The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (9 page)

“You have offered me courtesy,” he said. “I offer cooperation in return.”

I could not help swallowing, remembering my dream of the black star. If it was true—it had felt true, but who could say with dreams?—then Nahadoth was more than capable of destroying the world, even diminished as he was. Yet it was his simple gesture of putting out the lights that filled me with awe. Tired as I was, I suppose that mattered more to me than the whole of the world.

“Thank you,” I managed at last. “And—” There was no subtle way to say it. “Will you leave now? Please?”

He was a silhouette. “All that happens in darkness, I see,” he said. “Every whisper, every sigh, I hear. Even if I leave, some part of me will remain. That cannot be helped.”

Only later would his words disturb me. For now, I was just grateful. “It will be enough,” I said. “Thank you.”

He inclined his head, then vanished—not all at once, as Sieh had done, but fading over the space of several breaths. Even after I could no longer see him, I felt his presence, but eventually that faded, too. I felt, properly or not, alone.

I climbed back into bed and was asleep in a span of minutes.

There is a tale of the Nightlord that the priests allow.

Once long ago, before the war between the gods, the Nightlord descended to earth, seeking entertainment. He found a lady in a tower—the wife of some ruler, shut away and lonely. It was not difficult for him to seduce her. Some while later, the woman gave birth to a child. It was not her husband’s. It was not human. It was the first of the great demons, and after it and others like it were born, the gods realized they had made a terrible mistake. So they hunted their own offspring, slaying them down to the tiniest infant. The woman, who had been turned out by her husband and was now deprived of her child as well, froze to death alone in a snowy forest.

My grandmother told me a different version of the tale. After the demon-children were hunted down, the Nightlord found the woman again and begged her forgiveness for what he’d done. In atonement he built her another tower and gave her riches so that she might live in comfort, and he visited her ever afterward to see that she was all right. But she never forgave him, and eventually she killed herself for grief.

The priests’ lesson: beware the Nightlord, for his pleasure is a mortal’s doom. My grandmother’s lesson: beware love, especially with the wrong man.

THE NEXT MORNING, a servant arrived to help me dress and groom myself. Ridiculous. Still, it seemed appropriate to at least try to behave like an Arameri, so I bit my tongue while she fussed about me. She did my buttons and shifted my clothing minutely as if that would somehow make me look more elegant, then brushed my short hair and helped me put on makeup. The last I did actually need help with, as Darre women do not wear cosmetics. I could not help feeling some consternation as she turned the mirror to show me all in paint. It didn’t look bad. Just… strange.

I must have frowned too much, because the servant grew anxious and began rummaging in the large bag she’d brought with her. “I have just the thing,” she said, and lifted out something that I thought at first was a party masque. It certainly looked like one, with a wire eyeframe attached to a satin-wrapped rod. But the masque itself was peculiar, seeming to consist only of a pair of bright blue feathery objects like the eyes of a peacock’s tail.

Then they blinked. I started, looked closer, and saw that they were not feathers at all.

“All the highblood ladies use these,” said the servant eagerly. “They’re very fashionable right now. Watch.” She lifted the frame to her face so that the blue eyes superimposed her own rather pretty gray ones. She blinked, lowered the frame—and suddenly her eyes were bright blue, surrounded by long, exotically thick black lashes. I stared, then saw that the eyes in the frame were now gray, staring blankly and fringed with the servant’s own very ordinary lashes. Then she put the frame back to her face, and her eyes were her own again.

“You see?” She held the rod out to me. Now I could see the tiny black sigils, barely visible, etched along its length. “Blue would look lovely with that dress.”

I recoiled, and it took me another few seconds to speak through my revulsion. “Wh-whose eyes were they?”

“What?”

“The eyes, the eyes. Where did they come from?”

The servant stared at me as if I’d asked where the moon had come from. “I don’t know, my lady,” she said after a flustered pause. “I could inquire, if you like.”

“No,” I said, very softly. “There’s no need.”

I thanked the servant for her assistance, praised her skill, and let her know I would have no further need of a dressing servant for the remainder of my stay in Sky.

Another servant arrived shortly afterward with word from T’vril: as expected, Relad had declined my request for a meeting. As it was a rest day, there was no Consortium meeting, so I ordered breakfast and a copy of the latest financial reports on my assigned nations.

As I studied the reports over raw fish and poached fruit—I did not dislike Amn food, but they never seemed to know what to cook and what to leave alone—Viraine dropped by. To see how I was doing, he said, but I had not forgotten my earlier sense that he wanted something of me. I felt that more strongly than ever as he paced about my room.

“Interesting to see you taking such an active interest in governance,” he said, as I set aside a sheaf of papers. “Most Arameri don’t bother even with basic economics.”

“I rule—ruled—a poor nation,” I said, draping a cloth over the remains of my breakfast. “I’ve never had that luxury.”

“Ah, yes. But you’ve taken steps to remedy that poverty, haven’t you? I heard Dekarta commenting on it this morning. You ordered your assigned kingdoms to resume trade with Darr.”

I paused in the midst of drinking my tea. “He’s watching what I do?”

“He watches all his heirs, Lady Yeine. Very little else entertains him these days.”

I thought of the magic orb I’d been given, through which I had contacted my nations the night before. I wondered how difficult it would be to create an orb that would not alert the person being observed.

“Have you secrets to hide already?” Viraine raised his eyebrows at my silence, amused. “Visitors in the night, secret trysts, conspiracies afoot?”

I have never possessed the innate talent for lying. Fortunately, when my mother realized this, she taught me alternative tactics. “That would seem to be the order of business here,” I said. “Though I haven’t tried to kill anyone yet. I haven’t turned the future of our civilization into a contest for my amusement.”

“If those small things trouble you, Lady, you won’t last long here,” Viraine said. He moved to sit in a chair across from me, steepling his fingers. “Would you like some advice? From someone who was once a newcomer here himself?”

“I welcome your counsel, Scrivener Viraine.”

“Don’t get involved with the Enefadeh.”

I considered whether to stare at him or feign ignorance and ask what he meant. I chose to stare.

“Sieh seems to have taken a liking to you,” he said. “He does that sometimes, like a child. And like a child, he’s affectionate; he amuses and exasperates; he’s very easy to love. Don’t.”

“I’m aware that he’s not truly a child.”

“Are you aware that he’s killed as many people over the years as Nahadoth?”

I could not help flinching. Viraine smiled.

“He is a child, mind you—not in age, but in nature. He acts on impulse. He has a child’s creativity… a child’s cruelty. And he is Nahadoth’s, blood and soul. Just think about that, Lady. The Nightlord, living embodiment of all that we who serve the Bright fear and despise. Sieh is his firstborn son.”

I did think about it. But strangely, the image that came most clearly to mind was Sieh’s utter contentment when I’d put an arm around him that first night. Later I would understand that I had already begun to love Sieh, possibly in that very moment. Some part of me agreed with Viraine: to love such a creature was beyond foolish, edging into suicidal. Yet I did.

Viraine saw me shudder. With perfect solicitousness he came over and touched my shoulder. “You aren’t entirely surrounded by enemies,” he said gently, and so discomfited was I that for a moment I actually took comfort from his words. “T’vril seems to like you, too—though that isn’t surprising, given his history. And you have me, Yeine. I was your mother’s friend before she left Sky; I can be yours as well.”

If he had not spoken those last words, I might have indeed considered him a friend.

“Thank you, Scrivener Viraine,” I said. For once, thank the gods, my Darre nature did not assert itself. I tried to sound sincere. Tried not to show my instant dislike and suspicion. Judging by his pleased look, I succeeded.

He left, and I sat silent in his wake for a long time, thinking.

It would occur to me shortly thereafter that Viraine had warned me off only Sieh, not Nahadoth.

I needed to know more about my mother.

Viraine had said he was her friend. Everything I knew of my mother said this was a lie. Viraine’s strange mix of solicitousness and nonchalance, his callous help and false comfort—no. My mother had always valued people who were straightforward in their dealings with others. I could not imagine her being friendly toward, much less close to, someone like Viraine.

But I had no idea where to begin learning more about my mother. The obvious source for information was Dekarta, though I had no desire to ask him for the intimate details of my mother’s past in front of the entire Salon. A private meeting, though… yes. That would suffice.

Not yet, though. Not until I understood better why he had brought me to Sky in the first place.

That left other members of the Central Family, some of whom were more than old enough to have remembered the days when my mother was heir. But T’vril’s warning lingered in my mind; any of the Central Family who truly had been friends to my mother were off doing family business, no doubt to keep themselves apart and safe from the viper pit that was life in Sky. No one who remained would speak honestly to me. They were Dekarta’s people—or Scimina’s, or Relad’s.

Ah, but there was an idea. Relad.

He had refused my request for a meeting. Protocol dictated that I not try again—but protocol was a guideline, not an absolute, and among family protocol took whatever form its members permitted. Perhaps a man used to dealing with someone like Scimina would value a direct approach. I went in search of T’vril.

I found him in a spacious, neat little office on one of the palace’s lower levels. The walls glowed down here, even though it was a bright day outside. This was because the lower levels of the palace were underneath the broadest part of its bulk and cast into perpetual shadow as a result. I could not help noticing that I saw only servants on these levels, most of them wearing the blood sigil that looked like a simple black bar. Distant relatives, I knew now, thanks to Viraine’s explanations. Six generations or more removed from the Central Family.

T’vril was giving instructions to a group of his staff when I arrived. I stopped just beyond the open door, listening idly but not interrupting or making my presence known, as he told a young woman, “No. There won’t be another warning. When the signal comes, you’ll have one chance. If you’re still near the shaft when it comes…” He said nothing more.

The grim silence that fell in the wake of his words was what finally caught my attention. This sounded like more than the usual instructions to clean rooms or deliver food more quickly. I stepped closer to the doorway to listen, and that was when one of T’vril’s people spotted me. He must have made some sort of signal to T’vril, because T’vril immediately looked my way. He stared at me for half a breath, then told his people, “Thank you; that’s all.”

I stood aside to let the servants disperse through the doorway, which they did with a brisk efficiency and lack of chatter that I found unsurprising. T’vril had struck me as the type to run a tight ship. When the room was clear, T’vril bowed me inside and shut the door behind us in deference to my rank.

“How may I help you, Cousin?” he asked.

I wanted to ask him about the shaft, whatever that was, and the signal, whatever that was, and why his staff looked as though he had just announced an execution. It was obvious, though, that he preferred not to speak of it. His movements were ever so slightly forced as he beckoned me to a seat in front of his desk and offered me wine. I saw his hand tremble as he poured it, until he noticed me watching and set the carafe down.

He had saved my life; for that I owed him courtesy. So I said only, “Where do you think Lord Relad might be about now?”

He opened his mouth to reply, then paused, frowning. I saw him consider attempting to dissuade me, then decide against it. He closed his mouth, then said, “The solarium, most likely. He spends most of his idle time there.”

T’vril had shown me this the day before, during my tour of the palace. Sky’s uppermost levels culminated in a number of platforms and airy spires, most of which contained the apartments and entertainments of the fullbloods. The solarium was one of the entertainments: a vast glass-ceilinged chamber of tropical plants, artfully made couches and grottoes, and pools for bathing or… other things. T’vril had not led me far inside during our tour, but I’d caught a glimpse of movement through the fronds and heard a cry of unmistakable ardor. I had not pressed T’vril for a further look, but now it seemed I would have no choice.

“Thank you,” I said, and rose.

“Wait,” he said, and went behind his desk. He rummaged through the drawers for a moment, then straightened, holding a small, beautifully painted ceramic flask. He handed this to me.

“See if that helps,” he said. “He could buy himself bucketsful if he wanted, but he likes being bribed.”

I pocketed the flask and memorized the information. Yet the whole exchange raised a new question. “T’vril, why are you helping me?”

“I wish I knew,” he replied, sounding abruptly weary. “It’s clearly bad for me; that flask cost me a month’s wages. I was saving it for whenever I needed a favor from Relad.”