The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (30 page)

“Did anything unusual happen at that ceremony?” I asked. “Did you make a play for the Stone that time?”

“No, we weren’t ready. It was a routine succession, like the hundred others that have occurred since our imprisonment.” Sieh sighed. “Or so I’m told, since I wasn’t there. None of us were, except Nahadoth. They always make him attend.”

I frowned. “Why just him?”

“Itempas attends the ceremony,” said Zhakkarn. While I gaped at her, trying to shape my mind around the idea of the Skyfather here, right here, coming here, Zhakkarn went on. “He makes his greetings personally to the new Arameri ruler. Then he offers Nahadoth freedom, though only if he serves Itempas. Thus far, Naha has refused, but Itempas knows it is in his nature to change his mind. He will keep asking.”

I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the lingering sense of reverence that a lifetime of training had inculcated in me. The Skyfather, at the succession ceremony. At every succession ceremony. He would be there to see me die. He would put his blessing on it.

Monstrous. All my life, I had worshipped him.

To distract myself from my own whirling thoughts, I pinched the bridge of my nose with my fingers. “So who was the sacrifice last time? Some other hapless relative dragged into the family nightmare?”

“No, no,” said Sieh. He got up, stretched again, then bent double and began to stand on his hands, wobbling alarmingly. He spoke in between puffing breaths. “An Arameri clan head… must be willing to kill… every person in this palace… if Itempas should require it. To prove themselves, usually… the prospective head must… sacrifice someone close.”

I considered this. “So I was chosen because neither Relad nor Scimina is close to anyone?”

Sieh wobbled too much, tumbled to the ground, then rolled upright at once, examining his nails as if the fall hadn’t happened. “Well, I suppose. No one’s really sure why Dekarta chose you. But for Dekarta himself, the sacrifice was Ygreth.”

The name teased my memory with familiarity, though I could not immediately place it with a face. “Ygreth?”

Sieh looked at me in surprise. “His wife. Your maternal grandmother. Kinneth didn’t tell you?”

ARE YOU STILL ANGRY WITH ME?

No.

That was quick.

Anger is pointless.

I disagree. I think anger can be very powerful under the right circumstances. Let me tell you a story to illustrate. Once upon a time there was a little girl whose father murdered her mother.

How awful.

Yes, you understand that sort of betrayal. The little girl was very young at the time, so the truth was hidden from her. Perhaps she was told her mother abandoned the family. Perhaps her mother vanished; in their world, such things happened. But the little girl was very clever, and she had loved her mother dearly. She pretended to believe the lies, but in reality, she bided her time.

When she was older, wiser, she began to ask questions—but not of her father, or anyone else who claimed to care for her. These could not be trusted. She asked her slaves, who hated her already. She asked an innocent young scrivener who was smitten with her, brilliant and easy to manipulate. She asked her enemies, the heretics, whom her family had persecuted for generations. None of them had any reason to lie, and between them all she pieced together the truth. Then she set all her mind and heart and formidable will on vengeance… because that is what a daughter does when her mother has been murdered.

Ah, I see. But I wonder; did the little girl love her father?

I wonder that, too. Once, certainly, she must have; children cannot help loving. But what of later? Can love turn to hate so easily, so completely? Or did she weep inside even as she set herself against him? I do not know these things. But I do know that she set in motion a series of events that would shake the world even after her death, and inflict her vengeance on all humankind, not just her father. Because in the end, we are all complicit.

All of you? That seems a bit extreme.

Yes. Yes, it is. But I hope she gets what she wants.

This, then, was the Arameri succession: a successor was chosen by the family head. If she was the sole successor, she would be required to convince her most cherished person to willingly die on her behalf, wielding the Stone and transferring the master sigil to her brow. If there was more than one successor, they competed to force the designated sacrifice to choose one or the other. My mother had been sole heir; whom would she have been forced to kill, had she not abdicated? Perhaps she had cultivated Viraine as a lover for more than one reason. Perhaps she could have convinced Dekarta himself to die for her. Perhaps this was why she had never come back after her marriage, after my conception.

So many pieces had fallen into place. More yet floated, indistinct. I could feel how close I was to understanding it all, but would I have time? There was the rest of the night, the next day, and another whole night and day beyond that. Then the ball, and the ceremony, and the end.

More than enough time, I decided.

“You can’t,” Sieh said again urgently, trotting along beside me. “Yeine, Naha needs to heal, just as I did. He can’t do that with mortal eyes shaping him—”

“I won’t look at him, then.”

“It’s not that simple! When he’s weak, he’s more dangerous than ever; he has trouble controlling himself. You shouldn’t—” His voice dropped an octave suddenly, breaking like that of a youth in puberty, and he cursed under his breath and stopped. I walked on, and was not surprised when I heard him stamp the floor behind me and shout, “You are the stubbornest, most infuriating mortal I’ve ever had to put up with!”

“Thank you,” I called back. There was a curve up ahead; I stopped before rounding it. “Go and rest in my room,” I said. “I’ll read you a story when I get back.”

What he snarled in reply, in his own tongue, needed no translation. But the walls did not fall in, and I did not turn into a frog, so he couldn’t have been that angry.

Zhakkarn had told me where to find Nahadoth. She had looked at me for a long time before saying it, reading my face with eyes that had assessed a warrior’s determination since the dawn of time. That she’d told me was a compliment—or a warning. Determination could easily become obsession. I did not care.

In the middle of the lowermost residential level, Zhakkarn had said, Nahadoth had an apartment. The palace was perpetually shadowed here by its own bulk, and in the center there would be no windows. All the Enefadeh had dwellings on that level, for those unpleasant occasions when they needed to sleep and eat and otherwise care for their semimortal bodies. Zhakkarn had not mentioned why they’d chosen such an unpleasant location, but I thought I knew. Down there, just above the oubliette, they could be closer to Enefa’s Stone than to Itempas’s usurped sky. Perhaps the lingering feel of her presence was a comfort, given that they suffered so much in her name.

The level was silent when I stepped out of the lift alcove. None of the palace’s mortal complement lived here—not that I blamed them. Who would want the Nightlord for a neighbor? Unsurprisingly, the level seemed unusually gloomy; the palace walls did not glow so brightly here. Nahadoth’s brooding presence permeated the whole level.

But when I rounded the last curve, I was briefly blinded by a flash of unexpected brightness. In the afterimage of that flash I had seen a woman, bronze-skinned and silver-haired, almost as tall as Zhakkarn and sternly beautiful, kneeling in the corridor as if to pray. The light had come from the wings on her back, covered in mirror-bright feathers of overlapping precious metals. I had seen her once before, this woman, in a dream—

Then I blinked my watering eyes and looked again, and the light was gone. In its place, heavyset, plain Kurue was laboriously climbing to her feet, glaring at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said, for the interruption of whatever meditations a goddess required. “But I need to speak with Nahadoth.”

There was only one door in this corridor, and Kurue stood in front of it. She folded her arms. “No.”

“Lady Kurue, I don’t know when I’ll have another chance to ask these things—”

“What, precisely, does ‘no’ mean in your tongue? Clearly you don’t understand Senmite—”

But before our argument could escalate, the apartment door slid aside a fraction. I could see nothing through that sliver, only darkness. “Let her speak,” said Nahadoth’s deep voice from within.

Kurue’s scowl deepened. “Naha, no.” I started a little; I had never heard anyone contradict him. “It’s her fault you’re in this condition.”

I flushed, but she was right. Yet there was no answer from within the chamber. Kurue’s fists clenched, and she glared into the darkness with a very ugly look.

“Would it help if I wore a blindfold?” I asked. There was something in the air that hinted at a long-standing anger beyond just this brief exchange. Ah, but of course—Kurue hated mortals, quite rightly blaming us for her enslaved condition. She thought Nahadoth was being foolish over me. Most likely she was right about that, too, being a goddess of wisdom. I did not feel offended when she looked at me with new contempt.

“It isn’t just your eyes,” Kurue said. “It’s your expectations, your fears, your desires. You mortals want him to be a monster and so he becomes one—”

“Then I will want nothing,” I said. I smiled as I said it, but I was annoyed now. Perhaps there was wisdom in her blind hatred of humankind. If she expected the worst from us, then we could never disappoint her. But that was beside the point. She was in my way, and I had business to complete before I died. I would command her aside if I had to.

She stared at me, perhaps reading my intentions. After a moment she shook her head and made a dismissive gesture. “Fine, then. You’re a fool. And so are you, Naha; you both deserve each other.” With that, she walked away, muttering as she rounded a corner. I waited until the sound of her footfalls stopped—not fading, but simply vanishing—then turned to face the open door.

“Come,” said Nahadoth from within.

I cleared my throat, abruptly nervous. Why did he frighten me at all the wrong times? “Begging your pardon, Lord Nahadoth,” I said, “but perhaps I’d better stay out here. If it’s true that just my thoughts can harm you—”

“Your thoughts have always harmed me. All your terrors, all your needs. They push and pull at me, silent commands.”

I stiffened, horrified. “I never meant to add to your suffering.”

There was a pause, during which I held my breath.

“My sister is dead,” Nahadoth said very softly. “My brother has gone mad. My children—the handful who remain—hate and fear me as much as they revere me.”

And I understood: what Scimina had done to him was nothing. What was a few moments’ suffering beside the centuries of grief and loneliness that Itempas had inflicted on him? And here I was, fretting over my own small addition.

I opened the door and stepped inside.

Within the chamber, the darkness was absolute. I lingered near the door for a moment, hoping my eyes would adjust, but they did not. In the silence after the door closed I made out the sound of breathing, slow and even, some ways away.

I put out my hands and began groping my way blindly toward the sound, hoping gods had no great need of furniture. Or steps.

“Stay where you are,” Nahadoth said. “I am… not safe to be near.” Then, softer, “But I am glad you came.”

This was the other Nahadoth, then—not the mortal, but not the mad beast of a cold winter’s tale, either. This was the Nahadoth who had kissed me that first night, the one who actually seemed to like me. The one I had the fewest defenses against.

I took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on the soft empty dark.

“Kurue is right. I’m sorry. It’s my fault Scimina punished you.”

“She did it to punish you.”

I winced. “Even worse.”

He laughed softly, and I felt a breeze stir past me, soft as a warm summer night. “Not for me.”

Point. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

I felt the breeze again, and this time it tickled the tiny hairs on my skin. I had a sudden image of him standing just behind me, holding me close and exhaling into the curve of my neck.

There was a soft, hungry sound from the other side of the room, and abruptly lust filled the space around me, powerful and violent and not remotely tender. Oh, gods. I quickly fixed my thoughts again on darkness, nothing, darkness, my mother. Yes.

It seemed to take a long time, but eventually that terrible hunger faded.

“It would be best,” he said with disturbing gentleness, “if you make no effort to help.”

“I’m sorry—”

“You are mortal.” That seemed to say it all. I lowered my eyes, ashamed. “You have a question about your mother.”

Yes. I took a deep breath. “Dekarta killed her mother,” I said. “Was that the reason she gave, when she agreed to help you?”

“I am a slave. No Arameri would confide in me. As I told you, all she did was ask questions at first.”

“And in return, you asked for her help?”

“No. She still wore the blood sigil. She could not be trusted.”

Involuntarily I raised a hand to my own forehead. I continually forgot the mark was there. I had forgotten that it was a factor in Sky politics as well. “Then how—”

“She bedded Viraine. Prospective heirs are usually told about the succession ceremony, but Dekarta had commanded that the details be kept from her. Viraine knew no better, so he told Kinneth how the ceremony usually goes. I assume that was enough for her to figure out the truth.”

Yes, it would have been. She had suspected Dekarta already—and Dekarta had feared her suspicions, it seemed. “What did she do, once she knew?”

“She came to us and asked how she might be made free of her mark. If she could act against Dekarta, she said, she would be willing to use the Stone to set us free.”

I caught my breath, amazed at her daring—and her fury. I had come to Sky willing to die to avenge my mother, and only fortune and the Enefadeh had made that possible. My mother had created her own vengeance. She had betrayed her people, her heritage, even her god, all to strike a blow against one man.