The Inheritance Trilogy Omnibus(126)

“My true one,” He said. “All the others have betrayed me, save you.”

Only later did I learn what He meant—that Lady Enefa (HR) and Lord Nahadoth (HR) had turned on Him, along with hundreds of their immortal children. Only later did Lord Itempas bring me His war prisoners, fallen gods in invisible chains, and tell me to use them to put the world to rights. It was too much for Bentr, my brother; we found him that night in the cistern chamber, his wrists slit in a barrel of wash water. There was only me to bear witness, and later to bear the burden, and right then to weep, because even if a god did honor my mother, what good did that do? She was still dead.

And that is how the High Priestess of the Bright, Shahar Arameri, passed on.

For you, Mother. I will live on, I will do as Our Lord commands, I will remake the world. I will find some husband strong enough to help me shoulder the burden, and I will raise my children to be hard and cold and ruthless, like you. That is the legacy you wanted, isn’t it? In Our Lord’s name, it shall be yours.

Gods help us all.





Acknowledgments


So many people to thank, so little space.

Foremost thanks go to my father, who was my first editor and writing coach. I’m really sorry I made you read all that crap I wrote when I was fifteen, Dad. Hopefully this book will make up for it.

Also equal thanks to the writing incubators that have nurtured me over the years: the Viable Paradise workshop, the Speculative Literature Foundation, the Carl Brandon Society, Critters.org, the BRAWLers of Boston, Black Beans, The Secret Cabal, and Altered Fluid. Never thought I’d get this far, and I wouldn’t have done it without all of you to kick me into action. (The bruises are fading nicely, thanks.)

Then to Lucienne Diver, the hardest-working agent in all the land. You believed in me; thanks. Also to Devi Pillai, my editor, who totally floored me with the realization that editors could be fun, funny people, eviscerating manuscripts with a wink and a smile. Thanks for that, and for picking such a great title.

And last but by no means least: thanks to my mother (hi, Mom!), my BFFs Deirdre and Katchan, and all the members of the old TU crew. To the staff and students of the universities I’ve worked at over the years; day jobs really shouldn’t be so much fun. Posthumous thanks to Octavia Butler, for going first and showing the rest of us how it’s done. And I always give thanks to God, for instilling the love of creation in me.

I suppose I should also thank my roommate NukuNuku, who encouraged me with headbutts, swats to the face, fur in my keyboard, incessant distracting yowls, and… um… wait, why am I thanking her again? Never mind.





THE

BROKEN

KINGDOMS





THE BOOK TWO OF

THE INHERITANCE TRILOGY





I REMEMBER THAT IT WAS MIDMORNING.

Gardening was my favorite task of the day. I’d had to fight for it, because my mother’s terraces were famous throughout the territory, and she didn’t quite trust me with them. I couldn’t really blame her; my father still laughed over whatever I’d done to the laundry that one time I tried.

“Oree,” she would say whenever I sought to prove my independence, “it’s all right to need help. All of us have things we can’t do alone.”

Gardening, however, was not one of those things. It was the weeding that my mother feared, because many of the weeds that grew in Nimaro were similar in form to her most prized herbs. Fakefern had a fan-shaped frond just like sweet ire; running may was spiky and stung the fingers, same as ocherine. But the weeds and the herbs didn’t smell anything alike, so I never understood why she had such trouble with them. On the rare occasions that both scent and feel stumped me, all I had to do was touch a leaf edge to my lips or brush my hand through the leaves to hear the way they settled into place, and I would know. Eventually, Mama had to admit that I hadn’t tossed out a single good plant all season. I was planning to ask for my own terrace the following year.

I usually lost myself in the gardens for hours, but one morning something was different. I noticed it almost the moment I left the house: a strange, tinny flatness to the air. A pent-breath tension. By the time the storms began, I had forgotten the weeds and sat up, instinctively orienting on the sky.

And I could see.

What I saw, in what I would later learn to call the distance, were vast, shapeless blotches of darkness limned in power. As I gaped, great spearing shapes—so bright they hurt my eyes, something that had never happened before—jutted forth to shatter the blotches. But the remnants of the dark blotches became something else, darting liquid tendrils that wrapped about the spears and swallowed them. The light changed, too, becoming spinning disks, razor-sharp, that cut the tendrils. And so on, back and forth, dark against light, neither winning for more than an instant. Through it all, I heard sounds like thunder, though there was no scent of rain.