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 can’t,” Sieh said again urgently, trotting along beside me. “Yeine, Naha needs to heal, just as I did. He can’t do that with mortal eyes shaping him—”
“I won’t look at him, then.”
“It’s not that simple! When he’s weak, he’s more dangerous than ever; he has trouble controlling himself. You shouldn’t—” His voice dropped an octave suddenly, breaking like that of a youth in puberty, and he cursed under his breath and stopped. I walked on, and was not surprised when I heard him stamp the floor behind me and shout, “You are the stubbornest, most infuriating mortal I’ve ever had to put up with!”
“Thank you,” I called back. There was a curve up ahead; I stopped before rounding it. “Go and rest in my room,” I said. “I’ll read you a story when I get back.”
What he snarled in reply, in his own tongue, needed no translation. But the walls did not fall in, and I did not turn into a frog, so he couldn’t have been that angry.
Zhakkarn had told me where to find Nahadoth. She had looked at me for a long time before saying it, reading my face with eyes that had assessed a warrior’s determination since the dawn of time. That she’d told me was a compliment—or a warning. Determination could easily become obsession. I did not care.
In the middle of the lowermost residential level, Zhakkarn had said, Nahadoth had an apartment. The palace was perpetually shadowed here by its own bulk, and in the center there would be no windows. All the Enefadeh had dwellings on that level, for those unpleasant occasions when they needed to sleep and eat and otherwise care for their semimortal bodies. Zhakkarn had not mentioned why they’d chosen such an unpleasant location, but I thought I knew. Down there, just above the oubliette, they could be closer to Enefa’s Stone than to Itempas’s usurped sky. Perhaps the lingering feel of her presence was a comfort, given that they suffered so much in her name.
The level was silent when I stepped out of the lift alcove. None of the palace’s mortal complement lived here—not that I blamed them. Who would want the Nightlord for a neighbor? Unsurprisingly, the level seemed unusually gloomy; the palace walls did not glow so brightly here. Nahadoth’s brooding presence permeated the whole level.
But when I rounded the last curve, I was briefly blinded by a flash of unexpected brightness. In the afterimage of that flash I had seen a woman, bronze-skinned and silver-haired, almost as tall as Zhakkarn and sternly beautiful, kneeling in the corridor as if to pray. The light had come from the wings on her back, covered in mirror-bright feathers of overlapping precious metals. I had seen her once before, this woman, in a dream—
Then I blinked my watering eyes and looked again, and the light was gone. In its place, heavyset, plain Kurue was laboriously climbing to her feet, glaring at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, for the interruption of whatever meditations a goddess required. “But I need to speak with Nahadoth.”
There was only one door in this corridor, and Kurue stood in front of it. She folded her arms. “No.”
“Lady Kurue, I don’t know when I’ll have another chance to ask these things—”
“What, precisely, does ‘no’ mean in your tongue? Clearly you don’t understand Senmite—”
But before our argument could escalate, the apartment door slid aside a fraction. I could see nothing through that sliver, only darkness. “Let her speak,” said Nahadoth’s deep voice from within.
Kurue’s scowl deepened. “Naha, no.” I started a little; I had never heard anyone contradict him. “It’s her fault you’re in this condition.”
I flushed, but she was right. Yet there was no answer from within the chamber. Kurue’s fists clenched, and she glared into the darkness with a very ugly look.
“Would it help if I wore a blindfold?” I asked. There was something in the air that hinted at a long-standing anger beyond just this brief exchange. Ah, but of course—Kurue hated mortals, quite rightly blaming us for her enslaved condition. She thought Nahadoth was being foolish over me. Most likely she was right about that, too, being a goddess of wisdom. I did not feel offended when she looked at me with new contempt.
“It isn’t just your eyes,” Kurue said. “It’s your expectations, your fears, your desires. You mortals want him to be a monster and so he becomes one—”
“Then I will want nothing,” I said. I smiled as I said it, but I was annoyed now. Perhaps there was wisdom in her blind hatred of humankind. If she expected the worst from us, then we could never disappoint her. But that was beside the point. She was in my way, and I had business to complete before I died. I would command her aside if I had to.
She stared at me, perhaps reading my intentions. After a moment she shook her head and made a dismissive gesture. “Fine, then. You’re a fool. And so are you, Naha; you both deserve each other.” With that, she walked away, muttering as she rounded a corner. I waited until the sound of her footfalls stopped—not fading, but simply vanishing—then turned to face the open door.
“Come,” said Nahadoth from within.
I cleared my throat, abruptly nervous. Why did he frighten me at all the wrong times? “Begging your pardon, Lord Nahadoth,” I said, “but perhaps I’d better stay out here. If it’s true that just my thoughts can harm you—”
“Your thoughts have always harmed me. All your terrors, all your needs. They push and pull at me, silent commands.”
I stiffened, horrified. “I never meant to add to your suffering.”
There was a pause, during which I held my breath.
“My sister is dead,” Nahadoth said very softly. “My brother has gone mad. My children—the handful who remain—hate and fear me as much as they revere me.”
And I understood: what Scimina had done to him was nothing. What was a few moments’ suffering beside the centuries of grief and loneliness that Itempas had inflicted on him? And here I was, fretting over my own small addition.
I opened the door and stepped inside.
Within the chamber, the darkness was absolute. I lingered near the door for a moment, hoping my eyes would adjust, but they did not. In the silence after the door closed I made out the sound of breathing, slow and even, some ways away.
I put out my hands and began groping my way blindly toward the sound, hoping gods had no great need of furniture. Or steps.
“Stay where you are,” Nahadoth said. “I am… not safe to be near.” Then, softer, “But I am glad you came.”
This was the other Nahadoth, then—not the mortal, but not the mad beast of a cold winter’s tale, either. This was the Nahadoth who had kissed me that first night, the one who actually seemed to like me. The one I had the fewest defenses against.