The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - By N. K. Jemisin Page 0,9

a glimpse of a high-cheekboned, pointed face that would one day be handsome.

Where are you taking me? My ability to reason was returning, though slowly. To Viraine?

He uttered a derisive snort. We left the arena and passed into more of the mazelike white halls. Dont be foolish. Were going to hide.

But that man Nahadoth. Now I remembered where Id heard the name. Never whisper it in the dark, read the childrens tales, unless you want him to answer.

Oh, so now hes a man? We just have to keep ahead of him and everything will be fine. The boy ran around a corner, more nimble than me; I stumbled to keep up. He darted his eyes around the corridor, looking for something. Dont worry. I get away from him all the time.

This did not sound wise. I w-want to go to Viraine. I tried to say it with authority, but I was still too frightened, and winded now besides.

The boy responded by stopping, but not because of me. Here! he said, and put his hand against one of the pearlescent walls. Atadie!

The wall opened.

It was like watching ripples in water. The pearly stuff moved away from his hand in steady waves, forming an openinga holea door. Beyond the wall lay an oddly shaped, narrow chamber, not so much a room as a space between. When the door was big enough for us both, the boy pulled me inside.

What is this? I asked.

Dead space in the body of the palace. All these curving corridors and round rooms. Theres another half a palace in between that no one usesexcept me. The boy turned to me and flashed an up-to-no-good grin. We can rest for a little while.

I was beginning to catch my breath, and with it came a weakness that I recognized as the aftermath of adrenaline. The wall had rippled shut behind me, becoming as solid as before. I leaned back against it gingerly at first, then gratefully. And then I examined my rescuer.

He wasnt much smaller than me, maybe nine years old, with the spindly look of a fast grower. Not Amn, not with skin as dark as mine and sharpfold eyes like those of the Tema people. They were a murky, tired green, those eyeslike my own, and my mothers. Maybe his father had been another wandering Arameri.

He was examining me as well. After a moment, his grin widened. Im Sieh.

Two syllables. Sieh Arameri?

Just Sieh. With a childs boneless grace, he stretched his arms above his head. You dont look like much.

I was too tired to take offense. Ive found it useful, I replied, to be underestimated.

Yes. Always good strategy, that. Lightning-quick, he straightened and grew serious. Hell find us if we dont keep moving. En!

I jumped, startled by his shout. But Sieh was looking up. A moment later, a childs yellow kickball fell into his hands.

Puzzled, I looked up. The dead space went up several floors, a featureless triangular shaft; I saw no openings from which the ball could have come. There was certainly no one hovering above who could have thrown the ball to him.

I looked at the boy and suffered a sudden, chilling suspicion.

Sieh laughed at my face and put the ball on the floor. Then he sat on it, cross-legged. The ball held perfectly still beneath him until he was comfortable, and then it rose into the air. It stopped when he was a few feet above the ground and hovered. Then the boy who was not a boy reached out to me.

I wont hurt you, he said. Im helping you, arent I?

I just looked at his hand, pressing myself back against the wall.

I could have led you in a circle, you know. Right back to him.

There was that. After a moment, I took his hand. His grip left no question; this was not a childs strength.

Just a little ways, he said. Then, dangling me like a snared rabbit, he floated us both up through the shaft.

* * *

There is another thing I remember from my childhood. A song, and it went How did it go? Ah, yes. Trickster, trickster / Stole the sun for a prank. / Will you really ride it? / Where will you hide it? / Down by the riverbank

It was not our sun, mind you.

* * *

Sieh opened two ceilings and another wall before finally setting me down in a dead space that was as big as Grandfather Dekartas audience chamber. But it was not the size of this space that