The Broken Kingdoms

  “Lil.” I gripped the broomstick. “He has powerful magic. He’s already killed several godlings, and”—I fought back a shudder of revulsion, which might’ve been enough to touch off my nausea again—“and eaten them. I don’t want to see you join them.”

  Lil looked at me, startled. “What?”

  Shiny’s hand gripped my good shoulder; I felt him move in front of me.

  “I don’t want you anymore,” Dateh said, cold now. To Shiny. “You’re useless, whatever you are. But I have no qualms about going through you to get to her, so step aside.”

  Lil was still staring at me. “What do you mean, eaten them?”

  My eyes welled with tears of grief and frustration. “He cuts out their hearts and eats them. He’s been doing that to all the missing ones. Gods know how many by now.”

  “Lady Oree,” Dateh said, his voice tight with anger. All at once, the hole doubled in size, tearing the air as it grew. It drifted toward us, a warning. There was no suction—yet.

  “You didn’t say they were being eaten. You should have said that in the first place,” Lil said, looking annoyed. Then she turned on Dateh’s hole, and her expression darkened. “It is bad, very bad, for a mortal to eat one of us.”

  I felt the suction the instant it began. It was gentler than that night in front of Madding’s, but still enough to stagger me. In front of me, Shiny grunted and set his feet, his power rising, but it dragged him forward, anyway—

  Lil shoved both of us roughly aside, stepping in front of the hole.

  The suction increased sharply, to full force. Shiny and I had both fallen to the ground; I was sprawled and half sensible, as the fall had jarred both my head and my broken arm. Through a haze, I saw Lil, her legs braced, her gown whipping about her scrawny form, her long yellow hair tangling in the wind. The hole was huge now, nearly as big as her body, yet somehow it had not claimed her.

  She lifted her head. I was behind her, but I knew the instant her mouth lengthened, without seeing it.

  “Greedy mortal boy.” Lil’s voice was everywhere, echoing, shrill with delight. “Do you really think that will work on me?”

  She spread her arms wide, blazing with golden power. I heard the buzz and whir of her teeth, so loud that it made my bones rattle and my spine vibrate, so powerful that even the earth shivered beneath me. The whir rose to a scream as she lunged at the portal—and tried to eat it. Sparks of pure magic shot past us, each one burning where it landed. A concussion of force flattened me even more and shattered the piles of junk around us. I heard wood splintering, debris tumbling, the Lights screaming, and Lil laughing like the insane monster she was.

  And then Shiny had my good arm, hauling me up. We ran, him half dragging me because my legs would not work and I kept trying to vomit. Finally he scooped me into his arms and ran, as behind us the junkyard erupted in earthquakes and chaos and flames.

  16

  “From the Depths to the Heights” (watercolor)

  I GRAYED OUT FOR A TIME. The jostling, the running, and the blurring cacophony of sounds proved too much for my already-abused senses. I was vaguely aware of pain and confusion, my sense of balance completely thrown; it felt as though I tumbled through the air, unconnected to anything, uncontrolled. A blurry voice seemed to whisper into my ear: Why are you alive when Madding is dead? Why are you alive at all, death-filled vessel that you are? You are an affront to all that is holy. You should just lie down and die.

  It might have been Shiny speaking, or my own guilt.

  * * *

  After what felt like a very long time, I regained enough wit to think.

  I sat up, slowly and with great effort. My arm, the good one, did not obey my will at first. I told it to push me up, and instead it flailed about, scrabbling at the surface beneath me. Hard, but not stone. I sank my nails into it a little. Wood. Cheap, thin. I patted it, listening, and realized it was all around me. When I finally regained control of myself, I managed a slow, shaky exploration of my environment, and finally understood. A box. I was in some kind of large wooden crate, open at one end. Something heavy and scratchy and smelly lay upon me. A horse blanket? Shiny must have stolen it for me. It still reeked of its former owner’s sweat, but it was warmer than the chilly predawn air around me, so I drew it closer.

  Footsteps nearby. I cringed until I recognized their peculiar weight and cadence. Shiny. He climbed into the crate with me and sat down nearby. “Here,” he said, and metal touched my lips. Confused, I opened my mouth, and nearly choked as water flooded in. I managed not to splutter too much of it away, fortunately, because I was desperately thirsty. As Shiny turned up the flask for me again, I greedily drank until there was nothing left. I was still thirsty but felt better.

  “Where are we?” I asked. I kept my voice soft. It was quiet, wherever we were. I heard the bap-plink of morning dew—such a welcome sound after days without it in the House of the Risen Sun. There were people about, but they moved quietly, too, as if trying not to disturb the dew.

  “Ancestors’ Village,” he said, and I blinked in surprise. He had carried me across the city from the Shustocks junkyard, from Wesha into Easha. The Village was just north of South Root, near the tunnel under the rootwall. It was where the city’s homeless population had made a camp of sorts, or so I’d been told. I’d never visited it. Many of the Villagers were sick in body or mind, too harmless to be quarantined, but too ugly or strange or pitiful to be acceptable in the orderly society of the Bright. Many were lame, mute, deaf… blind. In my earliest days in Shadow, I’d been terrified of joining them.

  I didn’t ask, but Shiny must have seen the confusion on my face. “I lived here sometimes,” he said. “Before you.”

  It was no more than I’d already guessed, but I could not help pity: he had gone from ruling the gods to living in a box among lepers and madlings. I knew his crimes, but even so…

  Belatedly I noticed more footsteps approaching. These were lighter than Shiny’s, several sets—three people? One of them had a bad limp, dragging the second foot like deadweight.

  “We have missed you,” said a voice, elderly, raspy, of indeterminate gender, though I guessed male. “It’s good to see you well. Hello, miss.”

  “Um, hello,” I said. The first words had not been directed at me.

  Satisfied, the maybe-man turned his attention back to Shiny. “For her.” I heard something set down on the crate’s wooden floor; I smelled bread. “See if she can get that down.”

  “Thank you,” said Shiny, surprising me by speaking.

  “Demra’s gone looking for old Sume,” said another voice, younger and thinner-sounding. “She’s a bonebender—not a very good one, but sometimes she’ll work for free.” The voice sighed. “Wish Role was still around.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Shiny, because of course he intended to kill me. Even I could tell that these people didn’t have many favors to call in; best they not spend such a precious one on me. Then Shiny surprised me further. “Something for her pain would be good, however.”

  A woman came forward. “Yes, we brought this.” Something else was set down, glass. I thought I heard the slosh of liquid. “It isn’t good, but it should help.”

  “Thank you,” Shiny said again, softer. “You are all very kind.”

  “So are you,” said the thin voice, and then the woman murmured something about letting me sleep, and all three of them went away. I lay there in their wake, not quite boggling. I was too tired for real astonishment.

  “There’s food,” Shiny said, and I felt something dry and hard brush my lips. The bread, which he’d torn into chunks so I wouldn’t have to waste strength gnawing. It was coarse, flavorless stuff, and even the small piece he’d torn made my jaws ache. The Order of Itempas took care of all citizens; no one starved in the Bright. That did not mean they ate well.

  As I held a piece in my mouth, hoping saliva would make it more palatable, I considered what I had heard. It had had the air of long habit—or ritua
l, perhaps. When I’d swallowed, I said, “They seem to like you here.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do they know who you are? What you are?”

  “I have never told them.”

  Yet they knew, I was certain. There had been too much reverence in the way they’d approached and presented their small offerings. They had not asked about the black sun, either, as a heathen might have done. They simply accepted that the Bright Lord would protect them if He could—and that it was pointless to ask if He could not.

  I had to clear my dry throat to speak. “Did you protect them while you were here?”

  “Yes.”

  “And… you spoke to them?”

  “Not at first.”

  With time, though, same as me. For a moment, an irrational competitiveness struck me. It had taken three months for Shiny to deem me worthy of conversation. How long had he taken with these struggling souls? But I sighed, dismissing the fancy and refusing when Shiny tried to offer me another piece of bread. I had no appetite.

  “I’ve never thought of you as kind,” I said. “Not even when I was a child, learning about you in White Hall. The priests tried to make you sound gentle and caring, like an old grandfather who’s a little on the strict side. I never believed it. You sounded… well-intentioned. But never kind.”

  I heard the glass thing move, heard a stopper come free with a faint plonk. Shiny’s hand came under the back of my head, lifting me gently; I felt the rim of a small flask nudge my lips. When I opened my mouth, acid fire poured in—or so it tasted. I gasped and spluttered, choking, but most of the stuff went down my throat before my body could protest too much. “Gods, no,” I said when the bottle touched my lips again, and Shiny took it away.

  As I lay there trying to regain the full use of my tongue, Shiny said, “Good intentions are pointless without the will to implement them.”

  “Mmm.” The burn was fading now, which I regretted, because for a moment I had forgotten the pain of my arm and head. “The problem is, you always seem to implement your intentions by stomping all over other people’s. That’s pretty pointless, too, isn’t it? Does as much harm as good.”

  “There is such a thing as greater good.”

  I was too tired for sophistry. There had been no greater good in the Gods’ War, just death and pain. “Fine. Whatever you say.”

  I drifted awhile. The drink went to my head quickly, not so much dulling the pain as making me care less about it. I was contemplating sleeping again when Shiny spoke. “Something is happening to me,” he said, very softly.

  “Hmm?”

  “It isn’t my nature to be kind. You were correct in that. And I have never before been tolerant of change.”

  I yawned, which made my headache grow in a distant, warm sort of way. “Change happens,” I said through the yawn. “We all have to accept it.”

  “No,” he replied. “We don’t. I never have. That is what I am, Oree—the steady light that keeps the roiling darkness at bay. The unmoving stone around which the river must flow. You may not like it. You don’t like me. But without my influence, this realm would be cacophony, anarchy. A hell beyond mortal imagination.”

  Surprised into wakefulness, I blurted the first thing that came to mind. “Does it bother you that I don’t like you?”

  I heard him shrug. “You have a contrary nature. I suspect you are of Enefa’s lineage.”

  I almost laughed at the sour note in his voice, though that would’ve hurt my head. I sobered, though, as I realized something. “You and Enefa weren’t always enemies.”

  “We were never enemies. I loved her, too.” And I could hear that, suddenly, in the soft interstices of his tone.

  “Then”—I frowned—“why?”

  He did not answer for a long while.

  “It was a kind of madness,” he said at last, “though I did not think so at the time. My actions seemed perfectly rational, until… after.”

  I shifted a little, uncomfortable, both from my arm and the conversation topic. “That’s pretty normal,” I said. “People snap sometimes. But afterward—”

  “Afterward I had no recourse. Enefa was dead and could not—I thought—be restored. Nahadoth hated me and would shatter all the realms for vengeance. I dared not free him. So I committed myself to the path I had chosen.” He paused for a moment. “I… regret… what I did. It was wrong. Very wrong. But regret is meaningless.”

  He fell silent. I knew I should have let it go then, with the echoes of his pain still reverberating in the air around me. He was ancient, unfathomable; there was so much about him I would never understand. But I reached out with my good hand and found his knee.

  “Regret is never meaningless,” I said. “It’s not enough, not on its own; you have to change, too. But it’s a start.”

  Shiny let out a long sigh of almost unbearable weariness. “Change is not my nature, Oree. Regret is all I have.”

  More silence then, for a long while.

  “I’d like some more of that stuff,” I said at length. The throb of my arm was becoming more present; the liquor had worn off. “But I think I’d better eat something beforehand.”

  So Shiny resumed feeding me, giving me more water, too, from among the offerings the Villagers had made. I had the presence of mind to keep a little in my mouth and use that to soften the horrid bread. “In the morning there will be soup,” he said. “I’ll have the others bring some to us. It would be best if neither you nor I are seen for a while.”

  “Right,” I said, sighing. “So what do we do now? Live here among the beggars until the New Lights find us again? Hope I don’t die of infection before Mad’s killers are brought to justice?” I rubbed my face with my good hand. Shiny had given me more of the fiery liquor, and already it was making me feel warm and feather-light. “Gods, I hope Lil is all right.”

  “They are both children of Nahadoth. In the end, it will be a matter of strength.”

  I shook my head. “Dateh’s not…” Then I understood. “Oh. That explains a lot.” I felt Shiny throw me a look. Well, too late to take it back.

  “She is my daughter, too,” he said, at length. “He will not defeat her easily.”

  For a moment I puzzled over this, wondering how on earth the Lord of Night and the Bright Father had managed to have a child together. Or was he speaking figuratively, counting all godlings as his children regardless of their specific parentage? Then I dismissed it. They were gods; I didn’t need to understand.

  We fell silent for a while, listening to the dew fall. Shiny ate the rest of the bread, then sat back against a wall of the crate. I lay where I was and wondered how long it would be ’til dawn and whether there was any point in living long enough to see it.

  “I know who we can go to for help,” I said at length. “I don’t dare call another godling; I won’t be responsible for more of their deaths. But there are some mortals, I think, who are strong enough to take on the Lights. If you help me.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Take me back to Gateway Park. The Promenade.” The last place I had been happy. “Where they found Role. Do you remember it?”

  “Yes. There are often New Lights in that area.”

  Yes. This time of year, with the Tree about to bloom, all the heretic groups would have people at the Promenade, hoping to convert some of the Lady’s pilgrims to their own faiths. Easier to start with people who had already turned their backs on Bright Itempas.

  “Help me get there unseen,” I said. “To the White Hall.”

  He said nothing. All at once, tears sprang to my eyes, inexplicable. Drunkenness. I fought them back.

  “I have to see this through, Shiny. I have to make sure the New Lights are destroyed. They still have my blood—they can make more of those arrow things. Madding isn’t like Enefa. He won’t come back to life.”

  I could still see him in my head. I always knew you were special, he’d said, and my specialness had killed him. His death had to be the last.
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  Shiny got up, climbed out of the crate, and walked away.

  I could not help it. I gave in to the tears, because there was nothing else I could do. I didn’t have the strength to make it to the Promenade on my own, or elude the Lights for much longer. My only hope was the Order. But without Shiny—

  I heard his heavy footfalls and caught my breath, pushing myself up and wiping the tears off my face.

  Something heavy and loose landed in front of me. I touched it, puzzled it out. A cloak. It reeked of someone’s unwashed filth and stale urine, but I caught my breath as I realized what he meant for us to do.

  “Put that on,” Shiny said. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  The Promenade.

  Dawn had not yet come, but the Promenade was far from still. People stood in knots on streets and corners, murmuring, some weeping, and for the first time I noticed the tension that filled the city, as it must have since the sun had turned black the day before. The city was never quiet at night, but by the sounds that I could hear on the wind, many of its denizens had not slept the night before. A good number must have risen to wait for the sunrise, perhaps in hopes of seeing a change in the sun’s condition. There were none of the usual vendors about—and no one at Art Row, though it was still too early for that—but I could hear the pilgrims. Many more than usual seemed to have gathered, kneeling on the bricks and murmuring prayers to the Gray Lady in her dawn guise. Hoping she would save them.

  Shiny and I made our way along quietly, keeping close to buildings rather than crossing the Promenade. That would’ve been faster—the White Hall was directly across from us—but also more conspicuous, even amid the milling crowd. Most Villagers knew better than to enter those parts of the city frequented by visitors; doing so was a good way to get rousted by Order-Keepers. They would be tense today, and a good many of them were young hotheads who would just as soon take Shiny and me into an empty storehouse to deal with themselves. We needed to reach the White Hall itself, where they were more likely to do the proper thing and take us in.