N. Jemisin - The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“You cannot sleep,” he said.

I blinked in confusion, then realized it was a question. “No. The bed… the light.”

Nahadoth nodded. Abruptly the walls went dim, their light fading until shadows shrouded the room, and the only illumination came from the moon and stars and the lights of the city. The Nightlord was a darker shadow etched against the windows. He had put out the unlight of his face as well.

“You have offered me courtesy,” he said. “I offer cooperation in return.”

I could not help swallowing, remembering my dream of the black star. If it was true—it had felt true, but who could say with dreams?—then Nahadoth was more than capable of destroying the world, even diminished as he was. Yet it was his simple gesture of putting out the lights that filled me with awe. Tired as I was, I suppose that mattered more to me than the whole of the world.

“Thank you,” I managed at last. “And—” There was no subtle way to say it. “Will you leave now? Please?”

He was a silhouette. “All that happens in darkness, I see,” he said. “Every whisper, every sigh, I hear. Even if I leave, some part of me will remain. That cannot be helped.”

Only later would his words disturb me. For now, I was just grateful. “It will be enough,” I said. “Thank you.”

He inclined his head, then vanished—not all at once, as Sieh had done, but fading over the space of several breaths. Even after I could no longer see him, I felt his presence, but eventually that faded, too. I felt, properly or not, alone.

I climbed back into bed and was asleep in a span of minutes.

There is a tale of the Nightlord that the priests allow.

Once long ago, before the war between the gods, the Nightlord descended to earth, seeking entertainment. He found a lady in a tower—the wife of some ruler, shut away and lonely. It was not difficult for him to seduce her. Some while later, the woman gave birth to a child. It was not her husband’s. It was not human. It was the first of the great demons, and after it and others like it were born, the gods realized they had made a terrible mistake. So they hunted their own offspring, slaying them down to the tiniest infant. The woman, who had been turned out by her husband and was now deprived of her child as well, froze to death alone in a snowy forest.

My grandmother told me a different version of the tale. After the demon-children were hunted down, the Nightlord found the woman again and begged her forgiveness for what he’d done. In atonement he built her another tower and gave her riches so that she might live in comfort, and he visited her ever afterward to see that she was all right. But she never forgave him, and eventually she killed herself for grief.

The priests’ lesson: beware the Nightlord, for his pleasure is a mortal’s doom. My grandmother’s lesson: beware love, especially with the wrong man.

The next morning, a servant arrived to help me dress and groom myself. Ridiculous. Still, it seemed appropriate to at least try to behave like an Arameri, so I bit my tongue while she fussed about me. She did my buttons and shifted my clothing minutely as if that would somehow make me look more elegant, then brushed my short hair and helped me put on makeup. The last I did actually need help with, as Darre women do not wear cosmetics. I could not help feeling some consternation as she turned the mirror to show me all in paint. It didn’t look bad. Just… strange.

I must have frowned too much, because the servant grew anxious and began rummaging in the large bag she’d brought with her. “I have just the thing,” she said, and lifted out something that I thought at first was a party masque. It certainly looked like one, with a wire eyeframe attached to a satin-wrapped rod. But the masque itself was peculiar, seeming to consist only of a pair of bright blue feathery objects like the eyes of a peacock’s tail.

Then they blinked. I started, looked closer, and saw that they were not feathers at all.

“All the highblood ladies use these,” said the servant eagerly. “They’re very fashionable right now. Watch.” She lifted the frame to her face so that the blue eyes superimposed her own rather pretty gray ones. She blinked, lowered the frame—and suddenly her eyes were bright blue, surrounded by long, exotically thick black lashes. I stared, then saw that the eyes in the frame were now gray, staring blankly and fringed with the servant’s own very ordinary lashes. Then she put the frame back to her face, and her eyes were her own again.

“You see?” She held the rod out to me. Now I could see the tiny black sigils, barely visible, etched along its length. “Blue would look lovely with that dress.”

I recoiled, and it took me another few seconds to speak through my revulsion. “Wh-whose eyes were they?”

“What?”

“The eyes, the eyes. Where did they come from?”

The servant stared at me as if I’d asked where the moon had come from. “I don’t know, my lady,” she said after a flustered pause. “I could inquire, if you like.”

“No,” I said, very softly. “There’s no need.”

I thanked the servant for her assistance, praised her skill, and let her know I would have no further need of a dressing servant for the remainder of my stay in Sky.

Another servant arrived shortly afterward with word from T’vril: as expected, Relad had declined my request for a meeting. As it was a rest day, there was no Consortium meeting, so I ordered breakfast and a copy of the latest financial reports on my assigned nations.

As I studied the reports over raw fish and poached fruit—I did not dislike Amn food, but they never seemed to know what to cook and what to leave alone—Viraine dropped by. To see how I was doing, he said, but I had not forgotten my earlier sense that he wanted something of me. I felt that more strongly than ever as he paced about my room.

“Interesting to see you taking such an active interest in governance,” he said, as I set aside a sheaf of papers. “Most Arameri don’t bother even with basic economics.”

“I rule—ruled—a poor nation,” I said, draping a cloth over the remains of my breakfast. “I’ve never had that luxury.”

“Ah, yes. But you’ve taken steps to remedy that poverty, haven’t you? I heard Dekarta commenting on it this morning. You ordered your assigned kingdoms to resume trade with Darr.”

I paused in the midst of drinking my tea. “He’s watching what I do?”

“He watches all his heirs, Lady Yeine. Very little else entertains him these days.”

I thought of the magic orb I’d been given, through which I had contacted my nations the night before. I wondered how difficult it would be to create an orb that would not alert the person being observed.

“Have you secrets to hide already?” Viraine raised his eyebrows at my silence, amused. “Visitors in the night, secret trysts, conspiracies afoot?”

I have never possessed the innate talent for lying. Fortunately, when my mother realized this, she taught me alternative tactics. “That would seem to be the order of business here,” I said. “Though I haven’t tried to kill anyone yet. I haven’t turned the future of our civilization into a contest for my amusement.”

“If those small things trouble you, Lady, you won’t last long here,” Viraine said. He moved to sit in a chair across from me, steepling his fingers. “Would you like some advice? From someone who was once a newcomer here himself?”

“I welcome your counsel, Scrivener Viraine.”

“Don’t get involved with the Enefadeh.”