The Awakened Kingdom

by N. K. Jemisin

  I thought about this. I didn’t hate her anymore, but—“Everybody should learn this, though,” I said, troubled. “Why do you only teach it to women?”

  The look on Mikna’s face turned—I don’t know. Pitying? She turned, putting her hands on her hips, and gazed toward the walls of the arena, though it was clear that her thoughts lay far beyond it. “You’re so young, Lady Shill. You’ve had only the barest taste of what we mortals do to each other. Look around this world for a few years, then ask me that question again.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Once we shared this knowledge with our men. Once men honed their skills against women in battle, and had at least some small chance at proving themselves worthy in the way of warriors. A few even became ennu, the figurehead for all that makes us strong as a people. Those were simpler times—the days when Yeine walked among women as a mortal.” I perked up at this. “Back then, we thought that all we had to fear were foreigners. And the gods, of course.”

  A demon spoke of fearing gods. “Of course,” I said, really softly.

  “But not long after Skyfall,” Mikna continued, “in the new golden age that Darr had begun to enjoy with the ending of the Bright, and the rebuilding after the war—our men turned on us. Not all, certainly, but enough to pose a real threat. They wanted to take over.” A muscle in her jaw tightened. “That’s the way of men, you see, when women don’t keep them in check. They want all, not just some. Nature made them weak: slaves to their impulses, helpless against pain, barely capable of making it out of the womb. Their weakness makes them fearful. Nothing is more dangerous than fearful people with a fresh taste of power.”

  I frowned. This did not feel…I wasn’t sure. I was more sophisticated now, able to think bigger thoughts, but maybe I still wasn’t big enough to understand.

  Mikna tossed some of her long hair back over her shoulder. “So we crushed the dangerous ones, and made the fateful decision to protect the rest of the men from themselves. But Eino is the proof that Darren flames cannot be smothered so easily. Gods, the fight in him!” She smiled, almost to herself. “How could I not want him? I am a true Darre.”

  I looked up at Zhakkarn, who watched me impassively, then back at Mikna. “If you make him do something he doesn’t want, he’ll fight you. Real battle, not fun. Or”—it suddenly occurred to me, and this thought was terrible—“or you’ll make him so hurt and sad inside that he won’t care about fighting anymore. He…he won’t be Eino, if you do that.”

  Mikna looked uncomfortable for a moment, then took a deep breath. “Darr is changing. The forests are shrinking, the seasons going strange. We have changed, as we must, but there’s almost nothing left of the warrior Darr anymore. Now we’re merchants.” She said this like it made her mouth taste bad. “A wealthy nation! And with every passing generation, we forget a little more of who we were.”

  I looked at Zhakkarn again, because I wasn’t sure what to say. Of course Mikna’s people were changing; that was what life did. And of course their climate was all strange; even now I could hear this world’s moon muttering to itself, disgruntled and unhappy. It had been wandering since Sieh’s end, pulling the tides and the winds with it, changing where rain fell and rivers ran. The forests shrank and the animals learned to eat different things or died and other things ate them and thrived and everything kept on, dying and borning endlessly, in cycles and patterns and repetition. All these things were mortality.

  They don’t understand, Zhakkarn said to me without words. Their lives are too short to see the wholeness of it.

  I scowled. I’m not even two months old and I understand.

  You are a god.

  And being a god was more than just being immortal. I sighed, suddenly feeling lonely on a planet teeming with living beings. Zhakkarn got to her feet after a moment, then came over and put a big hand on my shoulder. I wasn’t mad at her anymore after that.

  Mikna exhaled, oblivious to us.

  “You think Fahno cruel to give Eino to me,” she said. I blinked. “You think me cruel to take him, when he doesn’t want me.”

  “Well, yes,” I said. Then I sighed. “But Arolu says you can take care of him, if Fahno dies without an heir.”

  She smiled in a lopsided way. “Take care of him? I want nothing of the sort. I’d be a fool not to recognize the strength in him, Shill; that’s precisely why I want him. Call me selfish for it, but I want daughters—and sons, too—with his spirit. It’s as simple as that.”

  I started to get mad again; Zhakkarn squeezed my shoulder, gently. “Well, maybe you should ask him to give you some spirit and babies, then!”

  She blinked, then laughed. “You have such an odd way of phrasing things.” She sighed. “I will be—careful with him. I’m no brute; I want a helpmeet, not just some stud-beast to be chained away between uses. But, Shill…I did ask him to marry me. And Lumyn asked him. He hasn’t answered either of us…which is why Fahno is forcing the issue.”

  “Oh!” Why hadn’t Eino answered her? I would have to ask him. I was beginning to think that understanding this whole mess might be the key to understanding him. And myself.

  I had grown, though, and I understood now how important good manners were. “Thank you,” I said. “You made me bigger. I’ll, um, I’ll go think about what you said.” Then I shifted from foot to foot, but I was too grown up now not to acknowledge when I’d been wrong. “And I, uh, I’m sorry I was mean to you.”

  She smiled cheerfully. “That’s fine. I got to watch Lady Zhakkarn beat you senseless, after all. Let’s call it even.”

  I was surprised into a laugh, though it was not a very good laugh. (Suddenly I understood why so many mortals laughed without really meaning it.) “Um, I’m gonna go find Eino and talk to him now. Bye.”

  She nodded, as did Zhakkarn. “Until later, Lady Shill.”

  I will stop here to tell you another thing you should know. That day with Mikna was when I realized that it is not their poison that makes enulai powerful. Also, I started to know that having power does not make a person—or a god—better, or right. I did not dislike Mikna anymore, and I probably would even like Lumyn if I gave her a chance…but I thought they were both wrong about a lot of things.

  Yes yes OK I know you knew that already you do not have to be obnoxious about it OK.

  So I went back to Fahno’s house, not bothering with a body as I moved through it. Lumyn was gone. Fahno was in her study, and the whole room felt of weary frustration; I did not invade her privacy. The servants were just going about their business as usual. Arolu was in a pretty room with a glass skylight where there were comfortable seats and flowers and books and lengths of cloth and thread on skeins. At first I thought he was working on a small embroidered blanket with a hood and little feet, which was in his lap. But he just sat there, unmoving, and after a moment I realized he had something else in his lap: a small ceramic circle which bore a portrait of a woman’s face. I could see her resemblance to Eino in the strength of her jaw and the determination in her gaze. Tehno, Eino’s mother, and Arolu’s lost wife.

  “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. I was confused, because he could not see me; how did he know I was there? But then he touched the circle, and I realized he wasn’t talking to me. I wondered what he was sorry about. Whether he’d gone through this at some point, being given to a woman he maybe didn’t love, made to stuff himself into floofy clothes and quiet rooms when maybe he was the kind of man who wanted to run and shout. Somewhere along the way he had grown to love Tehno, obviously, but when? How? Had it been worth it?

  I was a big girl now; I didn’t bother him.

  Eino was up on the roof, lounging beneath the canopy of the chair I’d first seen Fahno in. A whole day had passed since that moment; it made me feel nostalgic for how young and silly I’d been back then. He didn’t sit like Fahno, though, who liked to be forward-leaning and intent; instead Eino sat sprawled in the chair, his legs crossed, his arms draped over the rests, an expressi
on of distant boredom in his face. But his face was another kind of lie; mortals did that a lot, I was beginning to see. He was not bored, he was brooding. Angry, with perfect grace. I shaped myself out of ether and settled on the ground beside his chair; he did not seem at all surprised when I did.

  “The word is out, Shill,” he said quietly. “Everyone in town is talking about me. How I somehow got the Council to discuss male property inheritance. How I lured a group of innocent, good-hearted boys to Yukur for unnatural revels in the middle of the night. How I’m the reason a boy ran away to Menchey rather than marry the woman his clan had chosen for him. How I’ve been seen talking to men in the sharing houses, and foreigners. How I’ve been gathering an army, and soon it will be the Men’s Rebellion all over again.”

  I leaned against his chair. “What’s a sharing house?”

  “Where men go when they have no clan to care for them, and when they are not so homely that they are completely without value. They get meals and a bed to sleep in, provided they share it with any woman who wants them.” He smiled thinly. “Father fears I’ll end up in one, at the rate I’m going. I’m beginning to think I might not mind.”

  I frowned. Sharing houses did not sound very nice. “Is any of that other stuff true, about you?”

  “Does it matter? Home and tradition are threatened. Everywhere, young men of previously honorable character are acting out. Someone must be to blame.”

  He sounded sad, too, underneath the mad. Maybe I should not have left, while Lumyn and Fahno and Mikna were still arguing. As I watched him, Eino reached into one of his sleeves and took out something small. I heard the echo of Lumyn’s voice and realized it was the thing she’d given him. A small box. He opened it, tilting it so I could see: inside was a very curvy knife. A beautiful knife, its handle wrapped in shiny white stuff and its sharp blade inlaid with small plates of black stone and red-and-green lacquer, done up in patterns like forest vines. I oohed. “I like that knife!”

  “Do you?” Eino was smiling again, but it was still mad and sad and bitter. “I do, too, in spite of myself. Such a pretty threat.”

  “Huh?”

  He turned the knife over, setting his thumb against its edge. “Not how she sees it, of course. Lumyn is Darre through and through, whatever anyone else thinks. Of course she would give me a circumcision knife, and think it a romantic gesture; that’s how most Darre think of it, after all. It’s how I thought of it, really, until I thought, and realized just how grotesque the whole custom is.”

  I knew the word because Papa Tempa had taught it to me. But—“She wants to cut you?”

  “Of course. It’s how marriage goes, for Darre. A woman takes a man to her home, and there in solemn, intimate ceremony…” He shrugged. He’d cut his finger. A fat drop of blood welled up as I watched; I cringed away inwardly even as I stayed still and stared, hypnotized. Demon blood. “I suppose I should be glad these aren’t ancient times, when women would just kidnap the men they wanted, cut them to establish their claim, and rape them. We are civilized now. A proper woman gets permission from the boy’s clan head, first.”

  I set my jaw. “No one’s going to do anything to you that you don’t want.” The air rang with my words. I was only a little godling; I couldn’t change the universe by word alone. But I could mean it, and Eino felt that. He blinked and looked at me as if finally noticing I was there, though he’d been talking to me all along. This time his smile was not as sad, and more genuine.

  “I’m glad I have you for a friend, Shill,” he said, gently. “At least what you want from me is something I’m willing to give.” He reached for me, perhaps to pet my hair, but I flinched away from the blood on his finger, and he blinked. “…Sorry.” He put his hand back in his lap.

  I was just proud of myself for not running away this time. I drew up my knees, wrapped my arms around them. “What do you want to do?” I asked. “Are you going to marry Lumyn, or Mikna?”

  His voice hardened and his smile faded. “Not you, too, Shill.”

  I shrugged, awkwardly. “I don’t care which. I just want to understand how you think about it.”

  “Ah. Your quest for understanding.” Abruptly he got up, pacing with the knife in his hand. “What I think is that I don’t want to think about this, Shill. I think there are other problems in the world, other things I could be worrying about, besides who gets to slice me up and ride me! Like how to help you.” He stopped, glaring at me. “I want to be your enulai. But I don’t know my own magic. And you just saw—I haven’t been trained in how to be careful around gods! You should choose Mikna; at least she won’t kill you by accident.”

  I wanted to say, I don’t want Mikna, but he was right; she was a better enulai. Maybe only because she’d been trained and he hadn’t, but I didn’t know how to make anyone train him. “She isn’t terrible,” I said, grudgingly.

  Eino laughed, pacing again. “No, she isn’t. I’d probably fall in love with either of them if I had half a moment to think about it. But no one will give me that moment, and all I can think about is how unfair all this is. If I’d just been born with the right stuff between my legs…” He shook his head.

  I knew how that felt, kind of. “I was supposed to be different, too,” I said, shifting to sit cross-legged. “Everybody thought I would be the new Trickster when I was born. But I’m not. I even thought I could make myself be the Trickster, but none of that has worked. I’m still just me.”

  Eino stopped again, his back to me this time. It was sunset now, and he stood stock-still in the slanting red light; it made me think of Papa Tempa. “What do you intend to do about that?”

  “Do?” I considered, then finally shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t be what everyone wanted me to be. I can’t even be what I want to be. I’m going to have to find a way to live with what I am, I guess.” As soon as I figured that out.

  “And if you can’t? Live with it, I mean.”

  I had never thought of that. “I don’t know. I guess…if I really want to, I can always go to Mama—um, Yeine, that is. Or, or find a demon. When gods want to die, that’s what they have to do.”

  “Poor creatures.” It sounded like a joke, the way Eino said it, but it didn’t seem very funny. “That you must rely on someone else for the privilege of taking your own life.”

  I shrugged a little, not really liking the conversation anymore. “Yeine calls mortality a gift. I think it’s scary, but when you put it that way, maybe it is.”

  “Yes.” Eino fell silent. I watched him, and worried. He was so still, just like Papa. But mortals are not meant to be like Itempas. They’re supposed to bend; if they get too much like him, they break.

  I could hear some noise downstairs in the house, but I’d sort of pushed it away as unimportant. A moment later, though, I heard footsteps on the stairs that led up to the roof, and then Arolu opened the door. He was breathing hard, his handsome face stark with worry. “Eino,” he said, then seemed to run out of things to say. A moment later, however, he was pushed forward and out of the doorway, and three women in black uniforms stepped out onto the rooftop, with Fahno in tow looking worried.

  “Eino mau Tehno?” This was one of the uniformed women. As weapons went she had only a knife strapped across the small of her back, but her hand was on the hilt of this. “You are summoned. The Council would like a word with you.”

  “Would they?” asked Eino, as I got to my feet. He didn’t sound alarmed, and suddenly he was smiling. It was a strange smile. “Good. I’d like to talk to them, too.”

  I did not know this at the time, but later I showed my older siblings a memory of this smile, and they said it was a lot like Sieh’s had been, when he was up to something scary.

  The women in the uniforms took Eino back to the place I’d visited on my first day in the mortal realm: the Raringa, a great domed building where the Warriors’ Council held court and decided the fate of the Darre.

  I tried to stay with Eino, because I did not know what was going o
n but it seemed to be bad. Fahno made me walk with her and Arolu instead, though, because—she said—it would make the Council more prejudiced against Eino if I misbehaved. I wasn’t sure if I believed her, but I stayed quiet and near her anyway, just in case. Mikna and Lumyn were there at the Raringa, too, arriving when we did; Lumyn glanced at us but moved to the other side of a gathering knot of women moving into the chamber, while Mikna came over and nodded briskly to Fahno, her jaw set and tight. She saw me and nodded again. Even Ia was there, appearing quietly beside us as we claimed a spot amid the gathering crowd of onlookers.

  “What’s happening?” I whispered to him. A lot of people looked at us; I’d been too loud again.

  “I don’t know,” he said, frowning slightly. That made me worry more, and I was already worried lots. I didn’t like the look on Ia’s face. I didn’t like that Eino had said And if you can’t? Live with it.

  I especially didn’t like that I knew Eino still had Lumyn’s knife, somewhere hidden in his robes.

  At the door of the Council chamber the uniformed women tried to put shackles on Eino. I bared my teeth and made them go away. They looked at him like he had done it. He smiled and said, “There’s no need for that, is there?” And they did not try to put shackles on him again.

  Fahno looked at me very hard and suspiciously! But she did not know for sure, and that was what mattered. I had learned a lot from Eino.

  Now Eino knelt at the center of a wide circle of some fifty or sixty old women seated on cushions, and one much younger woman who sat on an elevated stool facing him. He was quiet and still, his eyes downcast, his robes a swirl of bright burgundy-emerald jewel tones around him; the women were stark and restless in black and gray, murmuring to one another and glaring over pursed lips and sniffing noses. I didn’t like any of them.

  But it was Fahno who made a rumbly sound that made me think of stormclouds, and Fahno who pushed me aside so she could stalk forward and stand in front of Eino, glaring back at the women around her.