The Broken Kingdoms (34 page)

“And they brought me home. But I knew: I could no longer trust them. I had learned what it meant to be alone. It is the opposite of all that I am, that emptiness, that… nothing. I fought ten thousand battles before time began, burned my soul to shape this universe, and never before have I experienced such agony.

“The mortal girl warned me. She said they would do it again. That they would forget they loved me. That they would turn to each other and I would be alone—left alone—forever.

“They would not.

“They would not.

“Then the mortal girl killed our son.”

He fell silent here for just a moment, his body utterly still.

“ ‘Take it,’ she told me, and offered me the blood. And I thought… I thought… I thought… when there were only two of us, I was never alone.”

A final silence, fortelling the story’s end.

Slowly, he let me go. All the tension and strength ran out of him, like water. He slid down my body to his knees, his cheek pressed to my belly. He had stopped trembling.

I have spent time studying the nature of light. It is part curiosity and part meditation; someday I hope to understand why I see the way I do. Scriveners have studied light, too, and in the books that Madding read to me, they claimed that the brightest light—true light—is the combination of all other kinds of light. Red, blue, yellow, more; put it all together and the result is shining white.

This means, in a way, that true light is dependent on the presence of other lights. Take the others away and darkness results. Yet the reverse is not true: take away darkness and there is only more darkness. Darkness can exist by itself. Light cannot.

And thus a single moment of solitude had destroyed Bright Itempas. He might have recovered from that in time; even a river stone wears into new shapes. But in the moment of his greatest weakness, he had been manipulated, his already-damaged soul struck an unrecoverable blow by the mortal woman he’d trusted to love him. That had driven him so mad that he had murdered his sister to keep from ever experiencing the pain of betrayal again.

“I’m sorry,” he said. It was very soft, and not meant for me. But the next words were. “You don’t know how much I’ve thought of taking your blood for myself.”

I folded my arm around his shoulders and bent down to kiss his forehead. “I do know, actually.” Because I did.

So I straightened, took his hand, and pulled him up. He came without resistance, letting me lead him to the bed, where I pulled him to lie down. When we’d settled, I snuggled into the crook of his arm, resting my head on his chest as I’d so often done with Madding. They felt and smelled very different—sea salt to dry spice, cool to hot, gentle to fierce—but their heartbeats were the same. Steady, slow, reassuring. Could a son inherit such a thing from a father? Apparently so.

I could always die tomorrow, I supposed.

I THINK MADDING ALWAYS SUSPECTED THE TRUTH.

Throughout my childhood, I had a strange memory of being someplace warm and wet and enclosed. I felt safe, yet I was lonely. I could hear voices, yet no one spoke to me. Hands would touch me now and again, and I would touch back, but that was all.

Many years later, I told this story to Madding, and he looked at me oddly. When I asked him what was wrong, he didn’t answer at first. I pressed him, and finally he said, “It sounds like you were in the womb.”

I remember laughing. “That’s crazy,” I said. “I was thinking. Listening. Aware.”

He shrugged. “So was I, before I was born. I guess that happens sometimes with mortals, too.”

But it isn’t supposed to, he did not say.

“What do you intend to do?” Shiny asked me the next morning.

He stood at the window across the room, glowing softly with the dawn. I sat up blearily, stifling a yawn.

“I don’t know,” I said.

I wasn’t ready to die. That was easier to admit than I’d thought. I had killed Madding; to live with that knowledge would be—had been—almost unbearable. But killing myself, or letting Shiny or the Arameri do it, felt worse somehow. In the wake of Madding’s death, it felt like throwing away a gift.

“If I live, the Arameri will use me for the gods know what. I won’t have more deaths on my conscience.” I sighed, rubbing my face with my hands. “You were right to want to kill us. You should’ve gotten us all, though. That was the only mistake the Three made.”

“No,” said Shiny. “We were wrong. Something had to be done about the demons—that I will not deny—but we should have sought a different solution. They were our children.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Stared, though he was now little more than a pale relief against the dimmer sheen of the window. I wasn’t really sure what to say. So I changed the subject. “What do you plan to do?”

He stood as he had on so many mornings at my house, facing the rising sun with back straight and head high and arms folded. Now, however, he let out a soft sigh and turned to me, leaning against the window with an almost palpable weariness. “I have no idea. Nothing in me is whole or right, Oree. I am the coward you named me, and the fool you did not. Weak.” He lifted his hand as if he’d never seen it before and made a fist. It didn’t look weak to me, but I imagined how a god might see it. Bones that could be broken. Skin that would not instantly heal if torn. Tendons and veins as fine as gossamer.

And underneath this fragile flesh, a mind like a broken teacup, badly mended.

“It’s solitude, then?” I asked. “That’s your true antithesis, not darkness. You didn’t realize?”

“No. Not until that day.” He lowered his hand. “But I should have realized. Loneliness is a darkness of the soul.”

I got up and went over to him, stumbling once over the rugs. Finding his arm, I reached up to touch his face. He allowed this, even turning his cheek against my hand. I think he was feeling alone in that very moment.

“I’m glad they put me here in this mortal form,” he said. “I can do no harm when I go mad. When I was trapped in that realm of darkness, I thought I would. Having you there afterward… Without that, I would have broken again.”

I frowned, thinking of the way he’d clung to me that day, barely able to let go even for a moment. No human being could bear solitude forever—I would’ve gone mad in the Empty, too—but Shiny’s need was not a human thing.

I thought of something my mother had said to me, many times during my childhood. “It’s all right to need help,” I said. “You’re mortal now. Mortals can’t do everything alone.”

“I wasn’t mortal then,” he said, and I could tell he was thinking of the day he’d killed Enefa.

“Maybe it’s the same for gods.” I was still tired, so I turned to lean against the window beside him. “We’re made in your image, right? Maybe your siblings didn’t send you here so you’d do no harm as a mortal, but rather so that you could learn to deal with this as mortals do.” I sighed and closed my eyes, tired of Sky’s constant glow. “Hells, I don’t know. Maybe you just need friends.”

He fell silent, but I thought I felt him look at me.

Before I could say anything more, there was a knock at the door. Shiny went to answer it.

“My lord.” A voice that I did not recognize, with the professional briskness of a servant. “I bear a message. The Lord Arameri requests your presence.”

“Why?” Shiny asked—something I would never have done myself. The messenger was taken aback, too, though he paused for only a beat before answering.

“Lady Serymn has been captured.”

As before, the Lord Arameri had dismissed his court. I suppose making bargains with demons and disciplining wayward fullbloods were not matters for public consumption.

Serymn stood between four guards—Arameri as well as High Norther—though they were not actually touching her. I could not tell if she looked any worse for the wear, but her silhouette stood as straight and proud as any other time I’d met her. Her hands had been bound in front of her, which seemed to be the only concession made to her status as a prisoner. She, the guards, Shiny, and I were the only people in the room.

She and the Lord Arameri regarded each other in stillness and silence, like elegant marble statues of Defiance and Mercilessness.

After a moment of this perusal, she looked away from him—even blind, I could tell this was dismissive—and faced me. “Lady Oree. Does it please you to stand beside those who let your father die?”

Once, those words would have bothered me, but now I knew better. “You misunderstood, Lady Serymn. My father didn’t die because of the Nightlord, or the Lady, or the godlings, or anyone who supports them. He died because he was different—something ordinary mortals hate and fear.” I sighed. “With reason, I’ll admit. But give credit where credit is due.”

She shook her head and sighed. “You trust these false gods too much.”

“No,” I said, growing angry. Not just angry but furious, incandescent with rage. If I’d had a walking stick, there would have been trouble. “I trust the gods to be what they are, and I trust mortals to be mortals. Mortals, Lady Serymn, stoned my father to death. Mortals trussed me up like livestock and milked me of blood until I nearly died. Mortals killed my love.” I was very proud of myself; my throat did not close and my voice did not waver. The anger buoyed me that far. “Hells, if the gods do decide to wipe us out, is it such a bad thing? Maybe we’ve earned a little annihilation.” At that, I couldn’t help looking at Lord T’vril, too.

He ignored me, sounding bored when he spoke. “Serymn, stop toying with the girl. This rhetoric might have swayed your poor, lost spiritual devotees, but everyone here sees through you.” He gestured at her, a graceful hand wave encompassing all that she was. “What you may not understand, Eru Shoth, is that this whole affair is a family squabble gotten out of hand.”

I must have looked confused. “Family squabble?”

“I am a mere halfblood, you see—the first who has ever ruled this family. And though I was appointed to this position by the Gray Lady herself, there are those of my relatives, particularly the fullbloods, who still question my qualifications. Foolishly, I counted Serymn among the less dangerous of those. I even believed she might be useful, since her organization seemed to give direction to those members of the Itempan faith who have been disillusioned lately.” I could not see him glance at Shiny, but I guessed that he did. “I did not believe they could do true harm. For this, you have my apologies.”

I stiffened in surprise. I knew nothing of nobles or Arameri, but I knew this: they did not apologize. Ever. Even after the destruction of the Maroland, they had offered the Nimaro peninsula to my people as a “humanitarian gesture”—not an apology.

Serymn shook her head. “Dekarta appointed you his heir only under duress, T’vril. Ordinarily you’d do well enough, halfblood or not. But in these dark times, we need a family head strong in the old values, someone who will not waver from devotion to Our Lord. You lack the pride of our heritage.”

I felt the Lord Arameri smile, because it was a brittle, dangerous thing, and the whole room felt less safe for it.

“Have you anything else to say?” he asked. “Anything worthy of my time?”

“No,” she replied. “Nothing worthy of you.”

“Very well,” said the Lord Arameri. He snapped his fingers, and a servant appeared from a curtain behind T’vril’s seat. He crouched beside T’vril’s chair, holding something; there was the faint clink of metal. T’vril did not take it, and I could not see what it was. I did, however, see Serymn’s flinch.

“This man,” said the Lord Arameri. He gestured toward Shiny. “You left Sky before the last succession. Do you know him?”

Serymn glanced at Shiny, then away. “We were never able to determine what he was,” she said, “but he is the Lady Oree’s companion and perhaps lover. He had no value to us, except as a hostage against her good behavior.”

“Look again, Cousin.”

She looked, radiating disdain. “Is there something I should be seeing?”

I reached for Shiny’s hand. He had not moved—did not seem to care at all.

The Lord Arameri rose and descended the steps. At the foot of the steps, he abruptly turned toward us in a swirl of cloak and hair and dropped to one knee, with a grace I would never have expected of a man so powerful. From this, he said in a ringing tone, “Behold Our Lord, Serymn. Hail Itempas, Master of Day, Lord of Light and Order.”

Serymn stared at him. Then she looked at Shiny. There had been no sarcasm in T’vril’s tone, no hint of anything other than reverence. Yet I could guess what she saw when she looked at Shiny: the soul-deep weariness in his eyes, the sorrow beneath his apathy. He wore borrowed clothing, as I did, and said nothing at T’vril’s bow.

“He’s Maroneh,” Serymn said, after a long perusal.

T’vril got to his feet, flicking his long tail of hair back with practiced ease. “That is a bit of a surprise, isn’t it? Though it would not be the first lie our family has told until it forgot the truth.” He turned and went to her, stopping right in front of her. She did not step back from his nearness, though I would have. There was something about the Lord Arameri in that moment that made me very afraid.

“You knew he had been overthrown, Serymn,” he said. “You’ve seen many gods take mortal form. Why did it never occur to you that your own god might be among them? Hado tells me that your New Lights were not kind to him.”

“No,” Serymn said. Her strong, rich voice wavered with uncertainty for the first time since I’d met her. “That’s impossible. I would have… Dateh… We would have known.”

T’vril glanced back at the servant, who hurried forward with the metal object. He took it and said, “I suppose your pure Arameri blood doesn’t entitle you to speak for our god after all. Just as well, then. Hold her mouth open.”

I didn’t realize the last part was a command until the guards suddenly took hold of Serymn. There was a struggle, a jumble of silhouettes. When they stilled, I realized the guards had taken hold of Serymn’s head.

T’vril lifted the metal object so that I could see it at last, outlined by the glow of the far wall. Scissors? No, too large and oddly shaped for that.

Tongs.