N. Jemisin - The Kingdom of Gods

I threw off the blanket and got to my feet—awkwardly, as my limbs were longer than I was used to and I had too much hair—and stumbled over to Shahar’s windows. I put my hands on the glass and leaned on it with all my weight. Mortals rarely did this, I had observed during my centuries in Sky. Even though they knew that Sky’s glass was reinforced by magic and inhumanly precise engineering, they could not rid themselves of the fear that just once, the glass might break or the pane come loose. I braced my feet and shoved. I needed something in my presence to be unmoving and strong.

Something touched my shoulder and I turned fast, irrationally aching for hard sunset eyes and harder brown arms and brick-wall flexibility. But it was only the mortal, Shahar. I glared at her, furious that she wasn’t who I wanted, and thought of batting her aside. It was somehow her fault this had happened to me. Maybe killing her would free me.

If she had looked at me with compassion or pity, I would have done it. There was none of that in her face, though—just resentment and reluctance, nothing at all comforting. She was Arameri. That wasn’t something they did.

Itempas had failed me, but Itempas’s chosen had been magnificently predictable for two thousand years. I yanked her closer and locked my arms around her, so tight that it couldn’t have been comfortable for her. She turned her face away and her cheek pressed against my shoulder. She did not bend, though—didn’t speak, didn’t return my embrace. So I held her and trembled and ground my teeth together so that I would not simply start screaming. I glared at Nahadoth through the screen of her curls.

He gazed back at me, still and rueful. He knew full well why I had turned away from him, and he forgave me for it. I hated him for that, just as I’d hated Yeine for loving Itempas and just as I hated Itempas for going mad and not being here when I needed him. And I hated all three of them for squandering each other’s love when I would give anything, anything , to have that for myself.

“Go away,” I whispered through Shahar’s hair. “Please.”

“It isn’t safe for you here.”

I laughed bitterly, guessing his intent. “If I’m to have only a few more decades of life, Naha, I won’t spend them asleep inside you. Thanks.”

His expression tightened. He was not immune to pain, and I supposed I was driving the knives in deeper than usual. “You have enemies.”

I sighed. “I can take care of myself.”

“I will not lose you, Sieh. Not to death, and not to despair.”

“Get out!” I clutched Shahar like a teddy bear and shut my eyes, shouting, “Get out, demons take you, go away and leave me the hells alone!”

There was an instant of silence. Then I felt him go. The walls resumed their glow; the room felt suddenly looser, airy. Shahar relaxed, minutely, against me. But not all the way.

I kept her against me anyway because I was feeling selfish and I did not want to care what she wanted. But I was older now, more mature whether I wanted to be or not, so after a moment I stopped thinking solely about myself. She stepped back when I let her go, and there was a distinctly wary look in her eyes.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

I laughed, leaning back against the glass. “I don’t know.”

“Do you want to stay here?”

I groaned and put my hands on my head, tangling my fingers in all my unwanted hair. “I don’t know, Shahar. I can’t think right now. This is a bit much, all right?”

She sighed. I felt her come to stand beside me at the window, radiating thought. “You can sleep in Deka’s room for tonight. In the morning I’ll speak with Mother.”

I was so soul-numb that this did not bother me nearly as much as it should have. “Fine,” I said. “Whatever. I’ll try not to wake him as I pace the floors and cry.”

There was a moment’s silence. That did not catch my attention so much as the ripple of hurt that rode in the silence’s wake. “Deka isn’t here. You’ll have the room to yourself.”

I looked at her, frowning. “Where is he?” Then it occurred to me: Arameri. “Dead?”

“No.” She didn’t look at me and her expression didn’t change, but her voice went sharp and contemptuous of my assumption. “He’s at the Litaria. The scriveners’ college? In training.”

I raised both eyebrows. “I didn’t know he wanted to become a scrivener.”

“He didn’t.”

Then I understood. Arameri, yes. When there was more than one potential heir, the family head did not have to pit them against one another in a battle to the death. She could keep both alive if she put one in a clearly subordinate position. “He’s meant to be your First Scrivener, then.”

She shrugged. “If he’s good enough. There’s no guarantee. He’ll prove himself if he can, when he comes back. If he comes back.”

There was something more here, I realized. It intrigued me enough to forget my own troubles for a moment, so I turned to her, frowning. “Scrivener training lasts years,” I said. “Ten or fifteen, usually.”

She turned to face me, and I flinched at the look in her eyes. “Yes. Deka has been in training for the past eight years.”

Oh, no. “Eight years ago…”

“Eight years ago,” she said in that same clipped, edged tone, “you and I and Deka took an oath of friendship. Immediately upon which you unleashed a flare of magic so powerful that it destroyed the Nowhere Stair and much of the underpalace—and then you vanished, leaving Deka and me buried in the rubble with more bones broken than whole.”

I stared at her, horrified. She narrowed her eyes, searching my face, and a flicker of consternation diluted her anger. “You didn’t know.”

“No.”

“How could you not know?”

I shook my head. “I don’t remember anything after we joined hands, Shahar. But… you and Deka were wise to ask for my friendship; it should have made you safe from me for all time. I don’t understand what happened.”

She nodded slowly. “They pulled us out of the debris and patched us up, good as new. But I had to tell Mother about you. She was furious that we’d concealed something so important. And the heir’s life had been threatened, which meant someone had to be held accountable.” She folded her arms, holding her shoulders ever-so-slightly stiff. “Deka had fewer injuries than I. Our fullblood relatives started to hint that Deka—only Deka, never me—might have done something to antagonize you. They didn’t come right out and accuse him of plotting to use a godling as a murder weapon, but…”

I closed my eyes, understanding at last why she had cursed my name. I had stolen her innocence first and then her brother. She would never trust me again.

“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing it was wholly inadequate.

She shrugged again. “Not your fault. I see now that what happened was an accident.”

She turned away then, pacing across her room to the door that adjoined her suite to the one that had been Dekarta’s. Opening it, she turned back to look at me, expectant.

I stayed by the window, seeing the signs clearly now. Her face was impassive, cool, but she had not completely mastered herself yet. Fury smoldered in her, banked for now, but slow burning. She was patient. Focused. I would think this a good thing, if I hadn’t seen it before.

“You don’t blame me,” I said, “though I’ll wager you did, until tonight. But you still blame someone . Who?”

I expected her to dissemble. “My mother,” she said.

“You said she was pressured into sending Deka away.”

Shahar shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.” She said nothing for a moment more, then lowered her eyes. “Deka… I haven’t heard from him since he left. He returns my letters unopened.”