The villagers are screaming. Fire falls from the sky in waves, and before long, I can see nothing but flames where the camp used to be. Everyone moves at once. I pick Aliya up in my arms, and several Sentinels surround us, hurrying us back to the village.
“To the village!” Arzu shouts over the thunder.
A group of us runs, but not all the Sentinels can keep up, and a column of dirt erupts in an explosion behind us. Falling from the sky are the remains of the Sentinel who stood there. Blasts of lightning burst open the ground, heading straight for us.
Behind us, in the distance, the earth opens up beneath the refugee camp, swallowing groups of people until their screams are just whispers in the thunder.
“Keep going!” screams another tastahlik.
Juba is frozen, staring at the sky. Arzu is up ahead, leading a group of villagers to safety. Now Juba is alone.
“Ayaba!” It’s Folami. Her jointed staff in a scabbard behind her back, she grips Juba’s shoulders. A moment ago, she’d been ready to fight Juba. “Ayaba! Please. Let’s go.” Juba breaks out of her trance.
The four of us run toward the village. I glance up and swallow a scream. Black wings hover overhead. They seem to stretch out forever. Jagged lightning streaks the clouds, illuminating the rest of the flying beast. Revealing a sleek, ribbed torso and giant legs with talons that can pluck an entire house off the ground. It hangs there in the air, flapping its wings, its face twisted in a snarl. Then it lets out another shriek.
The sound topples us, and we scramble to our feet, Aliya still in my arms.
“Taj . . .” I can barely hear Aliya as I run with her in my arms. “She sent . . .” Aliya gulps for air, then quiets. “She sent the arashi. Karima. She sent the arashi. She knows . . .”
Then she goes limp in my arms.
My heart lurches in my chest. I have to keep moving, keep focused. I tighten my grip on Aliya. Energy leaks out of me like my chest has been punctured. People cry and scream and run all around us.
The earth shakes beneath us. The arashi is getting closer.
Wind whips around me. I turn and see a robed figure whirling so that something wet forms a circle on the ground around him. Blood. He jams his staff into the ground and murmurs a string of words. Above him, holes open in the sky, and water descends in giant, twirling columns.
Zaki. He’s calling water from the sky. He’s making a storm.
Iragide.
The columns surround the arashi, then close in on it.
I can’t stop staring.
Rough hands haul me to my feet.
“Wake up! Are you mad?” the young woman shouts as I stumble to keep up with her, Aliya completely still in my arms.
“I . . .”
“Come! Follow Zephi!” She snatches Aliya from me and flings her over her shoulder. “Come!”
“Who is Zephi?”
“Me! Idiot!” And she takes off.
Thunder and fire rage behind us.
We leave Zaki behind.
CHAPTER 21
BY THE TIME we get close to the village, the fire in the desert burns even larger than I imagined. It is everywhere. Even as far away as we are now, we can’t escape its wrath.
“Come!” Zephi shouts, pointing toward the sky. “Big-big!” and I know she means the arashi screaming and vomiting fire down on us. We run, dodging collapsing huts and falling roofs until we get to the back of the building where Aliya and I have been staying.
Wind howls around us, almost screaming. The inyo swirl in a whirlwind above our heads. The air is thick with them. Over the tops of some buildings, I can see fire stretched out in a long line along the ridge. Stones and dirt fly up as the lightning pelts the ground. If I keep my eyes open for too long, dust blinds me.
Zephi sweeps a patch of dirt aside to reveal a metal door in the ground. She kicks on it twice with her heel—doom, doom. It swings open, and I see a whole gaggle of faces lit up inside. A half dozen hands reach out all at once, and we send down Aliya’s body, then climb in ourselves. Zephi is the last one in, and she closes the door tight.
I look behind me and see a whole family spread out across the large cellar. There are cushions down here and mats, and in a far corner, a woman nurses a baby, gently rocking him in her arms. Three kids fight over a ball at the woman’s feet. I think I even see someone smoking from a shisha pipe.
Nobody here seems all that worried that a mythical demon is circling their home and raining death and destruction down on their heads. The stone walls shake with each blast from up above. I notice that the hideout is reinforced in some places by splintering beams of wood, which doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence.
Zephi lays Aliya on a pallet. A little girl brings over a bowl of water. For these kids, this is normal. Arzu once told me that arashi attacks are common in this land.
I look around. The adults appear calm, but when I look closer, I can tell that for some of them it’s forced. They are scared, but they’re trying to be brave for their children. Arashi attacks are common here, but Juba said that the Sentinels could detect them far enough in advance that the villagers could travel to somewhere safe. Why couldn’t they raise the alarm beforehand this time? I glance toward Aliya. My mind flashes back to what she whispered in the desert. About Karima sending the arashi. I try to shake the thought away.
There’s another boom overhead. I startle and look up.
“You know of our storms?” Zephi asks me, crouched at Aliya’s side. As she makes her comfortable with blankets and pillows, I notice she doesn’t have any sin-spots.
I nod. “An arashi destroyed my home.”
She raises her eyebrows. “So that’s something we have in common, then.” She sticks her hand out, palm up. “To you and yours, visitor.”
I slide my hand over hers, palm down. “To you and yours, Zephi.”
“Yes. Finally. A proper introduction.” She sighs, satisfied. “Come. Break kola nut with us.”
Oh, no, not those again.
* * *
• • •
After the meal, Zephi sits with me as we both watch over Aliya. She’s woken up a few times, sipped some water at my insistence, and then gone back to sleep. At one point, Zephi gets up to play keep-away with a bunch of the younger kids before coming back to join me in my watch over Aliya. The thunder outside has largely stopped, but I’ve never seen the end of an arashi attack. I wouldn’t even know what that looks like. I just thought they kept going until there was nothing left, no more sin to swallow or no more sinners to drain. If we keep on living, do they just keep circling? Looking for us, for sins? I glance at Zephi, whose gaze has fallen over Aliya. With one hand, she straightens the blanket wrapped around my friend. I want to ask Zephi about the Sentinels and how they could have missed this one, but Aliya’s words ring in my ear again: Karima. She sent the arashi. She’s found us.
“So, your friend is ill.” Zephi makes it sound like a question and a statement at the same time.
“Yes.” I don’t want to reveal too much. If I start talking about equations and the Seventh Prophet and how it looks like Aliya’s going mad before my very eyes, I have no idea how she’ll react. How anyone in the tribe will react. “I don’t think she’s drinking enough water.”
Zephi snorts out a laugh, then pulls it back. “I’m sorry, but I do not think that is what’s wrong with your friend.” She strokes Aliya’s blanket. “So, you were at the fights?”
I nod. “We were.”
Zephi tuts. “Your friend is a scholar, no?” She squints at me.
“Um, yes. She, uh, she studies algebra.”
“Ah, so your friend is knowing algebra?”
I smirk. “And she’s very good at it.” I puff my chest out, proud to brag on Aliya’s behalf. “You could say she’s fluent in that language.”
“If you continue talking like this
, we will have our Elders test her, and she will be very upset that you praised her abilities so much.” While she speaks, she twists a rag in a calabash bowl of water and squeezes out the excess, then pats Aliya’s head. “She will be upset, and we will tell her, ‘Oh, your friend said you could do this, and he said you were so good at that.’ And we will then ask her, ‘So, is your friend a liar?’” She leans back on her knees and looks at Aliya’s resting form, content with her handiwork. “And what do you think she’ll say?”
“Heh. I think she’ll gladly accept your test.” I’m trying to play along, but I keep looking over at Aliya, willing her to wake up. Willing her to be OK. Zephi can tell. Her hand lands on mine, covering the tattoo of a bird in flight.
After a moment, I pull away. “Don’t worry,” I say, gathering myself. “As soon as she wakes up, ask her any question about algebra. She will write a whole entire proof for you.” I stand up because I feel I need to and accidentally bump up against a shelf, sending a bowl crashing to the floor. Because I have the worst luck in the world, that’s when everybody gets quiet. Suddenly, I’m the only one making noise.
Wait.
I’m the only one making noise.
A moment later, we all look skyward. Nothing. No booming. No pebbles falling from the cellar’s ceiling. No screeching. No howling wind. Nothing.
A few of us look around nervously, then Zephi and I lock eyes. Without saying a word, we both know what we need to do. So, we make our way over to the ladder entrance, and both of us climb up, perched right beneath the metal doors to the cellar for a few tense seconds. It takes us some seconds to gather our courage, then Zephi puts her shoulder to the door.
“You’re not tastahlik,” I whisper before she pushes.
She looks at me. “No, Olurun has given me a simpler diet.” She snorts, then pushes. The door groans.
Sand falls like a curtain through the opening, but Zephi pushes through. I see that others have the same idea. More and more people are creeping up from their cellars. Some of them have to dig themselves out of new piles of sand, and a few of them hold large palm tree branches to sweep sand out of windows and through doorways. Some of the older tribespeople are stunned into silence. At first, I think it’s the same sort of sad silence people in Kos feel when they come out of their homes after their dahia has been Baptized and find their neighborhood destroyed. But this is different. There’s shock. Wonder. Like they’ve been spared.
Zaki. I run through the streets, and before I know it, I’m back at the rim of the village. Already, others have gathered to survey the damage. Bodies litter the land. Those who weren’t able to make it back in time. Those who were swallowed by the attack and spat back out. Inyo cloud the air around us, howling softly in our ears. Zephi stands with me, then begins walking among the dead, scanning faces, kneeling to listen for breathing.
Someone calls out in the distance. A voice ringing clear. Then shouts and signals being sung. Then a rush of footsteps. Are the Sentinels warning of another arashi attack?
I look to the sky to try to see if the telltale swirling clouds are forming, the ones that will spit out those monsters that set fire to whole cities. But the clouds are the same.
People from the tribe rush past us into the night, and Zephi and I stand, following them with our eyes.
Then several of them emerge, carrying something heavy.
Zaki is with them. His staff can barely hold him up. The villagers returning hold a blanket between them. A body. They dash by us in a blur, but it’s not fast enough for me not to notice the tattoos running up and down the exposed arms and legs. Arms and legs covered in blood. All of the person’s clothes are soaked through with blood. Shock numbs me, knocks all thought from my head, and before I know it, I’ve shaken off Zephi’s hand and am hurrying after the tribespeople, following them to the large tent where they’ve brought the body.
They lay it on a raised bed, and several of them, men and women, move around the body with the practiced quickness of people who have done this many times before and know exactly what to do. Soon, enough of the blood is washed from the body and the face that I recognize it.
His face is thinner, more drawn. And his nappy hair has grown out thick. His fingers are longer and more gnarled. And his arms are now sinewy with muscle. But I recognize him. He looks like a ghost, and maybe that’s what he is. He was supposed to have died back in Kos, defending the city alongside me against the army of inisisa Queen Karima and the Mage Izu had unleashed upon us. But he’s here.
“Tolu,” I whisper, hoping the aki I once lived with and grew up with and Ate sins with as a young orphan in Kos can hear me.
He does not move.
CHAPTER 22
ONCE THEY’VE CLEANED all the mess away from his face and body, he looks more like the Tolu I remember, but he’s still like a ghost to me. It’s like he crawled out of the desert. I don’t know how long it’ll take me to adjust to the fact that he’s alive. If he doesn’t survive whatever it is that happened to him out there, I won’t have to.
But occasionally, I hear whispers of the tribesfolk outside the tent. They wonder about these people who have all of a sudden started coming to their homeland and changing their lives. And they wonder whether or not this new, young sin-eater is from Kos as well.
They know that I know him. Anyone who walks into the room or spends any time breathing the same air as us can tell that there is something between us, something that links us, and that perhaps it has to do with more than the fact that we both wear sin-spots.
I’m happy to see him again, overjoyed that he’s still alive, but a part of me is in mourning. Dispirited. No matter how far I run, what happened before somehow always runs me down.
I want to start over here and learn to be a true tastahlik. Maybe even Larada. I want to learn how to fight, but I also want to help cure sinners among the tribe. I want to be revered. I want to migrate and wander and discover lands I’ve never seen before. I want to feel what I felt when sailing off from Osimiri. That sense of adventure, of movement. I want to feel as though I’m running toward something instead of running away. I burn with shame at the thought of leaving Kos the way it is. But . . . but I can’t go back. The thought of making things worse is even more painful.
I have no idea what’s brought Tolu here, how he survived the Fall of Kos, nor how he escaped past the city wall. And I’m so stunned when his eyes finally flutter open that I can’t even bring myself to ask him.
Color has begun to return to his face and limbs. One bandaged arm rests on his stomach while the other remains at his side. Bandages have been wrapped around his head, and his shirt lies torn in half to expose the cloth that the Healers strapped to his chest and stomach. His legs are similarly covered, and for several seconds, he rhythmically blinks his eyes, cracks his knuckles, and flexes his toes.
I can only guess at all the questions he wants to ask, and I watch his eyes dart back and forth as he puts pieces together. Then he squints and turns to look at me. He doesn’t gasp, and his eyes don’t shoot wide open at the sight of me. There’s a new softness in them—like he thinks he’s in a dream.
“We all believed you’d survived,” he says at last, more a breath than a sentence.
“Hey, don’t talk,” I say, moving my stool closer to him. I don’t want him to raise his voice, in part because I don’t want anyone outside to overhear us. I also don’t want him to use more energy than absolutely necessary. “Rest.” I take one of his bandaged hands in mine. “We can talk about everything later. Now that you’re awake, we can maybe start feeding you properly. They have some of our food here. Moin-moin, and I’m sure if I dig around, I can get us some fufu.”
Tolu tries to smile through his cracked lips, but it turns into a grimace. “I don’t have much time.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s coming.” Tolu’s grip tightens. “He’s near.”
“Bo,” Tolu says. His head sinks back into his pillow, taking my heart with it. “Bo is coming. You must run.”
I feel like everyone’s been telling me to run, one way or another. I know I have to or, rather, will have to. But I hate it nonetheless.
“Anywhere. Just run.” He’s running out of breath. “Stay alive.”
For what? I want to ask him. Who am I supposed to stay alive for? There’s nothing waiting for me in Kos but an army of murderous inisisa wearing armor and a queen I thought I loved who is setting the whole Kingdom of Odo on fire to rip my head from my shoulders. My best friend is slaughtering entire villages trying to fulfill that very queen’s greatest wish. Where would I run to? What use am I to anyone?
A tear runs down the side of Tolu’s face.
“What is it?” I ask him, even though I know it will hurt to hear the answer.
“So many have died under Karima.”
I want to push him, find out everything I can, but he doesn’t have the strength, so I let him go at his own pace.
“After your escape, Karima, she crushed the rebellion. Turned us against each other. Those who could escaped through the tunnels.” He swallows. “She made Bo the commander of her army of inisisa. Sin-beasts, they roam the streets of Kos. There is no more Eating. Only more and more inisisa that the Mages are forced to call forth from the sinners in Kos.” He chuckles, then chokes on it. Once he finishes coughing, he continues. “There is no more sickness,” he says with a bitter grin. “No one need worry they will perish from living with a sin. She claims she is purifying the city and that she will do the same for the entire kingdom.” He looks straight at me. “She is spreading her rule. Expanding. She has already taken the mines in the north. Before long, she will have swallowed everything west of Kos.” He winces at new pain that runs through him. “She can even command the arashi.” He waves a weak hand in the air. “They circle the dahia. Like patrols. Every citizen of Kos, every Forum-dweller, lives in fear of the shadows above. The skies above Kos have been dark for a long time.”
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