The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“I know.” He strode up the steps. Caught off guard, I stared at his back for ten steps before remembering myself and trotting to follow.

Sar-enna-nem’s gates are heavy, ugly wood-and-metal affairs—a more recent addition to the ancient stone. It took at least four women to work the mechanism that swung them open, which made a vast improvement over the days when the gates had been made of stone and needed twenty openers. I had arrived unannounced, in the small hours of the morning, and knew that this meant upsetting the entire guardstaff. We had not been attacked in centuries, but my people prided themselves on vigilance nonetheless.

“They might not let us in,” I murmured, drawing alongside the Nightlord. I was hard-pressed to keep up; he was taking the steps two at a time.

Nahadoth said nothing in reply and did not slow his pace. I heard the loud, echoing sound of the great latch lifting, and then the gates swung open—on their own. I groaned, realizing what he’d done. Of course there were shouts and running feet as we passed through, and as we stepped onto the grassy patch that served as Sar-enna- nem’s forecourt, two clusters of guards came running forth from the ancient edifice’s doors. One was the gate company—just men, since it was a lowly position that required only brute strength.

The other company was the standing guard, composed of women and those few men who had earned the honor, distinguished by white silk tunics under the armor. This one was led by a familiar face: Imyan, a woman from my own Somem tribe. She shouted in our language as she reached the forecourt, and the company split to surround us. Very quickly we were surrounded by a ring of spears and arrows pointed at our hearts.

No—their weapons were pointed at my heart, I noticed. Not a single one of them had aimed at Nahadoth.

I stepped in front of Nahadoth to make it easier for them, and to signal my friendliness. For a moment it felt strange to speak in my own tongue. “It’s good to see you, Captain Imyan.”

“I don’t know you,” she said curtly. I almost smiled. As girls we had gotten into all manner of mischief together; now she was as committed to her duty as I.

“You laughed the first time you saw me,” I said. “I’d been trying to grow my hair longer, thinking to look like my mother. You said it looked like curly tree moss.”

Imyan’s eyes narrowed. Her own hair—long and beautifully Darre-straight—had been arranged in an efficient braids-and-knot behind her head. “What are you doing here, if you’re Yeine-ennu?”

“You know I’m no longer ennu,” I said. “The Itempans have been announcing it all week, by word of mouth and by magic. Even High North should’ve heard by now.”

Imyan’s arrow wavered for a moment longer, then slowly came down. Following her lead, the other guards lowered their weapons as well. Imyan’s eyes shifted to Nahadoth, then back to me, and for the first time there was a hint of nervousness in her manner. “And this?”

“You know me,” Nahadoth said in our language.

No one flinched at the sound of his voice. Darren guards are too well-trained for that. But I saw not a few exchanged looks of unease among the group. Nahadoth’s face, I noticed belatedly, had begun to waver again, a watery blur that shifted with the torchlight shadows. So many new mortals to seduce.

Imyan recovered first. “Lord Nahadoth,” she said at last. “Welcome back.”

Back? I stared at her, then at Nahadoth. But then a more familiar voice greeted me, and I let out a breath of tension I hadn’t realized that I felt.

“You are indeed welcome,” said my grandmother. She came down the short flight of steps that led to Sar- enna-nem’s living quarters, and the guards parted before her: a shorter-than-average elderly woman still clad in a sleeping tunic (though she’d taken the time to strap on her knife, I noted). Tiny as she was—I had unfortunately inherited her size—she exuded an air of strength and authority that was almost palpable.

She inclined her head to me as she came. “Yeine. I’ve missed you, but not so much that I wanted to see you back so soon.” She glanced at Nahadoth, then back at me. “Come.”

And that was that. She turned to head into the columned entrance, and I moved to follow—or would have, had Nahadoth not spoken.

“Dawn is closer, here, to this part of the world,” he said. “You have an hour.”

I turned, surprised on several levels. “You aren’t coming?”

“No.” And he walked away, off to the side of the forecourt. The guards moved out of his way with an alacrity that might have been amusing under other circumstances.

I watched him for a moment, then moved to follow my grandmother.

* * *

Another tale from my childhood occurs to me here.

It is said the Nightlord cannot cry. No one knows the reason for this, but of the many gifts that the forces of the Maelstrom bestowed upon their darkest child, the ability to cry was not one of them.

Bright Itempas can. Legends say his tears are the rain that sometimes falls while the sun still shines. (I have never believed this legend, because it would mean Itempas cries rather frequently.)

Enefa of the Earth could cry. Her tears took the form of the yellow, burning rain that falls around the world after a volcano has erupted. It still falls, this rain, killing crops and poisoning water. But now it means nothing.

Nightlord Nahadoth was firstborn of the Three. Before the others appeared, he spent countless aeons as the only living thing in all of existence. Perhaps that explains his inability. Perhaps, amid so much loneliness, tears become ultimately useless.

* * *

Sar-enna-nem was once a temple. Its main entrance is a vast and vaulted hall supported by columns hewn whole from the earth, erected by my people in a time long before we knew of such Amn innovations as scrivening or clockwork. We had our own techniques back then. And the places we built to honor the gods were magnificent.

After the Gods’ War, my ancestors did what had to be done. Sar-enna-nem’s Twilight and Moon Windows, once famed for their beauty, were bricked up, leaving only the Sun. A new temple, dedicated exclusively to Itempas and untainted by the devotion once offered to his siblings, was built some ways to the south; that is the current religious heart of the city. Sar-enna-nem was repurposed as nothing more than a hall of government, from which our warrior council issued edicts that I, as ennu, once implemented. Any holiness was long gone.

The hall was empty, as befitted the late hour. My grandmother led me to the raised plinth where, during the day, the Warriors’ Council members sat on a circle of thick rugs. She took a seat; I took one opposite.

“Have you failed?” she asked.

“Not yet,” I replied. “But that is only a matter of time.”

“Explain,” she said, so I did. I will admit I edited the account somewhat. I did not tell her of the hours I wasted in my mother’s chambers weeping. I did not mention my dangerous thoughts about Nahadoth. And I most certainly did not speak of my two souls.

When I was done, she sighed, the only sign of her concern. “Kinneth always believed Dekarta’s love for her would safeguard you. I cannot say I ever liked her, but over the years I grew to trust her judgment. How could she have been so wrong?”

“I’m not certain she was,” I said softly. I was thinking of Nahadoth’s words about Dekarta, and my mother’s murder: You think it was him?

I had spoken with Dekarta since then. I had seen his eyes while he spoke of my mother. Could a man like him murder someone he loved so much?

“What did Mother tell you, Beba?” I asked. “About why she left the Arameri?”

My grandmother frowned, taken aback by my shift from formality. We had never been close, she and I. She had been too old to become ennu when her own mother finally died, and none of her children had been girls. Though my father had managed against all odds to succeed her, becoming one of only three male ennu ever in our history, I was the closest thing to a daughter she would ever have. I, the half-Amn embodiment of her son’s greatest mistake. I had given up on trying to earn her love years