The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

When I turned, Sieh had finally stopped laughing. He sat on the edge of the bed, watching me, thoughtful.

I could be older, he said softly. If youd rather have me older, I mean. I dont have to be a child.

I stared at him and did not know whether to feel pity, nausea, or both at once.

I want you to be what you are, I said.

His expression grew solemn. That isnt possible. Not while Im in this prison. He touched his chest.

Do I did not want to call them my family. Do others ask you to be older?

He smiled. It was, most horribly, very much a childs smile. Younger, usually.

Nausea won. I put a hand to my mouth and turned away. Never mind what Ras Onchi thought. I would never call myself Arameri, never.

He sighed and came over, wrapping arms around me from behind and resting his head on my shoulder. I did not understand his constant need to touch me. I didnt mind, but it made me wonder who he cuddled when I was not around. I wondered what price they demanded of him in exchange.

I was ancient when your kind first began to speak and use fire, Yeine. These petty torments are nothing to me.

Thats beside the point, I said. Youre still I groped for words. Human might be taken as an insult.

He shook his head. Only Enefas death hurts me, and that was no mortals doing.

In that moment there was a deep, basso shudder throughout the palace. My skin prickled; in the bathroom something rattled for an instant, then went still.

Sunset, Sieh said. He sounded pleased as he straightened and went to one of my windows. The western sky was layered clouds, spectrum-painted. My father returns.

Where had he gone? I wondered, though I was distracted by another thought. The monster of my nightmares, the beast who had hunted me through walls, was father to Sieh.

He tried to kill you yesterday, I said.

Sieh shook his head dismissively, then clapped his hands, making me jump. En. Naiasouwamehikach.

It was gibberish, spoken in a singsong lilt, and for an instant while the sound lingered, my perception changed. I became aware of the faint echoes of each syllable from the rooms walls, overlapping and blending. I noticed the way the air felt as the sounds rippled through it. Along my floor into the walls. Through the walls to the support column that held up Sky. Down that column to the earth.

And the sound was carried along as the earth rolled over like a sleepy child, as we hurtled around the sun through the cycle of seasons and the stars around us did a graceful cartwheel turn

I blinked, momentarily surprised to find myself still in the room. But then I understood. The earliest decades of the scrivening arts history were littered with its founders deaths, until theyd restricted themselves to the written form of the language. It amazed me now that theyd even tried. A tongue whose meaning depended upon not only syntax and pronunciation and tone, but also ones position in the universe at any given momenthow could they even have imagined mastering that? It was beyond any mortal.

Siehs yellow ball appeared out of nowhere and bounced into his hands. Go and see, then find me, he commanded, and threw the ball away. It bounced against a nearby wall, then vanished.

Ill deliver your message to Kurue, he said, heading toward the wall beside my bed. Consider our offer, Yeine, but do it quickly, will you? Time passes so swiftly with your kind. Dekarta will be dead before you know it.

He spoke to the wall and it opened before him, revealing another narrow dead space. The last thing I saw was his grin as it closed behind him.

7

Love

HOW STRANGE. I have only now realized that this whole affair was nothing more than one family squabble pitted against another.

* * *

From my window in Sky, it seemed as though I could see the whole of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. That was a fallacy, I knew; scriveners have proven that the world is round. Yet it was easy to imagine. So many winking lights, like stars on the ground.

My people were audacious builders once. We carved our cities into mountainsides and positioned our temples to make a calendar of the starsbut we could never have built anything like Sky. Nor could the Amn, of course, not without the aid of their captive gods, but this is not the main reason Sky is deeply, profoundly wrong in Darre eyes. It is blasphemy to separate oneself from the earth and look down on it like a god. It is more than blasphemy; it is dangerous. We can never be gods, after allbut we can become something less than human with frightening ease.

Still I could not help drinking in the view. It is important to appreciate beauty, even when it is evil.

I was very tired. I had been in Sky for little more than a day, and so much of my life had changed. In Darr, I was effectively dead. I had left no heirs, and now the council would appoint some other young woman, of some other lineage, as ennu. My grandmother would be so disappointedand yet this was nothing more than what she had feared all along. I was not dead, but I had become Arameri, and that was just as bad.