The Kingdom of Gods

by N. K. Jemisin

  Startled out of anger, Nahadoth turned to me. All three of them looked at me, in fact, radiating a combination of pity and chagrin. I smiled back at them, bleak in my despair.

  “Nicely done,” I said. “You only forgot I was here for half a minute.”

  Nahadoth’s jaw tightened. I took an obscure pride in this.

  Yeine sighed, stepping between her taller brothers with a glare at each, and came to my side. She crouched beside me, balancing on her toes; as usual she wore no shoes. When I did not move, she shifted to sit against me, her head resting on my shoulder. I closed my eyes and pressed my cheek against her hair.

  “There is another option,” Nahadoth said at last, breaking the silence. He spoke slowly, reluctantly. Change should not have been difficult for him, but I could see that this was. “When we are of one accord, all things become possible.”

  Again, I expected a reaction that Itempas did not provide. “Sieh’s restoration is something we all desire.” He spoke stiffly because change was difficult for him. Yet he made the effort anyway, even though it was an extreme suggestion: to bring together the Three as they had not done since the dawning of the universe. To remake reality, if that was what it took to remake me.

  To this, I had no snide remark. I stared at them, Naha and Tempa, standing side by side and trying, for my sake, to get along.

  Yeine lifted her head, which forced me to do the same. “I am willing, of course,” she said to them, though she sounded concerned. “But I have never done this before. Is there danger to Sieh?”

  “Some,” said Itempas.

  “Perhaps,” said Nahadoth.

  At Yeine’s frown, I touched her hand, explaining as I had done for Shahar and Deka. “If the Three’s accord is not total” — I nodded toward Itempas and Nahadoth, not needing to be subtle in my meaning — “if there is any hint of discord between you, things could go very wrong.”

  “How wrong?”

  I shrugged. I had not seen it happen myself, but I understood the principle. It was simple: their will became reality. Any conflicts in their respective desires manifested as natural law — inertia and gravity, time and perception, love and sorrow. Nothing that the Three did was subtle.

  Yeine considered this for a long moment. Then she reached up to caress my hair. As a boy, I had loved for her to do this. As a man, I found it awkward. Patronizing. But I tolerated it.

  “Then there is danger,” she said, troubled. “I want what you want. And it seems to me that what you want is not entirely clear.”

  I smiled sadly. Itempas’s eyes narrowed. He and Nahadoth exchanged a knowing look. That was nice, actually. Like old times. Then they remembered that they hated each other and focused on me again.

  It was ironic, really, and beautiful in its way. The problem was not them but me. The Three walked the world again and had come together in the hope of saving me. And I could not be saved, because I was in love with two mortals.

  Yeine sighed. “You need time to think.” She got to her feet, brushing unnecessarily at her pants, and faced Nahadoth and Itempas. “And we have business of our own to discuss, Sieh. Where shall we send you?”

  I shook my head, rubbing my head wearily. “I don’t know. Somewhere else.” I gestured vaguely at the palace. “I’ll make my own way.” I always did.

  Yeine glanced back at me as if she’d heard that last thought, but like a good mother, she let it pass unremarked. “Very well.”

  Then the world blurred, and I found myself sitting in a large open chamber of the new palace. Templelike, its ceiling arched high overhead, thirty or forty feet away. Vines dangled from its cornices and wended down the curving pillars. In the handful of minutes since we’d left, Yeine’s power had thoroughly permeated the palace and covered it in green. The daystone was no longer precisely white, either: one wall of the chamber faced the sun, translucent, and against the bright backdrop I saw white stone marbled with something darker, gray shading to black. The black was studded with tiny white points, like stars. Perhaps they would glow, too, come night. Deka sat there on his knees, alone. What had he been doing, praying? Holding vigil while my mortality passed away? How quaint. And how unsubtle of Yeine, to send me to him. I would never have figured her for a matchmaker.

  “Deka,” I said.

  He started, turned, and frowned at me in surprise. “Sieh? I thought —”

  I shook my head, not bothering to get up. “I have unfinished business, it seems.”

  “What —” No. Deka was too smart to ask that question. I saw understanding, elation, guilt, and hope flow across his face in a span of seconds before he caught himself and put his Arameri mask in place instead. He got to his feet and came over, offering a hand to help me up, which I took. When I was up, however, there was a moment of awkwardness. We were both men now, and most men would have stepped apart after such a gesture, putting distance between themselves so as to maintain the necessary boundaries of independence and camaraderie. I did not move away, and neither did Deka. Awkwardness passed into something entirely different.

  “We were thinking about what to name this palace,” he said softly. “Shahar and I.”

  I shrugged. “Seashell? Water?” I had never been much for creative naming. Deka, who had taste, grimaced at my suggestions.

  “Shahar likes ‘Echo.’ She’ll have to run it past Mother, of course.” So fascinating, this conversation. Our mouths moved, speaking about things neither of us cared about, a verbal mask for entirely different words that did not need to be said. “She thinks this will make a good audience chamber.” Another grimace, this one more delicate.

  I smiled. “You disagree?”

  “It doesn’t feel like an audience chamber. It feels …” He shook his head, turning to face a spot beneath the translucent swirl-wall. I took his meaning. There was a votive atmosphere to this chamber, something difficult to define. There should have been an altar in that spot.

  “So tell her,” I said.

  He shrugged. “You know how it is. Shahar is still … Shahar.” He smiled, but it faded.

  I nodded. I didn’t really want to talk about Shahar.

  Deka’s hand brushed mine, tentative. This was something he could have played off as an accident, if I let him. “Perhaps you should bless this place. It’s a trick, of a sort, or it will be. The real home of the Arameri, leaving Sky as a decoy …”

  “I can’t bless anything anymore, except in the poetic sense.” I took his hand, growing tired of the game. No semblance of just-friends anymore. “Shall I become a god again, Deka? Is that what you want?”

  He flinched, thrown by my directness, his mask cracking. Through it I saw need so raw that it made me ache in sympathy. But he abandoned the game, too, because that was what the moment deserved. “No.”

  I smiled. If I had still been a god, my teeth would have been sharp. “Why not? I could still love you, as a god.” I stepped closer, nuzzling his chin. He did not take this bait or the verbal bait I offered next. “Your family would love you better, if I were a god. Your god.”

  Deka’s hands gripped my arms, tight. I expected him to thrust me away, but he didn’t. “I don’t care what they want,” he said, his voice suddenly low, rough. “I want an equal. I want to be your equal. When you were a god, I couldn’t be that, so … So help me, yes, some part of me wished you were mortal. It wasn’t deliberate, I didn’t know what would happen, but I don’t regret it. So Shahar’s not the only one who betrayed you.” I flinched, and his hands tightened, to the threshold of pain. He leaned closer, intent. “As a child, I was nothing to you. A game to pass the time.” When I blinked in surprise, he laughed bitterly. “I told you, Sieh. I know everything about you.”

  “Deka —” I began, but he cut me off.

  “I know why you’ve never taken a mortal lover as more than a passing whim. Even before mortals were created, you’d lived so long, seen so much, that no mortal could be anything but an eyeblink in the eternity of your life. That’s if you were willing to
try, and you weren’t. But I will not be nothing to you, Sieh. And if I must change the universe to have you, then so be it.” He smiled again, tight, vicious, beautiful. Terrifying.

  Arameri.

  “I should kill you,” I whispered.

  “Do you think you could?” Unbelievable, his arrogance. Magnificent. He reminded me of Itempas.

  “You sleep, Deka. You eat. Not all my tricks need magic.”

  His smile grew an edge of sadness. “Do you really want to kill me?” When I didn’t answer — because I didn’t know — he sobered. “What do you want, Sieh?”

  And because I was afraid, and because Yeine had asked the same question, and because Deka really did know me too well, I answered with the truth.

  “N-not to be alone anymore.” I licked my lips and looked away — at the altar-less floor, at a nearby pillar, at the sun diluted by swirls of white and black and gray. Anywhere but at him. I was so very, very tired. I had been tired for an age of the world. “To have … I want … something that is mine.”

  Deka let out a long, shaky sigh, pressing his forehead against mine as if he’d just won some victory. “Is that all?”

  “Yes. I want —”

  And then there was no repeating what I wanted, because his mouth was on mine and his soul was in me and it was frightening to be invaded — and exhilarating and agonizing. Like racing comets and chasing thoughtwhales and skating along freezing liquid air. It was better than the first time. He still kissed like a god.

  Then his mouth was on my throat, his hands tugging open my shirt, his legs pushing us back back back until I stopped against one of the vine-covered pillars. I barely noticed despite the breath being knocked out of me. I was gasping now because he’d bitten me just over my lower rib cage, and that was the most erotic sensation I’d ever felt. I reached out to touch him and found hot mortal skin and humming tattooed magic, free of the encumbering cloth as he stripped himself. There are so many ways to make magic. I tapped a cadence over his shoulders, and hot, raw power seared up my arms in response. I drank it in and moaned. He had made himself strong and wise, a god in mortal flesh, for me, me, me. Was he right? I had always avoided mortals. It made no sense for a being older than the sun to want a creature that would always be less than a child, in relative terms. But I did want him; oh gods, how I wanted him. Was that the solution? It was not my nature to do what was wise; I did what felt good. Why should that not apply to love as well as play?

  Had I truly been fighting myself all this time?

  Movement on the edge of my vision pulled me out of the haze of Deka’s teeth and hands. I focused on reality and saw Shahar, in the entryway of the marbled chamber. She had stopped there, framed by the corridor beyond, illuminated by the swirling sun. Her eyes were wide, her face paler than ever, her lips a flat white line. I remembered those lips soft and open, welcoming, and in spite of everything, I craved her again. I stroked Deka’s straight hair and thought of hers coiling round my fingers and — Gods, no, I would go mad if I kept this up.

  Something that was mine. I looked down at Deka, who’d crouched at my feet, licking the bite on my ribs as I shuddered. His hands cupped my waist, as gentle as if I were made of egg-shell. (I was. It was called mortal flesh.) Beautiful, perfect boy. Mine.

  “Prove it,” I whispered. “Show me how much you love me, Deka.”

  He looked up at me. I realized he knew Shahar was there. Of course; the bond between us. Perhaps that was why she’d come here, too, at this precise moment, out of the whole vast empty palace. I was lonely. I needed. That need drew them to me now, just as my need had drawn them on a long-ago day in Sky’s underpalace. We had shared something powerful when we took our oath, but the connection had been there even beforehand. That could not be broken by something so paltry as betrayal.

  All this was in Deka’s eyes as he gazed up at me. I do not know what he saw in mine. Whatever it was, though, he nodded once. Then he rose, never taking his hands off me, and turned me gently to face the pillar. When he spoke into my ear, the words were gods’ language. That made me believe them, and trust him, because they could be nothing but true.

  “I’ll never hurt you,” he said, and proved it.

  Shahar left sometime during what followed. Not immediately. She stayed for a long while, in fact, listening to my groans and watching while I stopped caring about her, or even being aware of her presence. Perhaps she even lingered after I pulled her little brother to the floor and made a proper altar of it, wringing sweat and tears and songs of praise from him, and blessing him with pleasure in return. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. Deka was my only world, my only god. Yes, I used him, but he wanted me to. I would worship him forever.

  I was exhausted afterward. Deka wasn’t tired at all, the bastard. He sat up awhile, using the floor to idly trace the outlines of sigils that he intended to draw into the new palace’s substance as part of its first layer of arcane protection. Apparently teams of soldiers and scriveners had already begun exploring the palace and mapping its wonders. He told me about this while I lay in a stupor. It was as though he’d gorged himself on my vitality, leaving me little better than a husk. Then it occurred to me that during our lovemaking, it had been he who’d drawn us out of the world and back; his kisses, not mine, had woven our souls together. He was still one-eighth of a god. I was all mortal.

  If this was how mortals usually felt when a god was done with them, I felt fresh guilt for all my past dalliances.

  Eventually I recovered, however, and told Deka that I needed to leave. All the highbloods were selecting apartments in the uppermost central spirals of the palace — the old pattern from Sky. It would be easy for me to find him later. There was an uncomfortable moment when Deka gave me a long and silent perusal before replying, but whatever he saw in my face satisfied him. He nodded and rose to get dressed himself.

  “Be careful,” was all he said. “My sister may be dangerous now.”

  I thought that was probably true.

  I found Itempas less than a half hour before sunset. As I’d suspected, he’d taken up residence on the wide central platform where we’d first arrived, which had become a meadow of bobbing sea grass in the meantime. This palace had not been configured to exalt him; nevertheless, the highest center point of anything was a natural place for him to settle.

  He stood facing the sun, his legs braced apart and arms folded, unmoving, though he must have sensed my approach. The grass whispered against my pant legs as I walked, and I saw that the grass nearest Itempas had turned white. Typical.

  I did not see Nahadoth or Yeine or feel their presence nearby. They had abandoned him again.

  “Want to be alone?” I asked, stopping behind him. The sun had almost touched the sea in the distance. He could count the remaining moments of his godhood on one hand. Maybe two.

  “No,” he said, so I sat down in the grass, watching him.

  “I’ve decided that I want to remain mortal,” I said. “At least until … you know. Close to. Ah. The end. Then the three of you can try to change me back.” Unspoken was the fact that I might change my mind again then and choose to die with Deka. It was a choice that not every god got to make. I was very fortunate.

  He nodded. “We felt your decision.”

  I grimaced. “How unromantic. And here I was thinking that was an orgasm.”

  He ignored my irreverence out of long habit. “Your love for those two has been clear to all of us since your transformation into mortal, Sieh. Only you have resisted this knowledge.”

  I hated it when he got sanctimonious, so I changed the subject. “Thanks for trying, by the way. To help me.”

  He sighed gently. “I wonder, sometimes, why you think so little of me. Then I remember.”

  “Yes. Well.” I shrugged, uncomfortable. “Is Glee coming to fetch you?” Unspoken: when you are mortal again?

  “Yes.”

  “She really loves you, you know.”

  He turned, just enough so that I could see h
is face. “Yes.”

  I was babbling, and he had noticed. Annoyed, I stopped talking. The silence collected around us, comfortable. In the old days, I had only ever liked being quiet around him. With anyone else, the urge to fill the silence with chatter or movement was overwhelming. He had never needed to command me to be still. Around him, I just wanted to.

  We watched the sun inch toward the horizon. “Thank you,” he said suddenly, surprising me.

  “Hmm?”

  “For coming here.”

  At this, I sighed and shifted and rubbed a hand over my hair. Finally I got up, coming to stand beside him. I could feel the radiant warmth of his presence, skin tightening even from a foot away. He could blaze with the fire and light of every sun in existence, but most times he kept the furnace banked so that others could be near him. His version of a friendly invitation — because naturally he would never, ever just say he was lonely, the fool.

  And somehow, I had never, ever noticed that he did this. What did that make me? His twice-fool son, I supposed.

  So I stayed there beside him while we watched the last curve of the sun flatten into an oblong, then puddle against the edge of the world, and finally melt away. The instant this happened, Itempas gasped, and I felt a sudden swift wave of heat, as of something rushing away. What remained in its wake was human, ordinary, just a middle-aged man in plain clothes and worn boots (brown again, ha ha!) with too much hair for practicality. And when he toppled backward like an old broken tree, unconscious in the aftermath of godhood, it was I who caught him, and eased him to the floor, and cradled his head in my lap.

  “Stupid old man,” I whispered. But I stroked his hair while he slumbered.

  Would that things could have ended there.

  A moment after I’d settled down with Itempas, I felt a presence behind me and did not turn. Let Glee think what she would of me with her father. I was tired of hating him. “Make him decorate his hair,” I said, more to make conversation than anything else. “If he’s going to wear his hair in a Teman style, he ought to do it right.”