The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

The look on Scimina’s face was thoughtful, measuring. Naha, however, was sober, his eyes showing some darker emotion that I could not name. If I had to put a word to it, it might have been bitterness. But that was not so surprising, was it? I was not so Darre as, and so much more Arameri than, I seemed. It was something I had always hated about myself.

“He’s begun to wear a single face for you, hasn’t he?” Naha asked. I knew at once who “he” was. “That’s how it starts. His voice grows deeper or his lips fuller; his eyes change their shape. Soon he’s something out of your sweetest dreams, saying all the right things, touching all the right places.” He pressed his face into Scimina’s hair, as if seeking comfort. “Then it’s only a matter of time.”

I left, goaded by fear and guilt and a creeping, hateful sense that no matter how Arameri I was, it was not enough to help me survive this place. Not Arameri enough by far. That is when I went to Viraine, and that is what led me to the library and the secret of my two souls, and that is how I ended up here, dead.

14. The Walking Dead

“We cured your father,” said Sieh. “That was your mother’s price. In exchange she allowed us to use her unborn child as the vessel for Enefa’s soul.”

I closed my eyes.

He took a deep breath in my silence. “Our souls are no different from yours. We expected Enefa’s to travel onward after she died, in the usual manner. But when Itempas… When Itempas killed Enefa, he kept something. A piece of her.” It was difficult to catch, but he was rushing his words ever so slightly. Distantly I considered soothing him. “Without that piece, all life in the universe would have died. Everything Enefa created—everything except Nahadoth and Itempas himself. It is the last vestige of her power. Mortals call it the Stone of Earth.”

Against my closed eyelids images formed. A small, ugly lump of bruise-dark flesh. An apricotstone. My mother’s silver necklace.

“With the Stone still in this world, the soul was trapped here, too. Without a body it drifted, lost; we only discovered what had happened centuries later. By the time we found it the soul had been battered, eroded, like a sail left on a mast through a storm. The only way to restore it was to house it again in flesh.” He sighed. “I will admit the thought of nurturing Enefa’s soul in the body of an Arameri child was appealing on many levels.”

I nodded. That I could certainly understand.

“If we can restore the soul to health,” Sieh said, “then there is a chance it can be used to free us. The thing that subdues us in this world, trapping us in flesh and binding us to the Arameri, is the Stone. Itempas took it not to preserve life, but so that he could use Enefa’s power against Nahadoth—two of the Three against one. But he could not wield it himself; the Three are all too different from one another. Only Enefa’s children can use Enefa’s power. A godling like me, or a mortal. In the war, it was both—some of my siblings, and one Itempan priestess.”

“Shahar Arameri,” I said.

The bed moved slightly with his nod. Zhakkarn was a silent, watching presence. I drew Zhakkarn’s face with my mind, matching it against the face I’d seen in the library. Zhakkarn’s face was framed like Enefa’s, with the same sharp jaw and high cheekbones. It was in all three of them, I realized, though they didn’t look like siblings or even members of the same race. All of Enefa’s children had kept some feature, some tribute, to their mother’s looks. Kurue had the same frank, dissecting gaze. Sieh’s eyes were the same jade color.

Like mine.

“Shahar Arameri.” Sieh sighed. “As a mortal, she could wield only a fraction of the Stone’s true power. Yet she was the one who struck the deciding blow. Nahadoth would have avenged Enefa that day, if not for her.”

“Nahadoth says you want my life.”

Zhakkarn’s voice, with a hint of irritation: “He told you that?”

Sieh’s voice, equally irritated, though at Zhakkarn: “He can only defy his own nature for so long.”

“Is it true?” I asked.

Sieh was silent for so long that I opened my eyes. He winced at the look on my face; I did not care. I was through with evasions and riddles. I was not Enefa. I did not have to love him.

Zhakkarn unfolded her arms, a subtle threat. “You haven’t agreed to ally with us. You could give this information to Dekarta.”

I gave her the same look that I had Sieh. “Why,” I said, enunciating each word carefully, “would I possibly betray you to him?”

Zhakkarn’s eyes flicked over to Sieh. Sieh smiled, though there was little humor in it. “I told her you’d say that. You do have one advocate among us, Yeine, however little you might believe it.”

I said nothing. Zhakkarn was still glaring at me, and I knew better than to look away from a challenge. It was a pointless challenge on both sides—she would have no choice but to tell me if I commanded her, and I would never earn her trust merely by my words. But my whole world had just been shattered, and I knew of no other way to learn what I needed to know.

“My mother sold me to you,” I said, mostly to Zhakkarn. “She was desperate, and perhaps I would even make the same choice in her position, but she still did it and at the moment I am not feeling well-inclined towards any Arameri. You and your kind are gods; it doesn’t surprise me that you would play with mortal lives like pieces in a game of nikkim. But I expect better of human beings.”

“You were made in our image,” she said coldly.

An unpleasantly astute point.

There were times to fight, and times to retreat. Enefa’s soul inside me changed everything. It made the Arameri my enemies in a far more fundamental way, because Enefa had been Itempas’s enemy and they were his servants. Yet it did not automatically make the Enefadeh my allies. I was not actually Enefa, after all.

Sieh sighed to break the silence. “You need to eat,” he said, and got up. He left my bedroom; I heard the apartment door open and close.

I had slept nearly three days. My angry declaration that I would leave had been a bluff; my hands were shaking, and I did not trust my ability to walk far if I tried. I looked down at my unsteady hand and thought sourly that if the Enefadeh had infected me with a goddess’s soul, the least they could have done was give me a stronger body in the process.

“Sieh loves you,” said Zhakkarn.

I put my hand on the bed so it would no longer shake. “I know.”

“No, you don’t.” The sharpness in Zhakkarn’s voice made me look up. She was still angry, and I realized now that it had nothing to do with the alliance. She was angry about how I’d treated Sieh.

“What would you do, if you were me?” I asked. “Surrounded by secrets, with your life dependent on the answers?”

“I would do as you have done.” That surprised me. “I would use every possible advantage I had to gain as much information as I could, and I would not apologize for doing so. But I am not the mother Sieh has missed for so long.”

I could tell already that I was going to become very, very sick of being compared to a goddess.

“Neither am I,” I snapped.

“Sieh knows that. And yet he loves you.” Zhakkarn sighed. “He is a child.”

“He’s older than you, isn’t he?”

“Age means nothing to us. What matters is staying true to one’s nature. Sieh has devoted himself fully to the path of childhood. It is a difficult one.”

I could imagine, though it made no sense to me. Enefa’s soul seemed to bring me no special insight into the tribulations of godhood.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked. I felt weary, though that might’ve been the hunger. “Shall I cuddle him to my breast when he comes back, and tell him everything will be all right? Should I do the same for you?”

“You should not hurt him again,” she said, and vanished.

I gazed at the spot where she had stood for a long while. I was still staring at it when Sieh returned, setting