The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - By N. K. Jemisin Page 0,98
Skyfather, at the succession ceremony. At every succession ceremony. He would be there to see me die. He would put his blessing on it.
Monstrous. All my life, I had worshipped him.
To distract myself from my own whirling thoughts, I pinched the bridge of my nose with my fingers. So who was the sacrifice last time? Some other hapless relative dragged into the family nightmare?
No, no, said Sieh. He got up, stretched again, then bent double and began to stand on his hands, wobbling alarmingly. He spoke in between puffing breaths. An Arameri clan head must be willing to kill every person in this palace if Itempas should require it. To prove themselves, usually the prospective head must sacrifice someone close.
I considered this. So I was chosen because neither Relad nor Scimina is close to anyone?
Sieh wobbled too much, tumbled to the ground, then rolled upright at once, examining his nails as if the fall hadnt happened. Well, I suppose. No ones really sure why Dekarta chose you. But for Dekarta himself, the sacrifice was Ygreth.
The name teased my memory with familiarity, though I could not immediately place it with a face. Ygreth?
Sieh looked at me in surprise. His wife. Your maternal grandmother. Kinneth didnt tell you?
22
Such Rage
ARE YOU STILL ANGRY WITH ME?
No.
That was quick.
Anger is pointless.
I disagree. I think anger can be very powerful under the right circumstances. Let me tell you a story to illustrate. Once upon a time there was a little girl whose father murdered her mother.
How awful.
Yes, you understand that sort of betrayal. The little girl was very young at the time, so the truth was hidden from her. Perhaps she was told her mother abandoned the family. Perhaps her mother vanished; in their world, such things happened. But the little girl was very clever, and she had loved her mother dearly. She pretended to believe the lies, but in reality, she bided her time.
When she was older, wiser, she began to ask questionsbut not of her father, or anyone else who claimed to care for her. These could not be trusted. She asked her slaves, who hated her already. She asked an innocent young scrivener who was smitten with her, brilliant and easy to manipulate. She asked her enemies, the heretics, whom her family had persecuted for generations. None of them had any reason to lie, and between them all she pieced together the truth. Then she set all her mind and heart and formidable will on vengeance because that is what a daughter does when her mother has been murdered.
Ah, I see. But I wonder; did the little girl love her father?
I wonder that, too. Once, certainly, she must have; children cannot help loving. But what of later? Can love turn to hate so easily, so completely? Or did she weep inside even as she set herself against him? I do not know these things. But I do know that she set in motion a series of events that would shake the world even after her death, and inflict her vengeance on all humankind, not just her father. Because in the end, we are all complicit.
All of you? That seems a bit extreme.
Yes. Yes, it is. But I hope she gets what she wants.
* * *
This, then, was the Arameri succession: a successor was chosen by the family head. If she was the sole successor, she would be required to convince her most cherished person to willingly die on her behalf, wielding the Stone and transferring the master sigil to her brow. If there was more than one successor, they competed to force the designated sacrifice to choose one or the other. My mother had been sole heir; whom would she have been forced to kill, had she not abdicated? Perhaps she had cultivated Viraine as a lover for more than one reason. Perhaps she could have convinced Dekarta himself to die for her. Perhaps this was why she had never come back after her marriage, after my conception.
So many pieces had fallen into place. More yet floated, indistinct. I could feel how close I was to understanding it all, but would I have time? There was the rest of the night, the next day, and another whole night and day beyond that. Then the ball, and the ceremony, and the end.
More than enough time, I decided.
You cant, Sieh said again urgently, trotting along beside me. Yeine, Naha needs to heal, just as I did. He cant do that with mortal eyes shaping him