The Kingdom of Gods

  “Come,” I whispered with the voice of the universe.

  And It came, Its wild substance passing into me through the filter of the God Mask. Remaking me. Fitting me into existence like a puzzle piece — which worked only because Itempas’s temporary absence had left a void. Without that, my presence, a Fourth, would have torn it all apart. In fact, when Itempas next awoke, the sundering would begin.

  Thus I raised the knife coated with my son’s blood. There was plenty of Glee’s left, too, I hoped — though really, there was only one way to find that out.

  I drove the knife into my breast, and ended myself.

  23

  IN THE SKY ABOVE, JUST WHEN IT SEEMED the Maelstrom would crush everything, It suddenly winked out of existence, leaving a painful silence.

  As I pushed myself up from where I’d been curled on the ground, my hands clamped over my ears, Lord Nahadoth appeared, carrying my brother. Then came Lord Ahad, bringing a newly revived Lord Itempas and a badly wounded Glee Shoth. A moment later, Lady Yeine arrived, bearing Sieh.

  I am Shahar Arameri, and I am alone.

  I issued an edict to the Consortium, summoning them to Echo, and to this I added a personal invitation for Usein Darr, and any allies that she chose to bring. To make my position clear, I phrased the note thus: To discuss the terms of the Arameri surrender.

  Mother always said that if one must do something unpleasant, one should do it wholeheartedly and not waste effort on regret.

  I invited representatives from the Litaria as well, and the Merchants’ Guild, and the Farmers’ Collective, and the Order of Itempas. I even summoned a few beggars from Ancestors’ Village, and artists from Shadow’s Promenade. As Lord Ahad was indisposed — he would not leave the bedside of Glee Shoth, who had been healed but slept in deep exhaustion — I included an invitation to several of the gods of Shadow, where they could be located. Most of them, not entirely to my surprise, had remained in the mortal realm as the disaster loomed. It was not the Gods’ War again; they cared about us this time. To wit, Ladies Nemmer and Kitr responded in the affirmative, saying that they would attend.

  The Litaria’s involvement meant that all parties could gather quickly, as they sent scriveners forth to assist those mortals who could not hire their own. Within less than a day, Echo played host to several hundred of the world’s officials and influencers, decision makers and exploiters. Not everyone who mattered, of course, and not enough of those who didn’t. But it would do. I had them gather in the Temple, the only space large enough to hold them all. To address them, I stood where my brother and my best friend had shown me how to love. (I could not think of that and function, so I thought of other things instead.)

  And then I spoke.

  I told everyone there that we, the Arameri, would give up our power. Not to be distributed among the nobles, however, which would only invite chaos and war. Instead, we would give the bulk of our treasury, and management of our armies, to a single new governing body that was to consist of everyone in the room or their designated representatives. The priests, the scriveners, the godlings, the merchants, the nobles, the common folk. All of them. This body — by vote, edict, or whatever method they chose — would rule the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms in our place.

  To say that this caused consternation would be understating the case.

  I left as soon as the shouting began. Unconscionable for an Arameri ruler, but I no longer ruled. And like most mortals who had been near the Maelstrom that day, my ears were sensitive, still ringing despite my scriveners’ healing scripts. The noise was bad for my health.

  So I sought out one of the piers of Echo. A few hadn’t been damaged by the palace’s precipitous flight from ocean to lake. The view from here was of the lakeshore, with its ugly, sprawling survivors’ encampment — not the ocean I craved or the drifting clouds I would never stop missing. But perhaps those were things I should never have gotten used to in the first place.

  A step behind me. “You actually did it.”

  I turned to find Usein Darr standing there. A thick bandage covered her left eye and that side of her face; one of her hands had been splinted. There were probably other injuries hidden by her clothing and armor. For once I saw none of Wrath’s constantly hovering guards about, but Usein did not have a knife in her good hand, which I took as a positive sign.

  “Yes,” I said, “I did it.”

  “Why?”

  I blinked in surprise. “Why are you asking?”

  She shook her head. “Curiosity. A desire to know my enemy. Boredom.”

  By my training, I should never have smiled. I did it anyway, because I no longer cared about my training. And because, I was certain, it was what Deka would have done. Sieh, I suspected, would have gone a step further, because he always went a step further. Perhaps he would have offered to babysit her children. Perhaps she would even have let him.

  “I’m tired,” I said. “The whole world isn’t something one woman should bear on her shoulders — not even if she wants to. Not even if she has help.” And I no longer did.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  She fell silent, and I turned back to the railing as a light breeze, redolent of algae and rotting crops and human sorrow, wafted over the lake from the land beyond. The sky was heavily overcast as if threatening a thunderstorm, but it had been so for days without rain. The lords of the sky were in mourning for their lost child; we would not see the sun or the stars for some time.

  Let Usein knife me in the back, if she wished. I truly did not care.

  “I am sorry,” she said at length. “About your brother, and your mother, and …” She trailed off. We could both see the Tree’s corpse in the distance; it blocked the mountains that had once marked the horizon. From here, Sky was nothing more than tumbled white jewels around its broken crown.

  “ ‘I was born to change this world,’ ” I whispered.

  “Pardon?”

  “Something the Matriarch — the first Shahar — reportedly said.” I smiled to myself. “It isn’t a well-known quote outside the family, because it was blasphemous. Bright Itempas abhors change, you see.”

  “Hmm.” I suspected she thought I was mad. That was fine, too.

  After a time, Usein left, probably returning to the Temple to battle for Darr’s fair share of the future. I should have gone, too. The Arameri were, if nothing else, the royal family of the numerous and fractious tribes of the Amn race. If I did not fight for my people, we might be shortchanged in the time to come.

  So be it, I decided, and hitched up my gown to sit against the wall.

  It was Lady Yeine who found me next.

  She appeared quietly, seated on the railing I had just leaned against. Though she looked the same as always — relentlessly Darren — her clothing had changed. Instead of pale gray, the tunic and calf-pants she usually wore were darker in color. Still gray, but a color that matched the lowering stormclouds above. She did not smile, her eyes olive with sorrow.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  If one more person, mortal or god, asked me that question, I was going to scream.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked in return. An impertinent question, I knew, for the god to whom my family now owed its allegiance. I would never have dared it with Lord Itempas. Yeine was less intimidating, however, so she would have to deal with the consequences of that.

  “An experiment,” she said. (I was privately relieved that my rudeness did not seem to bother her.) “I am leaving Nahadoth and Itempas alone together for a while. If the universe comes apart again, I’ll know I made a mistake.”

  If my brother had not been dead, I would have laughed. If her son had not been dead, I think she would have, too.

  “Will you release him?” I asked. “Itempas?”

  “It has already been done.” She sighed, drawing up one knee and resting her chin on it. “The Three are whole again, if not wholly united, and not exactly rejoicing at our
reconciliation. Perhaps because there is no reconciliation; that will take an age of the world, I imagine. But who knows? It has already gone faster than I expected.” She shrugged. “Perhaps I’m wrong about the rest, too.”

  I considered the histories I had read. “He was to be punished for as long as the Enefadeh. Two thousand years and some.”

  “Or until he learned to love truly.” She said nothing more. I had seen Itempas weep beside the body of his son, silent tear tracks cleansing the blood and dirt from his face. This had been nothing meant for a mortal’s eyes, but he had permitted me to see it, and I was keenly conscious of the honor. At the time, I’d had no tears of my own.

  And I had seen Lord Itempas put a hand on the shoulder of Lord Nahadoth, who knelt beside Sieh’s corpse without moving. Nahadoth had not shaken that hand off. By such small gestures are wars ended.

  “We will withdraw,” Lady Yeine said, after a time of silence. “Naha and Tempa and I, completely this time. There is much work to be done, repairing the damage that the Maelstrom did. It takes all our strength to hold the realms together, even now. The scar of Its passage will never fade completely.” She sighed. “And it has finally become clear to me that our presence in the mortal realm does too much harm, even when we try not to interfere. So we will leave this world to our children — the godlings, if they wish to stay, and you mortals, too. And the demons, if there are any left or any more born.” She shrugged. “If the godlings get out of hand, ask the demons to keep them in line. Or do it yourselves. None of you are powerless anymore.”

  I nodded slowly. She must have guessed my thoughts, or read them in my face. I was slipping.

  “He loved you,” she said softly. “I could tell. You drove him half mad.”

  At that, I did smile. “The feeling was mutual.”

  We sat then, gazing at the clouds and the lake and the broken land, both of us thinking unimaginable thoughts. I was glad for her presence. Datennay tried, and I was growing to care for him, but it was hard to keep the pain at bay some days. The Mistress of Life and Death, I feel certain, understood that.

  When she got to her feet, I did, too, and we faced each other. Her tiny size always surprised me. I thought she should have been like her brothers, tall and terrible, showing some hint of her magnificence in her shape. But that was what I got for thinking like an Amn.

  “Why did it begin?” I asked. And because I was used to how gods thought and that question could have triggered a conversation about anything from the universe to the Gods’ War and everything in between, I added, “Sieh. How did we make him mortal? Why did we have such power over him, with him? Was it because …” It was difficult for me to admit, but I’d had the scriveners test me, and they had confirmed my suspicions. I was a demon, though the god-killing potency of my blood was negligible, and I had no magic, no specialness. Mother would have been so disappointed.

  “It had nothing to do with you,” Yeine said softly. I blinked. She looked away, sliding her hands into her pockets — a gesture that tore at my heart, because Sieh had done it so often. He’d even looked like her, a little. By design? Knowing him, yes.

  “But what —”

  “I lied,” she said, “about us staying wholly out of the mortal realm. There will be times in the future when we’ll have no choice but to return. It will be our task to assist the godlings, you see, when the time of metamorphosis comes upon them. When they become gods in their own right.”

  I jerked in surprise. “Become … what? Like Kahl?”

  “No. Kahl sought to force nature. He wasn’t ready for it. Sieh was.” She let out a long sigh. “I didn’t begin to understand until Tempa said that whatever Sieh had become, he was meant to become. His bond with you, losing his magic — perhaps these are the signs we’ll know to watch for next time. Or perhaps those were unique to Sieh. He was the oldest of our children, after all, and the first to reach this stage.” She looked at me and shrugged. “I would have liked to see the god he became. Though I still would have lost him then, even if he’d lived.”

  I digested this in wonder and felt a little fear at the implications. Godlings could grow into gods? Did that mean gods, then, could grow into things like the Maelstrom? If they could somehow live long enough, would mortals become godlings?

  Too many things to think about. “What do you mean, you would have lost him if he’d lived?”

  “This realm can abide only three gods. If Sieh had survived and become whatever he was meant to be, his fathers and I would have had to send him away.”

  Death or exile. Which would I have preferred? Neither. I want him back, and Deka, too. “But where could he have gone?”

  “Elsewhere.” She smiled at my look, with a hint of Sieh’s mischief. “Did you think this universe was all there was? There’s room out there for so much more.” Her smile faded then, just a little. “He would have enjoyed the chance to explore it, too, as long as he didn’t have to do it alone.”

  The Goddess of Earth looked at me then, and suddenly I understood. Sieh, Deka, and I; Nahadoth, Yeine, and Itempas. Nature is cycles, patterns, repetition. Whether by chance or some unknowable design, Deka and I had begun Sieh’s transition to adulthood — and perhaps, when the chrysalis of his mortal life had finally split to reveal the new being, he would not have transformed alone.

  Would I have wanted to go with him and Deka, to rule some other cosmos?

  Just dreams now, like broken stone.

  Yeine dusted off her pants, stretched her arms above her head, and sighed. “Time to go.”

  I nodded. “We will continue to serve you, Lady, whether you’re here or not. What prayers shall we say for you at the dawn and twilight hour?”

  She threw me an odd look, as if checking to see if I was joking. I wasn’t. This seemed to surprise and unnerve her; she laughed, though it sounded a bit forced.

  “Say whatever you want,” she said finally. “Someone might be listening, but it won’t be me. I have better things to do.”

  She vanished.

  Eventually I wandered back into the palace, and to the Temple, where the assembly was breaking up at last. Merchants and nobles and scriveners drifted down the hall in knots, still arguing with each other. They ignored me completely as I came to the Temple entrance.

  “Thanks for leaving,” said Lady Nemmer as she emerged looking thoroughly disgruntled. “We got exactly one thing done, aside from setting a date for a future useless meeting.”

  I smiled at her annoyance; she scowled back, the room growing oddly shadowed. But she wasn’t really angry, so I asked, “And the thing you got done was?”

  “We chose a name.” She waved a hand, irritable. “A pretentious and needlessly poetic one, but the mortals outnumbered Kitr and I, so we couldn’t vote it down. Aeternat. It’s one of our words. It means —”

  I cut her off. “I don’t need to know, Lady Nemmer. Please convey to whoever’s speaking for this Aeternat that they should inform me when they’re ready for the transfer of military command and funds.”

  She looked at me in real surprise, then finally nodded. We turned at the sound of someone calling my name from down the corridor: Datennay. He’d sat in on the Aeternat’s session. I would have to quickly dissuade him from doing that, now that he was my husband. Beyond him was Ramina, who watched me with a solemn sorrow in his expression that I understood completely. He caught my eye over the heads of a gaggle of shouting priests and smiled, however, inclining his head in approval. It warmed me. I would need to have his true sigil removed sometime soon.

  And I would need to send a note to Morad, I reminded myself. She’d quit her position and gone home to southern Senm, to no one’s surprise. I still hoped to entice her back eventually; competent stewards were hard to find. I would not press Morad, however. She deserved the time and space to mourn in her own way.

  While Datennay approached, I inclined my head to Nemmer in farewell. “Welcome to ruling the world, Lady Nemmer. I wish you enjoyment of it.”

&n
bsp; She spoke a godword so foul that one of the nearby lanterns turned to melted metal-and-oil sludge and crashed to the floor. As I walked away, I heard her cursing again — in some mortal tongue this time, more softly, as she bent to clean up the mess.

  Datennay met me halfway down the hall. He hesitated before offering me his hand. Once, I had discouraged him from displaying affection in public. Now, however, I took his hand firmly, and he blinked in surprise, flashing a smile.

  “These people are all mad,” I said. “Take me away from here.”

  As we walked away, something pulsed hot between my breasts, and I remembered I had forgotten to tell Lady Yeine about the necklace we’d found on Sieh’s body. The cord had been broken, half the smaller beads lost to whatever had snapped it, but the central bead — the peculiar yellow one — was fine. It was surprisingly heavy, and sometimes, if I was not imagining things, it became oddly warm to the touch. I had put the thing on a chain around my own neck, because I felt better wearing it. Less alone.

  Lady Yeine would not mind if I kept it, I decided. Then I stroked the little sphere as if to comfort it, and walked on.

  CODA

  SHAHAR ARAMERI DIED in bed at the age of seventy, leaving two daughters and a son — half-Teman fullbloods unmarked by any sigil — to carry on the family. The Arameri still owned many businesses and properties, and they remained one of the most powerful clans on the Senm continent. They just had less. Shahar’s children immediately began scheming to get more upon her death, but that is a matter for other tales.

  The godling Ahad, called Beloved by his fellow godlings, watched over Glee Shoth for the entire year that she slept after her legendary battle with Kahl. When she finally awoke, he took her away from Echo and the new city developing around its lake. They settled in a small northwestern Senm town, where they spent some years looking after an elderly, blind Maro woman until her death. There they remained for another hundred years or so, never marrying, raising no children, but always together. She lived a long time for a mortal, and gave him a proper name of his own before she died. He tells no one that name, it is said, guarding it like something precious and rare.