Free The Broken Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin Page A

so.”
    Madding nodded. “Sieh does it. He does it every day, all day; he never stops. That makes him strong.”
    I was beginning to understand, a little. “Is that why you’re a usurer?”
    Madding chuckled. “I prefer the term investor. And my rates are perfectly fair, thank you.”
    “Drug dealer, then.”
    “I prefer the term independent apothecary—”
    “Hush.” I reached out, wistful, to touch the back of his hand where it rested on the sheets. “It must have been hard for you during the Interdiction.” That was what he and the other godlings called the time before their coming—the time when they hadn’t been permitted to visit our world or interact with mortals. Why they’d been forbidden to come, or who had forbidden them, they would not say. “I can’t see gods having many obligations.”
    “Not true,” he said. He watched me for a moment, then turned his hand over to grasp mine. “The most powerful obligations aren’t material, Oree.”
    I looked at his hand clasped around the nothingness of my own, understanding and wishing that I didn’t. I wished he had just fallen out of love with me. It would have made things easier.
    His grip loosened; I had let him see more in my expression than I’d meant to. He sighed and lifted my hand, kissing the back of it. “I should go,” he said. “If you need anything—”
    On impulse, I sat up, though it made my back ache something awful. “Stay,” I said.
    He looked away, uneasy. “I shouldn’t.”
    “No obligation, Mad. Just friendship. Stay.”
    He reached up to brush my hair back from my cheek. His expression, in that one unguarded moment, was the softest I ever saw it outside of his liquid form.
    “I wish you were a goddess,” he said. “Sometimes it feels as if you are one. But then something like this happens…” He brushed my robe back and grazed a bruise with his fingertip. “And I remember how fragile you are. I remember that I’ll lose you one day.” His jaw flexed. “I can’t bear it, Oree.”
    “Goddesses can die, too.” I realized my error belatedly. I’d been thinking of the Gods’ War, millennia before. I had forgotten Madding’s sister.
    But Madding smiled sadly. “That’s different. We can die. You mortals, though… Nothing can stop you from dying. All we can do is stand by and watch.”
    And die a little with you. That was what he’d said before, on the night he’d left me. I understood his reasoning, even agreed with it. That didn’t mean I’d ever like it.
    I put my hand on his face and leaned in to kiss him. He did it readily, but I felt how he held himself back. I tasted nothing of him in that kiss, even though I pressed close, practically begging for more. When we parted, I sighed and he looked away.
    “I should go,” he said again.
    This time I let him. He rose from the bed and went to the door, pausing in the frame for a moment.
    “You can’t go back to Art Row,” he said. “You know that, don’t you? You shouldn’t even stay in town. Leave, at least for a few weeks.”
    “And go where?” I lay back down, turning my face away from him.
    “Maybe visit your hometown.”
    I shook my head. I hated Nimaro.
    “Travel, then. There must be somewhere else you want to visit.”
    “I need to eat,” I said. “Rent would be nice, too, unless you intend for me to carry all my household possessions when I go.”
    He sighed in faint exasperation. “Then at least set up your table at one of the other promenades. The Easha Order-Keepers don’t bother with those parts of the city as much. You’ll still get a few customers there.”
    Not enough. But he was right; it would be better than nothing. I sighed and nodded.
    “I can have one of my people—”
    “I don’t want to owe you anything.”
    “A gift,” he said softly. There was a faint, unpleasant shiver of the air, like chimes gone sour. Generosity was not easy for him. On another day, under other circumstances, I would’ve been honored that he