Crows circled overhead, squawking.
“Fleas and farts!” Sparks flew from Kyrie’s fingers at mercenaries with hungry eyes. “We speak Anawanama and listen to the birds. They’ll warn us.”
Hiding in Djola’s mother’s tongue to pass as carnival players was Awa’s idea. Djola felt ambivalent. Ancestor talk was powerful conjure, dangerous even. A player with a wheel heart, marble eye, and crystal foot might lose his wits talking Anawanama and never get an audience with the emperor. His old friend had banished him on pain of death. Were Djola and Zizi friends anymore?
“The library has a new wing.” Kyrie had been away as long as Djola. “The city shapeshifts. Abelzowadyo.”
“Not just buildings—” Nothing in Arkhys City felt as Djola remembered it. Dark-eyed towers loomed over them, whistling a reproach on the wind. Only the emperor’s citadel across the river was lit by tree-oil lamps. Without supplies from Holy City or Kyrie’s mountain, Arkhys City suffered cold, dark nights. The citadel’s hundred lights winked out all at once, an eerie spectacle. He wrinkled his nose. “Did it always stink?”
“Doesn’t smell worse than Holy City.” Awa was in a terrible mood too—who could fault her? Offal from recent riots turned brown on stone streets. Sewers reeked, overflowing before reaching Thunder River or the sea. Crows descended on a corpse shoved to the roadside. Djola looked away, not wanting to know who’d been left to rot.
“This is worse than I remember.” He spat out the new taste of Arkhys City.
“We’ve changed too. All of us, storm weary.” Kyrie pointed at storm shelters along the buildings. Every stall had flaps to pull down.
Djola shook his head. “Who knows where the wind will blow?”
Mango squeezed past bedraggled farmers, thief-lord brigades, river pirates, miners, Green Elders, and pickpockets lifting purses. Today the Eishne Festival of Memories began. Two hours before the sun climbed over Mount Eidhou, the gates opened to everyone, even refugees fleeing Holy City. Djola cringed at tales of the Master of Poisons bringing down Hezram’s temple.
“Today is Eishne,” Kyrie shouted. “We’re all strangers, but woven from the same threads, so one family, and we remember ourselves.”
Azizi and Urzula commandeered an Anawanama sacred day to celebrate their wedding anniversary and twenty-eight years of Empire peace. According to Grain, Council wanted to cancel Eishne and keep out desperate hordes running from poison desert everywhere. Azizi insisted there was no better time to remind people who they were together than in the middle of strife and war. Merchants, librarians, and carnival players were thrilled. The Master of Money lusted after tax revenue. High priest Ernold hoped for converts to his temple or transgressors for the huts. Despite official approval, the festive atmosphere was unsettled. Crowds tearing through the gates were desperate for miracles. Djola’s troupe was little more than spit on a foul wind. It was folly to return to this festering place. How could they change the weather?
“Amazing.” Bal pointed at Kyrie’s painting artistry. When Mango waggled her trunk, the yellow snake wiggled on her forehead. Bal nudged Awa. “Mango looks like you, a snake on her brow.” Awa tried not to smile, but couldn’t help herself.
Mango flapped her ears, irritated at stalls, people, and animals between her and the carnival stage in the oasis garden. Elephants preferred plenty of room to maneuver. Mango turned onto a dim alleyway that meandered through northlander neighborhoods around the market. The crowd thinned to a trickle. Good citizens rarely ventured the back way to Thunder River—too dark, too dangerous, too long.
Djola tried to relax. His troupe would arrive at the bridge to the citadel before any afternoon storm. According to Kyrie, Urzula and Lilot were rebels. When poison winds roared and spectators and guards took cover, Djola’s troupe would slip across the bridge to the cook’s entrance. Lilot had agreed to place markers to guide them. Kyrie knew every passageway in the citadel and Lilot’s jackals and hyenas avoided her. This sounded like a fine plan last night, sitting around a fire, drunk on wine. In the light of day, Djola worried that if they got past guards and dust demons, what then? Azizi might not listen to Djola or believe the proof in Vandana’s bag—Awa’s bag.
“You haven’t told me what cure you’ll offer Azizi.” Kyrie glared at Djola. “If you’re afraid to tell me, how will you persuade him?”
“I offer something he won’t refuse.” He looked at Awa and Bal. “A future.”
Kyrie shrugged. The alley twisted around a steep hill. Painted clay hovels huddled against the slope. Fanciful creatures decorated doorways and walls. Raintrees struck down in a void squall leaned toward the gutter. Djola stroked their leafless crowns. His mother claimed he’d been born in this slum, on a street like this.
“I brought Samina here one night, right after we met. Raintrees were in bloom all over the city…” Nobody challenged the Master of Poisons as he kissed his love under a fragrant raintree. They wore transparent robes, the delights of their bodies on full display. Witch women from the floating cities had no shame. Djola loved that.
“I can imagine.” Bal tapped Yari’s drum.
Soot charged ahead, sniffing crevices and jumping up on dim ledges. Fannie nudged Mango’s hefty haunches. No hurrying the elephant. Bal broke off drumming to nock an arrow. Red-robed acolytes ran up a side street away from Soot’s raised hackles. Ernold’s followers. Kyrie held a ball of fire. Acolytes snatched hapless souls from alleyways to bleed. Bal aimed at boots crunching stone on a ledge above them. A woman—assassin?—raised her hands and ran by. Bal pouted at Djola. This made no sense. Protecting him from bad people was what Bal had always wanted to do. “What does sacred shapeshifter mean?” vie asked again.
Djola groaned. This Bal, who probably wasn’t his Bal, was as bad as Awa, digging at him, questioning everything, never giving up.
“Abelzowadyo.” Bal chewed the word and scanned the alley. “Poetry ignites our spirits.” Vie let loose two arrows, pinning a red-robed acolyte to the doorway where he lurked. A weapon clattered from a wounded hand. The acolyte howled. Bal saluted him. “On a festival day, I take your pride and leave you your life.”
Djola sighed. Alley rats would have the acolyte’s life.
Awa feasted on Bal’s shadow-warrior prowess, in love, but fighting passion. Bal loved otherworldly Awa with abandon, drinking up her Jumbajabbaland spirit. Sweet romance had been stolen from them.
“We must be poetry in action.” Bal scowled at him. “How do we live Abelzowadyo?”
Djola tapped Kyrie. “You write on Abelzowadyo in your conjure book, don’t you?”
“Ernold and Money assume my gates fall when I do.” Kyrie kissed her teeth. “Spirits become the gate and work without the conjurer.”
“Gate conjure is shapeshifting, Abelzowadyo.” Awa sighed.
“Haints powering gates don’t linger forever.” Djola nodded at Kyrie. “You were planning to sacrifice yourself, not Samina or anybody. But Samina drank poison, found you in Smokeland, and offered to watch over Mount Eidhou.” Tears filled the back of his throat. “Tessa and Quint smoke-walked to you as poison desert claimed them. My family haunted your gates with their last breaths. Basawili.”
Kyrie blinked at him, eyes blurry. “I conjure only with the willing.”
“Forgive me.” Djola tried to suck down tears. “I was wrong about you.”
“Everyone is.” Bal poked Awa.
“Abelzowadyo is Zamanzi,” Kyrie said. “Shapeshift any direction, live like a god of the crossroads.”
Djola wanted to hug Kyrie, but she wasn’t sentimental. “Yes, be a trickster, beholden to no one, responsible to everyone. Create a new realm for all of us.”
Bal sucked vie’s teeth with the Empire’s matter-of-fact contempt for northlander wisdom. “Zamanzi arrogance.”
Awa rolled her eyes. “Yari talked this same arrogance to us when we were Sprites.”
“Lahesh arrogance is different,” Bal countered.
Awa snorted. “Everybody’s arr
ogance is special.”
“True. And admitting you were wrong feels wonderful.” Djola shook himself and smiled at Kyrie. Soot trotted back to them, tail wagging—nothing to fear ahead.
“Playing god is good meditation.” Bal stowed bow and arrow. “But the gods are just stories we tell ourselves, so the sky won’t seem so big and our moments too short.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Awa asked. “Crossing over, I chose griot, remember?”
“Fatazz,” Bal cursed. “How is temple talk a plan to defeat Hezram?”
“We must make up new gods, a new yesterday and tomorrow.” Awa sneered. “We must shift the shapes of the world.”
Bal sang, “We’re roots to hidden treasures and seeds for something new—”
“Do you sneer at me or Yari?” Djola snapped at them. His thighs ached from riding the elephant. The crystal in his foot burned. He uncovered it. Dust on the wind dissolved on its facets. “So much impossible work still to do.”
“Awa tells me you’re a very wise man”—Bal stroked Yari’s talking drum—“a great teacher who can explain what the wind means, why rocks are hard and metals melt instead of burn, why this tree sings a different song than one with similar leaves.” Bal licked dry lips. “She says you are barbarian, Anawanama, and Zamanzi. Ancient enemies war in your blood, yet you know how to talk adversaries to a peace fire.”
“I did once. Years ago…” He sighed. “Or perhaps chiefs, masters, thief-lords, and pirates sat down to peace of their own accord.”
“You kept them there till you had a treaty.” Bal leaned into Awa. “She loves you like a father. I’m jealous.”
“Do you want her love all for yourself or do you crave a father’s love?” Djola asked.
Bal blinked away a tear. “Awa says you’ll tell me of Yari’s death.”
“Not now.” He tasted the wind. The afternoon storm might come sooner than expected. “That’s a story for after the masquerade.”
A voice like Yari’s jolted Djola. “Sing! I am Eidhou, Eidhou!”
Griots on fast ponies paraded past them. They were smooth-cheeked Green Elders, dark eyes outlined in black kohl and wiry hair knotted around glass beads. Red mica glittered on their palms. “We celebrate tomorrow in yesterday. Sing with us.”
Eidhou! All rivers flow from my heart
All the light comes from my dark
Stillness follows my fury
Love is never my worry
Bal played a rhythm that captured everyone’s heartbeat. Mango was delighted and tapped Bal’s nose. Kyrie and Awa leaned into Bal’s music. Djola squinted through the marble eye. He wanted to peer through Bal’s skin, beyond blood and bones to first moments, to origins. Awa’s Bal was a grown veson with scars on an angular face. Djola’s Bal had been round-faced, pouting the last time he saw her. Awa’s Bal could braid sweetgrass rope strong enough to hold a caravan of elephants. Djola’s Bal had also been a weaver, a little dancing soldier, a singer. Djola’s Bal wanted to ride to the capital and protect her father from foolish, greedy men, and now Awa’s Bal did exactly that.
If his Bal was Awa’s Bal, could vie forgive Djola, could vie love him?
The alley came out on the river end of Rainbow Square. A rambunctious audience cheered their entrance. Someone shouted, “The horse is almost as tall as the elephant.” Any of the young people squealing at an elephant with a snake brow and a mangy hound in a trickster hat could have been Tessa, Quint, or Bal grown into themselves. Djola rode to Council, for them, for all the children.
I am Eidhou, Eidhou!
When you find yourself, come right to me
When you find yourself, you have to see
Sour fruit turns to sweet in my meadows
Truth on the run hides in my shadows
Waiting for the time to rhyme
Waiting for the time to shine
Come right to me! You have to see!
I am Eidhou!
3
Yesterday’s Blood
Arkhys City’s Rainbow Square was more dazzling than Djola remembered. The riverstone ground was inlaid with agate, quartz, moonstone, and crystals he could not name. Sandstone buildings around the Square shimmered in hot dry air. Mercenaries marched around money houses, granaries, and tree-oil works, on the lookout for rebels but ignoring carnival clowns. These warriors-for-hire hoped to get rich plundering petty merchants and desperate farmers. Across Thunder River, sunlight snuck through the columns, domes, and towers of Azizi’s citadel. After the chaotic, earthy market, the rigid splendor of rulers needled Djola. Actually, it was being stuck in the everyday that annoyed him. His wanted to fly to Council at the speed of thought.
“Wim-wom.” Awa was dazzled by the Lahesh waterwheel that still presided over the river entrance to Rainbow Square. Creatures made of wood, metal, leather, and glass chased each other up, down, and around the wheel. Grinning behemoths, striped horses, and tentacled blobs slid along ramps, spun on tops, and leapt from catapults. Rainbow spirits from crystals in the center of the wheel cavorted around the square to the delight of men and women. Nobody had persuaded Azizi to ban women or replace the Lahesh whimsy wheel with a better power display. Djola offered a prayer to the crossroads gods—ancient Anawanama words learned from his mother. She never translated the verses, but said: Each life fills this prayer with meaning.
Mango halted under a lone cathedral tree. Its burl-mottled trunk rose a hundred feet before hefty branches broke the vertical line. A host of animal-people chirped, squealed, and buzzed from nests, holes, and hiding places in the tree. Among the feathery green leaves was the red bronze of new growth. Rainbow spirits had protected this elder from axmen and oil merchants. Even void dust avoided this giant. For how much longer? A spring fed deep roots and burbled into a fountain altar dedicated to the crossroads gods. Mango guzzled a trough of water then raised her trunk, curious, cautious. Kyrie waved to Anawanama and Zamanzi players at the top of the oasis garden.
Djola snorted bloody sand from his nostrils. “Can we trust them?”
“They’re sworn rebels.” Kyrie grunted. “We join their cause. Can they trust us?”
Kyrie urged Mango toward the oasis garden—a green marvel at the end of Rainbow Square. The elephant stepped out, majestic, confident, but Fannie balked, rearing as Empire guards marched by the fountain with spears, swords, and bows ready.
“The battle is over.” Awa stroked velvet ears. “Yesterday’s blood on their swords.”
“Yesterday’s blood is everywhere,” Djola said.
“No worries.” Bal scanned for danger. “We write tomorrow.”
“Is that so?” Djola wanted to argue with the green flecks in vie’s eyes. Not just Djola, many northland and floating-city folks had those eyes. Bal could have been Iyalawo Tembe’s child, given up to Green Elders when Tembe married Ice Mountain. “What story will you make?”
Bal shrugged. “Something better than today.”
“Yes.” Djola forced himself to look away from vie. “That’s usually the plan.”
“Whayoa! Come no farther!” An archer guarding a tree-oil manufactory yelled Empire vernacular at a child in a rag and raffia bird masquerade tumbling his way. Mercenaries along the stone wall behind him brandished swords and spears. The archer nocked an arrow and aimed. A crowd paused to gawk and mutter. “Move on,” the archer shouted, ready to lay down his life for pots of oil. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen. “The show is down at the oasis garden.”
The bird child nodded a wooden beak, flapped colored raffia wings, and backed away. A few gangly adults grumbled about fat mercenaries and corrupt masters. The archer aimed at their flimsy bravado, hands trembling. Djola held his breath. A carnival could become a riot on an upbeat—too many twitchy young men with weapons, too many people with nothing to lose.
Mango sucked water from the fountain and sprayed the crowd just as it was turning into a mob. People squealed and scattered; a few giggled. A hyena girl twirled, flinging droplets at those who wer
e still dry. Mango sprayed the archer. He gaped at her, wavering through outrage, fear, and delight. She waggled her head and trumpeted. Everyone laughed. Dripping wet, his mouth hanging open, the archer lowered his bow.
“A natural clown.” Kyrie used Empire talk.
Mango snatched the archer’s hat and threw it in the air, then tickled his nose. The archer stifled a chuckle. “I thought the last carnival elephants died a year ago. Only barbarians and their elephant raiders left.”
“Mango is a wild girl,” Kyrie said. “A memory come to life on Eishne.”
Mango put the hat back on his head. The crowd applauded.
The archer stroked her trunk. “Elephants are good luck, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Kyrie beamed at him. “Today we’re hopeful and celebrate peace.”
Mango strode toward the library, her ears flat, her chest rumbling. Fannie trotted behind her in a better mood too. The library’s onion domes were pitted and broken. Tattered banners fluttered over milky windows. Refugees from Holy City and everywhere huddled together in the portico on ragged mats and sipped a steaming brew from clay cups. Thick metal doors stood open, defiant. Djola caught the scent of mint tea, musty parchment, ink, and wax candles.
The librarians were beekeepers who loved ancient literature and welcomed everyone. Were they foolish? Naïve? Mango trumpeted a greeting. Librarians and refugees cheered her. A man in blue-violet pirate pants with a purple librarian sash across a broad chest charged down the marble steps. He looked like Orca, a bit thinner, head and chin shaved. Djola’s heart wheel stuttered. The librarian grinned and waved. He had dimpled chin and cheeks.
“That’s Boto, the rebel librarian.” Bal waved at him. “He stands with the People.”
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