The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - By N. K. Jemisin Page 0,141
THOUSAND KINGDOMS,
look out for
THE BROKEN KINGDOMS
Book Two of the Inheritance Trilogy
by N. K. Jemisin
I am a woman plagued by gods.
Sometimes I feel as if theyre everywhere: underfoot, overhead, peering around corners and lurking under bushes. They leave glowing footprints on the sidewalks of my city. (I can see that they have their own favorite paths for sightseeing.) They urinate on the white walls. They dont have to do that, urinate I mean, they just find it amusing to imitate us. I find their names written in splattery light, usually in sacred places. Occasionally they buy souvenirs from me. Not all of them realize I know what they are, but the ones who do buy from me for that precise reason.
Sometimes I love them. Sometimes they try to kill me. I even found one in my trash once. Sounds mad, doesnt it? But its true. Thats why Im telling you this, because there are some parts that even I dont believe, looking back.
The one in the trash, then. Ill start with him.
* * *
Id been up late one nightor morningworking on a painting, and had gone out to toss several empty cans. The muckrakers usually came with their reeking wagons at dawn, carting off the trash to sift for nightsoil and anything else of value, and I didnt want to miss them. I didnt even notice a man there because he smelled like the rest of the trash behind my building. Like something deadwhich, now that I think about it, he probably was.
I tossed the cans and would have gone back inside had I not noticed an odd glimmer from the corner of one eye. I was tired enough that I should have ignored that, too. After five years in this city, I had grown inured to godling leavings. Perhaps one of them had thrown up there after a night of drinking, or spent himself in a tryst amid the thick reek. Most of them liked to do that, spend a week or so playing mortal, before settling into whatever life theyve decided to lead among us. This initiation was generally messy.
So I dont know why I stopped that chilly winter morning. Some instinct told me to turn my head, and I dont know why I listened to it. But I did, and that was when I saw glory awaken in my trash pile.
At first I saw only lines of gold, blazing and bright as the sun Ive never seen, limn the shape of a man. Dewdrops of glimmering silver beaded along his flesh and then ran down it in rivulets, illuminating the texture of skin in smooth relief. I saw some of those rivulets move impossibly upward, igniting the filaments of his hair, the stern, sharp lines of his face.
And as I stood there, my hands wet with paint and my door standing open behind me, forgotten, I saw this glowing man draw a deep breaththis made him shimmer even more beautifullyand open eyes whose color I would never be able to describe, even if I someday learn the words.
But as I stood there, transfixed by those eyes, I saw something else: pain. So much sorrow and grief and anger and guilt, and other emotions I cannot name because when all is said and done, my life has been relatively happy. There are some things one can understand only by experience, and there are some experiences no one wants to share.
* * *
Hmm. Perhaps I should tell you something about me before I go on.
Im an artist. I make my living selling trinkets and souvenirs to out-of-towners. I also paint, though my paintings are mostly just a hobby and not meant for the eyes of others. Aside from this Im just an ordinary woman, no one special. I see gods, but so does everyone; I told you, theyre everywhere. I probably just notice them more because theyre all I can see.
My parents named me Oree. Like the cry of the western weeper-bird; have you heard it? It seems to sob as it calls, oree, gasp, oree, gasp. Most Maroneh girls are named for such sorrowful things. It could be worse; the boys are named for vengeance. Depressing, isnt it? That sort of thing is why I left.
Now. Let me tell you more about the man that I found in the trash.
* * *
He was dead again when I got home, on the day that it all began. This was two months after Id dug him out of my trash. His corpse was in the kitchen, at the table, where hed slit his throat before falling forward into a pool of his own blood. I slipped on the blood coming in, which annoyed me because that meant it was all over the kitchen floor. The smell was so thick and cloying that I could not localize it; this wall or that one? The whole floor or just near the table? I was certain he dripped on the carpet, too, while I dragged him to the bathroom. He was a big man, so it took a while. I wrestled him into the tub as best I could and then filled it with cold water from the roof cistern, partly so that the blood on his clothes wouldnt set, and partly to let him know how angry I was.
Id calmed down somewhatcleaning the kitchen helped me ventby the time I heard a sudden, violent slosh of water from the bathroom. He was often disoriented when he first returned to life, so I waited in the doorway until the sounds of sloshing stilled and his attention fixed on me. He had a strong personality. I could always feel the pressure of his gaze.
Its not fair, I said, for you to make my life harder. Do you understand?
Silence. But he heard me.
Ive cleaned up the worst of the kitchen, but I think there might be some blood on the living room rugs. The smells so thick that I cant find the small patches. Youll have to do those. Ill leave a bucket and brush in the kitchen.
More silence. A scintillating conversationalist, he was.
I sighed. My back hurt from scrubbing the floor. Thanks for making dinner. I didnt mention that I hadnt eaten any. No way to tellwithout tastingif hed gotten blood on the food, too. Im going to bed; its been a long day.
A faint taste of shame wafted on the air. I felt his gaze move away and was satisfied. In the two months hed been living with me, Id come to know him as a man of almost compulsive integrity, predictable as the tolling of a White Hall bell. He did not like it when the scales between us were unbalanced.
I crossed the bathroom, bent over the tub, and felt for his face. I got the crown of his head at first, and marveled as always at the feel of hair textured like my ownsoft-curled, dense but yielding, thick enough to lose my fingers in. The first time Id touched him Id fleetingly thought he was one of my people, because only Maroneh had such hair. Of course I also knew he was something else entirely, something not human, but that early surge of fellow-feeling had never quite faded. So I leaned down and kissed his brow, savoring the feel of soft, smooth heat beneath my lips. He was always hot to the touch. Assuming we could come to some agreement on the sleeping arrangements, next winter I could save a fortune on firewood.
If he was still around.
Good night, I murmured, and then went to bed.
1. Initial compilation by First Scrivener and Order of the White Flame Ordinate Sefim Arameri, in the 55th year of the Bright. Subsequent revisions by First Scriveners Comman Knorn/Arameri (170), Latise Arameri (1144), Bir Get/Arameri (1721), and Viraine Derreye/Arameri (2224).
2. The subjects do not refer to themselves as such, but this terminology was agreed upon per the Munae Scrivan, 7th Reiterate, year 230 of the Bright.
3. Defined as magic per Litaria standard terminology, 1st progression.
4. See On Magic, volume 12.
5. As observed in the Pells War, the Ulan Uprising, and other occasions.
6. Hereinafter referred to as aetheric per Litaria standard terminology, 4th progression.
7. Scrivener Pjors, in The Limitations of Mortality (Munae Scrivan, pp. 4098), argues that no other mortals have been able to achieve comparable power, and therefore the Conspirators abilities clearly exceed the material. Consensus within the Scriveners College and Litaria holds that this is the purposeful doing of Our Lord, who intended that the Conspirators retain enough godly might to be of use in the aftermath of the Gods War.
8. Family Notes, various, volumes 12, 15, 24, and 37.