by C. T. Rwizi
Isa clutches onto the Arc even tighter. “Your Worship, tell me you are wrong.”
The man speaks bluntly. “I’m afraid I cannot, Your Highness. The Royal Guard attacked everyone in sight, and when they could find no one else, they turned on each other.” He pauses, and Isa could swear he’s being hesitant. “I must confess . . . I suspected treachery was afoot, which was why my Jasiri and I were in the vicinity, but evidently I underestimated the scope of the attack. I assumed an external threat and never once considered that the threat would emerge from within the palace. It is a personal failure I will never forgive and a burden I will carry to my grave.”
Isa’s ears ring with this revelation. “What are you saying, Your Worship?”
“It will dismay you to hear this, but the other high mystics of the Shirika have forsaken your clan and withdrawn their protection. I believe the Crocodile has taken this as permission to move for the throne. I, however, am not of one mind with them, and so long as I live, a Saire will be king, and so long as you live, Your Highness, he who orchestrated this treason will have failed.”
“I told you it was him!” In a rage Jomo frees himself of Obe. Another Sentinel has to rush forward to help him stay on his feet. He stabs the air with an accusing finger. “Stay the devil away from me, crocodile filth! Your uncle did this! Your clan did this! I swear I’ll kill every one of you if it’s the last thing I do.”
Obe’s shoulders flex as he fumes, glaring death at Jomo. “My uncle would never. You’re jumping to conclusions.”
“I’m afraid the facts suggest otherwise,” the Arc says. “I do not doubt your devotion to the crown, young man. You are a Sentinel, after all, and I suspect we have you to thank for Her Highness’s survival. But I have received intelligence via mirrorgram; Kola Saai is on his way to the capital as we speak, bringing with him a significant contingent of his legion.”
Isa looks to Obe, who looks back like his world has just been turned onto its side. Isa doesn’t know what to think. She feels angry tears pouring down her face.
“Isa . . .” Obe takes a step closer, then seems to remember that there is an audience. “Your Highness, I had nothing to do with this. You have to believe me.”
She wants to—she does—but her whole family is dead, and his uncle is responsible. How can she ever look at him in the same way again?
“Your Highness,” the high mystic says. “You must take refuge in the Red Temple. Once you are safe inside, I will summon the ancient protections. No one will be able to safely enter the citadel unless I allow it.”
“To what end?” Isa hears herself say. “The Crocodile has already won. If I fled to the temple, what difference would it make?”
“The mask-crown is still in this palace,” the Arc says. “So long as it exists, and so long as there is a Saire of royal blood fit to wear it, the Shirika cannot crown another king. It is the pact that founded this kingdom. Take refuge in the Red Temple; claim the mask-crown. Let us thwart the Crocodile before his hold over this kingdom grows stronger.”
Isa stares at her audience of Sentinels, who stare back expectantly. Without the king, she and Jomo are now the Sentinels’ sole responsibility. The young warriors are bound by death oaths to be absolutely loyal to whichever one of them ends up wearing the mask-crown.
Isa does not want that person to be her. “But I am a woman, Your Worship. My cousin Jomo is a Saire prince. He is the one you must crown.”
“No.” Jomo shakes his head so vigorously he almost brings himself and the Sentinel propping him up crashing to the ground. “I cannot. Please, Isa. I cannot. I will not.”
The Arc does not appear surprised by Jomo’s reaction. “Women have worn the mask-crown when circumstances required departure from tradition,” he says. “This is one of those times. It is what your father would want.”
Isa covers her face and forces herself to take deep breaths. Falling apart in front of so many people would not do. When she has found her composure, she wipes the tears off her cheeks. “I want to see my family before I leave.”
For the second time tonight, the high mystic hesitates. “Your Highness, I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“I have to see my family.” A troubling thought occurs to her. “Who will see to their committals if I’m hiding in the temple?”
“I will see to the arrangements,” the Arc says, “but I’m afraid your presence would incur too much risk. Your enemies will stop at nothing to see you dead; we must not give them another chance.”
“Then I need to see my family. I need to say goodbye.” Isa’s voice cracks in her throat. “Please.”
The Arc considers her silently for a moment, then relents with a nod. “But be prepared, Your Highness. What you’re about to see will stay with you forever.”
A tremor of fear racks Isa’s body and almost proves her a coward, but she weathers it.
And then she goes to see her family.
19: Musalodi
Khaya-Siningwe—Yerezi Plains
As morning comes on the day he is set to leave the kraal, Salo sits cross-legged beneath the pale, leafless branches of the witchwood tree growing in the bonehouse garden. With his back against the trunk, he places his hands on his knees, palms facing upward. Then he ignites his shards.
Essence rushes into them from the environment, transformed therein by arcane logic into the energy of Storm craft. The energy grows denser and denser until the shards crackle with dancing sparks of red static, and only now does he release it, sending it out along the set of predetermined patterns he learned from a spell book.
Nimara kept her promise, and over the last few days Salo has spent hours with his nose buried inside the spell book she procured for him, imprinting its patterns into the pathways of his mind. To the layperson, the little book is no more than a few pages of meaningless angular scripts. But to those who can read ciphers, it is a precise description of how Storm craft can be harnessed as jets of wind. A basic spell compared to what he could find in the library at the Queen’s Kraal if he were ever given the chance, but a far better one than what he attempted to design himself.
At his command the pressure changes in the garden, and the air begins to stir as he tests the boundaries, a slight breeze at first, then a whirlwind that gathers force and whips around the tree, cocooning him in a fast-moving funnel of twigs and leaves.
He smiles. The spell is flirting with the limit of what his single ring can handle, but the conversion of essence in his shards is so effortless he can direct individual microcurrents or the entire swirling mass.
I have always wanted this, says a quiet voice in his mind. He’s always known this, of course, always felt it in his soul. He just couldn’t admit such a thing to himself, for to do so would have been to prove what they all said about him right: that he wanted things meant for women and was therefore questionable as a man. Now, though, with the power of magic flowing through his veins, he feels like he has looked at himself in the mirror for the first time in his life.
This is who I am. My true self.
Still, he’s not certain he likes this reflection, as he feels a tingle of shame for being so much of a deviation from what is expected of a Yerezi man, let alone the firstborn son of a chief.
“And you told me you weren’t ready to leave the bonehouse,” says a voice, and when Salo shifts his focus beyond the funnel of debris, he sees Nimara shaking her head with her arms folded. “I should have known you were lying and kicked you out days ago.”
With a smirk he slows down the currents and lets the spell die. The air stills, and the leaves drift to the ground. “This place has everything I could possibly want. A lovely garden. Privacy. No chores. Why would I leave?”
“Because the bonehouse is for sick people, which you’re clearly not.”
“True, and it’s thanks to you.”
“You’d better not forget it.”
“I’m serious, Nimara,” Salo says. “I owe you. Not just for the spell book, mind you, but for everyt
hing. For giving me the push I needed, for saving my life afterward. For being a good friend.”
She smiles, uncharacteristically bashful, but her smile wanes as something sad enters her eyes. “Are you done packing?”
“Mostly,” Salo says.
“Even the supplies I left in your room?”
“I’ll be able to treat an army if I ever have to.”
Nimara shrugs. “When it comes to preparation, over is better than under.”
“Actually, I was hoping I could ask you one more favor,” Salo says.
“What do you need?”
“You know where the totem staff is, right?”
Nimara peers at him with suspicion. “I do, and I’m certain you do too.”
“Yes, but can you please get it for me anyway? As well as the other totem-related items. I’m sure it’s all there.”
She keeps watching him, studying him, then comes to some hidden conclusion. “One day you’ll have to stop being so weird about that hut. But yes, I’ll get it for you.”
And with those words a great deal of anxiety ebbs away from Salo’s chest. That’s one unpleasant task avoided. “Again, I owe you, Nimara. For this and a whole lot more.”
A twinkle briefly lights up her eyes. “You can pay me back by bringing me something nice from the Jungle City. And it better be good, Salo. Nothing cheap, or you’ll have to go back for something better. Got it?”
He doesn’t know when he’ll come back or even if he’ll come back, so he shouldn’t be making promises. But he smiles and says, “It’ll be the biggest and best gift you’ve ever seen.”
He goes to say goodbye to his stepmother.
Ama Lira is in the middle of teaching a calligraphy class to a group of young girls sitting on little desks arranged beneath a tree outside the grammar school. A yellow kitenge with white patterns covers her body, haltered over her neck and falling down to her knees. She smiles when she sees him approach, a chalky hand falling onto her swollen belly. Ama Lira is still graceful even in the late stages of her pregnancy.
The story goes that a young VaSiningwe fell so in love with his clan mystic he was prepared to flout the rules of propriety by taking her as his wife. But she would not have him, for a clan mystic must be married only to her clan.
To console him, she bore him a son, whom she named after him. And when that only exacerbated his attentions, she found him a young woman and convinced him to marry her. That woman was Ama Lira, and a year after their wedding the twins were born.
Some whisper to this day that the chief never really stopped pursuing the mystic. Some whisper that she was in fact the villain and had bewitched him so he could love no one else. Either way, Salo would not have blamed Ama Lira if she hated the sight of him.
As it is, she has always been kind to him, if a little demure.
They don’t talk much when he pulls her aside to say goodbye—they rarely do—but she tells him she finally learned the sex of her unborn child—or children, it turns out.
“Girls,” she tells him, rubbing her bulbous belly, and she glows with so much motherly pride it makes him smile. “You’ll be a big brother to two beautiful girls. That is why I will pray every day for your return—so they don’t miss you too much.”
Salo has always wanted a little sister, and now he’ll have two. His heart breaks to know he won’t be there to greet them when they come into the world. “I’ll think about them every day,” he promises.
Ama Lira smiles and places a gentle hand on his arm. “Check the kitchens before you go. I’ve packed a little parcel for you.”
He thanks her and hopes that she knows it’s not just for the parcel, or for being one of the few people who visited him in the bonehouse, but also for never making him feel unwanted.
He doesn’t find Aaku Malusi anywhere in the kraal, so he decides to walk down to the Ajaha training glade, driven by an impulse he doesn’t probe too much.
At first no one notices him come to a stop in the trees at the edge of the glade, where he silently watches Niko sparring with a would-be ranger, both of them wielding blunt swords and elliptical hide shields. Niko has strength that can turn brutish at a moment’s notice, but he holds it in check. He’s neither cocky nor domineering, just confident in a way that can’t be overlooked. His sparring partner, on the other hand, a tall weedy boy in a white loincloth, is inexperienced, though light footed like a dancer. Agility is his answer to strength, improvisation to experience.
“Stance,” Niko keeps telling him whenever he improvises too much. “Nice one,” whenever he lands a solid hit on Niko’s shield.
Then the grunts die down, the sticks and swords stop rattling, and suddenly everyone’s looking Salo’s way. Niko pauses midstrike, noticing that something is off. When he turns around to look, his eyes widen slightly with surprise. It’s been a while since they last spoke, and seeing Niko now, Salo realizes he doesn’t want to leave without at least saying goodbye.
In the training glade, Niko glances at Salo’s brothers; they both frown and shake their heads slightly. He twists the hilt of the sword in his hand, seeming to consider their advice, but in the end he drops the sword and starts to walk over, telling the rangers to keep sparring in his absence.
Salo feels a nervous tingle in his stomach as he watches him approach. He once resented everything about the young man and couldn’t stand to look him in the eye. Now he is beginning to understand that it wasn’t resentment he felt but something else entirely.
Something perhaps more complicated.
The sunlight strikes Niko’s red steel greaves and vambraces so that they glitter. As he comes to a stop in front of Salo, he smiles for the briefest moment like he has forgotten everything that has happened these last few weeks, but the smile loses its shine, and his gaze falls to the ground. “Hello, Salo.”
“Hello, Niko.” I wanted to see you before I left, but now that you’re here, I’m not sure what I want to say to you.
Niko shifts uncomfortably on his feet. “I’m glad you recovered. You look well.”
“I’ll be leaving for Yonte Saire this afternoon.”
Niko’s eyes lift, flashing with surprise, but he masks it quickly. “I see.”
“I’d ask you to come with me, but—”
“I can’t, Salo.”
It shouldn’t hurt to hear. There could have been no other answer. Still feels like a knife to the heart. “I know.”
“Not that I don’t want to—”
“But what would people say, right?”
Niko turns his face away.
“Don’t worry. I understand.” Salo really does, but his voice grows bitter anyway. “You’re risking a lot even talking to me right now.”
He might as well have slapped Niko in the face. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
Dear Ama, I’m messing this up. Salo looks heavenward and curses under his breath. “I know,” he sighs. “I shouldn’t have said that.” Compose yourself and start again. “Look, I came here to thank you. You’ve never said a harsh word to me, even when I deserved it. You’ve defended me from scorn, even at the risk of your reputation. You were there for me when Monti died, and you took my side when everyone else blamed me. You’re a good man, Niko. Better than most, and I hope that one day I’ll earn back your friendship. That’s all I wanted to say.”
Salo turns and starts walking away, trying to escape the riptide of emotions, and he gets several paces away before Niko calls his name.
“Salo.”
He stops. Waits. He knows what he wishes Niko would say, and he knows just how unlikely he is to hear it, but as the silence stretches, he holds his breath, and hope fills the cavity of his chest.
“Come back to us in one piece.”
Salo doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t trust that his face won’t betray too much of the emptiness, the sheer desolation, he feels from having his hopes crushed. He nods and keeps walking.
For the first eight years of his life, one of Salo’s best friends was
a giant metal cat. While most people feared it, often more than they feared its master, Salo knew the beast would never turn on him, given whom it answered to.
At least until the night its master betrayed him and set in motion the events that would culminate in her death. Then the cat returned to its post by the kraal’s gates, where it would lie in wait for the next clan mystic to rouse it from its slumber.
The suns are high when Salo walks out of the kraal, lugging the sack of belongings he’s packed for his journey. He has worn his leather harness and fastened to it his bow, a half-filled quiver, and a hatchet. He has filled his waterskins, honed his steel hunting knife, and rubbed his witchwood knife with an alchemical preservative.
Nimara follows him out carrying the clan’s totem staff, which she unearthed for him from some shadowy corner of AmaSiningwe’s vacant hut, along with the totem’s ancient leather saddlery. A young boy she recruited is hauling the saddlery in a wheelbarrow; apparently, no one else wanted to touch anything that came out of the hut.
Word travels quickly around the kraal, so a crowd is waiting for them at the gates, with expressions ranging from curious to incensed. A quick scan tells Salo his brothers and a small group of young Ajaha are among the latter. Figures.
Mutters of “witch” and “siratata” ripple across the crowd as he unburdens himself of his luggage. He feigns indifference, but the whispers are like barbs digging into his heart. How will he ever win these people over?
Next to him Nimara proffers the staff. “Don’t mind them. They’ll get over it.”
He doesn’t believe her, but he reaches for the staff anyway, only to freeze when he sees VaSiningwe, Aba D, and a contingent of the chief’s council looking joyless as they walk out of the gates in a group.
“Ignore them,” Nimara says. “Actually, it’s good that you have so many witnesses. It’ll be harder for them to reject you once the totem responds positively. Now claim it already, or I’ll do it for you.”
“Okay, okay.” Salo finally accepts the staff from her, and a strange tingle ripples down his whole body when he touches it. He ignores the surge of unwelcome memories that follows, focusing instead on the feel of the staff in his hands. An old thing, this staff, a serpentine affair of twisting witchwood and red steel, just a little longer than he is tall, though light as air. Like the totem connected to it, the staff has served every Siningwe mystic since the clan’s inception. And now it is his.