The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (36 page)

And people, filling this glorious space. I was stunned to see the enormous number present, all of them granted special dispensation to stay in Sky for this one night. There must have been a thousand people in the room: preening highbloods and the most officious of the Salon’s officials, kings and queens of lands far more important than mine, famous artists and courtesans, everybody who was anybody. I had spent the past few days wholly absorbed in my own troubles, so I had not noticed carriages coming and going all day, as they must have been to bring so many to Sky. My own fault.

I would have happily gone into the room and merged with the crowd as best I could. They all wore white, which was traditional for formal events in Sky. Only I wore a color. But I wouldn’t have been able to disappear in any case, because when I entered the room and stopped at the top of the stairs, a servant nearby—clad in a strange white formal livery that I’d never seen before—cleared his throat and bellowed, loudly enough to make me wince, “The Lady Yeine Arameri, chosen heir of Dekarta, benevolent guardian of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms! Our guest of honor!”

This obliged me to stop at the top of the steps, as every eye in the room turned to me.

I had never stood before such a horde in my life. Panic filled me for a moment, along with the utter conviction that they knew. How could they not? There was polite, restrained applause. I saw smiles on many faces, but no true friendliness. Interest, yes—the kind of interest one holds for a prize heifer that is soon to be slaughtered for the plates of the privileged. What will she taste like? I imagined in their gleaming, avid regard. If only we could have a bite.

My mouth went dry. My knees locked, which was the only thing that stopped me from turning on my uncomfortably high heels and running out of the room. That, and one other realization: that my parents had met at an Arameri ball. Perhaps in this very room. My mother had stood on the same steps and faced her own roomful of people who hated and feared her behind their smiles.

She would have smiled back at them.

So I fixed my eyes on a point just above the crowd. I smiled, and lifted my hand in a polite and regal wave, and hated them back. It made the fear recede, so that I could then descend the steps without tripping or worrying whether I looked graceful.

Halfway down I looked across the ballroom and saw Dekarta on a dais opposite the door. Somehow they had hauled his huge stone chair-not-throne from the audience chamber. He watched me from within its hard embrace with his colorless eyes.

I inclined my head. He blinked. Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow.

The crowd opened and closed around me like lips.

I made my way through sycophants who attempted to curry favor by making small talk, and more honest folk who merely gave me cool or sardonic nods. Eventually I reached an area where the crowd thinned, which happened to be near a refreshment table. I got a glass of wine from the attendant, drained it, got another, and then spotted arched glass doors to one side. Praying they would open and were not merely decorative, I went to them and found that they led outside, to a wide patio where a few guests had already congregated to take in the magically warmed night air. Some whispered to one another as I went past, but most were too engrossed in secrets or seduction or any of the usual activities that take place in the shadowy corners of such events. I stopped at the railing only because it was there, and spent a while willing my hand to stop shaking so I could drink my wine.

A hand came around me from behind, covering my own and helping me steady the glass. I knew who it was even before I felt that familiar cool stillness against my back.

“They mean for this night to break you,” said the Nightlord. His breath stirred my hair, tickled my ear, and set my skin tingling with half a dozen delicious memories. I closed my eyes, grateful for the simplicity of desire.

“They’re succeeding,” I said.

“No. Kinneth made you stronger than that.” He took the glass from my hand and lifted it out of my sight, as if he meant to drink it himself. Then he returned the glass to me. What had been white wine—some incredibly light vintage that had hardly any color and tasted of flowers—was now a red so dark that it seemed black in the balcony light. Even when I raised the glass to the sky, the stars were only a faint glimmer through a lens of deepest burgundy. I sipped experimentally, and shivered as the taste moved over my tongue. Sweet, but with a hint of almost metallic bitterness, and a salty aftertaste like tears.

“And we have made you stronger,” said Nahadoth. He spoke into my hair; one of his arms slid around me from behind, pulling me against him. I could not help relaxing against him.

I turned in the half circle of his arm and stopped in surprise. The man who gazed down at me did not look like Nahadoth, not in any guise I’d ever seen. He looked human, Amn, and his hair was a rather dull blond nearly as short as mine. His face was handsome enough, but it was neither the face he wore to please me nor the face that Scimina had shaped. It was just a face. And he wore white. That, more than anything else, shocked me silent.

Nahadoth—because it was him, I felt that, no matter what he looked like—looked amused. “The Lord of Night is not welcome at any celebration of Itempas’s servants.”

“I just didn’t think…” I touched his sleeve. It was just cloth—something finely made, part of a jacket that looked vaguely military. I stroked it and was disappointed when it did not curl around my fingers in welcome.

“I made the substance of the universe. Did you think white thread would be a challenge?”

That startled me into a laugh, which startled me silent in the next instant. I had never heard him joke before. What did it mean?

He lifted a hand to my cheek, sobering. It struck me that though he was pretending to be human, he was nothing like his daytime self. Nothing about him was human beyond his appearance—not his movements, not the speed with which he shifted from one expression to another, especially not his eyes. A human mask simply wasn’t enough to conceal his true nature. It was so obvious to my eyes that I marveled the other people out on the balcony weren’t screaming and running, terrified to find the Nightlord so close.

“My children think I am going mad,” he said, stroking my face ever so gently. “Kurue tells me I risk all our hopes over you. She’s right.”

I frowned in confusion. “My life is still yours. I’ll abide by our agreement, even though I’ve lost the contest. You acted in good faith.”

He sighed, to my surprise leaning forward to rest his forehead against mine. “Even now you speak of your life as a commodity, sold for our ‘good faith.’ What we have done to you is obscene.”

I had no idea what to say to that; I was too stunned. It occurred to me, in a flash of insight, that this was what Kurue feared—Nahadoth’s fickle, impassioned sense of honor. He had gone to war to vent his grief over Enefa; he had kept himself and his children enslaved out of sheer stubbornness rather than forgive Itempas. He could have dealt with his brother differently, in ways that wouldn’t have risked the whole universe and destroyed so many lives. But that was the problem: when the Nightlord cared for something, his decisions became irrational, his actions extreme.

And he was beginning, against all reason, to care for me.

Flattering. Frightening. I could not guess what he might do in such a circumstance. But, more important, I realized what this meant in the short term. In only a few hours, I would die, and he would be left to mourn yet again.

How strange that this thought made my own heart ache, too.

I cupped the Nightlord’s face between my hands and sighed, closing my eyes so that I could feel the person beneath the mask. “I’m sorry,” I said. And I was. I had never meant to cause him pain.

He did not move, and neither did I. It felt good, leaning against his solidity, resting in his arms. It was an illusion, but for the first time in a long while, I felt safe.

I don’t know how long we stood there, but we both heard it when the music changed. I straightened and looked around; the handful of guests who had been on the patio with us had gone inside. That meant it was midnight—time for the main dance of the evening, the highlight of the ball.

“Do you want to go in?” Nahadoth asked.

“No, of course not. I’m fine out here.”

“They dance to honor Itempas.”

I looked at him, confused. “Why should I care about that?”

His smile made me feel warm inside. “Have you turned from the faith of your ancestors so completely?”

“My ancestors worshipped you.”

“And Enefa, and Itempas, and our children. The Darre were one of the few races who honored us all.”

I sighed. “It’s been a long time since those days. Too much has changed.”

“You have changed.”

I could say nothing to that; it was true.

On impulse, I stepped away from him and took his hands, pulling him into dancing position. “To the gods,” I said. “All of them.”

It was so gratifying to surprise him. “I have never danced to honor myself.”

“Well, there you are.” I shrugged, and waited for the start of a new chorus before pulling him to step with me. “A first time for everything.”

Nahadoth looked amused, but he moved easily in time with me despite the complicated steps. Every noble child learned such dances, but I had never really liked them. Amn dances reminded me of the Amn themselves—cold, rigid, more concerned with appearance than enjoyment. Yet here, on a dark balcony under a moonless sky, partnered by a god, I found myself smiling as we wheeled back and forth. It was easy to remember the steps with him exerting gentle guiding pressure against my hands and back. Easy to appreciate the grace of the timing with a partner who glided like the wind. I closed my eyes, leaning into the turns, sighing in pleasure as the music swelled to match my mood.

When the music stopped, I leaned against him and wished the night would never end. Not just because of what awaited me come dawn.

“Will you be with me tomorrow?” I asked, meaning the true Nahadoth, not his daytime self.

“I am permitted to remain myself by daylight for the duration of the ceremony.”

“So that Itempas can ask you to return to him.”

His breath tickled my hair, a soft, cold laugh. “And this time I shall, but not the way he expects.”

I nodded, listening to the slow, strange pulse of his heart. It sounded distant, echoing, as if I heard it across miles. “What will you do if you win? Kill him?”

His moment of silence warned me before the actual answer came. “I don’t know.”

“You still love him.”

He did not answer, though he stroked my back once. I didn’t fool myself. It was not me he meant to reassure.

“It’s all right,” I said. “I understand.”

“No,” he said. “No mortal could understand.”

I said nothing more, and he said nothing more, and thus did the long night pass.

I had endured too many nights with little sleep. I must’ve fallen asleep standing there, because suddenly I was blinking and lifting my head, and the sky was a different color—a hazy gradient of soupy black through gray. The new moon hovered just above the horizon, a darker blotch against the lightening sky.

Nahadoth’s fingers squeezed again gently, and I realized he’d woken me. He was gazing toward the balcony doors. Viraine stood there, and Scimina, and Relad. Their white garments seemed to glow, casting their faces into shadow.

“Time,” said Viraine.

I searched inside myself and was pleased to find stillness rather than fear.

“Yes,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Inside, the ball was still in full swing, though there were fewer people dancing now than I had last seen. Dekarta’s throne stood empty on the other side of the throng. Perhaps he had left early to prepare.

Once we entered Sky’s quiet, preternaturally bright halls, Nahadoth let his guise slip; his hair lengthened and his clothing changed color between one step and another. Pale-skinned again; too many of my relatives around, I supposed. We rode a lift upward, emerging on what I now recognized as Sky’s topmost floor. As we exited, I saw the doors to the solarium standing open, the manicured forest beyond shadowed and quiet. The only light came from the palace’s central spire, which jutted up from the solarium’s heart, glowing like the moon. A fainter path ran from our feet into the trees, directly toward the spire’s base.

But I was distracted by the figures who stood on either side of the door.

Kurue I recognized at once; I had not forgotten the beauty of her gold-silver-platinum wings. Zhakkarn, too, was magnificent in silver armor traced with molten sigils, her helm shining in the light. I had last seen that armor in a dream.

The third figure, between them, was at once less impressive and more strange: a sleek, black-furred cat like the leopards of my homeland, though significantly larger. And no forest had given birth to this leopard, whose fur rippled like waves in an unseen wind, iridescent to matte to a familiar, impossibly deep blackness. So he did look like his father, after all.

I could not help smiling. Thank you, I mouthed. The cat bared its teeth back in what could never have been misinterpreted as a snarl, and winked one green, slitted eye.

I had no illusions about their presence. Zhakkarn was not in full battle armor just to impress us with its shine. The second Gods’ War was about to begin, and they were ready. Sieh—well, maybe Sieh was here for me. And Nahadoth…

I looked back at him over my shoulder. He was not watching me or his children. Instead his gaze had turned upward, toward the top of the spire.

Viraine shook his head, apparently deciding not to protest. He glanced at Scimina, who shrugged; at Relad, who glared at him as if to say Why would I possibly care?

(Our eyes met, mine and Relad’s. He was pale, sweat beading his upper lip, but he nodded to me just slightly. I returned the nod.)

“So be it,” Viraine said, and all walked into the solarium, toward that central spire.

AT THE TOP OF THE SPIRE was a room, if it could be called that.