Crown of Thunder

by Tochi Onyebuchi

  “Like what you did with the water.”

  Zaki nods. “Like what I did with the water.”

  I turn to face him. “What was that? Will Aliya be able to do that?”

  Zaki steps closer to me. “If she remains strong enough to survive this trial, she will be able to do so much more. I am a tiny lizard compared to the power within her.” He settles his shoulders. “I did not believe it when I first heard word of an apprentice who could write proofs with extraordinary skill back at the Palace. I had been settled here for quite some time after my escape when news drifted on the caravans that there existed a novice Mage so skilled at algebra that her elders could hardly follow her. She had been an unremarkable student in the dahia, not even making it to the Palace competitions as a child, but when she was brought in to work for the Palace, she showed unparalleled skill.” He shakes his head. “As a Mage, you hear such stories all the time. People trying to bring glory to the dahia where they are from or trying to proclaim that they have the best students and, therefore, they must be the best teachers. But then this young Mage vanished.”

  “Is that what you heard?”

  “Eventually, I learned from my agents of the rebellion in Kos. I learned of what had befallen the city. And I knew the time had finally come.” He frowns. “We had missed our chance before. We had been too slow. But we will not make the same mistake again.”

  I look back at the door, and suddenly my body feels so heavy. Everything is pulling me back to Kos, even as I want to stay here. I’m not ready to go back. “I don’t think I’ll ever be ready to go back.” I don’t realize I’ve whispered that out loud until I see the look on Zaki’s face. Concerned, but patient. Like a parent who knows he must watch his child suffer his way into a lesson.

  “Come,” says the exiled Mage. And he walks to a bed of flowers running along the pathway to his front door. When we arrive, he tucks his staff under his arm and pulls two trowels out from his robe.

  I turn mine over in my hand. “Oga, what is this now?”

  “We will just turn the earth a little. This is far from the most difficult thing this garden has asked of me.”

  I kneel beside him, and together we dig into a patch of moist soil. It gives easily.

  “I enjoy this,” he says. His voice is quiet but strong. Whatever strength he lost battling the arashi, he seems to have gotten it back. “I find it demands things of me that no other activity does.”

  “Like what?”

  “Attention. Patience.” He pauses. “Kindness.” He turns the earth with his trowel, then puts it to the side and pulls out of one sleeve a tiny metal contraption that looks like two knives joined at their middles. With one deft motion, he snips off a branch of a tree so tiny I can fit it in my two hands held together. “It is the same with the tastahlik here. What they do.” He frowns. “Not the fighters. The Onija? That is the opposite of patience, what they do.”

  The tastahlik Juba was prepared to cast out of the village. They are probably burying their dead. Maybe some of them have become inyo, their sin-heavy spirits moaning over the ground on which they once stood. I have not seen Abeo since just before the attack. I don’t know how to feel at the idea of him maybe being dead. I suppose I should finally feel safe. No longer under his watchful eye. But I feel guilty for feeling safe. I did not wish for him to be dead.

  Zaki examines the tree he has just pruned. “The Larada. Now, what they do requires much more patience and strength. It is easy to fight. It is difficult to forgive.

  “In the north,” he continues, “they have machines that assist in the healing of ailments. These are things that can issue a diagnosis; they can tell you what is wrong without the aid of a medicine man. But I have found in my studies—and others have corroborated these findings—that the very act of speaking to an actual person is an element of the healing process.” All the while, he’s snipping flowers or pouring water out of a small vial into the ground around the plants. “It is the same with the tastahlik. Turning the act of Eating into a spectacle means the purpose of the Eating and, thus, the purpose of the sin-eater are both lost. It ceases to be about the Healing. And it becomes instead another act of violence. The person whose sin you have Eaten—you have taken their sin from them and the guilt that accompanies it, but you have not truly freed them of it.”

  “But what else is left?”

  Zaki finishes with one plant, wipes his brow, then rises slowly. Like a true old man, he takes his time stretching his back. Then he exhales. “What is left, my son, is for the sinner to forgive himself.” He puts an arm over my shoulder and turns me toward the house. “You have Eaten many, many sins. I see it. But the people whose sins you Ate, do you believe they forgave themselves?”

  In my head, I see the colossal bedrooms of the wealthy. Preachers, kanselo, algebraists. The Kayas. I think of the Mages who called forth the sin, then ushered everyone out of the way while I risked my life. I think of how it felt for those first sins to rush down my throat, choking me. I remember crying from the pain, unable to scream because their horribleness was becoming mine.

  “They don’t feel anything,” I spit. “Never mind forgiveness.”

  Zaki gives me that sad-but-patient-parent look again. “You are running—”

  “Oga, do not be giving me that look when you cannot even tell your own daughter who her father is. Who is running?” I know I’m not angry at him. I’m angry at everything, but he is unlucky enough to be standing in front of me right now. “You talk to me of forgiveness. You stand here and lecture me about how the sinner must forgive themselves, but you abandoned her!” I’m shouting now, and I don’t care. “You abandoned your daughter!”

  I lunge for him, ready to crush his nose, but I stop myself just in time. Zaki hasn’t moved an inch.

  “I know you are angry,” he says, taking a step toward me.

  “Stop.” I point a finger at him. “Stop! Don’t touch me.”

  But he advances. “But what happened was not your fault,” he says. He puts his hands on my shoulders and pulls me to him.

  “Stop it!” I hold my head in my hands, but I don’t pull away. I close my eyes and see the arashi flying over the refugee camp, and I see fire raining from the sky, and I see the field of dead bodies outside of the camp, and I see Arzu picking out rebel aki and Mages, selecting them for execution, and, at last, I see Tolu, broken and beaten and bloody, and I see his face just as he died. “Stop!” My voice has softened. Sobs choke me.

  Zaki holds me to his chest. Tightly. My arms fall to my sides, and I bury my face in his robe and weep. For the aki I left behind in the forest. For the aki I left behind in Kos. For the refugees searching for lost family members in the camp outside the Wall. For the refugees who died, swallowed up by the earth during the arashi attack. For Tolu. For Baba. For Mama. And I weep and weep and weep.

  When I finally wipe the tears and snot from my face, I look over Zaki’s shoulder and see Arzu and Aliya standing a few paces back. The shouting must have brought them out. They stand completely still. Arzu’s face has lost its color.

  She heard.

  She steps forward. One step. Two steps. Each one a stiff shuffle. Then she reaches a hand out. “You’re my . . . baba?” she whispers so quietly I almost don’t hear it.

  Zaki has turned to her, and I can no longer see his face. For a long time, the two stare at each other. Then Zaki steps forward and wraps Arzu in an embrace. Only the very top of her blond head peeks up from over his shoulder. Aliya heads toward me, stumbling, trying to get her staff out in front of her in time.

  “Taj,” she says, and there’s a warning in her voice. “Taj, look!”

  I turn away from Zaki and Arzu.

  Fire, nothing but fire.

  The clouds in the sky above don’t move. None of us hears arashi, but fire rages.

  “Stay here,” I shout over my shoulder. Before I can stop
myself, I hurry back toward the village.

  Several huts are in flames. Aki ride through the town on horseback. Inisisa run alongside them. Almost like they are following orders.

  I swallow the bile that rises in my throat and run even faster.

  He found us.

  Bo.

  CHAPTER 24

  THERE ARE INISISA everywhere.

  Wolves the color of shadows chase children through the streets while nurses try to protect tribespeople from the blood-covered aki who ride by on horses. Fire flanks the main thoroughfare, and huts crumble in on themselves. I rush into one of them to see if there’s anyone inside. Just as I’m about to leave, I see a young girl cowering in a corner, screaming as a wooden beam falls from the ceiling. I dash over and swing her onto my back. We escape the hut just as its entire roof caves in.

  I have no idea where to take her, so I try to find my way to the sick tent. Surely that must be protected. Already the ground is littered with the Crossed. Inisisa gnaw at motionless bodies, and a few tribespeople lie in the streets bleeding and broken. I move as fast as I can to keep the girl from seeing these things. Before I get to the sick tent, a voice calls out. One of the nurses from earlier rushes to me, and I slip the weeping child into her arms.

  “The others, where are they?” I ask. But before she can answer, a horse gallops our way. I dive to the ground, taking the nurse and girl with me just in time to avoid the sword that would have taken our heads off. “Take her somewhere safe,” I say, then push myself to my feet.

  All around me are screams.

  I look around, trying to think of what to do next.

  It takes me some time to reorient myself. I turn in a slow circle. People writhe on the ground around me, some of them begging for help. In side streets, tastahlik battle with the various weapons they’ve been able to find, fending bears off with dagas, swinging and striking at griffins with staffs and beams of wood, slicing through lizards with their swords.

  An inisisa darts toward me from my left. Without thinking, I scramble to a motionless body in the street where I see a curved sword. I spin and slice through the inisisa. It splits into two, and before it can re-form and chase me, I dart down the street toward an older man trying to fend off an attack from an aki on horseback. He’s trying to fight the aki with a flaming beam of wood, but the fire inches toward his hands, and he has to drop it, leaving himself open to blows from the aki’s whip. I run as fast as my legs will carry me. The aki raises his whip, and just as it comes down, I stick my arm out, catching the whip’s end as it wraps around my wrist. I pull with all my might, and the aki comes tumbling out of his saddle. He hits the ground with a thud, and just as he comes up, I flip the sword in my hand and hit him square in the temple with its pommel.

  The villager falls back to the ground and murmurs his thanks before pushing himself up. I swing into the horse’s saddle. The beast bucks and nearly throws me off, but I clench my knees and whip the reins to set off down the street.

  Inisisa nip at my horse’s legs. We zig and zag, trying to avoid them, but they’re gaining on us. A group of beasts—wolves and hounds—breaks out from the burning huts around us. They’re cleansed. Juba’s. The beasts run alongside me and take down the inisisa trying to get us. The two groups of beasts tussle and writhe on the ground, biting and clawing and beating at one another. Shadows thrashing and struggling against glowing skin and fur. Snakes wrap around a bear’s throat. A griffin swoops from the sky and claws at a lynx.

  At the next intersection, five inisisa surround a bloodied Folami. Her torn shirt hangs from her body, and her ripped pants expose the sin-spots covering her legs. They all charge at once, and she swings her staff over her, cutting through all of them in one stroke. When they come apart, she falls to one knee. A bear rumbles straight at her from two huts down. I urge my horse forward at a gallop. Just as the bear reaches her, I swing my sword in an arc. It catches the bear’s jaw and flips it over.

  Falcons glide overhead, swooping down and snatching enemy aki from their horses. My horse leaps over one of the fallen and keeps going.

  I see Lanre to my right, sabers in both his hands, dueling an aki who holds two dagas. They spin and swing and strike and parry. They kick up dirt with each move, but eventually Lanre gets a shot in that cuts open the aki’s side. I ride by, glancing over my shoulder to watch Lanre deliver the killing blow.

  A griffin dives down, and I don’t see it until it’s on top of me. I swing in my saddle, but its talons catch my arm, slicing through my sleeve. Just as I’m about to fall off, I cry out, and something hard and fast—a sin-bear—crashes into my horse, knocking me clear off. I feel nothing but air around me until I land on the ground hard enough to hear something snap. I don’t have the breath in me to scream as pain burns through my chest and stomach. I can’t find my sword.

  The bear gets to me and rears up on its hind legs before something sticks it from behind. Its shadows fall away, and it morphs into a beast made of light, then bursts apart.

  Juba stumbles forward, inky blackness dripping from her robe, and hauls me to my feet. Inisisa charge toward us, and she rushes forward. A lynx leaps at her, and she palms its forehead midair, and it explodes in a burst of light. In the same motion, she slams her palm down on a wolf, and the same happens to it. Two cobras slither toward her, then, when they rise, she grabs them by their heads and they turn to light, then shatter. A giant falcon dives straight for us. She leaps into the air, grabs its chest feathers, and slams it into the ground. It struggles, but before it can fly away, Juba grips its head and tears the falcon apart in a shower of sparks.

  Beyond her, other Larada are doing the same. Just as inisisa reach them, the Healers stop them where they stand and, with a touch, burn away their shadows and turn them into stars that surge, then split apart.

  The onslaught continues, more and more inisisa coming toward us, but Juba and the tastahlik form a semicircle around me, beating them back. They fight them off, and there’s a lull. Our heavy breaths seem to be in sync with each other. It’s all I hear—until it’s not.

  Metal screeching against metal.

  Oh, no.

  I push my way through the semicircle and look down both ends of the street. From our left, a group of armored inisisa storms. Aki sit astride them with bladed staffs and swords at the ready. Shock drains the color from Juba’s face. The other tastahlik are frozen, their eyes wide.

  “Iragide,” I whisper, horror thick in my voice.

  “That’s blasphemy,” murmurs Juba, terrified, next to me. “Olurun, preserve us.”

  I have no idea what to do. There are too many of them.

  “Run!” I shout.

  But the armored inisisa are too fast. They’re already on top of us. The aki swing their staffs, taking down people and Juba’s light-beasts like they’re slicing through air. Tribespeople collapse all around me. I look over and see that Juba is wounded too. She has a hand to the deep cut on her shoulder. Her shoulders heave with each breath.

  “We can’t defeat them . . .” She sounds resigned when she says this. “My people . . .”

  The armored inisisa turn around and rumble toward us to finish the job when I hear a battle cry. I look up. The Onija jump from the roofs of homes to land right on top of the aki riding their steel beasts. They plunge their dagas into them, tearing them to the ground. Folami leads them. She stands and raises her arms, and an army of inisisa bursts from the buildings around us. The fighters. These are their beasts. Our inisisa smash into the armored beasts, sending them flying through the air. In the attack, the two groups of inisisa meld until they turn into puddles of ink on the ground, the armor breaking off around them.

  The tastahlik who saved us rush in our direction and begin attending to the wounded, putting pressure on their cuts and tearing pieces of cloth from their own bloodstained clothes to stanch the bleeding of their comrades.

 
“Arzu?” I ask Juba.

  She shakes her head. She doesn’t know where she is.

  I have to find them. There’s no way they stayed at Zaki’s home. Not when there are people who need their help.

  The weapons of dead aki and tastahlik litter the ground. I scoop up two dagas and set off at a run. Zephi chases after me.

  “Come,” she shouts as she nears me, “let us fight together.”

  She runs alongside me, her own dagas in hand.

  We hurry past side streets, and I dart into every hut—or what’s left of them—for any sign of Aliya or Arzu. Zephi stops when we get to the home we hid in during the arashi attack. Then she rushes inside. The house has been ransacked, and the rugs and cushions are stained with red, but there’s nobody inside. I follow her closely up the stairs, and she bursts through the trapdoor leading to the attic. It’s strange to be in this place when it’s so eerily quiet. It’s always so loud with the noise of family being family. Aliya had scattered parchment and rolled-up books all over the floor, scribbling equations and other mathematical lahala on them, writings I later discovered to be the secret behind inisisa. This was where she worked, and now it’s completely empty. There’s no blood here, no sign of damage. It doesn’t look like anyone’s hiding in here.

  Zephi pushes against the ceiling, feeling around, then finds a loose set of tiles and pushes them free. She climbs through, and I follow her. We crawl out onto the sloped roof. Perched there, we scan the town. It hurts my heart to see so much of it burning. The fires look to be dying down, and much of the movement has stopped. There’s not nearly as much chaos as there was a few moments ago.