The Broken Kingdoms it-2

by N. K. Jemisin

  I frown in puzzlement. "It's just magic." Magic is light, color. Magic is a beautiful song-wonderful, but not a necessity of life. Not like food or water, or sleep, or blood.

  "Yes. But it's also part of you. An important part." He smiles, and for the first time, I see how deeply the sadness has permeated him today. He seems lonely. "You have to understand. We're not like other people."

  ***

  I cried out with my voice and my thoughts. Gods can hear the latter if a mortal concentrates hard enough-it's how they hear prayers. There was no reply from Madding, or anyone else. Though I groped around, my hands encountered nothing. Even if he'd been there, right beside me, would I have known? I had no idea. I was so afraid.

  ***

  "Feel," says my father, guiding my hand. I hold a fat horsehair brush tipped with paint that stinks like vinegar. "Taste the scent on the air. Listen to the scrape of the brush. Then believe."

  "Believe… what?"

  "What you expect to happen. What you want to exist. If you don't control it, it will control you, Ree-child. Never forget that."

  ***

  I should have stayed in the house I should have left the city I should have seen the previt coming I should have left Shiny in the muck where I found him I should have stayed in Nimaro and never left.

  ***

  "The paint is a door," my father says.

  ***

  I put out my hands and imagined that they shook.

  ***

  "A door?" I ask.

  "Yes. The power is in you, hidden, but the paint opens the way to that power, allowing you to bring some of it out onto the canvas. Or anywhere else you want to put it. As you grow older, you'll find new ways to open the door. Painting is just the first method you've found."

  "Oh." I consider this. "Does that mean I could sing my magic, like you?"

  "Maybe. Do you like singing?"

  "Not like I like painting. And my voice doesn't sound good like yours."

  He chuckles. "I like your voice."

  "You like everything I do, Papa." But my thoughts are turning, fascinated with the idea. "Does that mean I can do something besides make paintings? Like…" My child's imagination cannot fathom the possibilities of magic. There are no godlings in the world yet to show us what it can do. "Like turn a bunny into a bee? Or make flowers bloom?"

  He is silent for a moment, and I sense his reluctance. He has never lied to me, not even when I ask questions he would rather not answer.

  "I don't know," he says at last. "Sometimes when I sing, if I believe something will happen, it happens. And sometimes"-he hesitates, abruptly looks uneasy-"sometimes when I don't sing, it happens, too. The song is the door, but belief is the key that unlocks it."

  I touch his face, trying to understand his discomfort. "What is it, Papa?"

  He catches my hand and kisses it and smiles, but I have already felt it. He is, just a little, afraid. "Well, just think. What if you took a man and believed he was a rock? Something alive that you believed was something dead?"

  I try to think about this, but I am too young. It sounds fun to me. He sighs and smiles and pats my hands.

  ***

  I put out my hands, closed my eyes, and believed a world into being.

  My hands ached to feel, and so I imagined thick, loamy soil. My feet ached to stand, so I put that soil under them, solid, hollow sounding when I stomped because of the air and life teeming within it. My lungs ached to breathe, and I inhaled air that was slightly cool, moist with dew. I breathed out and the warmth of my breath made vapor in the air. I could not see that, but I believed it was there. Just as I knew there would be light around me, as my mother had once described-misty morning light, from a pale, early-spring sun.

  The darkness lingered, resistant.

  Sun. Sun. SUN.

  Warmth danced along my skin, driving away the aching cold. I sat back on my knees, drawing deep breaths and smelling fresh-turned dirt and feeling the glaze of light against my closed eyelids. I needed to hear something, so I decided there would be wind. A light morning breeze, gradually dispelling the fog. When the breeze came, stirring my hair to tickle my neck, I did not let myself feel amazement. That would lead to doubt. I could feel the fragility of the place around me, its inclination to be something else. Cold, endless dark-

  "No," I said quickly, and was pleased to hear my own voice. There was air now to carry it. "Warm spring air. A garden ready to be planted. Stay here."

  The world stayed. So I opened my eyes.

  I could see.

  And strangely, the scene around me was familiar. I sat in the terrace garden of my home village, where I had almost always been completely blind. Not much magic in Nimaro. The only time I had ever seen the village had been-

  – the day my father died. The day of the Gray Lady's birth. I had seen everything then.

  I had re-created that day now, falling back on the memory of that single, magic-infused glimpse. Silvery midmorning mists shivered in the air. I remembered that the big, boxy shape on the other side of the garden was a house, though I could not tell if it was mine or the neighbors' without smelling it or counting my steps. Prickly things near my feet danced in the breeze: grass. I had rebuilt everything.

  Except people. I got to my feet, listening. In all my years in the village, I had never heard it so silent at this time of day. There were always small noises-birds, backyard goats, somebody's newborn fussing. Here there was nothing.

  Like ripples in water, I felt the space around me tremble.

  "It's home," I whispered. "It's home. Just early; nobody else is up yet. It's real."

  The ripples ceased.

  Real, yet terribly fragile. I was still in the dark place. All I'd done was create a sphere of sanity around myself, like a bubble. I would have to continue affirming its reality, believing in it, to keep it intact.

  Trembling, I dropped to my knees again, pushing my fingers into the moist soil. Yes, that was better. Concentrate on the small things, the mundanities. I lifted a handful of earth to my nose, inhaled. My eyes could not be trusted, but the rest-yes. That I could do.

  But I was tired suddenly, more tired than I should have been. As I squeezed the clod of dirt, I found my head nodding, my eyelids heavy. I hadn't slept much, but that did not account for this. I was in a strange place, scared out of my mind. Fear alone should have had me too tense to sleep.

  Before I could fathom this new mystery, there was another of those curious rippling shivers-and then agony sizzled behind my eyes. I cried out, arching backward and clapping dirty hands to my face, my concentration broken. Even as I screamed, I felt the false Nimaro bubble shatter around me, spinning away into nothingness as the sickening, empty dark rushed in.

  And then-

  I landed on my side on a solid surface, hard enough that the breath was jarred from my body.

  "Well, here you are," said a cool, male voice. Familiar, but I could not think. Hands touched me, turning me over and pushing my hair from my face. I tried to jerk away, but that jarred the racheting agony in my eyes, my head. I was too tired to scream.

  "Is she all right?" That was a woman's voice, somewhere beyond the man.

  "I'm not certain."

  The words felt like godwords, slapping my ears. I clapped my hands over my ears and moaned, wishing they would all just be silent.

  "This isn't the usual disorientation."

  "Mmm, no. I think it's some effect of her own magic. She used it to protect herself from my power. Fascinating." He turned away from me, and I felt his smugness like a scrim of filth along my skin. "Your proof."

  "Indeed." She sounded pleased as well.

  At that point I passed out.

  8

  "Light Reveals" (encaustic on canvas)

  I AWOKE SLOWLY, and in some pain.

  I was lying down. Heavy blankets covered me, soft linen and scratchy wool. I listened for a while, breathing, assessing. I was in a smallish room; my breath sounded close, though not
claustrophobically so. It smelled of spent candlewax, dust, me, and the World Tree.

  The lattermost scent was very strong, stronger than I'd ever known the Tree to smell. The air was laden with its distinctive wood resins and the bright sharp greenscent of its foliage. The Tree did not lose its leaves in autumn-a fact for which we in the city below were deeply grateful-but it did shed damaged leaves whenever they occurred, and it replaced those just before the spring flowering. It tended to smell more strongly during that time, but for the scent to be this strong, I had to be closer than usual.

  That was not the only unusual thing. I sat up slowly, wincing as I discovered that my whole left arm was sore. I examined it and found fresh bruises there, and also on my hip and ankle. My throat was so scratchy that it hurt when I tried to clear it. And my head ached dully in a single area, from the middle of my scalp right down into my head and forward to press against my eyes-

  Then I remembered. The empty place. My false Nimaro. Shattering, falling, voices. Madding.

  Where the hells was I?

  The room was cool, though I could feel watery sunlight coming from my left. I shivered a little as I got out of the warm blankets, though I was wearing clothing-a simple sleeveless shift, loose drawstring pants. Comfortable, if not the best fit. There were slippers beside the cot, which I avoided for the moment. Easier to feel the floor if I left my feet bare.

  I explored the room and discovered that I had been imprisoned.

  As prisons went, it was nice. The cot had been soft and comfortable, the small table and chairs were well made, and there were thick rugs covering much of the wooden floor. A tiny room off the main one contained a toilet and a sink. Yet the door I found was solidly locked, and there was no keyhole on my side. The windows were unbarred but sealed shut. The glass was thick and heavy; I would not be able to break through it easily, and certainly not without making a great deal of noise.

  And the air felt strange. Not as humid as I was used to. Thinner, somehow. Sounds did not carry as well. I clapped experimentally, but the echoes came back all wrong.

  I jumped when the door's lock turned, right on the heels of my thought. I was by the windows, so their solidity was suddenly comforting to me as I backed against them.

  "Ah, you're awake at last," said a male voice I had never heard before. "Conveniently when I come to check on you myself, rather than sending an initiate. Hello."

  Senmite, but no city accent I was familiar with. In fact, he sounded like someone rich, his every enunciation precise, his language formal. I couldn't tell more than that, since I didn't talk to many rich people.

  "Hello," I said, or tried to say. My abused throat-from screaming in the empty place, I remembered now-let out a rusty squeak, and it hurt badly enough that I grimaced.

  "Perhaps you shouldn't talk." The door closed behind him. Someone outside locked it. I jumped again at the sound of the latch. "Please, Eru Shoth, I mean you no harm. I imagine I can guess most of your questions, so if you'll sit down, I'll explain things."

  Eru Shoth? It had been so long since I'd heard the honorific that for a moment I didn't recognize it. A Maro term of respect for a young woman. I was a bit old for it-generally it was used for girls under twenty-but that was all right; maybe he meant to flatter me. He didn't sound Maro, however.

  He waited where he was, patiently, until I finally moved to sit down on one of the chairs.

  "That's better," he said, moving past me. Measured steps, solid but graceful. A large man, though not as large as Shiny. Old enough to know his body. He smelled of paper and fine cloth, and a bit of leather.

  "Now. My name is Hado. I'm responsible for all new arrivals here, which for the moment consists solely of you and your friends. 'Here,' if you're wondering, is the House of the Risen Sun. Have you heard of it?"

  I frowned. The newly risen sun was one of the symbols of the Bright Father but was little used these days, since it was easily confused with the dawning sun of the Gray Lady. I had not heard anyone refer to the risen sun since my childhood, back in Nimaro.

  "White Hall?" I rasped.

  "No, not exactly, though our purpose is also votive. And we, too, honor the Bright Lord-though not in the same manner as the Order of Itempas. Perhaps you've heard the term used for our members instead: we are known as the New Lights."

  That one I did know. But that made even less sense; what did a heretic cult want with me?

  Hado had said he could guess my questions, but if he guessed that one, he chose not to address it. "You and your friends are to be our guests, Eru Shoth. May I call you Oree?"

  Guest, hells. I set my jaw, waiting for him to get to the point.

  He seemed amused by my silence, shifting to lean against the table. "Indeed, we have decided to welcome you among us as one of our initiates-our term for a new member. You'll be introduced to our doctrines, our customs, our whole way of life. Nothing will be hidden from you. Indeed, it is our hope that you will find enlightenment with us, and rise within our ranks as a true believer."

  This time I turned my face toward him. I had learned that doing this drove the point home for seeing people. "No."

  He let out a gentle, untroubled sigh. "It may take you some time to get used to the idea, of course."

  "No." I clenched my fists in my lap and forced the words out, despite the agony of speaking. "Where are my friends?"

  There was a pause.

  "The mortals who were brought here with you are also being inducted into our organization. Not the godlings, of course."

  I swallowed, both to wet my throat and to push down a sudden queasy fear in my belly. There was no way they had managed to bring Madding and his siblings here against their will. No way. "What about the godlings?"

  Another of those telling, damning pauses. "Their fate is for our leaders to decide."

  I tried to figure out whether he was lying. These were godlings I was worrying about, not mortals. I had never heard of mortal magic that could hold a godling prisoner.

  But Madding had not come for me, and that meant he could not, for some reason. I had heard of godlings using mortals as a cover for their own machinations. Perhaps that was what was happening here-some rival of Madding's, moving to take over the godsblood trade. Or perhaps another godling had taken the commission that Lady Nemmer had declined.

  If either were true, though, wouldn't only Madding have been targeted, and not his whole crew?

  Just then, there was a strange movement beneath my feet, like a shiver of the floor. It rippled through the walls, not so much audible as palpable. It was as if the whole room had taken a momentary chill. One of the thick windows even rattled faintly in its frame before going still.

  "Where are we?" I rasped.

  "The House is attached to the trunk of the World Tree. The Tree sways slightly now and again. Nothing to be concerned about."

  Dearest gods.

  I'd heard rumors that some of the wealthiest folk in the city-heads of merchant cartels, nobility, and the like-had begun to build homes onto the Tree's trunk. It cost a fortune, in part because the Arameri had laid down strict requirements for aesthetics, safety, and the health of the Tree, and in part because no one with the gall to build onto the Tree would bother building a small house.

  That a group of heretics could command such resources was incredible. That they had the power to capture and hold half a dozen godlings against their will was impossible.

  These aren't ordinary people, I realized with a chill. This is more than money; it's power too. Magical, political-everything.

  The only people in the world with that kind of power were Arameri.

  "Now, I see that you're still not feeling well-not well enough to carry on a conversation, anyhow." Hado straightened, coming over to me. I flinched when I felt his fingers touch my left temple, where I was surprised to realize I had another bruise. "Better," he said, "but I think I'll recommend that you be given another day to rest. I'll have someone bring you dinner here, then take you to th
e baths. When you've healed more, the Nypri would like to examine you."

  Yes, I remembered now. After my false Nimaro had shattered, I had been brought out of the empty place somehow. I had fallen to the floor, hard. The ache in my eyes, though-that was more familiar. I had felt the same at Madding's after I'd used magic to kill the Order-Keepers at the park.

  Then I registered what Hado had said. "Nypri?" It sounded like some sort of title. "Your leader?"

  "One of our leaders, yes. His role is more specific, however; he's an expert scrivener. And he's very interested in your unique magical abilities. Most likely he'll request a demonstration."

  The blood drained out of my face. They knew about my magic. How? It did not matter; they knew.

  "Don't want to," I said. My voice was very small, not just because of the soreness.

  Hado's hand was still on my temple. He moved it down and patted my cheek, twice, in a patronizing sort of way. Both slaps were just a little too hard to be comforting, and then his hand lingered on me, an implicit warning.

  "Don't be foolish," he said very softly. "You're a good Maroneh girl, aren't you? We are all true Itempans here, Oree. Why wouldn't you want to join us?"

  The Arameri had ruled the world for thousands of years. In that time, they had imposed the Bright on every continent, every kingdom, every race. Those who'd worshipped other gods were given a simple command: convert. Those who disobeyed were annihilated, their names and works forgotten. True Itempans believed in one way-their way.

  How like Shiny, a small, bitter voice whispered in me before I forced it silent.

  Hado chuckled again, but this time he stroked my cheek approvingly at my silence. It still stung.