The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - By N. K. Jemisin Page 0,33
temper. Im not interested in matching her. I said it with more edge than I would have preferred, but I doubted he cared. All I want is to get out of this godsforsaken place alive.
The look he threw me made me feel ill. It wasnt cynical, or even derisive, just horrifyingly matter-of-fact. Youll never get out, that look said, in his flat eyes and weary smile. You have no chance.
But instead of voicing this aloud, Relad spoke with a gentleness that unnerved me more than his scorn. I cant help you, Cousin. But I will offer one piece of advice, if youre willing to listen.
I would welcome it, Cousin.
My sisters favorite weapon is love. If you love anyone, anything, beware. Thats where shell attack.
I frowned in confusion. Id had no important lovers in Darr, produced no children. My parents were already dead. I loved my grandmother, of course, and my uncles and cousins and few friends, but I could not see how
Ah. It was plain as day, once I thought about it. Darr itself. It was not one of Sciminas territories, but she was Arameri; nothing was beyond her reach. I would have to find some means of protecting my people.
Relad shook his head as if reading my mind. You cant protect the things you love, Cousinnot forever. Not completely. Your only real defense is not to love in the first place.
I frowned. Thats impossible. How could any human being live like that?
He smiled, and it made me shiver. Well. Good luck, then.
He beckoned to the women. Both of them rose from their places and came over to his couch, awaiting his next command. That was when I noticed: both were tall, patrician, beautiful in that flat, angular Amn way, and sable-haired. They did not look much like Scimina, but the similarity was undeniable.
Relad gazed at them with such bitterness that for a moment, I felt pity. I wondered whom he had loved and lost. And I wondered when I had decided that Relad was as useless to me as I was to him. Better to struggle alone than rely on this empty shell of a man.
Thank you, Cousin, I replied, and inclined my head. Then I left him to his fantasies.
On my way back to my room, I stopped at Tvrils office and returned the ceramic flask. Tvril put it away without a word.
9
Memories
THERE IS A SICKNESS CALLED the Walking Death. The disease causes tremors, terrible fever, unconsciousness, and in its final stages a peculiar kind of manic behavior. The victim is compelled to rise from the sickbed and walkwalk anywhere, even back and forth in the confines of a room. Walk, while the fever grows so great that the victims skin cracks and bleeds; walk while the brain dies. And then walk a little more.
There have been many outbreaks of the Walking Death over the centuries. When the disease first appeared, thousands died because no one understood how it spread. The walking, you see. Unimpeded, the infected always walk to wherever healthy people can be found. They shed their blood and die there, and thus the sickness is passed on. Now we are wise. Now we build a wall around any place the Death has touched, and we close our hearts to the cries of the healthy trapped within. If they are still alive a few weeks later, we let them out. Survival is not unheard of. We are not cruel.
It escapes no ones notice that the Death afflicts only the laboring classes. Priests, nobles, scholars, wealthy merchants it is more than that they have guards and the resources to quarantine themselves in their citadels and temples. In the early years there were no quarantines, and they still did not die. Unless they rose recently from the lower classes themselves, the wealthy and powerful are immune.
Of course such a plague is nothing natural.
When the Death came to Darr a little while before I was born, no one expected my father to catch it. We were minor nobility, but still nobility. But my paternal grandfather had been a commoner as Darre reckon ita handsome hunter who caught my grandmothers eye. That was enough for the disease, apparently.
Still my father survived.
I will remember later why this is relevant.
* * *
That night as I readied myself for bed, I came out of the bath to find Sieh eating my dinner and reading one of the books Id brought from Darr. The dinner I did not mind. The book was another matter.