The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (12 page)

“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.