The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

patchwork to piece together. “He must have blamed my father for her leaving. Maybe he convinced himself that she’d come back if Father was dead.”

“Dekarta did not unleash the Death on Darr.”

I stiffened. “What?”

“When Dekarta wants magic done, he uses us. None of us sent the plague to your land.”

“But if you didn’t—”

No. Oh, no.

There was another source of magic in Sky besides the Enefadeh. Another who could wield the gods’ power, albeit weakly. The Death had killed only a dozen people in Darr that year; a minor outbreak by all the usual standards. The best a mortal murderer could do.

“Viraine,” I whispered. My hands clenched into fists. “Viraine.”

He had played the martyr so well—the innocent used and abused by my scheming mother. Meanwhile he had tried to murder my father, knowing she would blame Dekarta and not him. He had waited in the corridors like a vulture while she came to plead with Dekarta for her husband’s life. Perhaps he had revealed himself to her afterward and commiserated with her over Dekarta’s refusal. To lay the groundwork for wooing her back? Yes, that felt like him.

And yet my father had not died. My mother had not returned to Sky. Had Viraine pined for her all these years, hating my father—hating me for thwarting his plans? Had Viraine been the one to raid my mother’s chest of letters? Perhaps he had burned any that referred to him, hoping to forget his youthful folly. Perhaps he’d kept them, fantasizing that the letters contained some vestige of the love he’d never earned.

I would hunt him down. I would see his white hair fall around his face in a red curtain.

There was a faint, skittering sound nearby, like pebbles on the hard Skystuff floor. Or claw tips—

“Such rage,” the Nightlord breathed, his voice all deep crevasses and ice. And he was close, all of a sudden, so close. Right behind me. “Oh, yes. Command me, sweet Yeine. I am your weapon. Give the word, and I will make the pain he inflicted on me tonight seem kind.”

My anger was gone, frozen away. Slowly I took a deep breath, then another, calming myself. No hatred. No fear of whatever the Nightlord had become thanks to my carelessness. I fixed my mind on the dark and the silence, and did not answer. I did not dare.

After a very long while I heard a faint, disappointed sigh. Farther away this time; he had returned to the other side of the room. Slowly I allowed my muscles to unclench.

Dangerous to continue this line of questioning right now. So many secrets to discover, so many pit-traps of emotion. I pushed aside thoughts of Viraine, with an effort.

“My mother wanted to save my father,” I said. Yes. That was a good thing to understand. She must have grown to love him, however strangely the relationship had begun. I knew he’d loved her. I remembered seeing it in his eyes.

“Yes,” said Nahadoth. His voice was as calm as before my lapse. “Her desperation made her vulnerable. Of course we took advantage.”

I almost grew angry, but caught myself in time.

“Of course. So you persuaded her then to allow Enefa’s soul into her child. And…” I took a deep breath. Paused, marshaling my strength. “My father knew?”

“I don’t know.”

If the Enefadeh did not know what my father thought of the matter, then no one here would know. I dared not go back to Darr to ask Beba.

So I chose to believe that Father knew and loved me anyway. That Mother, beyond her initial misgivings, had chosen to love me. That she had kept the ugly secrets of her family from me out of some misguided hope that I would have a simple, peaceful destiny in Darr… at least until the gods came back to claim what was theirs.

I needed to stay calm, but I could not hold it all in. I closed my eyes and began to laugh. So many hopes had been rested on me.

“Am I allowed none of my own?” I whispered.

“What would you want?” Nahadoth asked.

“What?”

“If you could be free.” There was something in his voice that I did not understand. Wistfulness? Yes, and something more. Kindness? Fondness? No, that was impossible. “What would you want for yourself?”

The question made my heart ache. I hated him for asking it. It was his fault that my wishes would never come true—his fault, and my parents’, and Dekarta’s, and even Enefa’s.

“I’m tired of being what everyone else has made me,” I said. “I want to be myself.”

“Don’t be a child.”

I looked up, startled and angry, though of course there was nothing to see. “What?”

“You are what your creators and experiences have made you, like every other being in this universe. Accept that and be done; I tire of your whining.”

If he had said it in his usual cold voice, I would have walked out in affront. But he truly did sound tired, and I remembered the price he had paid for my selfishness.

The air stirred nearby again, soft, almost a touch. When he spoke, he was closer. “The future, however, is yours to make—even now. Tell me what you want.”

It was something I had never truly thought about, beyond vengeance. I wanted… all the usual things that any young woman wanted. Friends. Family. Happiness for those I loved.

And also…

I shivered, though the chamber was not cold. The very strangeness of this new thought made me suspicious. Was this some sign of Enefa’s influence?

Accept that and be done.

“I…” I closed my mouth. Swallowed. Tried again. “I want… something different for the world.” Ah, but the world would indeed be different after Nahadoth and Itempas were done with it. A pile of rubble, with humanity a red ruin underneath. “Something better.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.” I clenched my fists, struggling to articulate what I felt, surprised by my own frustration. “Right now, everyone is… afraid.” Closer, yes. I kept at it. “We live at the gods’ mercy and shape our lives around your whims. Even when your quarrels don’t involve us, we die. What would we be like if… if you just… went away?”

“More would die,” said the Nightlord. “Those who worship us would be frightened by our absence. Some would decide it was the fault of others, while those who embrace the new order would resent any who keep the old ways. The wars would last centuries.”

I felt the truth of his words in the pit of my belly, and it left me queasy with horror. But then something touched me—hands, cool and light. He rubbed my shoulders, as if to soothe me.

“But eventually, the battles would end,” he said. “When a fire burns out, new things grow in its wake.”

I felt no lust or rage from him—probably because, for the moment, he felt none from me. He was not like Itempas, unable to accept change, bending or breaking everything around him to his will. Nahadoth bent himself to the will of others. For a moment the thought made me sad.

“Are you ever yourself?” I asked. “Truly yourself, not just the way others see you?”

The hands went still, then withdrew. “Enefa asked me that once.”

“I’m sorry—”

“No.” There was sorrow in his voice. It never faded, for him. How terrible to be a god of change and endure grief unending.

“When I am free,” he said, “I will choose who shapes me.”

“But…” I frowned. “That isn’t freedom.”

“At the dawn of reality I was myself. There was nothing and no one else to influence me—only the Maelstrom that had given birth to me, and it did not care. I tore open my flesh and spilled out the substance of what became your realm: matter and energy and my own cold, black blood. I devoured my mind and reveled in the novelty of pain.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. I swallowed hard and tried to will them away, but abruptly the hands returned,