N. Jemisin - The Broken Kingdoms

She and the Lord Arameri regarded each other in stillness and silence, like elegant marble statues of Defiance and Mercilessness.

After a moment of this perusal, she looked away from him—even blind, I could tell this was dismissive—and faced me. “Lady Oree. Does it please you to stand beside those who let your father die?”

Once, those words would have bothered me, but now I knew better. “You misunderstood, Lady Serymn. My father didn’t die because of the Nightlord, or the Lady, or the godlings, or anyone who supports them. He died because he was different—something ordinary mortals hate and fear.” I sighed. “With reason, I’ll admit. But give credit where credit is due.”

She shook her head and sighed. “You trust these false gods too much.”

“No,” I said, growing angry. Not just angry but furious, incandescent with rage. If I’d had a walking stick, there would have been trouble. “I trust the gods to be what they are, and I trust mortals to be mortals. Mortals , Lady Serymn, stoned my father to death. Mortals trussed me up like livestock and milked me of blood until I nearly died. Mortals killed my love.” I was very proud of myself; my throat did not close and my voice did not waver. The anger buoyed me that far. “Hells, if the gods do decide to wipe us out, is it such a bad thing? Maybe we’ve earned a little annihilation.” At that, I couldn’t help looking at Lord T’vril, too.

He ignored me, sounding bored when he spoke. “Serymn, stop toying with the girl. This rhetoric might have swayed your poor, lost spiritual devotees, but everyone here sees through you.” He gestured at her, a graceful hand wave encompassing all that she was. “What you may not understand, Eru Shoth, is that this whole affair is a family squabble gotten out of hand.”

I must have looked confused. “Family squabble?”

“I am a mere halfblood, you see—the first who has ever ruled this family. And though I was appointed to this position by the Gray Lady herself, there are those of my relatives, particularly the fullbloods, who still question my qualifications. Foolishly, I counted Serymn among the less dangerous of those. I even believed she might be useful, since her organization seemed to give direction to those members of the Itempan faith who have been disillusioned lately.” I could not see him glance at Shiny, but I guessed that he did. “I did not believe they could do true harm. For this, you have my apologies.”

I stiffened in surprise. I knew nothing of nobles or Arameri, but I knew this: they did not apologize. Ever. Even after the destruction of the Maroland, they had offered the Nimaro peninsula to my people as a “humanitarian gesture”—not an apology.

Serymn shook her head. “Dekarta appointed you his heir only under duress, T’vril. Ordinarily you’d do well enough, halfblood or not. But in these dark times, we need a family head strong in the old values, someone who will not waver from devotion to Our Lord. You lack the pride of our heritage.”

I felt the Lord Arameri smile, because it was a brittle, dangerous thing, and the whole room felt less safe for it.

“Have you anything else to say?” he asked. “Anything worthy of my time?”

“No,” she replied. “Nothing worthy of you. ”

“Very well,” said the Lord Arameri. He snapped his fingers, and a servant appeared from a curtain behind T’vril’s seat. He crouched beside T’vril’s chair, holding something; there was the faint clink of metal. T’vril did not take it, and I could not see what it was. I did, however, see Serymn’s flinch.

“This man,” said the Lord Arameri. He gestured toward Shiny. “You left Sky before the last succession. Do you know him?”

Serymn glanced at Shiny, then away. “We were never able to determine what he was,” she said, “but he is the Lady Oree’s companion and perhaps lover. He had no value to us, except as a hostage against her good behavior.”

“Look again, Cousin.”

She looked, radiating disdain. “Is there something I should be seeing?”

I reached for Shiny’s hand. He had not moved—did not seem to care at all.

The Lord Arameri rose and descended the steps. At the foot of the steps, he abruptly turned toward us in a swirl of cloak and hair and dropped to one knee, with a grace I would never have expected of a man so powerful. From this, he said in a ringing tone, “Behold Our Lord, Serymn. Hail Itempas, Master of Day, Lord of Light and Order.”

Serymn stared at him. Then she looked at Shiny. There had been no sarcasm in T’vril’s tone, no hint of anything other than reverence. Yet I could guess what she saw when she looked at Shiny: the soul-deep weariness in his eyes, the sorrow beneath his apathy. He wore borrowed clothing, as I did, and said nothing at T’vril’s bow.

“He’s Maroneh,” Serymn said, after a long perusal.

T’vril got to his feet, flicking his long tail of hair back with practiced ease. “That is a bit of a surprise, isn’t it? Though it would not be the first lie our family has told until it forgot the truth.” He turned and went to her, stopping right in front of her. She did not step back from his nearness, though I would have. There was something about the Lord Arameri in that moment that made me very afraid.

“You knew he had been overthrown, Serymn,” he said. “You’ve seen many gods take mortal form. Why did it never occur to you that your own god might be among them? Hado tells me that your New Lights were not kind to him.”

“No,” Serymn said. Her strong, rich voice wavered with uncertainty for the first time since I’d met her. “That’s impossible. I would have… Dateh… We would have known. ”

T’vril glanced back at the servant, who hurried forward with the metal object. He took it and said, “I suppose your pure Arameri blood doesn’t entitle you to speak for our god after all. Just as well, then. Hold her mouth open.”

I didn’t realize the last part was a command until the guards suddenly took hold of Serymn. There was a struggle, a jumble of silhouettes. When they stilled, I realized the guards had taken hold of Serymn’s head.

T’vril lifted the metal object so that I could see it at last, outlined by the glow of the far wall. Scissors? No, too large and oddly shaped for that.

Tongs.

“Oh, gods,” I whispered, understanding too late. I turned away, but there was no avoiding the horrible sounds: Serymn’s gagging cry, T’vril’s grunt of effort, the wet tear of flesh. It took only a moment. T’vril handed the tongs back to the servant with a sigh of disgust; the servant took them away. Serymn made a single, raw sound, not so much a scream as a wordless protest, and then she sagged between the guards, moaning.

“Hold her head forward, please,” T’vril cautioned. I heard him as if from a distance, through fog. “We don’t want her to choke.”

“W-wait,” I said. Gods, I could not think. That sound would echo in my nightmares.

“Yes, Eru Shoth?” Other than sounding a bit winded, the Lord Arameri’s tone was the same as always: polite, soft-spoken, warm. I wondered if I would throw up.

“Dateh,” I said, “and the missing godlings. She… she could have told us….” Now Serymn would say nothing, ever again.

“If she knew, she would never tell,” he said. He mounted the steps and sat down again. The servant, having disposed of the tongs behind the curtain, hurried back out and handed him a cloth for his hands, which he used to wipe each finger. “But most likely, she and Dateh agreed to separate in order to protect each other. Serymn is a fullblood, after all; she would have known to expect harsh questioning in the event of capture.”