The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“Oh for—” This was from another man, younger and bigger, one of the ones I had marked for an Arameri tool. He looked at me as if I were excrement on the bottom of his shoe. “Minister, you cannot seriously be considering this ridiculous demand!”

Gemd glared at him, but the silent reprimand clearly had no impact. The younger man stepped away from the table and came toward me, his whole posture radiating menace. Every Darre woman is taught to deal with such behavior from men. It is an animal trick that they use, like dogs ruffling their fur and growling. Only rarely is there actual threat behind it, and a woman’s strength lies in discerning when the threat is real and when it is just hair and noise. For now the threat was not real, but that could change.

He stopped before me and turned back to his fellows, pointing at me. “Look at her! They probably had to call a scrivener just to confirm she came out of an Arameri cunt—”

“Rish!” Gemd looked furious. “Sit down.”

The man—Rish—ignored him and turned back to me, and abruptly the threat became real. I saw it in the way he positioned himself, angling his body to put his right hand near my right side. He meant to backhand me. I had an instant to decide whether to dodge or reach for my knife—

And in that sliver of time, I felt the power around me coalesce, malice-hard and sharp as crystal.

* * *

That this analogy occurred to me should have been a warning.

* * *

Rish swung. I held still, tense for the blow. Three inches from my face Rish’s fist seemed to glance off something no one could see—and when it did, there was a high hard clacking sound, like stone striking stone.

Rish drew his hand away, startled and perhaps puzzled by his failure to put me in my place. He looked at his fist, on which a patch of shining, faceted black had appeared about the knuckles. I was close enough to see the flesh around this patch blistering, beading with moisture like meat cooked over a flame. Except it was not burning, but freezing; I could feel the waft of cold air from where I stood. The effect was the same, however, and as the flesh withered and crisped away as if it had been charred, what appeared underneath was not raw flesh, but stone.

I was surprised that Rish took so long to begin screaming.

All the men in the room reacted to Rish’s cry. One stumbled back from the table and nearly fell over a chair. Two others ran over to Rish to try and help him. Gemd moved to help as well, but some powerful preservative instinct must have risen in the well-dressed man beside him; he grabbed Gemd by the shoulder to halt him. That turned out to be wise, because the first of the men who reached Rish—one of the Toks—grabbed Rish’s wrist to see what was the matter.

The black was spreading swiftly; nearly the whole hand was now a glittering lump of black crystal in the rough shape of a fist. Only the tips of Rish’s fingers remained flesh, and they transformed even as I watched. Rish fought the Tok, maddened with agony, and the Tok grabbed Rish’s fist in an effort to hold him still. Almost immediately he jerked away, as if the stone had been too cold to touch—and then the Tok, too, stared at his palm, and the black blotch that was now spreading there.

Not merely crystal, I realized, in the part of my mind that was not frozen in horror. The black substance was too pretty to be quartz, too flawless and clear in its faceting. The stone caught the light like diamond, because that was what their flesh had become. Black diamond, the rarest and most valuable of all.

The Tok began to scream. So did several others of the men in the room.

Through it all I remained still and kept my face impassive.

* * *

He shouldn’t have tried to hit me. He deserved what he got. He shouldn’t have tried to hit me.

And the man who tried to help him? What did that one deserve?

They are all my enemies, my people’s enemies. They should not have… they should not… Oh, gods. Gods.

The Nightlord cannot be controlled, child. He can only be unleashed. And you asked him not to kill.

* * *

I could not show weakness.

So while the two men flailed and screamed, I stepped around them and walked up to the table. Gemd looked at me, his mouth distorted with disgust and disbelief.

I said, “Take all the time you like to discuss my order.” Then I turned to leave.

“W-wait.” Gemd. I paused, not allowing my eyes to linger on the two men. Rish was almost half diamond now, the stone creeping over his arm and chest, down one leg and up the side of his neck. He lay on the floor, no longer screaming, though he still keened in a low, agonized voice. Perhaps his throat had turned to diamond already. The other man was reaching toward his comrades, begging for a sword so he could cut off his arm. A young fellow—one of Gemd’s heirs, to judge by his features—drew his blade and edged close, but then another man grabbed him and hauled him back. Another wise decision; flecks of black no larger than a grain of sand sparkled on the floor around the two men. Bits of Rish’s flesh, transformed and cast about by his flailing. As I watched, the Tok fell onto his good hand, and his thumb touched one of the flecks. It, too, began to change.

“Stop this,” Gemd murmured.

“I did not start it.”

He cursed swiftly in his language. “Stop it, gods damn you! What kind of monster are you?”

I could not help laughing. That there was no humor in it, only bitter self-loathing, would be lost on them.

“I’m an Arameri,” I said.

One of the men behind us abruptly fell silent, and I turned. Not the Tok; he was still shrieking while blackness ate its way down his spine. The diamond had spread to encompass Rish’s mouth and was consuming the whole lower half of his face. It seemed to have stopped on his torso, though it was working its way down his remaining leg. I suspected it would stop altogether once it had consumed the nonvital parts of his body, leaving him mutilated and perhaps mad, but alive. I had, after all, asked Nahadoth not to kill.

I averted my eyes, lest I give myself away by throwing up.

“Understand this,” I said. The horror in my heart had crept into my voice; it lent me a deeper timbre, and a hint of resonance, that I had not possessed before. “If letting these men die will save my people, then they will die.” I leaned forward, putting my hands on the table. “If killing everyone in this room, everyone in this palace, will save my people, then know, Gemd: I will do it. You would, too, if you were me.”

He had been staring at Rish. Now his eyes jerked toward me, and I saw realization and loathing flicker through them. Was there a hint of self-loathing amid that hatred? Had he believed me when I’d said you would, too? Because he would. Anyone would, I understood now. There was nothing we mortals would not do when it came to protecting our loved ones.

I would tell myself that for the rest of my life.

“Enough.” I barely heard Gemd over the screams, but I saw his mouth move. “Enough. I’ll call off the attack.”

“And disband the alliance?”

“I can speak only for Menchey.” There was something broken in his tone. He did not meet my eyes. “The others may choose to continue.”

“Then warn them, Minister Gemd. The next time I’m forced to do this, two hundred will suffer instead of two. If they press the issue, two thousand. You chose this war, not I. I will not fight fairly.”

Gemd looked at me in mute hatred. I held his eyes awhile longer, then turned to the two men, one of whom still shuddered and whimpered on the floor. The other, Rish, seemed catatonic. I walked over to them. The