The Broken Kingdoms Read online

  I swallowed, no longer laughing now, and terrified.

  But before he could begin the real questioning, I felt a sudden shift of the air, signaling movement nearby. That was my only warning before something yanked the previt’s hand off my face. Rimarn started to protest, but before he could, another body blurred my view of him. A larger frame, dark and empty of magic, familiar in shape. Shiny.

  I could not see precisely what he did to Rimarn. But I didn’t have to; I heard the gasps of the other Row artists and onlookers, Shiny’s grunt of effort, and Rimarn’s sharp cry as he was bodily lifted and flung away. The godwords on Rimarn’s flesh blurred into streaks as he flew a good ten feet through the air. He stopped glowing only when he landed in a bone-jarring heap.

  No. Oh, no. I scrambled to my feet, knocking over my chair, and fumbled desperately for my walking stick. Before I could find it, I froze, realizing that though Rimarn’s glow had vanished, I could still see.

  I could see Shiny. His glow was faint, barely noticeable, but growing by the second and pulsing like a heartbeat. As Shiny interposed himself between me and Rimarn, the glow brightened still more, racheting up from a gentle burn toward that eye-searing peak that I had never seen from him outside of the dawn hour.

  But it was the middle of the day.

  “What the hells are you doing?” demanded a harsh voice from farther away. One of the other priests. This was followed by other shouts and threats, and I snapped back to awareness. No one could see Shiny’s glow except me and maybe Rimarn, who was still groaning on the ground. They had simply seen a man—an unknown foreigner, dressed in the plain, cheap clothing that was all I’d been able to afford for him—attack a previt of the Itempan Order. In front of a full troop of Order-Keepers.

  I reached out, caught one of Shiny’s blazing shoulders, and instantly snatched my hand back. Not because he was hot to the touch—though he was, hotter than I’d ever felt—but because the flesh under my hand seemed to vibrate in that instant, like I’d touched a bolt of lightning.

  But I pushed that observation aside. “Stop it!” I hissed at him. “What are you doing? You have to apologize, right now, before they—”

  Shiny turned to look at me, and the words died in my mouth. I could see his face now completely, as I always could in that perfect instant before he blazed too bright and I had to look away. “Handsome” did not begin to describe that face, so much more than the collection of features that my fingers had explored and learned. Cheekbones did not have their own inner light. Lips did not curve like living things in their own right, sharing with me a slight, private smile that made me feel, for just an instant, like the only woman in the world. He had never, ever smiled at me before.

  But it was vicious, that smile. Cold. Murderous. I drew back from it, stunned—and for the first time since I’d met him, afraid.

  Then he glanced around, facing the Keepers who were almost surely converging upon us. He considered them and the crowd of onlookers with the same detatched, cold arrogance. He seemed to make some decision.

  I kept gaping as three of the Order-Keepers grabbed him. I saw them, dark silhouettes limned by Shiny’s light, throw him to the ground and kick him and haul his arms back to tie them. One of them put his knee on the back of Shiny’s neck, bearing down, and I screamed before I could stop myself. The Order-Keeper, a malevolent shadow, turned and shouted for me to shut up, Maro bitch, or he would have some for me, too—

  “Enough!”

  At that fierce bellow, I started so badly that I lost my grip on my stick. In the silence that fell, it clattered on the Promenade’s walkstones loudly, making me jump again.

  Rimarn had been the one to shout. I could not see him; whatever he’d done to conceal his nature from me before, it was back in effect now. Even if I’d been able to see his godwords, I think Shiny would have drowned out his minor light.

  Rimarn sounded hoarse and out of breath. He was on his feet, near the cluster of men, and spoke to Shiny. “Are you a fool? I’ve never seen a man do anything so stupid.”

  Shiny had not struggled as the priests bore him down. Rimarn waved away the Order-Keeper who’d put a knee on Shiny’s neck—my own shoulder muscles unknotted in sympathetic relief—and then shoved the back of Shiny’s head with a toe. “Answer me!” he snapped. “Are you a fool?”

  I had to do something. “H-he’s my cousin,” I blurted. “Fresh from the territory, Previt. He doesn’t know the city, didn’t know who you were…” This was the worst lie I had ever told. Everyone, no matter their nation or race or tribe or class, knew Itempan priests on sight. They wore shining white uniforms and they ruled the world. “Please, Previt, I’ll take responsibility—”

  “No, you won’t,” Rimarn snapped. The Order-Keepers got up and hauled Shiny to his feet. He stood calmly between them, glowing so brightly that I could see half the Promenade by the light that poured off his flesh. He still had that terrible, deadly smile on his face.

  Then they were dragging him away, and fear soured my mouth as I fumbled my way around my tables. Something else fell over with a crash as I groped toward Rimarn without a stick. “Previt, wait!”

  “I’ll be back for you later,” he snapped at me. Then he, too, walked away, following the other Order-Keepers. I tried to run after them and cried out as I tripped over some unseen obstacle. Before I could fall, I was caught by rough hands that smelled of tobacco and sour alcohol and fear.

  “Quit it, Oree,” Vuroy breathed in my ear. “They’re too pissed off to feel guilty about kicking the shit out of a blind girl.”

  “They’ll kill him.” I gripped his arm tight. “They’ll beat him to death. Vuroy—”

  “Nothing you can do about it,” he said softly, and I went limp, because he was right.

  * * *

  Vuroy, Ru, and Ohn helped me get home. They carried my tables and goods, too, out of the unspoken understanding that I would not need to store my things with Yel, because I would not be going back to the Row anytime soon.

  Ru and Vuroy stayed with me while Ohn went out again. I tried to keep calm and look passive, because I knew they would be suspicious. They had looked around the house, seen the pantry that served as Shiny’s bedroom, found his small pile of clothes—neatly folded and stacked—in the corner. They thought I’d been hiding a lover from them. If they’d known the truth, they would’ve been much more afraid.

  “I can understand why you didn’t tell us about him,” Ru was saying. She sat across the kitchen table from me, holding my hand. The night before, Shiny’s blood had covered the place where our hands now rested. “After Madding… well. But I wish you had told us, sweetheart. We’re your friends—we would’ve understood.”

  I stubbornly said nothing, trying not to show how frustrated I was. I had to look dejected, depressed, so they would decide that the best thing for me was privacy and sleep. Then I could pray for Madding. The Order-Keepers probably wouldn’t kill Shiny immediately. He had defied them, disrespected them. They would make him suffer for a long time.

  That was bad enough. But if they killed him, and he pulled his little resurrection trick in front of them, gods knew what they would do. Magic was power meant for those with other kinds of power: Arameri, nobles, scriveners, the Order, the wealthy. It was illegal for commonfolk, even though we all used a little magic now and again in secret. Every woman knew the sigil to prevent pregnancy, and every neighborhood had someone who could draw the scripts for minor healing or hiding valuables in plain sight. Things had been easier since the coming of the godlings, actually, because the priests—who could not always tell godlings and mortals apart—tended to leave us all alone.

  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.

  3

  “Gods and Corpses” (oil on canvas)

  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.

  And there were other smells here, stronger and even less pleasant. Smoke. Charcoal. Burned meat and hair. I could hear something still sizzling faintly.

  Near this sound stood a tall, languid female figure, the only thing I could see aside from Madding. Her back was to me, so at first I noticed only her long, ragged hair, straight like a High Norther’s but an odd mottled gold in color. This was not the gold of Amn hair; it was somehow not pretty at all. She was also thin—disturbingly, unhealthily so. She wore an incongruously elegant gown with a low back, and the shoulder blades that I could see on either side of her hair were sharp-angled, like knife edges.

 
Then the woman turned, and I clapped both hands over my mouth to keep from crying out. Above the nose, her face was normal. Below, her mouth became a distorted, impossible monstrosity, her lower jaw hanging all the way to her knees, the too-long expanse of her gums lined with several rows of tiny, needlelike teeth. Moving teeth, each row marching along her jaw like a restless trail of ants. I could hear them whirring faintly. She drooled.

  And when she saw my reaction, she smiled. That was the most hideous sight I had ever seen.

  Then she shimmered and became an ordinary-looking woman, nondescriptly Amn, with a nondescriptly human mouth. She was still smiling, though, and there was still something disturbingly hungry in her expression.

  “My gods,” Madding murmured. (Godlings said this sort of thing all the time.) “It is you.”

  His words confused me because of their direction; he was not speaking to the blonde woman. Then I jumped at the response, because it came from another unexpected direction—above.

  “Oh, yes,” said this new, soft voice. “It’s him.”

  Madding suddenly went still in a way that I knew meant trouble. His two lieutenants suddenly flickered into view, equally tense. “I see,” Madding said, speaking low and carefully. “It’s been a while, Sieh. Have you come to gloat?”

  “A little.” The voice was that of a young, prepubescent boy. I looked up, trying to gauge where he was—a rooftop, maybe, or a window on the second or third floor. I could not see him. A mortal? Or another godling who was feeling shy?

  There was a sudden feel of movement before me, and abruptly the boy spoke from the ground only a few feet away. Godling, then.

  “You look worn out, old man,” the boy said, and belatedly I realized he, too, was addressing someone other than me, Madding, or the blonde woman. Finally I noticed that off to the side of the alley, near the wall, there was someone low to the ground. sitting or kneeling, maybe. Panting for some reason. Something about those weary breaths was familiar.