The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

his face has transformed, and I understand now that this is because Itempas can only control him so much. He must change; he is Change. He could allow me to see his fury, for it weighs the very air, making my skin itch. Instead he is expressionless. His skin has turned warm brown and his eyes are layered shades of black, and his lips make me crave soft, ripe fruit. The perfect face for seducing lonely Darre girls—though it would work better if his eyes held any warmth.

He says nothing that I recall. When my fever breaks at last and I awaken, he is gone and the weight of rage has lifted—though it never goes away entirely. That, too, Bright Itempas cannot control.

* * *

Dawn.

I sat up, feeling heavy and thick-headed. Zhakkarn, still near the window, glanced back at me over her shoulder.

“You’re awake.” I turned to see Sieh curled in a chair beside the bed. Bonelessly he unfolded himself and came to me, touching my forehead. “The fever’s broken. How do you feel?”

I responded with the first coherent thought my mind could muster. “What am I?”

He lowered his eyes. “I’m… not supposed to tell you.”

I pushed away the covers and got up. For a moment I was dizzy as blood rushed to my head and away, but then it passed and I stumbled toward the bathroom.

“I want you both out of here by the time I’m done,” I said over my shoulder.

Neither Sieh nor Zhakkarn responded. In the bathroom I stood over the sink for several painful moments, debating whether to vomit, though the emptiness of my stomach eventually settled the matter. My hands shook while I bathed and dried myself, and drank some water straight from the tap. I came out of the bathroom naked and was not at all surprised to find both Enefadeh still there. Sieh had drawn up his knees to sit on the edge of my bed, looking young and troubled. Zhakkarn had not moved from the window.

“The words must be phrased as a command,” she said, “if you truly want us to leave.”

“I don’t care what you do.” I found underthings and put them on. In the closet I took the first outfit I saw, an elegant Amn sheath-dress with patterns meant to disguise my minimal curves. I picked boots that didn’t match it and sat down to work them onto my feet.

“Where are you going?” Sieh asked. He touched my arm, anxious. I shook my arm as I would to get rid of an insect, and he drew back. “You don’t even know, do you? Yeine—”

“Back to the library,” I said, though I picked that at random because he’d been right; I hadn’t had a destination in mind other than away.

“Yeine, I know you’re upset—”

“What am I?” I stood with one boot on and rounded on him. He flinched, possibly because I’d bent to scream the words into his face. “What? What? What am I, gods damn you? What —”

“Your body is human,” interrupted Zhakkarn. Now it was my turn to flinch. She stood near the bed, gazing at me with the same impassivity she’d always shown, though there was something subtly protective in the way she stood behind Sieh. “Your mind is human. The soul is the only change.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’re the same person you always were.” Sieh looked both subdued and sullen. “An ordinary mortal woman.”

“I look like her.”

Zhakkarn nodded. She might have been reporting on the weather. “The presence of Enefa’s soul in your body has had some influence.”

I shivered, feeling ill again. Something inside me that was not me. I rubbed at my arms, resisting the urge to use my nails. “Can you take it out?”

Zhakkarn blinked, and I sensed that for the first time I’d surprised her. “Yes. But your body has grown accustomed to two souls. It might not survive having only one again.”

Two souls. Somehow that was better. I was not an empty thing animated solely by some alien force. Something in me, at least, was me. “Can you try?”

“Yeine—” Sieh reached for my hand, though he seemed to think better of it when I stepped back. “Even we don’t know what would happen if we take the soul out. We thought at first that her soul would simply consume yours, but that clearly hasn’t happened.”

I must have looked confused.

“You’re still sane,” said Zhakkarn.

Something inside me, eating me. I half-fell onto the bed, dry-heaving unproductively for several moments. The instant this passed, I pushed myself up and paced, limping with my one boot. I could not be still. I rubbed at my temples, tugged at my hair, wondering how much longer I would stay sane with such thoughts in my mind.

“And you’re still you,” Sieh said urgently, half-following me as I paced. “You’re the daughter Kinneth would have had. You don’t have Enefa’s memories or personality. You don’t think like her. That means you’re strong, Yeine. That comes from you, not her.”

I laughed wildly; it sounded like a sob. “How would you know?”

He stopped walking, his eyes soft and mournful. “If you were her,” he said, “you would love me.”

I stopped, too, pacing and breathing.

“And me,” said Zhakkarn. “And Kurue. Enefa loved all her children, even the ones who eventually betrayed her.”

I did not love Zhakkarn or Kurue. I let out the breath I’d held.

But I was shaking again, though part of that was from hunger. Sieh’s hand brushed mine, tentative. When I did not pull away this time, he sighed and took hold of me, pulling me back to the bed to sit down.

“You could have gone your whole life never knowing,” he said, reaching up to stroke my hair. “You would have grown older and loved some mortal, maybe had mortal children and loved those, too, and died in your sleep as a toothless old woman. That was what we wanted for you, Yeine. It’s what you would have had if Dekarta hadn’t brought you here. That forced our hand.”

I turned to him. This close, the impulse was too strong to resist. I cupped his cheek in my hand and leaned up to kiss his forehead. He started in surprise but then smiled shyly, his cheek warming under my palm. I smiled back. Viraine had been right; he was so easy to love.

“Tell me everything,” I whispered.

He flinched as if struck. Perhaps the magic that bound him to obey Arameri commands had some physical effect; perhaps it even hurt. Either way, there was a different kind of pain in his eyes as he realized I had issued the command deliberately.

But I had not been specific. He could have told me anything—the history of the universe from its inception, the number of colors in a rainbow, the words that cause mortal flesh to shatter like stone. I had left him that much freedom.

Instead, he told me the truth.

13. Ransom

Wait. Something happened before that. I don’t mean to get things so mixed up; I’m sorry, it’s just hard to think. It was the morning after I found the silver apricotstone, three days before. Wasn’t it? Before I went to Viraine, yes. I got up that morning and readied myself for the Salon, and found

* * *