment clean, so not even dust motes danced in the light. If I held my breath I could almost believe I stood within a portrait, not a place in the here and now.

I took a step forward. This was the reception room. Bureau, couch, table for tea or work. A few personal touches here and there—paintings on the wall, sculpture on small shelves, a beautifully carved altar in the Senmite style. All very elegant.

None of it felt like her.

I went through the apartment. Bathchamber on the left. Bigger than mine, but my mother had always loved bathing. I remembered sitting in bubbles with her, giggling as she piled her hair on top of her head and made silly faces—

No. None of that, or I would soon be useless.

The bedchamber. The bed was a huge oval twice the size of mine, white, deep with pillows. Dressers, a vanity, a hearth and mantel—decorative, since there was no need for fire in Sky. Another table. Here, too, were personal touches: bottles carefully arranged on the vanity to put my mother’s favorites at the front. Several potted plants, huge and verdant after so many years. Portraits on the walls.

These caught my eye. I went to the mantel for a better look at the largest of them, a framed rendering of a handsome blonde Amn woman. She was richly dressed, with a bearing that spoke of an upbringing far more refined than mine, but something about her expression intrigued me. Her smile was only the barest curve of lips, and although she faced the viewer, her eyes were vague rather than focused. Daydreaming? Or troubled? The artist had been a master to capture that.

The resemblance between her and my mother was striking. My grandmother, then, Dekarta’s tragically dead wife. No wonder she looked troubled, marrying into this family.

I turned to take in the whole room. “What were you in this place, Mother?” I whispered aloud. My voice did not break the stillness. Here within the closed, frozen moment of the room, I was merely an observer. “Were you the mother I remember, or were you an Arameri?”

This had nothing to do with her death. It was just something I had to know.

I began to search the apartment. It went slowly because I could not bring myself to ransack the place. Not only would I offend the servants by doing so, but I felt that it would somehow disrespect my mother. She had always liked things neat.

Thus the sun had set by the time I finally found a small chest in the headboard cabinet of her bed. I hadn’t even realized the headboard had a cabinet until I rested my hand on its edge and felt the seam. A hiding space? The chest was open, stuffed with a bouquet of folded and rolled papers. I was already reaching for it when my eyes caught a glimpse of my father’s handwriting on one of the scrolls.

My hands shook as I lifted the chest from the cabinet. It left a clean square amid the thick layer of dust on the cabinet’s inside; apparently the servants hadn’t cleaned within. Perhaps they, like me, hadn’t realized the headboard opened. Blowing dust off the topmost layer of papers, I picked up the first folded sheet.

A love letter, from my father to my mother.

I pulled out each paper, examining and arranging them in order by date. They were all love letters, from him to her and a few from her to him, spanning a year or so in my parents’ lives. Swallowing hard and steeling myself, I began to read.

An hour later I stopped, and lay down on the bed, and wept myself to sleep.

When I awakened, the room was dark.

And I was not afraid. A bad sign.

“You should not wander the palace alone,” said the Nightlord.

I sat up. He sat beside me on the bed, gazing at the window. The moon was high and bright through a smear of cloud; I must have slept for hours. I rubbed my face and said, greatly daring, “I would like to think we have an understanding, Lord Nahadoth.”

My reward was his smile, though he still did not turn to me. “Respect. Yes. But there are more dangers in Sky than me.”

“Some things are worth the risk.” I looked at the bed. The pile of letters lay there, along with other small items I’d taken from the chest: a sachet of dried flowers; a lock of straight black hair that must have been my father’s; a curl of paper that held several crossed-out lines of poetry in my mother’s hand; and a tiny silver pendant on a thin leather cord. The treasures of a woman in love. I picked up the pendant and tried again, unsuccessfully, to determine what it was. It looked like a rough, flattened lump, oblong with pointed ends. Familiar, somehow.

“A fruitstone,” said Nahadoth. He watched me now, sidelong.

Yes, it did look like that—apricot, perhaps, or gingko. I remembered then where I’d seen something similar: in gold, around Ras Onchi’s neck. “Why…?”

“The fruit dies, but within lies the spark of new life. Enefa had power over life and death.”

I frowned in confusion. Perhaps the silver fruitstone was Enefa’s symbol, like Itempas’s white-jade ring. But why would my mother possess a symbol of Enefa? Or rather—why would my father have given it to her?

“She was the strongest of us,” Nahadoth murmured. He was gazing out at the night sky again, though it was clear his thoughts were somewhere else entirely. “If Itempas hadn’t used poison, He could never have slain her outright. But she trusted Him. Loved Him.”

He lowered his eyes, smiling gently, ruefully, to himself. “Then again, so did I.”

I nearly dropped the pendant.

Here is what the priests taught me:

Once upon a time there were three great gods. Bright Itempas, Lord of Day, was the one destined by fate or the Maelstrom or some unfathomable design to rule. All was well until Enefa, His upstart sister, decided that she wanted to rule in Bright Itempas’s place. She convinced their brother Nahadoth to assist her, and together with some of their godling children they attempted a coup. Itempas, mightier than both His siblings combined, defeated them soundly. He slew Enefa, punished Nahadoth and the rebels, and established an even greater peace—for without His dark brother and wild sister to appease, He was free to bring true light and order to all creation.

But—

“P-poison?”

Nahadoth sighed. Behind him his hair shifted restlessly, like curtains wafting in a night breeze. “We created the weapon ourselves in our dalliances with humans, though we did not realize this for some time.”

The Nightlord descended to earth, seeking entertainment— “The demons,” I whispered.

“Humans made that word an epithet. The demons were as beautiful and perfect as our godborn children—but mortal. Put into our bodies, their blood taught our flesh how to die. It was the only poison that could harm us.”

But the Nightlord’s lover never forgave him— “You hunted them down.”

“We feared they would mingle with mortals, passing on the taint to their descendants, until the entire human race became lethal to us. But Itempas kept one alive, in hiding.”

To murder one’s own children… I shuddered. So the priests’ story was true. And yet I could sense the shame in Nahadoth, the lingering pain. That meant my grandmother’s version of the story was true, too.

“So Lord Itempas used this… poison to subdue Enefa when she attacked Him.”

“She did not attack Him.”

Queasiness. The world was tilting in my head. “Then… why…?”

He lowered his gaze. His hair fell forward to obscure his face, and I was thrown back in time three nights to our first meeting. The smile that curved his lips now was not mad, but held such bitterness that it might as well have been.

“They quarreled,” he said, “over me.”

For half an instant, something changed in me. I looked at Nahadoth and did not see him as the powerful, unpredictable, deadly entity that he was.

I wanted him. To entice him. To control him. I saw myself naked on green grass, my arms and legs wrapped around Nahadoth as he shuddered upon me, trapped and helpless in the pleasure of my flesh. Mine. I saw myself caress his midnight hair, and look up to meet my own eyes, and smile in smug, possessive satisfaction.

I rejected that image, that feeling, almost as soon as it came to my mind. But it was another warning.

“The Maelstrom that begat us was slow,” Nahadoth said. If he sensed my sudden unease, he gave no sign. “I was born first, then Itempas. For uncountable eternities He and I were alone in the universe—first enemies, then beloved. He liked it that way.”

I tried not to think of the priests’ tales. Tried not to wonder if Nahadoth was lying, too—though there was a feel of truth to his words that rang within me on an almost instinctive level. The Three were more than siblings; they were forces of nature, opposed yet inextricably linked. I, an only child and a mortal who had never had a beloved of her own, could not begin to understand their relationship. Yet I felt compelled to try.

“When Enefa came along… Lord Itempas saw her as an interloper?”

“Yes. Even though before her we felt our incompleteness. We were made to be Three, not two. Itempas resented that, as well.”

Then Nahadoth glanced at me sidelong. In the shadow of my body, for just an instant, the uncertain shift of his face resolved into a singular perfection of lines and features that made my breath catch. I had never seen anything so beautiful. At once I understood why Itempas had killed Enefa to have him.

“Does it amuse you to hear that we can be just as selfish and prideful as humankind?” There was an edge to Nahadoth’s voice now. I barely noticed it. I could not look away from his face. “We made you in our image, remember. All our flaws are yours.”

“No,” I said. “A-all that surprises me are… the lies I’ve been told.”

“I would have expected the Darre to do a better job of preserving the truth.” He leaned closer, slow, subtle. Something predatory was in his eyes—and I, entranced, was easy prey. “Not every race of humankind worships Itempas by choice, after all. I would have thought their ennu at least would know the old ways.”

I would have thought so, too. I clenched my hand around the silver fruitstone, feeling light-headed. I knew that once my people had been heretics. That was why the Amn called races like mine darkling: we had accepted the Bright only to save ourselves when the Arameri threatened us with annihilation. But what Nahadoth implied—that some of my people had known the real reason for the Gods’ War all along and had hidden it from me—no. That I could not, did not want to, believe.

There had always been whispers about me. Doubts. My Amn hair, my Amn eyes. My Amn mother, who might have inculcated me with her Arameri ways. I had fought so hard to win my people’s respect. I thought I had succeeded.

“No,” I whispered. “My grandmother would have told me…”

Wouldn’t she?

“So many secrets surround you,” the Nightlord whispered. “So many lies, like veils. Shall I strip them away for you?” His hand touched my hip. I could not help jumping. His nose brushed mine, his breath tickling my lips. “You want me.”

If I had not already been trembling, I would have begun. “N-no.”

“So many lies.” On the last word, his tongue licked out to brush my lips. Every muscle in my body seemed to tighten; I could not help whimpering. I saw myself on the green grass again, under him, pinned by him. I saw myself on a bed—the very bed on which I sat. I saw him take me on my mother’s bed, his face savage and his movements violent, and I did not own him or control him. How had I ever dared to imagine that I might? He used me and I was helpless, crying out in pain and want. I was his and he devoured me, relishing my sanity as he tore it apart and swallowed it in oozing chunks. He would destroy me and I would love every minute of it.

“Oh gods—” The irony of my oath was lost on me. I reached up, burying my hands in his black aura to push at him. I felt cool night air and thought my hands would just go on, touching nothing. Instead I encountered solid flesh, a warm body, cloth. I clutched at the latter to remind me of reality and danger. It was so hard not to pull him closer. “Please don’t. Please, oh gods, please don’t.”

He still loomed over me. His mouth still brushed mine, so that I felt his smile. “Is that a command?”

I was shaking with fear and desire and effort. The last finally paid off as I managed to turn my face away from his. His cool breath tickled my neck and I felt it down my whole body, the most intimate of caresses. I had never wanted a man so much, never in my whole life. I had never been so afraid.

“Please,” I said again.

He kissed me, very lightly, on my neck. I tried not to moan and failed miserably. I ached for him. But then he sighed, rose, and walked over to the window. The black tendrils of his power lingered on me a moment longer; I had been almost buried in his darkness. But as he moved away the tendrils released me—reluctantly, it seemed—and settled back into the usual restlessness of his aura.

I wrapped my arms around myself, wondering if I would ever stop shivering.

“Your mother was a true Arameri,” said Nahadoth.

That shocked me out of desire, as suddenly as a slap.

“She was all that Dekarta wanted and more,” he continued. “Their goals were never the same, but in every other way, she was more than a match for her father. He loves her still.”

I swallowed. My legs were shaky so I did not stand, but I made myself straighten from the hunch that I had unconsciously adopted. “Then why did he kill her?”

“You think it was him?”

I opened my mouth to demand an explanation. But before I could, he turned to me. In the light from the window his body was a silhouette, except for his eyes. I saw them clearly, onyx-black and glittering with unearthly knowing and malice.

“No, little pawn,” said the Nightlord. “Little tool. No more secrets, not without an alliance. That is for your safety as well as ours. Shall I tell you the terms?” Somehow I knew that he smiled. “Yes, I think I should. We want your life, sweet Yeine. Offer it to us and you’ll have all the answers you want—and, too, the chance for revenge. That’s what you truly want, isn’t it?” A soft, cruel chuckle. “You’re more Arameri than Dekarta sees.”

I began to tremble again, not out of fear this time.

As before, he faded away, his image disappearing long before his presence did. When I could no longer feel him, I put away my mother’s belongings and straightened the room so that no one would know I had been there. I wanted to keep the silver fruitstone, but I could think of nowhere safer to hide it than the compartment where it had lain undiscovered for decades. So I left it and the letters in their hiding place.

When I was finally done, I went back to my room. It took all my willpower not to run.