Mark Reads ‘The Broken Kingdoms’: Chapter 17

In the seventeenth chapter of The Broken Kingdoms, Oree discovers what the Arameri want with her and why Itempas betrayed his siblings. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read The Broken Kingdoms.

Chapter Seventeen: “A Golden Chain” (engraving on metal plate)

There are just too many emotions in this chapter.

My excitement for seeing T’vril was largely based on liking him, and I suppose that was a naïve thing to feel. The man is still an Arameri, head of the most powerful family in the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. And while he is technically polite to Oree here, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t put the importance of his family first. No, that’s precisely what he’s done in one sense while also guaranteeing that there’s some form of protecting for humanity from the wrath of the gods.

I just… I’m so worried that something else is waiting around the corner to surprise me because y’all:

After a moment, Lord T’vril said, “You’ll both be pleased to know, I think, that the House of the Risen Sun is no more. Its threat has been removed.”

THE BOOK ISN’T EVEN CLOSE TO BE OVER, AND THE MAIN ANTAGONIST IS GONE. HOW. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE. I’m so worried, y’all. SO WORRIED. First of all, they haven’t found Dateh, which isn’t good at all. That dude has way too much power, so I’m concerned that T’vril is so confident they’ll catch him. Are you aware that he can create portals and suck you into a void whenever he wants??? THAT’S A THING DATEH CAN DO. Second, it appears that all the gods they Nypri kept in the Empty are dead. Yeah, this is 100% not okay, and I am UPSET. Why is this all so grim? Have you no care about my fragile emotions???

As much hope as I wanted to have that T’vril would do Oree right, I had to admit that I had expected too much of him once he said this:

“Then again,” said the Lord Arameri, “my family has long known the value of dangerous weapons.”

Goddamn, he’s going to use her. He’s going to possess her. So, despite that he swears that he’s not enslaving her, I think it’s vital that Jemisin comments on this through Oree’s thoughts:

I was so tired. So very tired of all of this. “Choice?” I asked. My voice sounded dull to my own ears. “Life on a leash or death? That’s your choice?”

Truthfully, people have been using Oree for their own purposes her whole life. Ableist assholes use her for pity or to make themselves feel better. Shiny used her for housing, food, and companionship. The New Lights used her so that her blood might guarantee them a way to kill the Nightlord. So there’s no pretense here on her part. She is well aware of the “hellish bargain” she’s been offered, and she knows what it means to her: a lifetime of servitude for the chance to stay alive. Because you better believe I don’t trust that she’ll be given many privileges for agreeing to the bargain. So it’s easy to understand why, privately, she decides that it’s not worth it for her to make this bargain. She would prefer to fulfill her bargain with Shiny and guarantee that her blood didn’t kill another god ever again.

Oh, but N.K. Jemisin isn’t done RUINING OUR LIVES. Unable to find Shiny, Oree strikes up a conversation with Hado, whose true purpose is finally revealed and I can’t believe I didn’t figure THIS out either.

“Once upon a time,” he said, “there was a god imprisoned here. He was a terrible, beautiful, angry god, and by night when he roamed these white halls, everyone feared him. But by day, the god slept. And the body, the living mortal flesh that was his ball and chain, got to have a life of its own.”

OH MY GOD, HADO IS THE DAYTIME BODY OF THE NIGHTLORD. WHICH EXPLAINS WHY HE APPEARS DARKER THAN OTHER SHADOWS IN OREE’S VISION. Oh shit, that is why he was the spy in the New Lights, why he speaks the way he does, and why I AM CONTINUALLY UNPREPARED FOR THIS NOVEL. But the most brilliant aspect of this is how it forces us to think about issues of consent, ownership, and the vitality of life. Here’s a being who spent over two thousand years without free will speaking to someone who was offered a lifetime in golden chains herself. Oh god, the parallels are too much, obviously, but the difference between them is also important:

“What would you do?” I asked. “If you were me. What would you choose? Life in chains or death?”

“I would be grateful to have that much of a choice.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Of course it is. But if you must know, I would choose life. So long as it was a choice, I would live.”

It’s nice that Jemisin focuses on the fact that Hado never once had a choice about any bit of his arrangement, and it helps explain why he has such a need for life:

“You’ve spent time among the gods, Eru Shoth. Haven’t you noticed? They live forever, but many of them are even more lonely and miserable than we are. Why do you think they bother with us? We teach them life’s value. So I would live, if only to spite them.”

It may seem strange to live to spite another, but as someone who lived as an openly gay man to spite all the awful homophobes I grew up with, I understand the catharsis achieved through this. It’s fascinating, then, to see how well this idea matches up with what we finally learn of Itempas and his choices thousands of years before. If Hado lives to spite the immortal gods, then Itempas represents a perfect example of the misery of immortality. It’s no surprise that he’s miserable; hell, Oree acknowledges fairly early on that he’s the perfect manifestation of what Hado just described. But I think that Jemisin faced a challenge in attempting to convey just what sort of despair that Itempas experienced.

I’m empathetic towards most stories and tropes that address loneliness because I had a lonely, miserable upbringing. (If you’re interested in reading more about that, this week’s Double Feature reviews of Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane will be addressing this rather intimately.) Naturally, I connect with this a lot on a certain level while still being able to recognize that out of context, Itempas’s behavior is wholly absurd. The guy murdered his sister so she wouldn’t ever make him feel lonely ever again. What Jemisin succeeds at doing, though, is conveying the sheer vastness of Itempas’s love and how he reacted when he first experienced a lack of love. Of course, it’s hard to wrap your mind around the thought of someone spending countless years with two loving beings as your siblings, only to suddenly face absolute loneliness and dejection for the first time. He had always been loved by Nahadoth and Enefa. It’s not like their “forgetting” of him was malicious. It just happened. And yet, Itempas is completely unable to deal with the phenomenon. He turns to a mortal woman for comfort (Shahar Arameri, yes? That’s who this flashback is all about, right?), who then betrays him after killing their demon child.

That doesn’t mean that Itempas was justified in doing what he did. Oh no, the text still openly criticizes him for his actions, and even he regrets what he’s done. But this is so helpful to build his character in a way that at least makes him a lot more easy to understand.

I love the metaphor Jemisin uses:

This means, in a way, that true light is dependent on the presence of other lights. Take the others away and darkness results. Yet the reverse is not true: take away darkness and there is only more darkness. Darkness can exist by itself. Light cannot.

Which is so much more fascinating when you think about Itempas is supposed to represent pure light. And yet? Even a god of his grandeur was susceptible to the darkness of loneliness. That’s a strangely comforting thought, y’all.

Please note that the original text and video contain uses of the word “mad.”

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