The Kingdom of Gods Read online

  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.”

  Even with my senses as muddled as they were, I could feel the raw wound in her soul where a twin brother had been. A wound like that demanded redress.

  She sighed. “Come on.”

  I took a step toward her and stopped, startled as I realized something. Arameri heads and heirs had loathed one another since the Bright’s dawning. Unavoidable, given circumstances: two souls with the strength to rule the world were rarely good at sharing or even cohabitating, for that matter. That was why the family’s heads had been as ruthless about controlling their heirs as they were about controlling the world.

  My eyes flicked to Shahar’s odd, incomplete blood sigil. None of the controlling words were there. She was free to act against her mother, even plot to kill her, if she wanted.

  She saw my look and smiled. “My old friend,” she said. “You were right about me, you know, all those years ago. Some things are my nature. Inescapable.”

  I crossed the room to stand beside her on the threshold. I was surprised to find myself uncertain as I considered her. I should have felt vindicated to hear her plans of vengeance. I should have said, and meant it, You’ll do worse before you’re done.

  But I had tasted her childish soul, and there had been something in it that did not fit the cold avenger she seemed to have become. She had loved her brother, enough to sacrifice herself for him. She had sincerely yearned to be a good person.

  “No,” I said. She blinked. “You’re different from the rest of them. I don’t know why. You shouldn’t be. But you are.”

  Her jaw flexed. “Your influence, maybe. As gods go, you’ve had a greater impact on my life than Bright Itempas ever could.”

  “That should’ve made you worse, actually.” I smiled a little, though I did not feel like it. “I’m selfish and cruel and capricious, Shahar. I’ve never been a good boy.”

  She lifted an eyebrow, and her eyes flicked down. I wore nothing but my ridiculously long hair, which fell to my ankles now that I was standing. (My nails, however, had kept to my preferred length. Partial mortality, partial growth? I would live in dread of my first manicure.) I thought Shahar was looking at my chest, but my body was longer now, taller. Belatedly I realized her gaze had settled lower.

  “You’re not a boy at all anymore,” she said.

  My face went hot, though I did not know why. Bodies were just bodies, penises were just penises, yet she had somehow made me feel keenly uncomfortable with mine. I could think of nothing to say in reply.

  After a moment, she sighed. “Do you want food?”

  “No …” I began, but then my belly churned in that odd, clenching way that I had not felt in several mortal generations. I had not forgotten what it meant. I sighed. “But I will by morning.”

  “I’ll have a double tray brought up. Will you sleep?”

  I shook my head. “Too much on my mind, even if I was exhausted. Which I’m not.” Yet.

  She sighed. “I see.”

  Suddenly I realized she was exhausted, her face lined and paler than usual. My time sense was returning — murky, sluggish, but functional — so I understood it had been well past midnight when she’d summoned me. Cursed me. Had she been pacing the floor herself, her mind cluttered with troubles? What had caused her to remember me, however hatefully, after all this time? Did I want to know?

  “Does our oath stand, Shahar?” I asked softly. “I didn’t mean to harm you.”

  She frowned. “Do you want it to stand? I seem to recall you were less than thrilled by the idea of two mortal friends.”

  I licked my lips, wondering why I was so uneasy. Nervous. She made me nervous. “I think perhaps … I could use friends, under the circumstances.”

  She blinked, then smiled with one side of her mouth. Unlike her earlier smiles, this one was genuine and free of bitterness. It made me see how lonely she was without her brother — and how young. Not so far removed, after all, from the child she had been.

  Then she stepped forward, putting her hands on my chest, and kissed me. It was light, friendly, just a warm press of her lips for an instant, but it rang through me like a crystal bell. She stepped back and I stared at her. I couldn’t help it.

  “Friends, then,” she said. “Good night.”

  I nodded mutely, then went into Deka’s room. She shut the door behind me, and I slumped back against it, feeling alone and very strange.

  4

  Sleep, little little one

  Here is a world

  With hate on every continent

  And sorrow in the fold.

  Wish for a better life

  Far, far from here

  Don’t listen while I talk of it

  Just go there.

  I didn’t sleep that night, though I could have. The urge was there, itchy. I imagined the craving for sleep as a parasite feeding on my strength, just waiting for me to grow weak so that it could take over my body. I had liked sleep, once, before it became a threat.

  But I did not like boredom, either, and there was a great deal of that in the hours after I left Shahar. I could only ponder my troubling condition for so long. The only way to vent my frustration was to do something, anything, so I got up from the chair and wandered about Deka’s room, peering into the drawers and under the bed. His books were too simple to interest me, except one of riddles that actually contained a few I hadn’t heard before. But I read it in half an hour and then was bored again.

  There is nothing more dangerous than a bored child — and though I had become a bored adolescent, that old mortal adage still rang true. So as the small hours stretched into slightly longer hours, I finally got up and opened a wall. That much, at least, I could do without expending any of my remaining strength; all it took was a word. When the daystone had finished rolling aside to make room for me, I went through
the resulting opening into the dead spaces beyond.

  Roaming my old territory put me in a better mood. Not everything was the same as it had been, of course. The World Tree had grown both around and through Sky, filling some of its old corridors and dead spaces with branchwood and forcing me to make frequent detours. This, I knew, had been Yeine’s intent, for without the Enefadeh, and more importantly without the constant empowering presence of the Stone of Earth, Sky needed the Tree’s support. Its architecture broke too many of Itempas’s laws for the mortal realm; only magic kept it in the sky and not smashed on the ground.

  So down seventeen levels, around a swirling rise of linked globules that only resembled a tunnel in dreams, and underneath an arched branch spur, I found what I’d sought: my orrery. I moved carefully between the protective traps I’d set, out of habit stepping around the patches of moonstone that lined the floor. It looked like daystone— mortals had never been able to tell the difference — but on cloudy, new-moon nights, the pieces of moonstone transformed, opening into one of Nahadoth’s favorite hells. I had made it as a little treat for our masters, to remind them of the price to be paid for enslaving their gods, and we had all seeded it through the palace. They had blamed — and punished —Nahadoth for it, but he’d thanked me afterward, assuring me the pain was worth it.

  But when I spoke atadie and the orrery opened, I stopped on its threshold, my mouth falling open.

  Where there should have been more than forty globes floating through the air, all turning around the bright yellow sphere at the orrery’s center, there were only four still floating. Four, counting the sun sphere. The rest lay scattered about the floor and against the walls, corpses in the aftermath of a systemic carnage. The Seven Sisters, identical small goldenworlds I had collected after searching billions of stars, lay strewn about the edges of the room. And the rest — Zispe, Lakruam, Amanaiasenre, the Scales, Motherspinner with its six child moons linked by a web of rings, and oh, Vaz, my handsome giant. That one, once a massive stark-white sphere I had barely been able to get my arms around, had hit the floor hard, splitting down the middle. I went to the nearer of the shattered halves and picked it up, moaning as I knelt. Its core was exposed, cold, still. Planets were resilient things, far more than most mortal creatures, but there was no way I could repair this. Even if I’d had the magic left to spare.

  “No,” I whispered, clutching the hemisphere to myself and rocking over it. I couldn’t even weep. I felt as dead as Vaz inside. Nahadoth’s words had not driven home the horror of my condition, but this? This I could not deny.

  A hand touched my shoulder, and so great was my misery that I did not care who it was.

  “I’m sorry, Sieh.” Yeine. Her voice, a soft contralto, had deepened further with grief. I felt her kneel beside me, her warmth radiant against my skin. For once, I took no comfort in her presence.

  “My fault,” I whispered. I had always meant to disperse the orrery, returning its worlds to their homes when I’d tired of them. Only I never had, because I was a selfish brat. And when I’d been incarcerated in mortal form, desperate to feel like a god because my Arameri masters treated me like a thing, I had brought the orrery here despite the danger that they might be discovered. I had spent strength I didn’t have, killing my mortal body more than once, to keep the orrery alive. And now, after all that, I hadn’t even noticed that I’d failed them.

  Yeine sighed and looped her arms around my shoulders, pressing her face to my hair for a moment. “Death comes to all, in time.”

  But this had been too soon. My orrery should have lasted a sun’s lifetime. I drew a deep breath and set the hemisphere down, turning to look up at her. Her face did not show the shock that I knew she felt at the sight of my older shape. I was grateful for that, because she could have flinched at my withered beauty, but of course that was not her way. She still loved me, would always love me, even if I could no longer be her little boy. I lowered my eyes, ashamed that I had ever begrudged Itempas her affection.

  “There are some survivors,” I said softly. “They …” I drew a deep breath. What would I do without them? I would truly be alone then … but I would do what was right. They deserved that, these truest friends of mine. “Will you help them, Yeine? Please?”

  “Of course.” She closed her eyes. One by one, the planets that still floated about the sun sphere, and a couple of the ones on the floor, vanished. I followed with her as best I could, watching her carefully deposit each where I had found it: this one spinning around a bright golden sun, which was delighted to have it back; that one near twin suns that sang in harmony; that one in the heart of a stellar nursery, surrounded by howling infant planets and hissing, cranky magnetars, where it sighed and resigned itself to the noise.

  But when Yeine reached for the sun sphere, En, it fought her. Surprised, we both opened our eyes back in the orrery to find that En had shed its ordinary yellow kickball disguise. It had begun to spin and burn, expending itself in a dangerous way given that I could not replenish it. At this rate, it would fail and die like the rest in minutes.

  “What the hells are you doing?” I demanded of it. “Quit that; you’re being rude.”

  It responded by darting out of its place and whisking over to boot me in the stomach. I oofed in surprise, wrapping my arms around it inadvertently, and felt its outrage. How dare I try to send it away? It was older than many of my siblings. Had it not always been there when I needed it? It would not be sent away like some disgraced servant.

  I touched its hot, pale-yellow surface, trying not to cry. “I can’t take care of you anymore,” I said. “Don’t you understand? If you stay with me, you’ll die.”

  It would die, then. Did not care it would die did not care.

  “Stubborn ball of hot air!” I shouted, but then Yeine touched my hand where it rested on En’s curve. When she did, En glowed brighter; she was feeding it as I could not.

  “A true friend,” she said gently, with only a hint of censure, “is something to be treasured.”

  “Not to death,” I said, looking up at her for support. “Yeine, please; it’s crazy. Send it away.”

  “Shall I deny its wishes, Sieh? Force it to do what you want? Am I Itempas now?”

  And at that I faltered, silent, because of course she knew of my earlier anger. Perhaps she had even known I was there, spying on her with Itempas until I’d flounced off. I hunched, ashamed of myself and then ashamed that I felt ashamed.

  “You use force when it suits you,” I muttered, trying to cover the shame with sullenness.

  “And when I must, yes. But it doesn’t suit me now.”

  “I don’t want more death on my conscience,” I said, both to her and to En. “Please, En. I couldn’t bear to lose you. Please!”

  En — the demonshitting, lightfarting gasbag — responded by turning red and bloating with each passing second. Gathering itself to explode, as if that was somehow better than starving to death! I groaned.

  Yeine rolled her eyes. “A tantrum. I suppose that’s to be expected, given your influence, but really…” She shook her head and sat back on her knees, looking around thoughtfully. For an instant her eyes darkened, from their usual faded green to something deep and shadowed, like a thick, wet forest, and then suddenly the orrery chamber was empty. All my dead toys vanished. En, too, for which I felt sudden regret.

  “I’ll keep the rest safe for you,” she said, reaching up to smooth a hand over my hair as she had always done. I closed my eyes and relaxed into the comfort of familiarity, pretending for a moment that I was still small and all was well. “Until the day you can reclaim them and send them home yourself.”

  I exhaled, grateful despite the bitterness her words triggered in me. It hurt her to make dead things live again; it went against her nature, a perversion of the cycle Enefa had designed at the beginning of life. She did not do it often, and we never asked it of her. But … I licked my lips. “Yeine … this thing that’s happening to me …”

  She
sighed, looking troubled, and belatedly I realized there was no need to ask. If she’d had the power to reverse my transformation into a mortal, she would have used it, no matter what harm it did her. But what did it mean, then, that the goddess who had supreme power over mortality could not erase mine?

  “If I were older,” she said, and I felt guilty for making her doubt herself. She lowered her eyes, looking small and vulnerable, like the mortal girl she resembled. “If I knew myself better, perhaps I would be able to find some solution.”

  I sighed and shifted to lie on my side, putting my head in her lap after awkwardly pushing my hair out of the way. “This may be beyond all of us. Nothing like it has ever happened before. It’s pointless to rail against what you can’t stop.” I scowled. “That would make you Itempas.”

  “Nahadoth is unhappy,” she said.

  I suspected she wanted to change the subject. I sighed. “Nahadoth is overprotective.”

  She stroked my hair again, then lifted the tangled mass and began to finger comb it. I closed my eyes, soothed by the rhythmic movements.

  “Nahadoth loves you,” she said. “When we first found you in this … condition … he tried so hard to restore you that it damaged him. And yet …” She paused, her tension suddenly prickling the air between us.

  I frowned, both at her description of Nahadoth’s behavior and at her hesitation. “What?”

  She sighed. “I’m not certain you can be any more reasonable about this than Naha.”

  “What, Yeine?” But then I understood, and as she had predicted, I grew unreasonably angry. “Oh gods and demons, no, no you don’t. You want to talk to Itempas.”

  “Resisting change is his nature, Sieh. He may be able to do what Nahadoth could not: stabilize you until I find a cure. Or if we joined again, as Three —”

  “No! You’d have to set him free for that!”

  “Yes. For your sake.”

  I sat up, scowling. “I. Don’t. Care.”