by Tomi Adeyemi
Like a battering ram to the heart, Binta forces herself into my mind. She, too, suffered. She suffered in my place.
Kwame stabs Tzain’s thigh again and I cry out once more, my vision blurring with new tears. He withdraws the dagger with a shaking hand. His tremor intensifies as he moves the blade up to Tzain’s chest.
“This is your last chance.”
“We are not your enemy!” I rush out. “The guards in Warri killed the people we loved, too!”
“Lies.” Kwame’s voice chokes up. He steadies his hand and pulls back the blade. “Those guards are your people. They’re the ones you love—”
The tent flaps open. Folake rushes in, almost flinging herself into Kwame.
“We’re under attack.”
Kwame’s face falls. “Her guards?”
“I don’t know. I think they have a maji!”
Kwame pushes the bone dagger into Folake’s hand and runs out.
“Kwame—”
“Stay here!” he calls back.
Folake pivots and takes us in. My tears, the blood gushing from Tzain’s leg. She covers her mouth, then drops the dagger in the dirt and flees from the tent.
“Tzain?” I ask. He clenches his teeth and presses against the tree root. The bloodstains spread on his pants leg. He blinks slowly, though his eyes are nearly swollen shut.
“You okay?”
The most painful tears yet prick at my eyes. Beaten. Stabbed. Yet still, he asks about me.
“We have to get out of here.”
I pull against the ropes binding my wrists with a new fervor. There’s a snapping sound as the bonds begin to fray. The rope rips at my skin, but my chest fills with a different kind of pain.
It’s like all those days back at the palace, back when my bonds were golden chains. I should’ve fought them the way I fight now.
If I had only done more, Binta would still be safe.
I clench my teeth, digging my heels into the dirt. With a grunt, I brace my heel against the bark and leverage my whole body to pull free.
“Amari.” Tzain’s voice is weaker now. He’s lost so much blood. Bark cuts into the soles of my feet, but I press even harder to pull at the ropes.
Strike, Amari.
Father’s voice rings in my head, but it’s not his strength I need.
Be brave, Amari. Binta soothes instead.
Be the Lionaire.
“Ugh!” I scream against the pain. It almost sounds like a roar. Folake’s voice rings from outside. The tent flap opens—
The rope binding me snaps. I pitch forward, falling face-first in the dirt. Folake dives for the bone dagger. I scramble to my feet and lunge at her.
“Agh!” she grunts as I tackle her headfirst, knocking her to the ground. She grabs the bone dagger, but I jab her in the throat. While she chokes, I drive my elbow into her gut.
The bone dagger falls from her hand. I wrap my hand around its ivory blade. Its touch fills me with a chill, a strange and violent power.
Strike, Amari.
Father’s face returns. Hard. Unforgiving.
This is what I warned you about. If we don’t fight, these maggots will be our end.
But staring at Folake, I see the pain in Kwame’s eyes. The fear that weighed down Zu’s small shoulders. All the grief that lies in Father’s wake, the lives he’s already taken away.
I cannot be like Father.
The maji are not my enemy.
I drop the dagger and pull my fist back, twisting from my hips as my fist collides with her jaw. Her head snaps with a lurch. Her eyes roll before she blacks out.
I leap off her and grab the dagger, slicing through the ropes binding Tzain’s wrists. The cords barely hit the ground before I start tying them around his thigh.
“Go.” Tzain tries to urge me on, but his arms are weak. “There’s not enough time.”
“Hush.”
His skin is clammy to the touch. When I tie the ropes tight, the blood flow slows. But he can hardly keep his eyes open. This might not be enough.
I peek outside the tent—unmasked figures run in every direction, creating the cover of chaos. Though the boundaries of the camp aren’t visible, we can at least follow the surge of people.
“Alright.” I break a branch off a tree and duck back into the tent, placing the makeshift cane in Tzain’s right hand. I sling his other arm over my shoulder, locking my knees to stop myself from buckling under the weight.
“Amari, no.” Tzain grimaces, breaths rapid and shallow.
“Be quiet,” I snap. “I’m not leaving you behind.”
With me for leverage and the cane for balance, Tzain takes his first labored step on his good leg. We make our way to the tent’s entrance before taking our last moment of rest.
“We’re not dying here,” I say.
I won’t allow it.
CHAPTER FIFTY
INAN
THE GROUND BEFORE ME is a maze.
A labyrinth of masks and earthly animations.
I sprint through the chaos, dodging blades, leaping over tree roots to make it through the gate.
More masked figures run out, confused, attempting to make sense of the insanity. Zélie’s animations break through the ground like rising mountains. They swarm like an infestation, a plague no one can escape.
It’s working. Despite myself, a smile comes as I sprint. It’s a whole new world of battle. A game of sênet more chaotic than anything I could’ve imagined.
All around me fighters go down, screaming as Zélie’s animations grab hold. Like cocoons, the earthly soldiers wrap themselves around the assailants, pinning the assailants to the ground.
For the first time, the sight of magic is thrilling. Not a curse, but a gift. A fighter lunges toward me and I don’t even have to reach for my blade; an animation crashes into him, knocking him out of my way.
As I leap over the fallen fighter, the earthly animation looks up. Though it has no visible eyes, I can sense its gaze. A chill runs through me as I near the gate.
“Ugh!”
The cry is distant, yet it seems to echo in my head.
The smell of the sea wavers.
I turn; an arrow’s pierced Zélie’s arm.
“Zélie!”
Another arrow flies, this time striking her side. The impact knocks her to the ground. New animations rise to take the arrows head-on.
“Go!” she shouts from down the field, finding me in the frenzy. She keeps one hand gripped on the sunstone as the other stanches the wound in her side.
My feet drag like cement, but I can’t ignore her instruction. The gate is only a few meters away. Our family and the scroll are still inside.
I push forward, making it through the gate and toward the camp. But before I can move on, a different sight gives me pause.
A divîner with a powerful frame races out the gate. Blood stains his hands and face. For some reason the sight makes me think of Tzain.
But most troubling of all is the smell of smoke and ash. It overpowers me as he runs past. I don’t understand why until I whip my head around and see the divîner’s hands begin to blaze.
A Burner …
The sight stops me in my tracks, reigniting a fear Father’s pounded into me my whole life. The type of maji that incinerated Father’s first family. The monsters who set him on his warpath.
An indomitable fire rages around the maji’s hands, billowing in shocking red clouds. Its flames shine bright against the night, crackling so loud it practically roars. As it floods my ears, the sound twists into screams. The futile pleas Father’s family must’ve made.
A new wave of arrows launches from the trees with the Burner’s arrival, forcing Zélie back. It’s too much to handle at once.
The sunstone slips from her grasp.
No!
The world shifts, time freezing as the forthcoming horror dawns. The Burner lunges for the orb. This must have been his plan all along.
Zélie stretches forward for the stone, p
ained face illuminated by the blaze in the Burner’s hands. But her reach falls short.
The Burner’s fingers barely graze the stone when his body erupts in flames.
The fire burns inside his chest, shooting from his throat, his hands, his feet.
Curse the skies.
It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
The blaze is all-consuming. The air incinerates to a scalding degree. The ground beneath the Burner’s feet smolders red. Just his presence melts the dirt around him like metal in a blacksmith’s forge.
My feet move before my mind catches up. I sprint through the mammoth trees and paralyzed masks in my way. I have no plan. No viable attack. But still, I run.
As I race to get there in time, the Burner holds his flaming hands in front of his face. Through the fire he almost looks confused, unsure of what to do.
But as his fists clench, darkness radiates from his stance. A new strength, a rediscovered truth. He has the power now.
And it’s a power he’s hungry to use.
“Zélie!” I scream.
He stalks toward her. A swarm of animations charge with a vengeance, but he breaks straight through them, unwavering as they splinter into burning rubble.
Zélie tries to rise from the ground and fight, but her wounds are too severe. As she falls back, the Burner raises his palm.
“No!”
I lunge, throwing myself between his hand and Zélie’s body. A surge of terror and adrenaline races through me as I face the Burner’s flames.
A comet of fire twists in his hand. Its heat bends the air.
My magic builds in my chest. Thrashing into my fingers. The image of my powers restraining Kaea’s mind returns. I raise my hands to fight—
“Stop!”
The Burner freezes.
Confusion rocks me as he turns to the voice’s source. A young girl makes her way across the camp, thin brows knit in concern.
The moonlight illuminates her face, glowing against the puff of white on top of her head. When she reaches us, she stares at the streak of white in my own hair.
“They’re one of us.”
The comet of fire in the Burner’s hands goes out.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
ZÉLIE
HE TRIED TO PROTECT ME.
In all the questions and confusion, this surprise rises above the rest. It surges when Inan retrieves the sunstone and places it in my hands. It swells when he lifts me in his arms and holds me tight against his chest.
Following the young girl with a crown of white hair, Inan carries me past the gate. As we pass, the fighters remove their masks and reveal their white locks. Almost every person behind the gate is a divîner, too.
What is this?
I try to make sense of everything through the haze of pain: the Burner, the countless divîners, the child who appears to lead them. But any notion of what this could all mean vanishes when we finally lay eyes on their camp.
In the center of the mammoth trees lies a convergence of several valleys. The dip creates a depression in the earth, forming a wide plain filled with bright tents, wagons, and carts. From afar the sweet scent of fried plantain and jollof rice hits me, somehow rising above the copper tang of my own blood. I catch murmurs of Yoruba in the crowd filled with the most divîners I’ve seen since I was a child.
We pass a group of divîners laying flowers around a tall lavender vase. A shrine. A tribute to Sky Mother.
“Who’re all these people?” Inan asks the young girl they call Zu. “What is it you’re doing?”
“Give me a moment. Please. I promise, I’ll return your friends and answer your questions, but I need some time.”
Zu whispers to a divîner beside her, a girl with a green patterned skirt and matching wrap tied around her white hair.
“They weren’t in the tent,” the divîner whispers back.
“Then find them.” The girl’s voice is strained. “They didn’t make it past the gate, so they can’t have gotten far. Tell them we have their friends. We know they were telling the truth.”
I strain my neck to hear more, but an ache ripples through my core. When I writhe, Inan holds me closer. The sound of his beating heart pulses through my ears, steady and strong, like the crest of the tides. I find myself leaning into the sound. Again, my greatest confusion rises.
“That Burner would’ve killed you,” I whisper. Just lying in the maji’s presence seared my skin. It still itches, raw and red, a patch on my arm burnt and blistering.
As it prickles, it brings me back to the scorching breaths I thought would be my last. For the first time, magic wasn’t my ally.
It was almost my end.
“What were you thinking?” I ask.
“You were in danger,” he answers. “I wasn’t.”
He reaches down and grazes a cut on my chin. A strange flutter travels through me at his touch. Any possible response jumbles in my throat. I don’t know what to say to that.
Inan still bathes in the glow of the sunstone’s touch. With his magic still at the surface, his copper complexion is rich with health. In the lantern’s light, his bones are elegantly pronounced instead of harsh and protruding against his skin.
“This’ll do.” Zu brings us into a tent where a few makeshift cots have been set up.
“Set her down here.” Zu points to a cot, and Inan lays me down with care. As my head hits the rough cotton, I fight a wave of nausea.
“We need liquor and bandages for the wounds,” Inan says.
Zu shakes her head. “I’ll take care of it.”
She presses her palms to the gash in my side, and I cringe. A searing stabs at my insides as she chants.
“Babalúayé, dúró tì mí bayi bayi. Fún mi ní agbára, kí nle fún àwọn tókù ní agbára—”
I force my head up; a bright orange light glows beneath Zu’s hands. The pain of her touch transforms into a numbing warmth. The searing inside me cools to a dull ache.
The soft light from her hands kneads its way into my skin, spreading throughout every ripped muscle and torn ligament.
I let out a long breath as Zu’s magic mends my wounds.
“Are you alright?”
I look up; I didn’t even realize I was squeezing Inan’s hand. My face heats as I let go and run my fingers over where the arrow pierced me. Wet blood still trickles down my skin, but the wound is completely healed.
Once again questions arise, louder now that they don’t have to fight through the haze of my pain. In the past hour, I’ve seen more different types of magic than I’ve seen in the past decade.
“You need to start talking.” I study Zu; the russet hue of her brown skin is strangely familiar, like the fishermen who sailed up to Ilorin every two moons to exchange their saltwater trout for our cooked tigerfish.
“What’s going on? What is this place? Where are the bone dagger and scroll? And where are our siblings? You said you had my brother—”
I pause as the tent flap flies open; Amari stumbles in with a half-conscious Tzain slung around her arm. I jump to my feet to help her. My brother is so battered he can hardly stand.
“What have you done?” I yell.
Amari withdraws the bone dagger and points it at Zu’s neck. “Heal him!”
The girl steps back, palms raised.
“Set him down.” She takes a deep breath. “I’ll answer all your questions now.”
* * *
WE SIT IN RIGID SILENCE, digesting everything as Zulaikha heals Tzain’s leg and head. Behind her, Kwame and Folake stand at attention, stances tense.
When Kwame shifts, my hand moves to my leather pack, searching for the heat of the sunstone under its skin. It’s still hard to look at him without imposing the memory of flames around his face.
I lean against Nailah, relieved to be reunited after Zu ordered her people to release my ryder. I tuck my pack behind her paw to keep it and the stone out of sight. But when Zu’s limbs begin to shake from the strain of her incantation,
I find myself wanting to pull out the sunstone and lend it to her.
Watching Zu, it’s like I’m five years old again, trailing after Mama with bandages and pots of heated water. Whenever the village Healer couldn’t tend to the worst of Ibadan’s sick alone, she and Mama would work together. Side by side they sat, the Healer using the magic of her touch while Mama kept the patient from taking his last breath. The best Reapers don’t only command death, little Zél. We also help others live.
I stare at Zu’s small hands, remembering the hands of my mother. Though young, Zu exhibits great skill over her magic. It all begins to make sense when we learn that she was the very first divîner to touch the scroll.
“I didn’t realize what I had,” she speaks, voice scratchy from the toll of her magic. Folake hands her a wooden cup of water. Zu nods in thanks before taking a sip. “We weren’t ready when Saran’s guards descended in Warri and attacked. We barely escaped after they took the scroll away.”
Inan and Amari stare at each other, a silent conversation playing in their eyes. The guilt that’s crept onto Inan’s face all day spreads to Amari’s.
“After Warri, I knew we needed a place where we could be safe. A place where the guards couldn’t hunt us. It started as only a few tents, but when we sent coded messages to the divîners of Orïsha, the camp began to grow.”
Inan lurches forward. “You built this settlement in under a moon?”
“It doesn’t feel like it.” Zu shrugs. “It’s like the gods kept sending divîners this way. Before I knew what was happening, the camp built itself.”
The ghost of a smile comes to Zu’s face, but fades when she turns to Amari and Tzain. She swallows hard and looks down, running her hands up and down her arms.
“The things we did to you—” Zu stops herself. “The things I allowed them to do … I’m so sorry. I promise you, it made me sick. But when our scouts saw a noble with the scroll, we couldn’t take the risk.” She squeezes her eyes shut, a thin line of tears breaking through. “We couldn’t let what happened in Warri happen here.”
Zu’s tears make my own eyes prickle. Kwame’s face pinches with pain. I want to hate him for what he did to Tzain, but I can’t. I’m no better. If anything, I’m worse. If Inan hadn’t stopped me, I would’ve stabbed that masked divîner to death just to get answers. He’d be facedown in the dirt instead of lying on a cot, being treated as he awaits Zu’s healing.