The Kingdom of Gods

by N. K. Jemisin

  Now the forecourt had been defiled by something hideous. As I emerged from the garden via the servants’ ground entrance, no one noticed me. Soldiers were all over the place, disorganized, in a panic. I saw the captain of the guard on one side of the gate mosaic, shouting at the coach driver to take the coach away, away, away for the Father’s sake, take it to the ground station at the cargo gate and let no one touch it.

  I ignored all this as I walked forward through the hubbub, my eyes on twin lumps on the ground. Someone had had the sense to lay them on a square of cloth, but that barely contained the mess. Pieces of the lumps spilled and scattered every which way, not helped at all by soldiers who stumbled around retching even as they tried to scrape everything back onto the cloth. As I got close enough to get a good look at the mess — flesh gone gelatinous, so rotten the only thing solid in it was spongy bone — the captain turned and spotted me. He was warrior enough to drop his hand to the sword at his side, but sensible enough to avoid drawing it as he realized who I must be. He cursed swiftly, then caught himself and threw a quick glance to be sure his men weren’t looking before he bowed quickly. Not a subtle man.

  “Sir,” he said carefully, though I could see he would rather have used my lord. He was no Itempan, either, though his forehead bore an Arameri mark. He held up a hand, and I stopped a few feet from the outermost edges of the foulness. “Please, it’s dangerous.”

  “I don’t think the maggots are likely to attack, do you?” My joke fell flat because there were no maggots. It was easy to see that what lay on the blanket were the remains of two very, very dead mortals, but that peculiarity did puzzle me. And the smell was wrong. I stepped closer, opening my mouth a little, though the last thing I wanted was a better taste of it. I had never liked carrion. But that taste gave me nothing but ammonia and sulfur and all the usual flavors of death.

  “Arameri, I take it?” I crouched for a better look. I could not make out marks on their foreheads, or their faces at all for that matter, which were oddly blackened and featureless. Almost flat. “Who were they? These look long-enough dead that I might’ve known them.”

  Stiffly, the captain said, “They are — we believe — Lord Nevra and Lady Criscina, second cousins of Lady Remath. Fullbloods. And they died — we believe — last night.”

  “What?”

  He didn’t repeat himself, though he did stir from his pose in order to kick over a globule of Nevra. Or Criscina. The soldiers had by now managed to get all the scattered bits onto the cloth and were wrapping it carefully for transport. I could see smears along the ground between the Vertical Gate and the cloth. They had brought the bodies up to Sky in the coach, but they hadn’t bothered to wrap them first? That made no sense … unless they hadn’t realized the couple inside were dead before they’d opened the door.

  I went over to the captain, who stiffened again at my approach, but held firm. I was surprised to see a lowbloods’ simple bar symbol on his forehead, though it was also hollowed out at the center in the manner of all the blood sigils I’d seen, except Remath’s. It was rare for lowbloods to achieve high rank within Sky. That meant this man either had a powerful patron — not a parent, or he wouldn’t be a lowblood — or he was very competent. I hoped the latter.

  “I must admit I pay little attention to mortals once they’re dead,” I said, keeping my voice low. “No fun, corpses. But I was under the impression it normally took them a few months, if not years, to reach this state.”

  “Normally, yes,” he said tersely.

  “Then what caused this?”

  His jaw flexed. “Please forgive me, sir, but I am under orders to keep this matter private. This family matter.” Which meant that Remath had ordered his silence, and nothing short of my dangling him off the Pier would make him talk. Perhaps not even that; he seemed the stubborn type.

  I rolled my eyes. “You know as well as I do that only magic could cause such a horror. A scrivener’s activation gone wrong, or perhaps they aggravated one of my siblings.” Though I doubted that. Any godling was capable of such a thing, even the ones with gentler natures, but I could think of no godling who would. We killed; we did not desecrate. We respected death. To do otherwise was an offense to Enefa, and probably Yeine, too.

  “I cannot say, sir.”

  Stubborn, indeed. “Why did you say it was dangerous?”

  He looked hard at me then, to my surprise. Not angrily, though I was pestering him and I knew it. He had the most remarkable gray eyes. Rare in Sky, and almost unheard of among Maroneh, though he looked brown enough to be fully of that race. Probably part Amn, if he was Arameri.

  “As you said, my lord.” He spoke softly but emphatically. “Only magic could have done such a thing. This magic works on contact.”

  He lifted his chin in the direction of the bodies’ faces, which were still visible as the soldiers worked to wrap the loose limbs. I peered closer and realized that what I had taken for just more decay was something different. The blackness of their faces was not rot, but char. Not faces at all, in fact: each of the dead mortals wore some sort of mask over their features. The masks had burned so badly as to fuse with the flesh, leaving only eyes and a line of jaw of the original faces.

  Then the soldiers were done bundling. Six of them set off, carrying the bodies slowly between them. As they reached the palace entrance, a phalanx of servants emerged, carrying cleaning implements and censers. They would cleanse the forecourt of its taint quickly so that no highblood would know such horror had ever lain here.

  “I must make my report to the Lady Arameri,” said the captain, turning.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  The captain paused, looking wary, and by that I guessed he’d heard something of my reputation. I grinned.

  “No singsongs, I promise,” I said. “No games or tricks. You’ve done nothing to offend me, so you have nothing to fear.”

  He relaxed minutely. “Wrath Arameri.”

  Definitely Maroneh, with a name like that. “Well, Captain Wrath, since you’re going to tell the lady I turned up here, anyway, you might also tell her that I’d be happy to assist in determining the cause of … this.” I gestured vaguely at the place where the corpses had lain.

  He frowned again. “Why?”

  “Boredom.” I shrugged. “Curiosity killed the cat. I’m too old to play with toys now.”

  A flicker of confusion crossed his face, but he nodded. “I will convey your message, sir.” He turned on his heel and left, heading into the palace, but he paused on the steps and bowed as a slim, white-clad figure appeared in the entryway. Shahar.

  I followed him more slowly, nodding to the servants out of habit (which seemed to startle them) and stopping at the foot of the wide steps. Shahar wore a simple morning robe of plush white fur, and a forbidding expression that made me hunch sheepishly, out of long habit.

  “I awoke to find you missing,” she said, “and since I’m now judged on how well I serve your needs” — oh, marvelous, just the lightest glaze of venom on those words; she was very good —“it became imperative that I find you before completing any of my other, many, duties. I was at a loss, however, until I was informed of this incident. I knew you would be wherever there was trouble.”

  I flashed her my most winning smile, which made her eyes even colder. Perhaps I was too old for that to work anymore. “You could simply have called me,” I said. “Like you did two nights ago.”

  She blinked, distracted from her own anger so easily that I knew she wasn’t that upset. “Do you think that would work?”

  I shrugged, though I was less nonchalant about it than I let her see. “We’re going to have to try it sometime, I suppose.”

  “Yes.” She let out a deep sigh, but then her eyes drifted to the servants now assiduously attacking the soiled area around the Vertical Gate. One of them was even cleaning the gate itself, though carefully, using a clear solution and taking great pains not to step on any of the black tiles.

  “You
knew them?” I asked. Softly, in case she’d cared for them.

  “Of course,” she said. “Neither was any threat to me.” As near a declaration of friendship as it got with this family. “They managed our shipping concerns in High North and on the islands. They were competent. Sensible. Brother and sister, like —” Deka and me, I suspected she would have said. “A great loss to the family. Again.”

  By the bleakness of her expression, I realized suddenly that she was not surprised by the manner of their deaths. And her wording had been another clue, as had Wrath’s warning.

  “I’m hungry,” I said. “Take me somewhere with food and eat with me.”

  She glared. “Is that a command?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not forcing you to obey it, so no.”

  “There are many kinds of force,” she said, her gaze as hard as stone. “If you tell my mother —”

  I groaned in exasperation. “I’m not a tattletale! I’m just hungry!” I stepped closer. “And I want to talk about this somewhere private.”

  She blinked, then flushed — as well she should have, because she should’ve caught my hints. Would have, if her pride hadn’t interfered. “Ah.” She hesitated, then looked around the forecourt as if it were full of eyes. It usually was, one way or another. “Meet me at the cupola of the library in half an hour. I’ll have food brought.” With that she turned away in a swirl of fur and whiteness, her shoes clicking briskly on the daystone as she walked.

  I watched her walk away, amused until I realized my eyes were lingering on the slight curves of her hips and their even slighter sway, thanks to her stiff, haughty walk. That unnerved me so badly that I stumbled as I backed down the steps. Though there were only servants to see me — and they were carefully not looking, probably on Morad’s orders — I still quickly righted myself and slipped into the garden as a cover, pretending to look at the boring trees and flowers with great fascination. In truth, however, I was shaking.

  Nothing to be done for it. Shevir had gauged my age at sixteen, and I knew full well what that age meant for mortal boys. How long before I found myself curled in a sweating knot, furiously caressing myself? And now I knew whose name I would groan when the moment struck.

  Gods. How I hated adolescence.

  Nothing to be done for it, I told myself again, and opened a hole in the ground.

  It did not take long to reach the library. I emerged between two of the massive old bookshelves in a disused corner, then made my way along the stacks until I reached the half-hidden spiral staircase. Kurue had built the library’s cupola as a reward for those palace denizens who loved the written word. They usually found it only by browsing the stacks and sitting quietly for a while, losing themselves in some book or scroll or tablet. It made me obscurely proud that Shahar had found it — and then I grew annoyed at that pride and more annoyed at my annoyance.

  But as I reached the top of the staircase, I stopped in surprise. The cupola was already occupied, and not by Shahar.

  A man sat on one of its long cushioned benches. Big, blond, dressed in a suggestively martial jacket that would have looked more so if it hadn’t been made out of pearlescent silk. The cupola’s roof was glass, its walls open to the air (though as magically protected from the winds and thinner air as the rest of the palace). A shaft of sunlight made a churning river of the man’s curly hair, and jewels of his jacket buttons, and a sculpture of his face. I knew him at once for Arameri Central Family even without looking at the mark on his brow, because he was too beautiful and too comfortable.

  But when he turned to me, I saw the mark and stared, because it was complete. All the scripts I remembered: the contract binding the Enefadeh to the protection and service of Shahar’s direct descendants, the compulsion that forced Arameri to remain loyal to their family head … all of it. But why did only this man, out of all the Central Family, wear the mark in its original form?

  “Well, well,” he said, his eyes raking me with the same quick analysis.

  “Sorry,” I said uneasily. “Didn’t know anyone was up here. I’ll try someplace else.”

  “You’re the godling,” he said, and I stopped in surprise. He smiled thinly. “I think you must remember how difficult it is to keep a secret in this place.”

  “I managed, in my day.”

  “Indeed you did. And a good thing that was, or you would never have gotten free of us.”

  I lifted my chin, feeling annoyed and belligerent. “Is that really a good thing in the eyes of a fullblood?”

  “Yes.” He shifted then, setting aside the large, handsomely bound book that had been in his lap. “I’ve just been reading about you and your fellow Enefadeh, actually, in honor of your arrival. My ancestors really had a monster by the tail, didn’t they? I feel exceedingly fortunate that you were released before I had to deal with you.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to understand my own wariness. “Why don’t I like you?”

  The man blinked in surprise, then smiled again with a hint of irony. “Maybe because, if you were still a slave and I your master, you’re the one I would put the shortest leash on.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was it, but it didn’t help. I had never trusted mortals who guessed at how dangerous I was. That usually meant they were just as dangerous. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Ramina Arameri.”

  I nodded, reading the lines of his face and the frame of his bones. “Remath’s brother?” No, that wasn’t quite right.

  “Half brother. Her father was the last family head. Mine wasn’t.” He shrugged dismissively. “How could you tell?”

  “You look Central Family. You smell like her. And you feel” — I glanced at his forehead —“like power that has been leashed.”

  “Ah.” He touched his forehead with a self-deprecating little smile. “This does make it obvious, doesn’t it? True sigils were the norm in your day, I understand.”

  “True sigils?” I frowned. “What do they call those trimmed-down ones, then?”

  “Theirs are called semisigils. Aside from Remath, I am the only member of the family who currently wears a true sigil.” Ramina looked away, his gaze falling on a flock of birds swirling around a Tree branch in the distance. They took off, gliding away, and he followed their slow, steady flight. “It was given to me when my sister took her place as head of the family.”

  I understood then. The true sigil enforced loyalty to the family head at the cost of the wearer’s will. Ramina could no more act against his sister’s interests than he could command the sun to set.

  “Demons,” I said, feeling an unexpected pity for him. “Why didn’t she just kill you?”

  “Because she hates me, I suppose.” Ramina was still watching the birds; I couldn’t read his expression. “Or loves me. Same effect either way.”

  Before I could reply, I heard footsteps on the spiral staircase. We both fell silent as two servants came up, bowing quickly toward Ramina and throwing me uncomfortable looks as they set up a wooden tray and put a large platter of finger foods on it. They left quickly, whereupon I went over to the tray and crammed several items into my mouth. Ramina lifted an eyebrow; I bared my teeth at him. He sniffed a bit and looked away. Good. Bastard.

  I was full after only that mouthful, which made me happy because it proved I wasn’t fully mortal yet. So I belched and began licking my fingers, which I hoped would disgust Ramina. Alas, he did not look at me. But a moment later, he glanced toward the steps again as Shahar emerged from the floor entrance. She nodded to me, then spotted Ramina and brightened. “Uncle! What are you doing up here?”

  “Plotting to take over the world, obviously,” he said, smiling broadly at her. She went over and hugged him with real affection, which he returned with equal sincerity. “And having a lovely conversation with my new young friend here. Did you come to meet him?”

  Shahar sat down beside him, glancing from him to me and back. “Yes, though it’s just as well you’re here. Do you know what’s happ
ened?”

  “Happened?”

  She sobered. “Nevra and Criscina. They — Soldiers brought the bodies this morning.”

  Ramina grimaced, closing his eyes. “How?”

  She shook her head. “The masks, again. This time it …” She made a face. “I didn’t see the result, but I smelled it.”

  I sat down on a bench opposite them, in the cupola’s shadows, and watched them. The light making an aura of their curls. Their identical looks of sorrow. Yes, it was so obvious I wondered why Remath bothered to try and keep it secret.

  Ramina got to his feet and began pacing, his expresion ferocious. “Demons and darkness! All the highbloods will be livid, and rightly so. They’ll blame Remath for not finding these bastards.” He stopped abruptly and turned to Shahar, his eyes narrowing. “And you will be in greater danger than ever, Niece, if these attackers have grown that bold. I wouldn’t advise travel for some time.”

  She frowned a little at this, but not in a surprised way. No doubt she had been thinking the same thing since the forecourt. “I’m scheduled to go to the Gray this evening, to meet with Lady Hynno.”

  The Gray? I wondered.

  “Reschedule it.”

  “I can’t! I asked for the meeting. If I reschedule, she’ll know something’s wrong, and Mother has decreed that any news of these murders is to remain secret.”

  Ramina stopped and looked pointedly at me. I flashed him a winning smile.