The Kingdom of Gods

by N. K. Jemisin

  “So,” said Kahl, and I went rigid with shock. His voice was soft, regretful. “You have forgiven him.”

  What —

  Before the thought could form, he was in front of me, on Itempas’s other side, with one hand poised in a way that made no sense to me — until he plunged it down, and too late I remembered that Glee had been protecting him from this very thing.

  By that point, Kahl’s hand was up to the wrist in Itempas’s chest.

  Itempas jerked awake, rigid, his face a rictus of agony. I did not waste time screaming denial. Denial was for mortals. Instead I grabbed Kahl’s arm with all my strength, trying to keep him from doing what I knew he was about to do. But I was just a mortal, and he was a godling, and not only did he rip Itempas’s heart out in a blur of splattering red, but he also threw me across the platform in the process. I rolled to a halt amid the salt-sweet stench of bruised sea grass, barely three feet from the edge. There were steps wending around the platform, but if I’d missed those, it was a long way — several hundred feet — to the base of the palace.

  Dazed, I struggled upright and discovered that my arm was dislocated. As I finished screaming from this, I looked up and found Kahl standing between me and Itempas’s corpse. The heart was in his hand, dripping; his expression was implacable.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I’ve been hunting him for years now. His demon daughter is good at hiding. I knew that if I watched you, however, I would eventually get my chance.”

  “What —” Hard to think around pain. If mortals could do it, I could, damn it. I ground my teeth and spoke through them. “What in the infinite hells is wrong with you? You know that won’t kill him. And now Naha and Yeine will be after you.” I was not a god anymore. I could not call them with my thoughts. What could I do, as a mortal, facing the god of vengeance in the moment of his triumph? Nothing. Nothing.

  “Let them come.” So familiar, that arrogance. Where had I seen it before? “They haven’t found me yet. I can complete the mask now and take it back from Usein.” He lifted Itempas’s heart, peering intently at it, and for the first time I saw him smile in unreserved pleasure. His lips drew back, showing a hint of canine —

  — sharp teeth, so much like —

  “Only a spark left. Just enough, though.”

  I understood then, or thought I did. What Kahl had sought was not Itempas’s mere blood or flesh, but the pure bright power of the god of light. As a mortal, Itempas had none, and in his true form he was too powerful. Only now, in the space between mortality and immortality, was Itempas both vulnerable and valuable — and I, powerless, was no sufficient guardian. Glee had been right not to trust me with him, though not for the reasons she feared.

  “You’re going to take the mask from Usein?” I struggled to sit up, holding my arm. “But I thought …”

  No. Oh, no. I had been so wrong.

  A mask that conferred the power of gods. But Kahl had never meant for a mortal to wear it.

  “You can’t.” I could not even imagine it. Once upon a time, there were three gods who had created all the realms. Less than three and it would all end. More than three and — “You can’t! If the power doesn’t rip you apart —”

  “Are you concerned?” Kahl lowered the heart, his smile fading. There was anger in him now; all his earlier reticence and sadness had vanished. He had accepted his nature at last, waxing powerful in the moment of his triumph. Even if I had been my old self, I would have felt fear. One did not challenge the elontid at such times. “Do you care about me, Sieh?”

  “I care about living, you demonshitting fool! What you’re planning …” It was a nightmare that no godling would admit dreaming. The Maelstrom had given birth to three gods down the course of eternity. Who knew if — or when — it might suddenly belch forth another? What we thought of as the universe, the collection of realities and embodiments that had been born from the Three’s warring and loving and infinitely careful craft, was too delicate to survive the onslaught of a Fourth. The Three themselves would endure, and adapt, and build a new universe that would incorporate the new one’s power. But everything of the old existence — including godlings and the entire mortal realm — would be gone.

  There was a blur and suddenly Kahl was before me. To be more precise, his foot was on my chest, and I was on the ground being crushed beneath it. With my good hand I scrabbled for his booted foot but could gain no purchase on the fine, god-conjured leather. The only reason I could still breathe at all was the soil beneath my back: my torso had sunk into it rather than simply collapsing.

  Kahl leaned over me, adding pressure to my lungs. Through watering eyes I saw his: narrow, deep-set slashes in the plane of his face, like Teman eyes. Like mine, though far colder. And they were green, too, like mine.

  — like Enefa’s —

  “Are you afraid?” He cocked his head as if genuinely curious, then leaned closer. I could almost hear my ribs groan, on the brink. But when I forced my face back up, muscles straining, throat bulging, I forgot all about my ribs. Because now Kahl was close enough that I could see his eyes clearly, and when his pupils flickered into narrow, deadly slits —

  — eyes like Enefa’s no no EYES LIKE MINE —

  I tried to scream.

  “It’s far too late for you to care about me, Father,” he said.

  The word fell into my mind like poison, and the veil on my memory shredded into tatters.

  Kahl vanished then, and I do not remember what happened after that. There was a lot of pain.

  But when I finally awoke, I was thirty years older.

  BOOK FOUR

  No Legs at Midnight

  HERE IS WHAT happened.

  In the beginning there were three gods. Nahadoth and Itempas came first, enemies and then lovers, and they were happy for all the endless aeons of their existence.

  Enefa’s coming shattered the universe they had built. They recovered, and welcomed her, and built it again — newer, better. They grew strong together. But for most of that time, Nahadoth and Itempas remained closer to each other than to their younger sister. And she, in the way of gods, grew lonely.

  So she tried to love me. But because she was a god and I merely a godling, our first lovemaking nearly destroyed me. I tried again — I have always been hardheaded, as the Maro say — and would have kept trying if Enefa, in her wisdom, had not finally realized the truth: a godling cannot be a god. I was not enough for her. If she was ever to have something of her own, she would have to win one of her brothers away from the other.

  She succeeded, many centuries later, with Nahadoth. This was one of the events that led to the Gods’ War.

  But in the meantime, she did not wholly spurn me. She was not a sentimental lover, but a practical one, and I was the best of the god-children she had yet produced. I would have been honored, when she decided to make a child from my seed —

  — if the existence of that child had not almost killed me.

  So she took steps to save both of us. First she tended to me, as I lay disintegrating within the conflagration of my own unwanted maturity. A touch, a reweaving of memory, a whisper: forget. As the knowledge that I was a father vanished, so, too, did the danger, and I was cured.

  Then she took the child away. I do not know where; some other realm. She sealed the child into this place so that it — he — Kahl — could grow up in safety and health. But he could not escape, and he was alone there, because keeping the secret from me meant keeping Kahl unknown to the other gods.

  Perhaps Enefa visited him to prevent the madness that comes of isolation. Or perhaps she ignored and observed him while he cried for her, one of her endless experiments. Or perhaps she took him as a new lover. No way to know, now that she is dead. I am just father enough to wonder.

  Still, because the fact of Kahl’s existence did not change, this has led to our current problem. Her delicate chains in my mind, the heavy bars on Kahl’s prison: both were loosened when Enefa died in Tempa’s trembling hands. Those
protections held, however, until Yeine claimed the remnant of Enefa’s body and soul for her own. This “killed” Enefa at last. The chains were broken, the bars snapped. Then Kahl, son of death and mischief, Lord of Retribution, was loosed upon the realms to do as he would. And it was only a matter of time before my memory returned.

  Just as well, I suppose, that I am already dying.

  19

  I DID NOT FEEL AT ALL WELL WHEN I WOKE.

  I lay in a bed, somewhere in the new palace. It was nighttime, and the walls glowed, though far more strangely than they had in Sky. Here the dark swirls in the stone reduced the light, though the flecks of white within each indeed gleamed like tiny stars. Beautiful, but dim. Someone had hung lanterns from looping protrusions on the walls, which seemed to have been created for that purpose. I almost laughed at this, because it meant that after two thousand years, the Arameri would now have to use candles to see by, like everyone else.

  I didn’t laugh because something had been shoved down my throat. With some effort I groped about my face and found some sort of tube in my mouth, held in place with bandages. I tried to tug it loose and gagged quite unpleasantly.

  “Stop that.” Deka’s hand came into my view, pushing mine away. “Be still, and I’ll remove it.”

  I will not describe what the removal felt like. Suffice it to say that if I had still been a god, I would have cursed Deka to three hells for putting that thing in me. Though only the nicer hells, since he’d meant well.

  Afterward, as I sat panting and trying to forget the fear that I might die choking on my own vomit, Deka moved to the edge of the bed beside me. He rubbed my back gently and slowly. A warning. “Feel better?”

  “Yes.” My voice was rough, and my throat dry and sore, but that would fade. I was more troubled by the awful weakness in every limb and joint. I looked at one of my hands and was stunned: the skin was dry and loose, more wrinkled than smooth. “What …”

  “You needed nourishment.” He sounded very tired. “Your body had begun to devour itself. One of my scriveners came up with this. I think it saved your life.”

  “Saved —”

  And then I remembered. Kahl. My —

  forget

  My mind shied away from both the thought and my mother’s warning, though it was too late for either. The knowledge was free, the damage done.

  “Mirror.” I whispered it, hoarse.

  One appeared nearby: full-length, on a wheeled wooden pivot stand. I had no idea how it had been conjured. But when Deka got up and tilted it toward me, I forgot the mystery of the mirror. I stared at myself for a long, long time.

  “It could have been much worse,” Deka said, while I sat there. “We — the scriveners — didn’t know what was wrong with you. Our warning-scripts led us to you. Then Lord Itempas revived and told us what needed to be done. I was able to design a negation-script to work in tandem with a loop-interrupt …” He trailed off. I wasn’t listening, anyway. It had worked; that was all that mattered. “We stopped the age acceleration. Then we repaired what we could. Three of your ribs were broken, your sternum was cracked, one lung punctured. There was some bruising to your heart, a dislocated shoulder …”

  He stopped again when I reached out to touch the mirror.

  My face was still handsome, at least, though no longer boyishly pretty. This was not my doing. My body was growing how it wanted now, and I could have ended up pudgy and bald. I’d gone gray mostly at the temples, though there was plenty threaded through the rest of my hair, which was long again, tangling into knots on the sheets behind me. The shape of my face was not so different, just softer. Temans tended to age well in that respect. The texture of my skin, however, was thicker, dryer, weathered, even though it had seen little of the outdoors. There were deep-set lines around my mouth, finer ones at the corners of my eyes, and I was looking decidedly grizzled, though thankfully someone had shaved me. If I kept my mouth shut and dressed right, I might be able to do “distinguished.”

  When I lowered my hand, it took more effort to move. Slower reflexes, softer muscles. I was skinny again, though not nearly as bad as after the last mortaling. The food tube had kept me in healthy flesh, but it was definitely weaker, less resilient flesh.

  “I’m too old for you now,” I said, very softly.

  Deka pushed aside the mirror, saying nothing. That silence hurt, because I took it to mean he agreed with me. Not that I blamed him. But then Deka lay down beside me and pulled me to lie with him, draping an arm across my chest. “You need to rest.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to turn away from him, but he wouldn’t let me, and I was too tired to struggle. All I could do was turn my face away.

  “Aren’t you too old to sulk, too?”

  I ignored him and sulked anyway. It wasn’t fair. I had wanted so much to make him mine.

  Deka sighed, nuzzling the back of my neck. “I’m too tired to talk sense into you, Sieh. Stop being stupid and go to sleep. There’s a lot going on right now, and I could use your help.”

  He was the strong one, young and brilliant, with a bright future. I was nothing. Just a fallen god and a terrible father. (Even to think this hurt, grinding agony throughout my body like a headache with serrated teeth. I bit my lip and focused on loneliness and self-pity instead, which was better.)

  But I was still tired. Deka’s arm, draped over my chest, made me feel safe. And though it was an illusion, doomed like all things mortal, I resolved to enjoy it while I could, and slept again.

  When I woke next, it was morning. Sunlight shone through the walls; the bedroom was illuminated in shades of white and green. Deka was gone from beside me. Glee was in the room instead, sitting beside the bed in a big chair.

  “I knew it was a mistake to trust you,” she said.

  I was feeling stronger, and my temper, at least, had not mellowed with age. I sat up, creaky, stiff, and glared at her. “Good morning to you, too.”

  She looked as tired as Deka, her clothing more disheveled than I had ever seen it, though still neat by the standards of average mortals. But when the daughter of Itempas wears unmatched clothing with her blouse half undone at the top, she might as well be a beggar from the Ancestors’ Village. She had, as perhaps a final concession to exhaustion, bottled her thunderstorm of hair rather than style it with her usual careless confidence: a tie pulled it into a fluffy bun at the nape of her neck. It did not suit her.

  “All you had to do,” she said tightly, “was shout Yeine’s name. It was twilight; she would have heard you. She and Naha would have come and dealt with Kahl, and that would have been that.”

  I flinched, because she was right. It was the sort of thing a mortal would have thought to do. “Well, where the hells were you?” This was a weak riposte. Her failure did not negate mine.

  “I am not a god. I didn’t know he’d been attacked.” She sighed, lifting a hand to rub her eyes. Her frustration was so palpable that the very air tasted bitter. “Father didn’t use his sphere to summon me until Kahl was long gone. His first thought, upon returning to life, was of you.”

  If I had still been a child, I would have felt a small and petty pleasure at this hint of her jealousy. But my body was older now; I could no longer be childish. I just felt sad.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. She only nodded, bleak.

  Because I felt stronger, I took in more of my surroundings this time. We were in the bedchamber of an apartment. I could see another room beyond the doorway, brighter lit; there must have been windows. The walls and floors were bare of personal touches, though I glimpsed clothes hanging neatly in a large closet across the room. Some of them were the ones Morad had given me before we’d left Sky. Apparently Deka had told the servants I was living with him.

  Pushing aside the covers, I got to my feet, slowly and carefully, as my knees hurt. I was naked, too, which was unfortunate as I seemed to have sprouted hair from an astonishing variety of body parts. Glee would just have to endure, I decided, and made my way to the close
t to dress.

  “Did Dekarta explain what has happened?” Glee had composed herself; she sounded brisk and professional again.

  “Aside from me taking a great flying leap toward death? No.” All my clothes had been made for a younger man. They would look ridiculous on me now. I sighed and pulled on the most boring of what I found and wished for shoes that might somehow ease the ache in my knees.

  Something flickered at the edge of my vision. I turned, startled, and saw a pair of boots sitting on the floor. Each had good, stiff leather about the ankles, and when I picked one up, I saw it had thick padding in the sole.

  I turned to Glee and held up the boot in wordless query.

  “Echo,” she said. “The palace’s walls listen.”

  “I … see.” I did not.

  She looked fleetingly amused. “Ask for something — or even think of it with enough longing — and it appears. The palace seems to clean itself as well, and it even rearranges furniture and decor. No one knows why. Some remnant of the Lady’s power, perhaps, or some property that has been permanently built in.” She paused. “If it is permanent, there will be little need for servants here, going forward.”

  And little need for the age-old divisions between highbloods and low, among Arameri family members. I smiled down at the boot. How like Yeine.

  “Where is Deka?” I asked.

  “He left this morning. Shahar has kept him busy since Kahl’s attack. He and the scriveners have been setting up all manner of defensive magics, internal gates, and even scripts that can move the palace, though not with any great speed. When he hasn’t been here, tending you, he’s been working.”

  I paused in the middle of pulling on pants. “How long have I been, er, incapacitated?”

  “Almost two weeks.”

  More of my life slept away. I sighed and resumed dressing.