The Kingdom of Gods Read Free

Arameri, then?” His face screwed up, as if he had found himself speaking gibberish.
You curtain apple jump, then?
    “No, I’m not.”
    “Are you a new servant?” asked the girl, seduced out of anger by her own curiosity. “Just come to Sky from outside?”
    I put my arms behind my head, stretching my feet out in front of me. “I’m not a servant at all, actually.”
    “You’re dressed like one,” said the boy, pointing.
    I looked at myself in surprise and realized I had manifested the same clothing I’d usually worn during my imprisonment: loose pants (good for running), shoes with a hole in one toe, and a plain loose shirt, all white. Ah, yes — in Sky, servants wore white every day. Highbloods wore it only for special occasions, preferring brighter colors otherwise. The two in front of me had both been dressed in deep emerald green, which matched the girl’s eyes and complemented the boy’s nicely.
    “Oh,” I said, annoyed that I’d inadvertently fallen prey to old habit. “Well, I’m not a servant. Take my word for it.”
    “You aren’t with the Teman delegation,” said the boy, speaking slowly while his eyes belied his racing thoughts. “Datennay was the only child with them, and they left three days ago, anyway. And they dressed like Temans. Metal bits and twisty hair.”
    “I’m not Teman, either.” I grinned again, waiting to see how they handled that one.
    “You
look
Teman,” said the girl, clearly not believing me. She pointed at my head. “Your hair barely has any curl, and your eyes are sharp and flat at the corners, and your skin is browner than Deka’s.”
    I glanced at the boy, who looked uncomfortable at this comparison. I could see why. Though he bore a fullblood’s circle on his brow, it was painfully obvious that someone had brought non-Amn delicacies to the banquet of his recent heritage. If I hadn’t known it was impossible, I would have guessed he was some variety of High Norther. He had Amn features, with their long-stretched facial lines, but his hair was blacker than Nahadoth’s void and as straight as windblown grass, and he was indeed a rich all-over brown that had nothing to do with a suntan. I had seen infants like him drowned or head-staved or tossed off the Pier, or marked as lowbloods and given over to servants to raise. Never had one been given a fullblood mark.
    The girl had no hint of the foreign about her — no, wait. It was there, just subtle. A fullness to her lips, the angle of her cheekbones, and her hair was a more brassy than sunlit gold. To Amn eyes, these would just be interesting idiosyncracies, a touch of the exotic without all the unpleasant political baggage. If not for her brother’s existence, no one would have ever guessed that she was not pure-blooded, either.
    I glanced at the boy again and saw the warning-sign wariness in his eyes. Yes, of course. They would have already begun to make his life hell.
    While I pondered this, the children fell to whispering, debating whether I looked more of this or that or some other mortal race. I could hear every word of it, but out of politeness I pretended not to. Finally the boy stage-whispered, “I don’t think he’s Teman at
all
,” in a tone that let me know he suspected what I really was.
    With eerie unity they faced me again.
    “It doesn’t matter if you’re a servant or not, or Teman or not,” said the girl. “
We’re
fullbloods, and that means you have to do what we say.”
    “No, it doesn’t,” I said.
    “Yes, it does!”
    I yawned and closed my eyes. “Make me.”
    They fell silent again, and I felt their consternation. I could have pitied them, but I was having too much fun. Finally, I felt a stir of air and warmth nearby, and I opened my eyes to find that the boy had sat down beside me.
    “Why won’t you help us?” he asked, his voice soft with honest concern, and I nearly flinched beneath the onslaught of his big dark eyes. “We’ve been down here all day, and we ate our