The Inheritance Trilogy

by N. K. Jemisin

  There is nothing more dangerous than a bored child—and though I had become a bored adolescent, that old mortal adage still rang true. So as the small hours stretched into slightly longer hours, I finally got up and opened a wall. That much, at least, I could do without expending any of my remaining strength; all it took was a word. When the daystone had finished rolling aside to make room for me, I went through the resulting opening into the dead spaces beyond.

  Roaming my old territory put me in a better mood. Not everything was the same as it had been, of course. The World Tree had grown both around and through Sky, filling some of its old corridors and dead spaces with branchwood and forcing me to make frequent detours. This, I knew, had been Yeine’s intent, for without the Enefadeh, and more importantly without the constant empowering presence of the Stone of Earth, Sky needed the Tree’s support. Its architecture broke too many of Itempas’s laws for the mortal realm; only magic kept it in the sky and not smashed on the ground.

  So down seventeen levels, around a swirling rise of linked globules that only resembled a tunnel in dreams, and underneath an arched branch spur, I found what I’d sought: my orrery. I moved carefully between the protective traps I’d set, out of habit stepping around the patches of moonstone that lined the floor. It looked like daystone—mortals had never been able to tell the difference—but on cloudy, new-moon nights, the pieces of moonstone transformed, opening into one of Nahadoth’s favorite hells. I had made it as a little treat for our masters, to remind them of the price to be paid for enslaving their gods, and we had all seeded it through the palace. They had blamed—and punished—Nahadoth for it, but he’d thanked me afterward, assuring me the pain was worth it.

  But when I spoke atadie and the orrery opened, I stopped on its threshold, my mouth falling open.

  Where there should have been more than forty globes floating through the air, all turning around the bright yellow sphere at the orrery’s center, there were only four still floating. Four, counting the sun sphere. The rest lay scattered about the floor and against the walls, corpses in the aftermath of a systemic carnage. The Seven Sisters, identical small goldenworlds I had collected after searching billions of stars, lay strewn about the edges of the room. And the rest—Zispe, Lakruam, Amanaiasenre, the Scales, Motherspinner with its six child moons linked by a web of rings, and oh, Vaz, my handsome giant. That one, once a massive stark-white sphere I had barely been able to get my arms around, had hit the floor hard, splitting down the middle. I went to the nearer of the shattered halves and picked it up, moaning as I knelt. Its core was exposed, cold, still. Planets were resilient things, far more than most mortal creatures, but there was no way I could repair this. Even if I’d had the magic left to spare.

  “No,” I whispered, clutching the hemisphere to myself and rocking over it. I couldn’t even weep. I felt as dead as Vaz inside. Nahadoth’s words had not driven home the horror of my condition, but this? This I could not deny.

  A hand touched my shoulder, and so great was my misery that I did not care who it was.

  “I’m sorry, Sieh.” Yeine. Her voice, a soft contralto, had deepened further with grief. I felt her kneel beside me, her warmth radiant against my skin. For once, I took no comfort in her presence.

  “My fault,” I whispered. I had always meant to disperse the orrery, returning its worlds to their homes when I’d tired of them. Only I never had, because I was a selfish brat. And when I’d been incarcerated in mortal form, desperate to feel like a god because my Arameri masters treated me like a thing, I had brought the orrery here despite the danger that they might be discovered. I had spent strength I didn’t have, killing my mortal body more than once, to keep the orrery alive. And now, after all that, I hadn’t even noticed that I’d failed them.

  Yeine sighed and looped her arms around my shoulders, pressing her face to my hair for a moment. “Death comes to all, in time.”

  But this had been too soon. My orrery should have lasted a sun’s lifetime. I drew a deep breath and set the hemisphere down, turning to look up at her. Her face did not show the shock that I knew she felt at the sight of my older shape. I was grateful for that, because she could have flinched at my withered beauty, but of course that was not her way. She still loved me, would always love me, even if I could no longer be her little boy. I lowered my eyes, ashamed that I had ever begrudged Itempas her affection.

  “There are some survivors,” I said softly. “They…” I drew a deep breath. What would I do without them? I would truly be alone then… but I would do what was right. They deserved that, these truest friends of mine. “Will you help them, Yeine? Please?”

  “Of course.” She closed her eyes. One by one, the planets that still floated about the sun sphere, and a couple of the ones on the floor, vanished. I followed with her as best I could, watching her carefully deposit each where I had found it: this one spinning around a bright golden sun, which was delighted to have it back; that one near twin suns that sang in harmony; that one in the heart of a stellar nursery, surrounded by howling infant planets and hissing, cranky magnetars, where it sighed and resigned itself to the noise.

  But when Yeine reached for the sun sphere, En, it fought her. Surprised, we both opened our eyes back in the orrery to find that En had shed its ordinary yellow kickball disguise. It had begun to spin and burn, expending itself in a dangerous way given that I could not replenish it. At this rate, it would fail and die like the rest in minutes.

  “What the hells are you doing?” I demanded of it. “Quit that; you’re being rude.”

  It responded by darting out of its place and whisking over to boot me in the stomach. I oofed in surprise, wrapping my arms around it inadvertently, and felt its outrage. How dare I try to send it away? It was older than many of my siblings. Had it not always been there when I needed it? It would not be sent away like some disgraced servant.

  I touched its hot, pale-yellow surface, trying not to cry. “I can’t take care of you anymore,” I said. “Don’t you understand? If you stay with me, you’ll die.”

  It would die, then. Did not care it would die did not care.

  “Stubborn ball of hot air!” I shouted, but then Yeine touched my hand where it rested on En’s curve. When she did, En glowed brighter; she was feeding it as I could not.

  “A true friend,” she said gently, with only a hint of censure, “is something to be treasured.”

  “Not to death,” I said, looking up at her for support. “Yeine, please; it’s crazy. Send it away.”

  “Shall I deny its wishes, Sieh? Force it to do what you want? Am I Itempas now?”

  And at that I faltered, silent, because of course she knew of my earlier anger. Perhaps she had even known I was there, spying on her with Itempas until I’d flounced off. I hunched, ashamed of myself and then ashamed that I felt ashamed.

  “You use force when it suits you,” I muttered, trying to cover the shame with sullenness.

  “And when I must, yes. But it doesn’t suit me now.”

  “I don’t want more death on my conscience,” I said, both to her and to En. “Please, En. I couldn’t bear to lose you. Please!”

  En—the demonshitting, lightfarting gasbag—responded by turning red and bloating with each passing second. Gathering itself to explode, as if that was somehow better than starving to death! I groaned.

  Yeine rolled her eyes. “A tantrum. I suppose that’s to be expected, given your influence, but really…” She shook her head and sat back on her knees, looking around thoughtfully. For an instant her eyes darkened, from their usual faded green to something deep and shadowed, like a thick, wet forest, and then suddenly the orrery chamber was empty. All my dead toys vanished. En, too, for which I felt sudden regret.

  “I’ll keep the rest safe for you,” she said, reaching up to smooth a hand over my hair as she had always done. I closed my eyes and relaxed into the comfort of familiarity, pretending for a moment that I was still small and all was well. “Until the day you can reclaim them a
nd send them home yourself.”

  I exhaled, grateful despite the bitterness her words triggered in me. It hurt her to make dead things live again; it went against her nature, a perversion of the cycle Enefa had designed at the beginning of life. She did not do it often, and we never asked it of her. But… I licked my lips. “Yeine… this thing that’s happening to me…”

  She sighed, looking troubled, and belatedly I realized there was no need to ask. If she’d had the power to reverse my transformation into a mortal, she would have used it, no matter what harm it did her. But what did it mean, then, that the goddess who had supreme power over mortality could not erase mine?

  “If I were older,” she said, and I felt guilty for making her doubt herself. She lowered her eyes, looking small and vulnerable, like the mortal girl she resembled. “If I knew myself better, perhaps I would be able to find some solution.”

  I sighed and shifted to lie on my side, putting my head in her lap after awkwardly pushing my hair out of the way. “This may be beyond all of us. Nothing like it has ever happened before. It’s pointless to rail against what you can’t stop.” I scowled. “That would make you Itempas.”

  “Nahadoth is unhappy,” she said.

  I suspected she wanted to change the subject. I sighed. “Nahadoth is overprotective.”

  She stroked my hair again, then lifted the tangled mass and began to finger comb it. I closed my eyes, soothed by the rhythmic movements.

  “Nahadoth loves you,” she said. “When we first found you in this… condition… he tried so hard to restore you that it damaged him. And yet…” She paused, her tension suddenly prickling the air between us.

  I frowned, both at her description of Nahadoth’s behavior and at her hesitation. “What?”

  She sighed. “I’m not certain you can be any more reasonable about this than Naha.”

  “What, Yeine?” But then I understood, and as she had predicted, I grew unreasonably angry. “Oh gods and demons, no, no you don’t. You want to talk to Itempas.”

  “Resisting change is his nature, Sieh. He may be able to do what Nahadoth could not: stabilize you until I find a cure. Or if we joined again, as Three—”

  “No! You’d have to set him free for that!”

  “Yes. For your sake.”

  I sat up, scowling. “I. Don’t. Care.”

  “I know. Neither does Nahadoth, to my surprise.”

  “Naha—” I blinked. “What?”

  “He is willing to do anything to save you. Anything, that is, except the one thing that might actually work.” Abruptly she was angry, too. “When I asked, he said he would rather let you die.”

  “Good! He knows I would rather die than ask for that bastard’s help! Yeine”—I shook my head but forced the words out—“I understand why you’re drawn to him, even though I hate it. Love him if you must, but don’t ask the same of me!”

  She glared back, but I did not back down, and after a moment, she sighed and looked away. Because I was right, and she knew it. She was still so young, so mortal. She knew the story, but she had not been there to see what Itempas had done to Nahadoth, or to the rest of us Enefadeh. She lived with the aftermath—as did we all, as would every living thing in the universe, forever and ever—but that was entirely different from knowing firsthand.

  “You’re as bad as Nahadoth,” she said at last, more troubled than angry. “I’m not asking you to forgive. We all know there’s no forgiving what he did, the past can’t be rewritten, but someday you’re going to have to move on. Do what’s necessary for the world, and for yourselves.”

  “Staying angry is necessary for me,” I said petulantly, though I forced myself to take a deep breath. I did not want to be angry with her. “One day, maybe, I’ll move on. Not now.”

  She shook her head, but then took me by the shoulders and guided me down so that my head lay in her lap again. I had no choice but to relax, which I wanted to do, anyway, so I sighed and closed my eyes.

  “It’s irrelevant in any case,” she said, still sounding a bit testy. “We can’t find him.”

  I did not want to talk about him, either, but I dredged up interest. “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. But he’s been missing for several years now. When we seek his presence in the mortal realm, we feel nothing, find nothing. We aren’t worried… yet.”

  I considered this but could offer no answer. Even together, the Three were not omniscient, and Yeine and Nahadoth alone were not the Three. If Itempas had found some scrivener to craft an obscuration for him… But why would he do that?

  For the same reason he does anything else, I decided. Because he’s an ass.

  “I don’t,” Yeine said softly after a while. I frowned in confusion. She sighed and stroked my hair again. “Love him, I mean.”

  So many unspokens in her words. Not yet the most obvious among them, and perhaps a bit of not ever, because I am not Enefa, though I did not believe that. She was too drawn to him already. Most relevant was not until you love him, too, which I could live with.

  “Right.” I sighed, weary again. “Right. I don’t love him, either.”

  We both fell silent at that, for a long while. Eventually she began to touch my hair here and there, causing the excess length to fall away. I closed my eyes, grateful for her attention, and wondered how many more times I would be privileged to experience it before I died.

  “Do you remember?” I asked. “The last day of your mortal life. You asked me what would happen when you died.”

  Her hands went still for a moment. “You said you didn’t know. Death wasn’t something you’d thought much about.”

  I closed my eyes, my throat tightening for no reason I could fathom. “I lied.”

  Her voice was too gentle. “I know.”

  She finished my hair and gathered the shed length of it in one hand. I felt the flick of her will, and then she put her hand in front of my face to show me what she’d done. My hair had become a thin woven cord short enough to loop about my neck, and threaded onto this cord was a small, yellow-white marble. A different size and substance, but I would recognize its soul anywhere: En.

  I sat up, surprised and pleased, lifting the necklace to grin at my old friend. (It did not like being smaller. It missed being a kickball, bouncy and fat. Did it have to be this puny, rigid shape just because I wasn’t a child anymore? Surely adult mortals liked to kick balls sometimes. I stroked it to still its whining.) Then I touched my shorter hair and found that she’d reshaped that, too, giving me a style that suited the older lines of my face.

  I looked up at her. “You’ve made me very pretty—thank you. Did you play with dolls as a mortal girl?”

  “I was Darre. Dolls were for boys.” She got to her feet, unnecessarily dusting off her clothes, and looked around the now-empty chamber. “I don’t like you being here, Sieh. In Sky.”

  I shrugged. “This place is as good as any other.” Nahadoth had been right about that. I couldn’t leave the mortal realm in my condition; too much of the gods’ realm was inimical to flesh. Naha could have kept me safe by taking me into himself, but I would not tolerate that again.

  “This place has Arameri.”

  Resisting the urge to bat at the marble on its cord, I slipped it over my head and let it settle under my shirt instead. (En liked that, being near my heart.) “I’m not a slave anymore, Yeine. They’re no threat to me now.” She shot me a look of such disgust that I recoiled. “What?”

  “Arameri are always a threat.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Really, daughter of Kinneth?”

  At this she looked truly annoyed, her eyes turning a yellowy, acid peridot. “They cling to power by a thread, Sieh. Only their scriveners and armies allow them to keep control—mortal magic, mortal strength, both of which can be subverted. What do you think they’ll do, now that they have a god in their power again?”

  “I can’t see how a weak, dying god will do them much good. I can’t even take another form safely. I’m pathet
ic.” She opened her mouth to protest again, and I sighed to interrupt her. “I will be careful. I promise. But truly, Yeine, I have more important concerns right now.”

  She sobered. “Yes.” After another moment’s silence, she uttered a heavy sigh and turned away. “See that you are careful, Sieh. A mortal lifetime may seem like nothing to you….” She paused, blinked, and smiled to herself. “To me, too, I suppose. But don’t squander it. I mean to use every moment of yours to try and find a cure.”

  I nodded. So lucky I was to have such devoted, determined parents. Two out of three of them, anyhow.

  “I will see you again when I know more,” she said. She leaned forward to pull me into an embrace. I was still sitting on my knees; I did not rise as she did this. If I had, I would have been taller than her, and that did not feel at all right.

  Then she vanished, and I sat alone in the empty orrery for a long time.

  Judging by the angle of the sun, it was well into the afternoon when I returned to Dekarta’s room. I didn’t care about that for long, however, because as I stepped through the hole in the wall, I found that I had visitors. They rose to greet me as I stopped in surprise.

  Shahar, more demure than I had ever seen her, stood near the door to her own room. She was dressed in what passed for daily wear among fullbloods: a long gown of honey-lattice, bright blue satin slippers, and a cloak, with her hair tucked and looped into an elaborate chignon. Beside Shahar stood a woman whose demeanor immediately cried steward to me. She stood the tallest of the three women in the room, broad-shouldered and handsome and marvelously direct in her gaze, with a churning avalanche of thick, coily black hair falling about her shoulders and back. Yet despite her commanding presence, she was not as well dressed as the other two, and her mark was only that of a quarterblood. She kept silent and looked through me with her hands behind her back, in the posture of detached attention that all her successful predecessors had mastered.