Free The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin Page B

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 stars—but 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 all—but 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 disappointed—and 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.
    As an Arameri, I was expected to show no favoritism to my birthland and consider the needs of all nations equally. I had not done so, of course. As soon as T’vril and Sieh were gone, I had contacted each of my assigned nations and suggested—knowing full well that a suggestion from an Arameri heir is not a suggestion—that they consider resuming trade with Darr. It had not been an official trade embargo, the lean years since my mother’s defection from the Arameri. We could have protested an embargo to the Consortium, or found ways to circumvent it. Instead, every nation that hoped to curry favor with our rulers simply chose to ignore Darr’s existence. Contracts were broken, financial obligations abandoned, lawsuits dismissed; even smugglers avoided us. We became pariah.
    So the least I could do with my newfound, unwanted Arameri power was to accomplish part of my purpose in coming here.
    As for the rest of my purpose… well. The walls of Sky were hollow, its corridors a maze. This left many places wherein the secrets of my mother’s death could hide.
    I would hunt them down, every one.
----
    I had slept well my first night in Sky. Worn out by shock and running for my life, I didn’t even remember lying down.
    On the second night, sleep stubbornly refused to come. I lay in the too-big, too-soft bed of my quarters, staring up at the glowing ceiling and walls that made my room bright as day. Sky embodied the Bright; the Arameri allowed no darkness here. But how did the other members of my illustrious family get any sleep?
    After what felt like hours of tossing, I finally managed a sort of half doze, but my mind never settled. In the silence I was free to think of all that had happened in the past days, and to wonder about my family and friends back in Darr, and to worry whether I had a hope in the Maelstrom of surviving this place.
    Presently, however, it came to me that I was being watched.
    My grandmother had trained me well; I came fully awake. But though I mastered the urge to open my eyes or otherwise react, a deep voice said, “You are awake.”
    So I opened my eyes and sat up, and had to suppress an entirely different urge when I saw the Nightlord standing not ten paces away.
    It would do no good to run. So I said, “Good evening, Lord Nahadoth.” I was proud that my voice did not quaver.
    He inclined his head to me, then just stood there smoldering and looking ominous at the foot of my bed. Realizing that a god’s sense of time was probably very different from a mortal’s, I prompted, “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”
    “I wanted to see you,” he said.
    “Why?”
    To this he did not answer. But he moved at last, turning and pacing over to the windows, his back to me. He was harder to see there,