N. Jemisin: The Broken Kingdoms

Shiny wasn’t a godling, though; he was something else. I didn’t know why he’d begun to shine back at the Promenade, but I knew this: it wouldn’t last. It never did. When he became weak again, he would be just a man. Then the priests would tear him apart to learn the secret of his power.

And they would come after me again for harboring him.

I rubbed my face as if I was tired. “I need to lie down,” I said.

“Demonshit,” Vuroy said. “You’re going to pretend to go to bed, then call your old boyfriend. Think we’re stupid?”

I stiffened, and Ru chuckled. “Remember we know you, Oree.”

Damn. “I have to help him,” I said, abandoning the pretense. “Even if I can’t find Madding, I have a little money. The priests take bribes—”

“Not when they’re this angry,” said Ru, very gently. “They’d just take your money and kill him, anyway.”

I clenched my fists. “Madding, then. Help me find Mad. He’ll help me. He owes me.”

I heard chimes on the heels of those words, which made my cheeks heat as I realized just how badly I’d underestimated my friends.

Someone opened the front door. I saw Madding’s familiar shimmer through the walls even before he stepped into the kitchen, with Ohn a taller shadow at his side. “I heard,” Madding said quietly. “Are you calling in a debt, Oree?”

There was a curious shiver in the air, and a delicate tension like something unseen holding its breath. This was Madding’s power beginning to flex.

I stood up from the table, more glad to see him than I’d been in months. Then I noticed the somberness of his expression and recalled myself. “I’m sorry, Mad,” I said. “I forgot… your sister. If there was any other way, I would never ask for your help while you’re in mourning.”

He shook his head. “Nothing to be done for the dead. Ohn tells me you’ve got a friend in trouble.”

Ohn would’ve told him more than that, because Ohn was an inveterate gossipper. But…“Yes. I think the Order-Keepers might have taken him somewhere other than their White Hall, though.” Itempas Skyfather— Dayfather , I kept forgetting—abhorred disorder, and killing a man was rarely neat. They would not profane the White Hall with something like that.

“South Root,” Madding said. “Some of my people saw them headed that way with your friend, after the incident at the Promenade.”

I had an instant to digest that he’d had his people watching me. I decided that it didn’t matter, reached for my stick, and went over to him. “How long ago?”

“An hour.” He took my hand with his own smooth, warm, uncallused one. “I won’t owe you after this, Oree,” he said. “You understand?”

I smiled thinly, because I did. Madding never reneged on an agreement; if he owed you, he would do anything, go through anyone, to repay. If he had to go through the Itempan Order, however, that would make business in Shadow difficult for him for quite some time. There were things he could not do—kill them, for example, or leave the city except to return to the gods’ realm. Even gods had their rules to follow.

I stepped closer and leaned against the comforting strength of his arm. Hard not to feel that arm without remembering other nights and other comforts and other times I’d relied on him to make all my troubles go away.

“I’d say that’s worth the price of breaking my heart,” I said. I spoke lightly, but I meant every syllable. And he sighed, because he knew I was right.

“Hang on, then,” he said, and the whole world went bright as his magic carried us to wherever Shiny was dying.

The instant madding and I appeared in South Root, a blast of power staggered us both.

I perceived it as a wave of brightness so intense that I cried out as it washed past, dropping my stick to clap both hands over my eyes. Mad gasped as well, as if something had stricken him a blow. He recovered faster than me and took my hands, trying to pull them away from my face. “Oree? Let me see.”

I let him push my hands aside. “I’m fine,” I said. “Fine. Just… too bright. Gods. I didn’t know these things could hurt like that.” I kept blinking and tearing up, which made him peer closely into each eye.

“They’re not ‘things’; they’re eyes. Is the pain fading?”

“Yes, yes, I’m fine, I told you. What in the infinite hells was that?” Already the brightness had vanished, subsumed into the dark that was all I usually saw. The pain was fading more slowly, but it was fading.

“I don’t know.” Madding cupped my face in his hands, thumbs grazing my underlids to brush away the tears. I allowed this at first, but abruptly his touch was too intimate, triggering memories more painful than the light had been. I pulled away, probably more quickly than I should have. He sighed a little but let me go.

There was a faint stir on either side of me, and I heard a light patter, as of feet touching the ground. Madding’s tone shifted to something more authoritative, as it always did when he spoke to his underlings. “Tell me that wasn’t who I thought it was.”

“It was,” said one voice, which I thought of as pale and androgynous even though I had seen its owner once, and she was the exact opposite, brown and voluptuous. She was also one of the godlings who didn’t like it when I saw her, so I had never glimpsed her since.

“Demons and darkness,” Mad said, sounding annoyed. “I thought the Arameri were keeping him.”

“Not anymore, apparently,” said the other voice. This one was definitively male. I had seen him, too, and he was a strange creature with long, wild hair that smelled like copper. His skin was Amn-white but with irregular darker patches here and there; I gathered the patches were his idea of decoration. I certainly found them pretty, whenever I managed to see him undisguised. This was business, though, so now he was just part of the darkness.

“Lil has come,” said the woman, and Madding groaned. “There are bodies. The Order-Keepers.”

“The—” Madding suddenly pulled back and looked hard at me. “Oree, please don’t tell me this is your new boyfriend.”

“I don’t have a boyfriend, Mad, not that it’s any of your business.” I frowned, suddenly understanding. “Wait. Are you talking about Shiny?”

“Shiny? Who the—” Madding cursed, then stooped swiftly to collect my walking stick and press it into my hands. “Enough. Let’s go.”

His underlings vanished, and Madding began to pull me along toward wherever that white-hot power had come from.

South Root—Where Sows Root, went the local joke—was the worst neighborhood in Shadow. One of the Tree’s main roots had forked off a side branch nearby, which meant the area was bracketed on three sides rather than the usual two. On rare days, South Root could be beautiful. It had been a respectable crafters’ neighborhood before the Tree, so the white-painted walls were inlaid here and there with mica and smooth agate, and the streets were cobbled in patterns of large and small bricks, with gates of iron wrought in magnificent shapes. If not for the three roots, it would have gotten more sunlight than parts of Shadow closer to the Tree’s trunk. I’d been told that it still did, on windy days in late autumn, for an hour or two a day. Any other time, South Root was perpetually dark.

No one lived there anymore but desperate, angry poor people. This made it one of the few places in the city where Order-Keepers might feel comfortable beating a man to death in the street.

Their consciences must’ve bothered them more than usual, however, because the space into which Madding finally dragged me did not feel open. I smelled garbage and mildew, and there was the bitter acridity of stale urine on my tongue. Another alley? One that had no magic to keep it clean.