The Kingdom of Gods

by N. K. Jemisin

  I stared back at him, stunned by his vehemence and, I will admit, hurt. And yet.

  “I don’t believe you,” I murmured. He blinked.

  Then he pushed away from the desk with such force that it scooched back a little, nearly jostling me off. I stared as he went over to Hymn, grabbed her by the scruff of her shirt, and half dragged her to the door, opening it.

  “I’m not going to kill him,” he said, shoving her through hard enough that she stumbled when he let her go. “I’m not going to do a damned thing other than gloat over his prolonged, humiliating death, which I have no reason whatsoever to hasten. So your money’s clean and you can wash your hands of him in good conscience. Be glad you escaped before he could ruin your life. Now get out!” And he slammed the door in her face.

  I stared at him as he turned to regard me, taking a long, slow breath to compose himself. Because I knew his soul, I felt the moment that he made a decision. Perhaps he had already guessed at mine.

  “Would you like a drink?” he asked at last, with brittle politeness.

  “Children shouldn’t drink,” I said automatically.

  “How fortunate that you’re not a child anymore.”

  I winced. “I, ah, haven’t had alcohol in a few centuries.” I said it carefully, testing this new, fragile peace beneath us. It was as thin as the tension on a puddle’s surface, but if we tread delicately, we might manage. “Do you have anything, er …”

  “For the pathetic?” He snorted and went over to a handsome wood cabinet, which turned out to hold a dozen or so bottles. All of them were full of strong, richly colored liquids. Stuff for men, not boys. “No. You’ll have to sink or swim, I’m afraid.”

  Most likely I would sink. I looked at the bottles and committed myself to the path of truce with a heavy sigh.

  “Pour on, then,” I said, and he did.

  Some while later, after I had unfortunately remembered too late that vomiting is far, far more unpleasant than defecating, I sat on the floor where Ahad had left me and took a long, hard look at him. “You want something from me,” I said. I believe I said it clearly, though my thoughts were slurred.

  He lifted an eyebrow in genteel fashion, not even tipsy. A servant had already taken away the wastebasket splattered with my folly. Even with the windows open, the stench of Ahad’s cheroot was better than the alternative, so I did not mind it this time.

  “So do you,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said, “but my wants are always simple things. In this case I want money, and since I really wanted it for Hymn and you’ve already given it to her, that essentially solves the problem. Your wants are never simple.”

  “Hmm.” I didn’t think this statement pleased him. “And yet you’re still here, which implies you want something more.”

  “Care during my feeble senescence. It will take me another fifty or sixty years to die, during which I will require increasing amounts of food and shelter and” — I looked at the bottle on the desk between us, considering —“and other things. Mortals use money to obtain these things; I am becoming mortal; therefore, I will need a regular source of money.”

  “A job.” Ahad laughed. “My housekeeper thought you might make a good courtesan, if you cleaned up a little.”

  Affront penetrated the alcohol haze. “I’m a god!”

  “Nearly a third of our courtesans are godlings, Sieh. Didn’t you feel the presence of family when you came in?” He gestured around the building, his hand settling on himself, and I flushed because in fact, I had not sensed him or anyone else. More evidence of my weakness. “A goodly number of our clients are, too — godlings who are curious about mortals but afraid or too proud to admit it. Or who simply want the release of meaningless, undemanding intercourse. We aren’t so different from them, you know, when it comes to that sort of thing.”

  I reached out to touch the world around me as best I could, my senses numbed and unsteady as they were. I could feel a few of my siblings then. Mostly the very youngest. I remembered the days when I had been fascinated by mortalkind — especially children, with whom I had loved to play. But some of my kind were drawn to adults, and with that came adult cravings.

  Like the taste of Shahar’s skin.

  I shook my head — a mistake, as the nausea was not quite done with me. I said something to distract myself. “We’ve never needed such things, Ahad. If we want a mortal, we appear somewhere and point at one, and the mortal gives us what we want.”

  “You know, Sieh, it’s all right that you haven’t paid attention to the world. But you really shouldn’t talk as though you have.”

  “What?”

  “Times have changed.” Ahad paused to sip from a square glass of fiery red liquid. I had stopped drinking that one after the first taste because mortals could die of alcohol poisoning. Ahad held it in his mouth a moment, savoring the burn, before continuing. “Mortalkind, heretics excepted, spent centuries believing in Itempas and nothing else. They don’t know what happened to him — the Arameri keep a tight grip on that information, and so do we godlings — but they know something has changed. They aren’t gods, but they can still see the new colors of existence. And now they understand that our kind are powerful, admirable, but fallible.” He shrugged. “A godling who wants to be worshipped can still find adherents, of course. But not many — and really, Sieh, most of us don’t want to be worshipped. Do you?”

  I blinked in surprise, and considered it. “I don’t know.”

  “You could be, you know. The street children swear by you when they speak any god’s name at all. Some of them even pray to you.”

  Yes, I had heard them, though I’d never done anything to encourage their interest. I’d had thousands of followers once, but these days it always surprised me that they remembered. I drew up my knees and wrapped my arms around them, understanding finally what Ahad meant.

  Nodding as if I’d spoken my thoughts aloud, Ahad continued. “The rest of our clients are nobles, wealthy merchants, very lucky commoners — anyone who’s ever yearned to visit the heavens before death. Even our mortal courtesans have been with gods enough to have acquired a certain ethereal technique.” He smiled a salesman’s smile, though it never once touched his eyes.

  “That’s what you’re selling. Not sex, but divinity.” I frowned. “Gods, Ahad, at least worship is free.”

  “It was never free.” His smile vanished. It hadn’t been real, anyway. “Every mortal who offered a god devotion wanted something in exchange for it — blessings, a guaranteed place in the heavens, status. And every god who demanded worship expected loyalty and more, in exchange. So why shouldn’t we be honest about what we’re doing? At least here, no god lies.”

  I flinched, as he had meant me to. Razors. Then he went on.

  “As for our residents, as we call them, there is no rape here, no coercion. No pain, unless that’s mutually agreed upon by both client and resident. No judgments, either.” He paused, looking me up and down. “The housekeeper usually has a good eye for new talent. It will be a shame to tell her that she was so far off in your case.”

  It was not entirely due to the alcohol that I straightened in wounded pride. “I could be a marvelous whore.” Gods knew I had enough practice.

  “Ah, but I think you would be unable to keep yourself from contemplating the violent murder of any client who claimed you. Which, given your nature and the unpredictability of magic, might actually cause such death to occur. That’s not good for business.” He paused, and I did not imagine the cold edge to his smile. “I have the same problem, as I discovered quite by accident.”

  There was a long silence that fell between us. This was not recriminating. It was simply that such statements stirred up sediment of the past, and it was natural to wait for that to settle before we moved on.

  Changing the subject helped, too. “We can discuss the matter of my employment later.” Because I was almost certain he would hire me. Unreasoning optimism is a fundamental element of childishness. “So wh
at is it, then, that you want?”

  Ahad steepled his fingers, propping his elbows on the arms of the handsome leather chair. I wondered whether this was a sign of nerves. “I should think you’d have guessed. Considering how easily you defeated me in —” He paused, frowning, and then I finally did catch on.

  “No mortal tongue has words for it,” I said softly. I would have to speak diplomatically, and that was never easy for me. “In our realm there is no need for words. Naturally you will have picked up some of our tongue over the centuries. …” I let the question ask itself, and he grimaced.

  “Not much of it. I couldn’t hear … feel …” He struggled to say it in Senmite, probably out of stubbornness. “I was like any other mortal before Yeine did this to me. I tried speaking your words a few times, died a few times, and stopped trying.”

  “Your words now.” I watched Ahad absorb this, his expression going unreadably blank. “I can teach you the language, if you want.”

  “There are several dozen godlings living in Shadow,” he replied stiffly. “If and when I deem it valuable, I can learn from them.”

  Idiot, I thought, but kept it behind my teeth, nodding as if I thought deliberate ignorance was a good idea. “You have a bigger problem, anyway.”

  He said nothing, watching me. He could do that for hours, I knew; something he’d learned during his years in Sky. I had no idea whether he knew what I was about to say.

  “You don’t know your nature.” That was how I’d known I could best him, or at least get him off me, in the contest of our wills. His reaction to the touch of my thoughts had given it away: I had seen mortal newborns do the same at the brush of a fingertip. A quick, startled jerk, a flailing look to determine what and how and why, and will it hurt me? Only learning oneself better, and understanding one’s place in the world, made the touch of another mundane.

  After a moment, Ahad nodded. This, too, was a gesture of trust between us. In the old days he would never have revealed so much weakness to me.

  I sighed and got up, swaying only a little as I gained my feet, and went over to his chair. He did not rise this time, but he grew palpably less relaxed as I got closer, until I stopped.

  “I will do you no harm,” I said, scowling at his skittishness. Why couldn’t he just be a coldhearted bastard all the time? I could never truly hate him, for pity. “The Arameri hurt you worse than I ever did.”

  Very, very quietly he replied, “You let them.”

  There was nothing I could say to that, because it was true. So I just stood there. This would never work if we began to rehash old hurts. He knew it, too. Finally he relaxed, and I stepped closer.

  “All gods must learn who and what they are for themselves,” I said. As gently as I could — my hands were rough and dirty from my days in the alley — I cupped his face and held it. “Only you can define the meaning and limit of your existence. But sometimes, those of us who have already found ourselves can give the new ones a clue.”

  I had already gained that clue during our brief metaphysical struggle. That fierce, devouring need of his. For what? I looked into his strangely mortalish eyes — strange because he had never really been mortal, yet mortality was all he knew — and tried to understand him. Which I should have been able to do because I had been there at the moment of his birth. I had seen his first steps and heard his first words. I had loved him, even if —

  The nausea struck faster than ever before, because the alcohol had already made me ill. I barely managed to whirl away and collapse onto the floor before I was retching, screaming through the heaves, wobbling because my legs were trying to jerk and my spine was trying to bow backward even as my stomach sought to cast out the poison I had taken in. But this poison was not physical.

  “Still a child after all.” Ahad sighed into my ear, his voice a low murmur that easily got through my strangled cries. “Shall I call you big brother or little brother? I suppose it doesn’t matter. You will never grow up fully, no matter how old you look. Brother.”

  Brother. Brother. Not child, not

  forget

  Ahad was not my son, not even figuratively, because

  forget

  Because a god of childhood could not be a father, not if he wanted to be at all, and

  forgetforgetforget

  Brother. Ahad was my brother. My new little brother, Yeine’s first child. Nahadoth would be … well, not proud, probably. But amused.

  My body unknotted. The agony receded enough that I stopped screaming, stopped spasming. There was nothing in my stomach anyhow. I lay there, returning gradually to myself as the horror faded, then drew one cautious breath. Then another.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  Ahad, crouching over me, sighed. He did not say you’re welcome, because I was not welcome and we both knew it. But he had done me a kindness when he hadn’t had to, and that deserved acknowledgment.

  “You smell,” he said, “and you’re filthy, and you look like horseshit. Since you’re too useless to take yourself out of here as you should, I have no choice but to put you up for the night. But don’t get used to it; I want you living somewhere else after this.” He got up and went away, I assume to find a servant and make arrangements for my stay.

  When he came back, I had managed — barely — to sit on my knees. I was still shaky. Insanely, my stomach now insisted that it needed to be filled again. In or out, I told it, but it did not listen.

  Ahad crouched in front of me again. “Interesting.”

  I managed to lift my eyes to him. His expression betrayed nothing, but he lifted a hand and conjured a small hand mirror. I was too tired even for envy. He lifted the mirror to show me my face.

  I had grown older. The face that gazed back at me was longer, leaner, with a stronger jawline. The hair on my chin was no longer downy and barely visible; it had grown darker, longer, the wispy precursors of a beard. Late adolescence, rather than the middling stage of it I’d been in. Two years of my life gone? Three? Gone, regardless.

  “I should be flattered, perhaps,” Ahad said. “That you remember the old days with such fondness.” His words skirted the edge of danger, but I was too tired for true fear. He could kill me anytime he wanted, and would’ve done it by now if he’d really meant to. He just liked flaunting his power.

  Suddenly this seemed monumentally unfair. “I hate this,” I whispered, not caring if he heard me. “I hate that I’m nothing now.”

  Ahad shook his head, less annoyed than unsurprised. His hand seized the back of my shirt and pulled me to my feet. “You’re not ‘nothing.’ You’re mortal, which is far from nothing. The sooner you accept that, the better off you’ll be.” He took one of my arms, holding it up, and made a sound of disgust. “You need to eat. Start taking care of your body if you want it to last for the few years you have left. Or would you rather die now?”

  I closed my eyes, letting myself dangle from his grasp. “I don’t want to be mortal.” I was whining. It felt good to realize I still could, however much I’d grown up. “Mortals lie when they say they love you. They wait until you trust them, then shove the knife in, and then they work it around to make sure it kills you.”

  There was a moment of silence, during which I closed my eyes and honestly contemplated having a good cry. It ended when the office door opened and two servants came in, and when Ahad gave me a slap on the cheek that was not quite gently chiding.

  “Gods do that, too,” he snapped, “so you’re damned whichever way you turn. Shut up and deal with it.”

  Then he shoved me into the servants’ waiting arms and they hauled me away.

  11

  I L-O-V-E, love you

  I’ll K-I-S-S, kiss you

  Then I pushed him in a lake

  And he swallowed a snake

  And ended up with a tummy ache

  The servants took me to a large sumptuous bathchamber with lovely benches that reeked of sex despite their freshly laundered cushions. They stripped me, throwing my old cloth
es into a pile to be burned, and scrubbed me with careless efficiency, rinsing me in perfumed water. Then they put me into a robe and took me to a room and let me sleep the whole day and well into the night. I did not dream.

  I woke up thinking that my sister Zhakkarn was using my head as a pike target, though she would never do such a thing. When I managed to sit upright, which took doing, I contemplated nausea again. A long-cold meal and a pitcher of room-temperature water sat on a sideboard of the room, so I decided on ingestion rather than ejection and applied myself grimly. It helped that the food tasted good. Beside this sat a small dish holding a dab of thick white paste and a paper card, on which elegant blocky letters had been written: eat it. The hand was familiar, so I sighed and tasted the paste. The alley rat had been more rancid but not by much. Still, as I was a guest in Ahad’s home, I held my breath and gulped the rest down, then quickly ate more food in an attempt to disguise the bitter taste. This did not work. However, I began to feel better, so I was pleased to confirm it was medicine, not poison.

  Fresh clothing had been set out for me, too. Pleasantly nondescript: loose gray pants, a beige shirt, a brown jacket, brown boots. Servant attire, most likely, since I suspected that would suit Ahad’s sense of cruelty. Thus arrayed, I opened the door of the room.

  And promptly stopped, as the sounds of laughter and music drifted up from downstairs. Nighttime. For a moment the urge to play a dozen bawdy, vicious tricks was almost overwhelming, and I felt a tickle of power at the thought. It would be so easy to change all the house’s sensual oils into hot chili oil or make the beds smell of mildew rather than lust and perfume. But I was older now, more mature, and the urge passed. I felt a fleeting sadness in its wake.