The Inheritance Trilogy Omnibus(22)

“I will consider your request for a meeting,” I said in my most dignified voice. “Please convey to the Lady Kurue that I will give you a response in no more than three days.”

Sieh laughed and jumped off me, returning to the bed. He curled up in the middle of it and grinned at me. “Kurue’s going to hate you. She thought you’d jump at the chance, and here you are keeping her waiting!”

“An alliance made in fear or haste will not last,” I said. “I need a better understanding of my position before I do anything that will strengthen or weaken it. The Enefadeh must realize that.”

“I do,” he said, “but Kurue is wise and I’m not. She does what’s smart. I do what’s fun.” He shrugged, then yawned. “Can I sleep here, sometimes, with you?”

I opened my mouth, then caught myself. He played innocent so well that I’d almost said yes automatically.

“I’m not sure that would be proper,” I said at last. “You are very much older than me, and yet clearly underage. It would be a scandal, either way.”

His eyebrows flew up almost into his hairline. Then he burst out laughing, rolling onto his back and holding his middle. He laughed for a long time. Eventually, a bit annoyed, I got up and went to the door to summon a servant and order lunch. I ordered two meals out of politeness, though I had no idea what, or whether, gods ate.

When I turned, Sieh had finally stopped laughing. He sat on the edge of the bed, watching me, thoughtful.

“I could be older,” he said softly. “If you’d rather have me older, I mean. I don’t have to be a child.”

I stared at him and did not know whether to feel pity, nausea, or both at once.

“I want you to be what you are,” I said.

His expression grew solemn. “That isn’t possible. Not while I’m in this prison.” He touched his chest.

“Do—” I did not want to call them my family. “Do others ask you to be older?”

He smiled. It was, most horribly, very much a child’s smile. “Younger, usually.”

Nausea won. I put a hand to my mouth and turned away. Never mind what Ras Onchi thought. I would never call myself Arameri, never.

He sighed and came over, wrapping arms around me from behind and resting his head on my shoulder. I did not understand his constant need to touch me. I didn’t mind, but it made me wonder who he cuddled when I was not around. I wondered what price they demanded of him in exchange.

“I was ancient when your kind first began to speak and use fire, Yeine. These petty torments are nothing to me.”

“That’s beside the point,” I said. “You’re still…” I groped for words. Human might be taken as an insult.

He shook his head. “Only Enefa’s death hurts me, and that was no mortal’s doing.”

In that moment there was a deep, basso shudder throughout the palace. My skin prickled; in the bathroom something rattled for an instant, then went still.

“Sunset,” Sieh said. He sounded pleased as he straightened and went to one of my windows. The western sky was layered clouds, spectrum-painted. “My father returns.”

Where had he gone? I wondered, though I was distracted by another thought. The monster of my nightmares, the beast who had hunted me through walls, was father to Sieh.

“He tried to kill you yesterday,” I said.

Sieh shook his head dismissively, then clapped his hands, making me jump. “En. Naiasouwamehikach.”

It was gibberish, spoken in a singsong lilt, and for an instant while the sound lingered, my perception changed. I became aware of the faint echoes of each syllable from the room’s walls, overlapping and blending. I noticed the way the air felt as the sounds rippled through it. Along my floor into the walls. Through the walls to the support column that held up Sky. Down that column to the earth.

And the sound was carried along as the earth rolled over like a sleepy child, as we hurtled around the sun through the cycle of seasons and the stars around us did a graceful cartwheel turn—

I blinked, momentarily surprised to find myself still in the room. But then I understood. The earliest decades of the scrivening art’s history were littered with its founders’ deaths, until they’d restricted themselves to the written form of the language. It amazed me now that they’d even tried. A tongue whose meaning depended upon not only syntax and pronunciation and tone, but also one’s position in the universe at any given moment—how could they even have imagined mastering that? It was beyond any mortal.

Sieh’s yellow ball appeared out of nowhere and bounced into his hands. “Go and see, then find me,” he commanded, and threw the ball away. It bounced against a nearby wall, then vanished.