The Inheritance Trilogy

by N. K. Jemisin

  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 closet 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 defe
nsive 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.

  “Morad has been busy organizing the palace’s operations and preparing sufficient living quarters for the highbloods,” Glee continued. “Ramina has even put the courtiers to work. Remath has begun transferring power to Shahar, which requires endless paperwork and meetings with the military, the nobles, the Order…” She shook her head and sighed. “And since none of those are permitted to come here, the palace’s gates and message spheres have seen heavy use. Only Remath’s orders keep Shahar here, and no doubt if Deka were not First Scrivener and essential to making the palace ready, she would have him visiting fifty thousand kingdoms as her proxy.”

  I frowned, going to the mirror to see if anything could be done about my hair. It was far too long, nearly to my knees. Someone had cut it already, I suspected, because given my usual pattern it should have been long enough to fill the room by this point. I willed scissors to appear on a nearby dresser, and they did. Almost like being a god again.

  “Why the urgency?” I asked. “Has something happened?” I hacked clumsily at my hair, which of course offended Glee. She made a sound of irritation, coming over to me and taking the scissors from my hand.

  “The urgency is all Remath’s.” She worked quickly, at least. I saw hanks of hair fall to the floor around my feet. She was leaving it too long, brushing my collar, but at least I wouldn’t trip on it now. “She seems convinced that the transition must be completed sooner rather than later. Perhaps she has told Shahar the reason for her haste; if so, Shahar has not shared this knowledge with the rest of us.” Glee shrugged.

  I turned to her, hearing the unspoken. “How has Shahar been, then, as queen of her own little kingdom?”

  “Sufficiently Arameri.”

  Which was both reassuring and troubling.

  Finishing, Glee brushed off my back and set the scissors down. I looked at myself in the mirror and nodded thanks, then immediately ran fingers through my hair to make it look messier. This annoyed Glee further; she turned away, her lips pursed in disapproval. “Shahar wanted to be informed when you were up and about, so I let a servant know when you began to stir. Expect a summons shortly.”

  “Fine. I’ll be ready.”

  I followed Glee out of the bedchamber and into a wide, nicely apportioned room of couches and sidebars that smelled of Deka, though it did not at all feel like him. No books. One whole wall of this room was a window, overlooking the bridge-linked tiers of the palace and the placid ocean beyond. The sky was blue and cloudless, noonday bright.

  “So what now?” I asked, going to stand at the window. “For you and Itempas? I assume Naha and Yeine are searching for Kahl.”

  “As are Ahad and his fellow godlings. But the fact that they have not yet found him—and did not, prior to his attack—suggests he has always had some means of hiding from us. Perhaps he simply retreats to wherever Enefa kept him hidden before now. That worked well enough for millennia.”

  “Darr,” I said. “The mask was there.”

  “Not anymore. Immediately after leaving here, Kahl went to Darr and took the mask. To be precise, he forced a young Darren man to pick up the mask, and took him. The Darre are furious; when Yeine arrived, searching for Kahl, they told her everything.” Glee folded her arms, the expression on her face very familiar. “Apparently Kahl approached Usein Darr’s grandmother, more than fifty years ago. He showed them how to combine the art of mask making with scrivening techniques and godsblood, and they took it further still. In exchange, he claimed the best of their mask makers and had them work on a special project for him. He killed them, Sieh, when they’d done whatever work he needed. The Darre say the mask grew more powerful—and Kahl grew less able to approach it himself—with every life he gave it.”

  I knew what Kahl was doing now. That sickening churn of wild, raw power I’d felt near the mask, like a storm—the Three had been born from something like that. A new god could be made from something similar.

  But he’d killed mortals to give it power? That I didn’t understand. Mortals were children of the Maelstrom, it was true; we all were, however distant. But the power of the Three was as a volcano to mortals’ candleflames. Mortal strength was so much lesser than ours as to be, well, nothing. If Kahl wanted to create himself anew as a god, he would need far more power than that.

  I sighed, rubbing my eyes. Didn’t I have enough to worry about? Why did I have to deal with all these mortal issues, too?

  Because I am mortal.

  Ah, yes. I kept forgetting.

  Glee said nothing more, so I experimented with wishing for food, and the precise meal I wanted—a bowl of soup and cookies shaped like cute prey animals—appeared on a nearby table. No need for servants indeed, I mused as I ate. That would serve the family’s security interests well, as they would have no need to hire non-Arameri. There would always be a need for certain tasks to be done, though, like running errands, and the Arameri were the Arameri. Those with power would always find some way to exert it over those who didn’t. Yeine was naïve to hope that such a simple change might free the family of its historic obsession with status.

  Still… I was glad for her naïveté. That was always the nicest thing about having a newborn god around. They were willing to try things the rest of us were too jaded even to consider.

  The knock at the door came just as I finished eating. “Come.”

  A servant stepped inside, bowing to both of us. “Lord Sieh. Lady Shahar requests your presence, if you are feeling better.”

  I looked at Glee, who inclined her head to me. This could have meant anything from hurry up to hope she doesn’t kill you. With a sigh, I rose and followed the servant out.

  Shahar had not chosen the Temple as her seat of power. (Already it had acquired capital-letter status in my heart, because what I had done with Deka there was holy.) The servant led us instead to a chamber deep within the palace’s heart, directly below the central high platform that had already come to be called the Whorl. Deka and his crew had been busy, I saw as we walked. Transport-sigils had been painted at intervals throughout the palace’s corridors and painted over with resin in order to protect them from scuffing or wear. They did not work quite like the lifts in Sky—standing on one sent a person anywhere they willed themselves to go within the palace, not merely up and down. This was awkward if one had never been to a particular location. When I asked the servant about this, he smiled and said, “The first time we go anywhere, we go on foot. Steward Morad’s orders.” Just the kind of eminently sensible thing I expected of her, especially given that with servants so sparse, she could not afford to lose even one to oblivion.

  Since the servant had been to the audience chamber before, I allowed him to control the magic, and we appeared in a space of cool, flickering light. Echo was more translucent than Sky, reflecting more of whatever colors surrounded it. By this I guessed immediately that we were somewhere beneath the waterline of the palace—which was confirmed as we passed a row of windows. I saw a great expanse of glimmering, shadow-flickering blueness and a passing curious fish. I grinned in delight at Shahar’s cleverness. Not only would her audience chamber be safer underwater than the rest of the palace, but also any visitors—the few who would be permitted to see her in person—would instantly be awed by the alien beauty of the fishes’-eye view. There was a certain symbolism to the choice as well, as the Arameri now served the Lady of Balance. Shahar’s safety would depend on the strength of the walls and windows and the equilibrium they could maintain against the weight of the water. It was perfect.

  And even though I am a god, it was I who stopped when we entered the audience chamber, staring about in awe.

 
; The chamber was small, as befit a space that would never be used by many people. Echo would have little need of the tricks that Sky had employed to intimidate and impress visitors, like vaulted ceilings and proportions meant to make supplicants feel unimportant before the great stone throne. This room was shaped like Echo itself: a descending spiral, though with small alcoves surrounding the depressed central space. In the alcoves, I glimpsed some of the soldiers who had come with us, at guard. Then I noticed more shadowy figures interspersing them, these crouched and oddly still. The ever-elusive Arameri assassins.

  A poor choice, I decided. They made it too obvious that Shahar felt the need to guard herself from her own family.

  When I finally stopped boggling, I noticed that Deka had preceded me. He knelt before the chamber’s depression, not looking up, though he’d probably heard me. I stopped beside him, emphatically not kneeling. The seat we faced was almost humble: just a wide, curving stool lined with a cushion, low-backed. Yet the room was structured so that every eye was drawn to it, and all of the flickering oceanlight coming through the chamber’s windows met in overlapping waves there. Had Shahar been sitting on the stool, she would have seemed unworldly, especially if she sat still. Like a goddess herself.

  Instead, she stood near one of the room’s windows, her hands behind her back. In the cool light she was almost unnoticeable, the folds of her pale gown lost amid flickering blueness. Her stillness troubled me—but then, what about this little scene didn’t? I had spent centuries in chambers like this, facing Arameri leaders. I knew danger when I sensed it.

  When the servant knelt to murmur to Shahar, she nodded and then raised her voice. “Guards. Leave.”

  They exited with no hesitation. The assassins did so by slipping out through small doors in each alcove, which the servant also used to leave at Shahar’s quiet command. Presently, she and I and Dekarta were alone. Deka rose to his feet then, glancing once at me; his face was unreadable. I nodded to him, then slipped my hands into my pockets and waited. We had not seen Shahar since that moment in the Temple, when she had witnessed our claiming of each other.