The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

19. Diamonds

You are insignificant. One of millions, neither special nor unique. I did not ask for this ignominy, and I resent the comparison.

Fine. I don’t like you, either.

We appeared in a stately, brightly lit hall of white and gray marble, lined by narrow rectangular windows, under a chandelier. (If I had never seen Sky, I would have been impressed.) At both ends of the hall were double doors of polished dark wood; I assumed we faced the relevant set. From beyond the open windows I could hear merchants crying their wares, a baby fussing, a horse’s neigh, womens’ laughter. City life.

No one was around, though the evening was young. I knew Nahadoth well enough by now to suspect that this was deliberate.

I nodded toward the doors. “Is Gemd alone?”

“No. With him are a number of guards, colleagues, and advisors.”

Of course. Planning a war took teamwork. I scowled and then caught myself: I could not do this angry. My goal was delay—peace, for as long as possible. Anger would not help.

“Please try not to kill anyone,” I murmured, as we walked toward the door. Nahadoth said nothing in response, but the hall grew dimmer, the flickering torchlit shadows sharpening to razor fineness. The air felt heavy.

This my Arameri ancestors had learned, at the cost of their own blood and souls: the Nightlord cannot be controlled. He can only be unleashed. If Gemd forced me to call on Nahadoth’s power—

Best to pray that would not be necessary.

I walked forward.

The doors flung themselves open as I came to them, slamming against the opposite walls with an echoing racket that would bring half Gemd’s palace guard running if they had any competence. It made for a suitably stunning entrance as I strode through, greeted by a chorus of surprised shouts and curses. Men who had been seated around a wide, paper-cluttered table scrambled to their feet, some groping for weapons and others staring at me dumbly. Two of them wore deep-red cloaks that I recognized as Tok warrior attire. So that was one of the lands Menchey had allied with. At the head of this table sat a man of perhaps sixty years: richly dressed, salt-and-pepper-haired, with a face like flint and steel. He reminded me of Dekarta, though only in manner; the Mencheyev were High North people, too, and they looked more like Darre than Amn. He half-stood, then hovered where he was, more angry than surprised.

I fixed my gaze on him, though I knew that Menchey, like Darr, was ruled more by its council than its chieftain. In many ways we were merely figureheads, he and I. But in this confrontation, he would be the key.

“Minister,” I said, in Senmite. “Greetings.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re that Darre bitch.”

“One of many, yes.”

Gemd turned to one of his men and murmured something; the man hurried away. To supervise the guards and figure out how I’d gotten in, no doubt. Then Gemd turned back, his look appraising and wary.

“You’re not among many now,” he said slowly. “Or are you? You couldn’t have been foolish enough to come alone.”

I caught myself just before I would have looked around. Of course Nahadoth would choose not to appear. The Enefadeh had pledged to help me, after all, and having the Nightlord looming behind me like an overgrown shadow would have undermined what little authority I had in these men’s eyes.

But Nahadoth was there. I could feel him.

“I have come,” I said. “Not entirely alone. But then, no Arameri is ever fully alone, is she?”

One of his men, almost as richly dressed as Gemd, narrowed his eyes. “You’re no Arameri,” he said. “They didn’t even acknowledge you until these last few months.”

“Is that why you’ve decided to form this alliance?” I asked, stepping forward. A few of the men tensed, but most did not. I am not very intimidating. “I can’t see how that makes much sense. If I’m so unimportant to the Arameri, then Darr is no threat.”

“Darr is always a threat,” growled another man. “You man-eating harlots—”

“Enough,” said Gemd, and the man subsided.

Good; not wholly a figurehead, then.

“So this is not about the Arameri adopting me, then?” I eyed the man Gemd had silenced. “Ah, I see. This is about old grudges. The last war between our peoples was more generations back than any of us can count. Are Mencheyev memories so long?”

“Darr claimed the Atir Plateau in that war,” Gemd said quietly. “You know we want it back.”

I knew, and I knew that was a stupid, stupid reason to start a war. The people who lived on the Atir didn’t even speak the Mencheyev tongue anymore. None of this made any sense, and that was enough to make my temper rise.

“Who is it?” I asked. “Which of my cousins is pulling your strings? Relad? Scimina? Some sycophant of theirs? Who are you whoring for, Gemd, and how much have you charged to bend forward?”

Gemd’s jaw tightened but he said nothing. His men were not so well-trained; they bristled and glared daggers. Not all of them, though. I noted which ones looked uncomfortable, and knew that they were the ones through whom Scimina or another of my relatives had chosen to work.

“You are an uninvited guest, Yeine-ennu,” Gemd said. “Lady Yeine, I should say. You are interrupting my business. Say what you’ve come to say, and then please leave.”

I inclined my head. “Call off your plans to attack Darr.”

Gemd waited for a moment. “Or?”

I shook my head. “There is no alternative, Minister. I’ve learned a great deal from my Arameri relatives these last few days, including the art of wielding absolute power. We do not give ultimatums. We give orders, and those are obeyed.”

The men turned to look at one another, their expressions ranging from fury to incredulity. Two kept their faces blank: the richly dressed man at Gemd’s side and Gemd himself. I could see calculation in their eyes.

“You don’t have absolute power,” said the man beside Gemd. He kept his tone neutral, a sign that he was uncertain. “You haven’t even been named heir.”

“True,” I said. “Only the Lord Dekarta holds total power over the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Whether they thrive. Whether they falter. Whether they are obliterated and forgotten.” Gemd’s brow tightened at that, not quite a frown. “Grandfather has this power, but he may of course choose to delegate it to those of us in Sky who have his favor.”

I let them wonder whether I had earned that favor or not. It probably sounded like a sign of favor that I had been summoned to Sky and named a fullblood.

Gemd glanced at the man beside him before saying, “You must realize, Lady Yeine, that once plans have been set in motion, they can be difficult to stop. We will need time to discuss your… order.”

“Of course,” I said. “You have ten minutes. I’ll wait.”

“Oh for—” This was from another man, younger and bigger, one of the ones I had marked for an Arameri tool. He looked at me as if I were excrement on the bottom of his shoe. “Minister, you cannot seriously be considering this ridiculous demand!”

Gemd glared at him, but the silent reprimand clearly had no impact. The younger man stepped away from the table and came toward me, his whole posture radiating menace. Every Darre woman is taught to deal with such behavior from men. It is an animal trick that they use, like dogs ruffling their fur and growling. Only rarely is there actual threat behind it, and a woman’s strength lies in discerning when the threat is real and when it is just hair and noise. For now the threat was not real, but that could change.

He stopped before me and turned back to his fellows, pointing at me. “Look at her! They probably had to call a scrivener just to confirm she came out of an Arameri cunt—”

“Rish!” Gemd looked furious. “Sit down.”

The man—Rish—ignored him and turned back to me, and abruptly the threat became real. I saw it in the way he positioned himself, angling his body to put his right hand near my right side. He meant to backhand me. I had an instant to decide whether to dodge or reach for my knife—

And in that sliver of time, I felt the power around me coalesce, malice-hard and sharp as crystal.

That this analogy occurred to me should have been a warning.

Rish swung. I held still, tense for the blow. Three inches from my face Rish’s fist seemed to glance off something no one could see—and when it did, there was a high hard clacking sound, like stone striking stone.

Rish drew his hand away, startled and perhaps puzzled by his failure to put me in my place. He looked at his fist, on which a patch of shining, faceted black had appeared about the knuckles. I was close enough to see the flesh around this patch blistering, beading with moisture like meat cooked over a flame. Except it was not burning, but freezing; I could feel the waft of cold air from where I stood. The effect was the same, however, and as the flesh withered and crisped away as if it had been charred, what appeared underneath was not raw flesh, but stone.

I was surprised that Rish took so long to begin screaming.

All the men in the room reacted to Rish’s cry. One stumbled back from the table and nearly fell over a chair. Two others ran over to Rish to try and help him. Gemd moved to help as well, but some powerful preservative instinct must have risen in the well-dressed man beside him; he grabbed Gemd by the shoulder to halt him. That turned out to be wise, because the first of the men who reached Rish—one of the Toks—grabbed Rish’s wrist to see what was the matter.

The black was spreading swiftly; nearly the whole hand was now a glittering lump of black crystal in the rough shape of a fist. Only the tips of Rish’s fingers remained flesh, and they transformed even as I watched. Rish fought the Tok, maddened with agony, and the Tok grabbed Rish’s fist in an effort to hold him still. Almost immediately he jerked away, as if the stone had been too cold to touch—and then the Tok, too, stared at his palm, and the black blotch that was now spreading there.

Not merely crystal, I realized, in the part of my mind that was not frozen in horror. The black substance was too pretty to be quartz, too flawless and clear in its faceting. The stone caught the light like diamond, because that was what their flesh had become. Black diamond, the rarest and most valuable of all.

The Tok began to scream. So did several others of the men in the room.

Through it all I remained still and kept my face impassive.

He shouldn’t have tried to hit me. He deserved what he got. He shouldn’t have tried to hit me.

And the man who tried to help him? What did that one deserve?

They are all my enemies, my people’s enemies. They should not have… they should not… Oh, gods. Gods.

The Nightlord cannot be controlled, child. He can only be unleashed. And you asked him not to kill.

I could not show weakness.

So while the two men flailed and screamed, I stepped around them and walked up to the table. Gemd looked at me, his mouth distorted with disgust and disbelief.

I said, “Take all the time you like to discuss my order.” Then I turned to leave.

“W-wait.” Gemd. I paused, not allowing my eyes to linger on the two men. Rish was almost half diamond now, the stone creeping over his arm and chest, down one leg and up the side of his neck. He lay on the floor, no longer screaming, though he still keened in a low, agonized voice. Perhaps his throat had turned to diamond already. The other man was reaching toward his comrades, begging for a sword so he could cut off his arm. A young fellow—one of Gemd’s heirs, to judge by his features—drew his blade and edged close, but then another man grabbed him and hauled him back. Another wise decision; flecks of black no larger than a grain of sand sparkled on the floor around the two men. Bits of Rish’s flesh, transformed and cast about by his flailing. As I watched, the Tok fell onto his good hand, and his thumb touched one of the flecks. It, too, began to change.

“Stop this,” Gemd murmured.

“I did not start it.”

He cursed swiftly in his language. “Stop it, gods damn you! What kind of monster are you?”

I could not help laughing. That there was no humor in it, only bitter self-loathing, would be lost on them.

“I’m an Arameri,” I said.

One of the men behind us abruptly fell silent, and I turned. Not the Tok; he was still shrieking while blackness ate its way down his spine. The diamond had spread to encompass Rish’s mouth and was consuming the whole lower half of his face. It seemed to have stopped on his torso, though it was working its way down his remaining leg. I suspected it would stop altogether once it had consumed the nonvital parts of his body, leaving him mutilated and perhaps mad, but alive. I had, after all, asked Nahadoth not to kill.

I averted my eyes, lest I give myself away by throwing up.

“Understand this,” I said. The horror in my heart had crept into my voice; it lent me a deeper timbre, and a hint of resonance, that I had not possessed before. “If letting these men die will save my people, then they will die.” I leaned forward, putting my hands on the table. “If killing everyone in this room, everyone in this palace, will save my people, then know, Gemd: I will do it. You would, too, if you were me.”

He had been staring at Rish. Now his eyes jerked toward me, and I saw realization and loathing flicker through them. Was there a hint of self-loathing amid that hatred? Had he believed me when I’d said you would, too? Because he would. Anyone would, I understood now. There was nothing we mortals would not do when it came to protecting our loved ones.

I would tell myself that for the rest of my life.

“Enough.” I barely heard Gemd over the screams, but I saw his mouth move. “Enough. I’ll call off the attack.”

“And disband the alliance?”

“I can speak only for Menchey.” There was something broken in his tone. He did not meet my eyes. “The others may choose to continue.”

“Then warn them, Minister Gemd. The next time I’m forced to do this, two hundred will suffer instead of two. If they press the issue, two thousand. You chose this war, not I. I will not fight fairly.”

Gemd looked at me in mute hatred. I held his eyes awhile longer, then turned to the two men, one of whom still shuddered and whimpered on the floor. The other, Rish, seemed catatonic. I walked over to them. The glimmering, deadly black flecks did not harm me, though they crunched under my feet.

Nahadoth could stop the magic, I was certain. He could probably even restore the men to wholeness—but Darr’s safety depended on my ability to strike fear into Gemd’s heart.

“Finish it,” I whispered.

The black surged and consumed each of the men in seconds. Chill vapors rose around them as their final screams mingled with the sounds of flesh crackling and bone snapping, then all of it died away. In the men’s place lay two enormous, faceted gems in the rough shape of huddled figures. Beautiful, and quite valuable, I guessed; if nothing else, their families would live well from henceforth. If the families chose to sell their loved ones’ remains.

I passed between the diamonds on my way out. The guards who had come in behind me moved out of my way, some of them stumbling in their haste. The doors swung shut behind me, quietly this time. When they were closed, I stopped.

“Shall I take you home?” asked Nahadoth. Behind me.

“Home?”

“Sky.”

Ah, yes. Home, for Arameri.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Darkness enveloped me. When it cleared, we were in Sky’s forecourt again, though at the Garden of the Hundred Thousand this time rather than the Pier. A path of polished stones wound between neat, orderly flower beds, each overhung with a different type of exotic tree. In the distance, through the leaves, I could see the starry sky and the mountains that met it.

I walked through the garden until I found a spot with an unimpeded view, beneath a miniature satinbell tree. My thoughts turned in slow, lazy spirals. I was growing used to the cool feel of Nahadoth behind me.

“My weapon,” I said to him.

“As you are mine.”

I nodded, sighing into a breeze that lifted my hair and set the leaves of the satinbell a-rustle. As I turned to face Nahadoth, a scud of cloud passed across the moon’s crescent. His cloak seemed to inhale in that dim instant, growing impossibly until it almost eclipsed the palace in rippling waves of black. Then the cloud passed, and it was just a cloak again.

I felt like that cloak all of a sudden—wild, out of control, giddily alive. I lifted my arms and closed my eyes as another breeze gusted. It felt so good.

“I wish I could fly,” I said.

“I can gift you with that magic, for a time.”

I shook my head, closing my eyes to sway with the wind. “Magic is wrong.” I knew that oh, so well now.

He said nothing to that, which surprised me until I thought deeper. After witnessing so many generations of Arameri hypocrisy, perhaps he no longer cared enough to complain.

It was tempting, so tempting, to stop caring myself. My mother, Darr, the succession; what did any of it matter? I could forget all of that so easily, and spend the remainder of my life—all four days of it—indulging any whim or pleasure I wanted.

Any pleasure, except one.

“Last night,” I said, lowering my arms at last. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

“You’re more useful alive.”

I laughed. I felt light-headed, reckless. “Does that mean I’m the only person in Sky who has nothing to fear from you?” I knew it was a stupid question before I finished speaking, but I do not think I was entirely sane in that moment.

Fortunately, the Nightlord did not answer my stupid, dangerous question. I glanced back at him to gauge his mood and saw that his nightcloak had changed again. This time the wisps had spun long and thin, drifting through the garden like layers of campfire smoke. The ones nearest me curled inward, surrounding me on all sides. I was reminded of certain plants in my homeland, which grew teeth or sticky tendrils to ensnare insects.

And at the heart of this dark flower, my bait: his glowing face, his lightless eyes. I stepped closer, deeper into his shadow, and he smiled.

“You wouldn’t have had to kill me,” I said softly. I ducked my head and looked up at him through my lashes, curving my body in silent invitation. I had seen prettier women do this all my life, yet never dared myself. I lifted a hand and moved it toward his chest, half-expecting to touch nothing and be snatched forward into darkness. But this time there was a body within the shadows, startling in its solidity. I could not see it, or my own hand where I touched him, but I could feel skin, smooth and cool beneath my fingertips.

Bare skin. Gods.

I licked my lips and met his eyes. “There’s a great deal you could have done without compromising my… usefulness.”

Something in his face changed, like a cloud across the moon: the shadow of the predator. His teeth were sharper when he spoke. “I know.”

Something in me changed, too, as the wild feeling went still. That look in his face. Some part of me had been waiting for it.

“Would you?” I licked my lips again, swallowed around sudden tightness in my throat. “Kill me? If… I asked?”

There was a pause.

When the Lord of Night touched my face, fingertips tracing my jaw, I thought I was imagining things. There was an unmistakable tenderness in the gesture. But then, just as tenderly, the hand slid farther down and curled around my neck. As he leaned close, I closed my eyes.

“Are you asking?” His lips brushed my ear as he whispered.

I opened my mouth to speak and could not. All at once I was trembling. Tears welled in my eyes, spilled down my face onto his wrist. I wanted to speak, to ask, so badly. But I just stood there, trembling and crying, while his breath tickled my ear. In and out. Three times.

Then he released my neck, and my knees buckled. I fell forward, and suddenly I was buried in the soft, cool dark of him, pressed against a chest I could not see, and I began sobbing into it. After a moment, the hand that had almost killed me cupped the nape of my neck. I must have bawled for an hour, though maybe it was less. I don’t know. He held me tight the whole time.