The Kingdom of Gods

by N. K. Jemisin

  I sighed and shifted from foot to foot and folded my arms so I would not be so cold. “So … I take it you don’t like what we did.”

  She sighed, and if anything, her mood turned darker. “I loved what we did, Sieh.”

  I was beginning to feel very tired, and it had nothing to do with my mortality affliction. Something had gone wrong; that was obvious. Would she have liked it better if I had become female for her? I wasn’t sure I could do that anymore, but it was such a small change. I would try, for her sake, if that would help. “What, then? Why do you look like you just lost your best friend?”

  “I may have,” she whispered.

  I stared at her as she turned back to me. The sheet had slipped off one of her shoulders, and most of her hair was a fright. She looked out of control and out of her element and lost. I remembered her wildness the night before. She had discarded all thought of propriety or position or dignity, and flung herself into the moment with perfect zeal. It had been glorious, but clearly such abandon had cost her something.

  Then I noticed, below the hand that held the sheet about herself, her free hand. She held it over her belly, fingering the skin there as if measuring its strength. I had seen ten thousand mortal women make the same gesture, and still I almost missed its meaning. Such things are not normally within my demesne.

  Pleased to have finally figured out the problem, I smiled and stepped closer, taking her hand off her belly and coaxing her to open the sheet so that I could step into it. She did so, clumsily adjusting the sheet so that she could hold it around both of us, and I sighed in grateful pleasure at the warmth of her nearness. Then I addressed the unease in her eyes that I thought I understood. Because I was who I was, and I am not always wise, I made it a tease. “Are you planning to kill me?”

  She frowned in confusion. I realized for the first time that she was as tall as I was, growing long and lean like a good Amn girl. I slid an arm around her waist and pulled her close, noting that she did not fully relax.

  “A child,” I said. I put a hand on her belly as she had done, rubbing circles to tease her. “It would kill me, you know.” Then I remembered my current condition and my amusement faded a little. “Kill me faster, anyway.”

  She stiffened, staring at me. “What?”

  “I told you already.” Her skin felt good beneath my hands. I bent and kissed her smooth shoulder right on the divot of bone and thought of biting her there as I rode her like a cat. Would she yowl for me? “Childhood cannot survive some things. Sex is fine, between friends.” I smiled on her skin. “Done without consequences. But consequences — like making a child — change everything.”

  “Oh, gods. It’s your antithesis.”

  I hated that word. Scriveners had come up with it. The word was like them, cold and passionless and precise and overly logical, capturing nothing of what truly made us what we were. “It corrupts my nature, yes. Many things can harm me — I’m just a godling, alas, not a god — but that one is the most sure.” I licked at her neck again, really trying this time, though not holding any great hope of success. Nahadoth had never managed to teach me how to seduce with any real degree of mastery.

  “Sieh!” She pushed at me, and when I lifted my head, I saw the horror in her eyes. “I didn’t use any … preventative … when we were together last night. I.…” She looked away, trembling. I regretted my teasing when I realized she was genuinely upset, but it made me happy that she cared so much.

  I laughed gently, relenting. “It’s all right. My mother Enefa realized the danger long ago. She changed me. Do you understand? No children.”

  She did not look reassured—did not feel reassured, her anguish tainting the very air around us. I have siblings who cannot endure mortal emotions. They are sad creatures who haunt the gods’ realm, devouring tales of mortal life and pretending they are not jealous of the rest of us. Shahar would have killed half of them by now.

  “Enefa is dead,” she said.

  That was more than enough to sober me. “Yes. But not all her works died with her, Shahar, or neither you nor I would be standing here.”

  She looked up at me, tense and afraid. “You’re different now, Sieh. You’re not really a god anymore, and mortals —” Her face softened so beautifully. It made me smile, despite the conversation. “Mortals grow up. Sieh, I want you to be sure there’s no child. Can you check somehow? Because … because …” She lowered her eyes, and suddenly it was shame that she felt, sour and bitter on the back of my tongue. Shame, and fear.

  “What?”

  She drew a deep breath. “I didn’t try to prevent a baby. In fact” — her jaw flexed — “I’ve been to the scriveners. They used a script.” She blushed, but forged ahead. “To make it easier, more likely, for three or four days. And once I, with you, I, I’m supposed to go to them. They have other scripts that they say … Even with a god, fertility magic works the same way.”

  Her stammering embarrassment confused me; I couldn’t figure out what she was trying to say at first. And then, like a comet’s icy plume, understanding slashed through me.

  “You wanted a child?”

  She laughed once, bitter. When she turned back to the window, her eyes were hard and older than they should be, and so perfectly Arameri. Then I knew.

  “Your mother.” Shahar nodded, still not meeting my eyes. “‘If we cannot own gods, then perhaps we can become gods,’ she said. The demons of old had great magic despite their mortality. Or, at the very least, we can gain the greatest demon magic: the power to kill gods.”

  I stared at her, feeling sick, because I should have known. The Arameri had been trying to get their hands on a demon for decades. I should have seen it in Remath’s quest for a godly lover; I should have realized why she’d been so pleased to have me in Sky. Why she’d tried to give me her daughter.

  I shrugged off the sheet and walked away from Shahar, manifesting clothing about myself. Black this time, like my fur when I was a cat. Like my father’s wrath.

  “Sieh?” Shahar blurted the words, cursed, dropped the sheet and grabbed for a robe. “Sieh, what are you —”

  I stopped and turned back to her, and she froze at the look in my eyes. Or perhaps at my eyes themselves, because I could not become this angry, even in my weakened half-mortal state, without a little of the cat showing.

  I would save the claws, however, for Remath.

  “Why did you tell me?” I asked, and she went pale. “Did you wait until now for a reason?” Some of my magic had come back to me. I touched the world, found Remath within it. Her audience chamber, surrounded by courtiers and petitioners. “Were you hoping I would kill her in front of witnesses so the other highbloods would think you weren’t involved? Was that what you told yourself so it wouldn’t feel like matricide?”

  Her lips turned white as she pressed them together. “How dare you —”

  “Because this wasn’t necessary.” I rode over her words with my own, with my grief, and that drove the anger from her face in an instant. “I told you I would kill her for you, if you asked. All I ever wanted was to be able to trust you. If you had given me that, I would have done anything for you.”

  She flinched as if I’d struck her. Her eyes welled with tears, but this was not like last night. She stood in the slanting afternoon light of Itempas’s sun, proud despite her nakedness, and the tears did not fall, because Arameri do not cry. Not even when they have broken a god’s heart.

  “Deka,” she said at last.

  I shook my head, mute, too consumed with my own nature to follow her insane mortal reasoning.

  She drew another breath. “I agreed to do this because of Deka. We made a bargain, Mother and I: one night with you, in exchange for him. The scriveners would take care of the rest. But when you said that a child would kill you …” She faltered.

  I wanted to believe she had betrayed her mother for my sake. But if that was true, then it meant she had also agreed to sacrifice my love in exchange for her brother.

&n
bsp; I remembered the look in her eyes when she’d said she loved me. I remembered the feel of her body, the sound of her sighs. I had tasted her soul and found it sweeter than I could ever have imagined. Nothing in what she’d done with me had been false. But would she have followed through on her desire now, so soon, if not for her mother’s bargain? Would she have done it at all if she hadn’t wanted someone else more than she wanted me?

  I turned my back on her.

  “Remath has perverted something that should have been pure,” I said. For the first time since I’d joined hands with two bright-eyed mortal children, something of my true self had slipped through the space between worlds to fill me. My voice grew deeper, becoming the man’s tenor that I had not quite achieved physically yet. I could have taken any shape I wanted in that moment; it was not beyond me anymore. But the part of me that hurt was the man, not the child or the cat, and it was the man whose pain needed assuaging. The man was the weakest part of me, but it would do for this purpose.

  “Sieh,” she whispered, and then fell silent. Just as well. I was in no mood to listen.

  “I cannot protect children from all the evils of the world,” I said. “Suffering is part of childhood, too. But this …” It came out more sibilant than it should have. I fought the change back with a soft snarl. “This, Shahar, is my sin. I should have protected you, from your own nature if nothing else. I have betrayed myself, and someone will die for that.”

  With that, I left. Her apartment door shivered into dust before me. When I stepped into the corridor, the daystone groaned and cracked beneath my feet, sending branching faults up the walls. The handful of guards and servants who stood unobtrusively about the corridor tensed in alarm as I strode toward them. Four of them stopped, sensing with whatever rudimentary awareness mortals have that I was not to be trifled with. The fourth, a guard, stepped into my path. I have no idea whether he meant to stop me or whether he was just moving to the other side of the corridor, where there was more room. I do not think at such times; I do what feels good. So I slashed my will across him like claws and he fell in six or seven bloody

  pieces to the floor. Someone screamed; someone else slipped in the blood; they did not get in my way again. I walked on.

  The floors opened and bent around me, forming steps, slopes, a new path. I stepped into the midday brilliance of the corridor that led to Remath’s audience chamber. I walked toward the ornate double doors at the end of the corridor, in front of which stood two Darren women. The warriors of Darr are famous for their skill and wits, which they use to make up for their lack of physical strength. Since the time of our escape, they had been tasked with protecting the Arameri family head, even from other Arameri. But as I came down the hall, spiderwebbing the windows with every step, they looked at each other. There was pride to consider, but stupid Darre do not last long in their culture, and they knew there was no way they could fight me. They could, however, attempt to appease me, which they did by kneeling before the door, heads bowed, praying for my mercy. I showed it by sweeping them off to either side, probably bruising them a little against the walls but not killing them. Then I tore apart the doors and went in.

  The room was full of courtiers, more guards, servants, clerks, scriveners. And Remath. She, on her cold stone throne, folded her hands and waited as if she’d been expecting me. The rest stared at me, stunned and silent.

  I pulled En loose from its cord. “Kill for me, beloved,” I murmured, and dropped it to the floor. It bounced, then shot around the room, ricocheting off walls and windows and the stone of Remath’s chair. It did not bounce off mortal flesh. When En had punched holes in enough of them and the screaming stopped, it came back to me, flaring hot to cook off the blood and then dropping cool and satisfied into my hand. I slipped it into my pocket.

  Remath had not been touched; En knew my heart well. She had not moved throughout the slaughter and showed no hint of concern that I had just killed thirty or so of her relatives.

  “I take it you’re unhappy about something,” she said.

  I smiled and saw her eyes flicker for an instant as she registered my sharp teeth. “Yes,” I said, raising my hand. In it, conjured out of possibility, lay ten thick, silver knitting needles. Each was longer than my hand. “But I will feel better in a moment. Cross your heart and hope to die, Remath. Here are my needles for your eyes.”

  To her credit, she kept her voice even. “I kept my promise. I’ve done you no harm.” I shook my head. “Shahar was my friend, and you have taken her from me.”

  “A minor harm,” she said, and then she surprised me with a small smile. “But you are a trickster, and I know better than to try and argue with you.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. And then I stepped forward, plucking the first of the needles from my palm and rolling it between my fingers in anticipation, because I am a bully, too, when all is said and done.

  I heard Shahar’s cry before she ran in, though I ignored it. She gasped as she reached the chamber and saw blood and bodies everywhere, but then she ran forward — slipping once in someone’s viscera — and grabbed my arm. This did nothing to slow my advance, since for the moment I was much stronger than any mortal, and after being dragged forward a step or two, she abandoned that effort. But then she ran around me and put herself in my path, just as I put my foot on the first step of the dais that held Remath’s throne. “Sieh, don’t do this.”

  I sighed and pushed her aside as gently as I could. This made her stumble off the steps, and she fell into the blood of some cousin or another of hers. I could smell the Arameri in him. Or not in him, not anymore; I laughed at my own joke.

  As I stopped in front of Remath — who remained where she was, calm as death loomed — Shahar appeared again, this time flinging herself directly in front of her mother’s throne. Her gold satin robe was drenched with blood down one side of her body, and somehow she’d gotten it on the side of her face as well. Half her hair hung limp and dripping with it. I laughed again and tried to think up a rhyme that would properly make fun of her. But what rhymed with horror? I would ponder it later.

  I stopped, however, because Shahar was in the way. “Move,” I said.

  “No.”

  “You wanted her dead, anyway.”

  “Not like this, damn you!”

  “Poor Shahar.” I made a singsong of it. “Poor little princess, how is she to see? With her fingers and her toes, once her eyes are with me.” I held the needle forward so that she could see it. “You have betrayed me, sweet Shahar. It is nothing to me to kill you, too.”

  Her jaw tightened. “I thought you loved me.”

  “I thought you loved me.”

  “You swore not to harm me!”

  She was right. Her failure to keep her word did not mean I should stoop to the same level. “Very well. I won’t kill you — just her.”

  “She’s my mother,” she snapped. “How much do you think it will harm me if you kill her right before my eyes?”

  As much as she’d harmed me by betraying my trust. Maybe a bit more. “I’m not interested in bargains right now, Shahar. Move, or I’ll move you. I won’t be gentle this time.”

  “Please,” she said, which ordinarily would only have goaded me further — bully — but this time it did not. This time, to my own great surprise, the churning vortex of my rage slowed, then went still. In the sudden storm-calm, I gazed at her and realized another truth that she had hidden from me all this time. And perhaps not just from me. I glanced at Remath, who was staring at Shahar, surprised into an expression of astonishment at last. Yes.

  “You love her,” I said.

  And because Shahar was Arameri, she flinched as if struck and looked away in shame. But she did not move out of my way.

  I let out a long, heavy sigh, and with it my power began to fade. I couldn’t have kept it up much longer anyhow; I was too old for tantrums.

  Shaking my head, I let the needles drop to the floor. They scattered over the steps with tinny metal sounds, loud
in the chamber’s silence. Listening to the nearby world, I could hear shouts and running feet — Captain Wrath and his men racing to save Remath and die in the trying because they were not sensible like Darre. Even the scriveners were marshaling, bringing their most powerful scripts, though they were disorganized because Shevir was here, his corpse cooling among the others I’d killed. I turned and looked at him, his face frozen in a look of surprise beneath the gaping hole in his forehead, and felt regret. He hadn’t been a bad man as First Scriveners went. And I had been a very bad boy.

  On the strength of that, I took myself away from Sky, not really caring where I went instead, just wanting comfort and silence and a place to be miserable in peace.

  I would not see Shahar again for two years.

  BOOK TWO

  Two Legs at Noon

  I AM A fly on the wall, or a spider in a bush. Same difference, except that the spider is a predator and suits my nature better.

  I sit in a web that would give me away in an instant if he saw it, because I have woven a smiling face into the tiny dewdrop-beaded strands. It has never been his nature to notice the minutia of his surroundings, however, and the web is half hidden by leaves anyhow. With my many eyes, I observe as Itempas, the Bright Sky, Day-bringer, sits on a whitebaked clay rooftop waiting for the sun to rise. It surprises me that he sits to observe this, but then many things have surprised me today. Like the fact that the rooftop is part of a mortal dwelling, and inside it are the mortal woman he loves and the mortal — but half-god — child she has borne him.

  I knew something was wrong. There had been a day of change in the gods’ realm not long before. The hurricane that was Nahadoth met the earthquake that was Enefa, and they found stillness in each other. A beautiful, holy thing — I know, I watched. But in the distance, the immovable white-capped mountain that was Itempas shimmered and went away. He has been gone ever since.

  Ten years, in mortal reckoning. An eyeblink for us, but still unusual for him. He does not sulk. More commonly he confronts a source of disruption, attacks it, destroys it if he can, or settles into some equilibrium with it if he cannot — but he has done neither this time. Instead he has fled to this realm with its fragile creatures and tried to hide himself among them, as if a sun can fit in among match flames. Except he isn’t hiding, not exactly. He’s just … living. Being ordinary. And not coming home.