That shut them up, though they stared at me with more curiosity than fear. Then the boy, whom I had already begun to suspect was the smarter of the two, narrowed his eyes at me.
“You don’t have a mark,” he said, pointing at my forehead. The girl started in surprise.
“Why, no, I don’t,” I said, and sat back against the wall. “Imagine that.”
“You aren’t Arameri, then?” His face screwed up, as if he had found himself speaking gibberish. You curtain apple jumprope, then?
“No, I’m not.”
“Are you a new servant?” asked the girl. “Just come to Sky from outside?”
I put my arms behind my head, stretching my feet out in front of me. “I’m not a servant at all, actually.”
“You’re dressed like one,” said the boy, pointing. I looked at myself in surprise and realized I had manifested the same clothing I’d usually worn during my imprisonment: loose pants (good for running), shoes with a hole in one toe, and a plain pullover shirt, all white. Ah, yes—in Sky, only servants wore white every day. The two in front of me had both been dressed in deep emerald green, which matched the girl’s eyes and complemented the boy’s nicely.
“Oh,” I said, annoyed that I’d inadvertently fallen prey to old habit. “Well, I’m not a servant. Take my word for it.”
“You aren’t with the Teman delegation,” said the boy, speaking slowly while thoughts raced in his eyes. “They didn’t have any children with them, and they left three days ago, anyway. And they dressed like Temans. Shiny things and nice shoes.”
“I’m not Teman, either.” I grinned again, waiting to see how they handled that one.
“You look Teman,” said the girl, clearly not believing me. She pointed at my head. “Your hair barely has any curl, and your eyes are knife-shaped, and your skin is browner than Deka’s.”
I glanced at the boy, who looked uncomfortable at this comparison. I could see why. Though he bore a fullblood’s circle on his brow, it was painfully obvious that someone had brought non-Amn delicacies to the banquet of his heritage. If I hadn’t known it was impossible, I would have guessed he was some variety of High Norther. He had Amn features, with their trademark long-stretched facial lines, but his hair was straight and blacker than Nahadoth’s void, and he was indeed a rich all-over brown that had nothing to do with a suntan. I had seen infants like him drowned or head-staved or tossed off the Pier, or disowned as lowbloods and handed over to servants to raise. Never had one been given a fullblood mark.
While I pondered this, the children fell to whispering, debating whether I looked more of this or that or some other mortal race. I could hear every word, but out of politeness I pretended not to. Finally the boy stage whispered, “I don’t think he’s Teman at all,” in a tone that let me know he suspected what I really was. With eerie unity they faced me again.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a servant or not, or Teman or not,” said the girl. “We’re fullbloods, and that means you have to do what we say.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said.
“Yes, it does!”
I yawned again and closed my eyes. “Make me.”
They fell silent again, in churning consternation. I could have pitied them, but I was having too much fun. Finally, I felt a stir of air and warmth nearby, and I opened my eyes to find that the boy had crouched beside me, hugging his knees.
“Why won’t you help us?” he asked, his voice plaintive, and I nearly flinched beneath the onslaught of his big dark eyes. “We’ve been down here all day, and we ate our sandwiches already, and we don’t know the way back.”
Wicked creatures! Cuteness is like a prayer to me; I cannot help but heed it. “All right,” I said, relenting. “Where are you trying to go?”
The boy brightened. “To the World Tree’s heart!” Then his excitement flagged. “Or at least, that was where we were trying to go. Now we just want to go back to our rooms.”
“A sad end to a grand adventure,” I said, nodding, “but you wouldn’t have found what you were looking for, anyhow. The World Tree was created by Yeine, the Lady of Earth; its heart is her heart. Even if you found the chunk of wood that exists at the Tree’s core, it would mean nothing.”
“Oh,” said the boy, slumping more. “We don’t know how to find her.”
“I do,” I said, slumping as he had done, “but that wouldn’t help you. She’s busy with other matters these days. Not much time for me or any of her children.”
“Oh, is she your mother?” The boy looked surprised at this. “That sounds like our mother. She never has time for us. Is your mother the family head, too?”
“Yes, in a way. Though she’s also new to the family, which makes for a certain awkwardness.” I sighed again, and the sound echoed within the Nowhere Stair, which descended into shadows at our feet. Back when I and the other Enefadeh had built this version of Sky, we had created this spiral staircase that led to nothing, twenty feet down to dead-end against a wall. It had been a long day; we’d gotten bored.
“It’s a bit like having a stepmother,” I said. “Do you know what that is?”
The boy looked confused again. The girl sat down beside him. “Like Lady Meull, of Agru,” she said to the boy. “Remember our genealogy lessons?” She looked at me for confirmation. “Like that, right?”
“Yes, yes, like that,” I said, though I neither knew nor cared who Lady Meull was. “Except Yeine is our queen, sort of, as well as our mother.”
“And you don’t like her?” Too much knowing in both children’s eyes as they asked that question. The usual Arameri pattern, then, parents raising children who would grow up to plot their painful deaths. The signs were all there.
“No,” I said softly. “I love her.” Because I did, in spite of her betrayal. “She is the mother of my soul. I would die for her.”
“So, then…” The girl was frowning. “Why are you sad?”
“Because love is not enough.” I fell silent for an instant, stunned as realization moved through me. Yes, here was truth, which they had helped me find. Mortal children are very wise, though it takes a careful listener or a god to understand this. “My parents love me, and I love them, but that just isn’t enough, not anymore. Do you understand? I need something more.” I groaned and sat up and drew up my knees, pressing my forehead against them. Comforting flesh and bone, familiar as an old blanket. “But what? What? Everything feels so wrong. Something is changing in me.”
I must have seemed mad to them, and perhaps I was. All children are a little mad. But then the boy reached out, hesitating, and touched my hand. I uncurled and looked at him in surprise.
“Maybe you should be happy,” he said. “When things are bad, change is good, right? Change means things will get better.”
I stared at him, this Amn child who did not at all look Amn and who would probably die before his majority because of it, and I felt the knot of frustration within me ease.
“An Arameri optimist,” I said, smiling. “Where did you come from?”
To my surprise, both of them bristled. I realized at once that I had struck a nerve, and realized which nerve when the girl clenched her fists. “He comes from right here in Sky,” she said. “Just like me.”
The boy lowered his eyes, and I heard the whisper of taunts around him, some in childish lilt and some deepened by adult malice: where did you come from did a barbarian leave you here by mistake maybe a demon dropped you off on its way to the hells because gods know you don’t belong here.
I saw how the words had scored his soul. In recompense for making me feel better, I touched his shoulder and sent my blessing into him, making the words just words and making him stronger against them, and putting a few choice retorts at the tip of his tongue for the next time. He blinked in surprise, looking up at me, and smiled shyly. I smiled back.
The girl watched this and relaxed, once it became clear that I meant her brother no harm. I willed a blessing to her, too, though she hardly needed it. She
already had the strength to face down bullies.
“I’m Shahar,” she said, and then she sighed and unleashed her last and greatest weapon: politeness. “Will you please tell us how to get home?”
Ugh, what a name! The poor girl. But I had to admit, it suited her. “Fine, fine. Here.” I looked into her eyes and made her know the palace’s layout as well as I had learned it over the generations that I had lived within and between its walls.
The girl gasped in surprise as she suddenly knew the way home. Then she surprised me, drawing herself up and bowing from the waist. “I thank you, sir,” she said. And while I stared at her, marveling at the novelty of Arameri thanks, she adopted that haughty tone she’d tried to use before. “May I have the pleasure of knowing your name?”
“I am Sieh.” No hint of recognition in either of them. I stifled a sigh.
She nodded and gestured to her brother. “This is Dekarta.”
Even worse. I got to my feet with a sigh. “Well, I’ve wasted enough time,” I said, “and you two should be getting back.” Outside the palace, I could feel the sun setting. For a moment, I closed my eyes, waiting for the familiar, delicious vibration of my father’s return to the world, but of course there was nothing. I felt fleeting disappointment.
The children jumped up in unison. “Do you come here to play often?” asked the boy, just a shade too eagerly.
“Such lonely little cubs,” I said, and laughed. “Has no one taught you not to talk to strangers?”
Of course no one had. They looked at each other in that freakish speaking-without-words-or-magic thing that twins do, and the boy swallowed and said to me, “You should come back. If you do, we’ll play with you.”
“It has been a long time since I played…” I murmured, marveling that this was so. I was forgetting who I was amid all this worrying. Better to leave the worry behind, stop caring about what mattered, and do what felt good. “All right, then. Assuming, of course, that your mother doesn’t forbid it”—which guaranteed that they would never tell her—“I’ll come back to this place on the same day, at the same time, next year.”
They looked horrified and exclaimed in unison, “Next year?”
“The time will pass before you know it,” I said, stretching to my toes. “Like a breeze through a meadow on a light spring day.”
It would be interesting to see them again, I told myself, because they were still young and would not become as foul as the rest of the Arameri for some while. And, because I had already grown to love them a little, I mourned, for the day they became true Arameri would most likely be the day I killed them. But until then, I would enjoy their innocence while it lasted.
I stepped between worlds and away.
Acknowledgments
Since I thanked everybody and everybody’s sister in the acknowledgments of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, here I’ll offer some literary/artistic acknowledgments. Fitting, since The Broken Kingdoms is a more, hmm, aesthetic book than its predecessor.
For the vocabulary of encaustic painting, sculpture, and watercolor used herein, I again thank my father, artist Noah Jemisin, who taught me more of his craft than I ever realized, given that I can’t draw a straight line. (No, Dad, fingerpainting when I was five doesn’t count.)
For the city of Shadow, I owe an obvious debt to urban fantasy—both the Miéville kind and the “disaffected hot chick with a weapon” kind (to quote a detractor of the latter, though I’m a fan of both). But a lot of it I owe to a lifetime spent in cities: Shadow’s Art Row is the Union Square farmers’ market in New York, maybe with a bit of New Orleans’s Jackson Square thrown in.
For several of the godlings, particularly Lil, Madding, and Dump, I thank my subconscious, because I had a dream about them (and several godlings you’ll meet in the third book of the Inheritance Trilogy). Lil tried to eat me. Typical.
Oh—and for a taste of how people in a major city might cope with a giant tree looming overhead, I acknowledge my past as an anime fangirl. In this case, the debt is owed to a lovely little shoujo OAV and TV series called Mahou Tsukai Tai, which I highly recommend. The problems caused by the giant tree were handled in a much more lighthearted manner there, but the beauty of the initial image lingers in my mind.
Table of Contents
Front Cover Image
Welcome
I am, you see, a woman plagued by gods.
Extras
Meet the Author
A Preview of THE KINGDOM OF GODS
1: “Discarded Treasure” (encaustic on canvas)
2: “Dead Goddesses” (watercolor)
3: “Gods and Corpses” (oil on canvas)
4: “Frustration” (watercolor)
5: “Family” (charcoal study)
6: “A Window Opens” (chalk on concrete)
7: “Girl in Darkness” (watercolor)
8: “Light Reveals” (encaustic on canvas)
9: “Seduction” (charcoal)
10: “Indoctrination” (charcoal study)
11: “Possession” (watercolor)
12: “Destruction” (charcoal and blood, sketch)
13: “Exploitation” (wax sculpture)
14: “Flight” (encaustic, charcoal, metal rubbing)
15: “A Prayer to Dubious Gods” (watercolor)
16: “From the Depths to the Heights” (watercolor)
17: “A Golden Chain” (engraving on metal plate)
18: “The Gods’ Vengeance” (watercolor)
19: “The Demons’ War” (charcoal and chalk on black paper)
20: “Life” (oil study)
21: “Still Life” (oil on canvas)
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Acknowledgments
By N. K. Jemisin
Praise for The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
Copyright
By N. K. Jemisin
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
The Broken Kingdoms
Praise for The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
“Jemisin’s engaging debut grabs readers right from the start… a complex, edge-of-your-seat story with plenty of funny, scary, and bittersweet twists.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“An offbeat, engaging tale by a talented and original newcomer.” —Kirkus
1 Interviewer’s note: “Enulai” (HR) is apparently a hereditary title among the Maro.
2 Reference: The Survivors’ Provisional Council of Nimaro Territory issued an official pronouncement on behalf of their royal family (deceased), indicating that their people were henceforth to be known as “Maroneh,” not “Maro.”
3 Interviewers’ note: The Gods’ War.
4 Interviewers’ note: See Post-Cataclysm Maro: Census.
5 Librarian’s note: Original transcript ends here. The message sphere recording is partially inaudible from this point on. There appears to be no damage to the sphere’s controlling script; however, consultation with scriveners suggests magical interference. I have transcribed the remainder of the interview as best I could.
6 Librarian’s note: This transcript and sphere were misfiled by First Scrivener Y’li Arameri in the Library of Sky and thus lost for some 600 years. Recovered when an exhaustive search of the Library vaults was conducted per order of Lord T’vril Arameri.
THE BROKEN KINGDOMS
BOOK TWO OF THE INHERITANCE TRILOGY
N.K. JEMISIN
www.orbitbooks.net
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 by N. K. Jemisin
Excerpt from The Kingdom of Gods copyright © 2010 by N. K. Jemisin
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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First eBook Edition: November 2010
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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN: 978-0-316-07598-5
N. K. Jemisin, The Broken Kingdoms
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