Crown of Thunder

by Tochi Onyebuchi

  Miri nods. “The arashi are being kept hungry. If they consume enough sins, then their hunger will be satisfied, and they will leave.”

  “So, we can’t kill the sin-beasts, then.”

  Miri shakes her head. “We need them.” She lets out a sigh. “We’ve been trying to uncover methods for controlling the arashi. We’ve heard rumors from the Palace that Mages and algebraists have a formula for understanding and commanding the arashi, and it is rumored that that is how Karima is able to hold them in the sky and keep them from feasting.”

  “Aliya had been working on something like that.” I start when I realize I’ve said that out loud.

  Miri looks at me, surprised. “Aliya was working on a proof for the arashi?”

  “Yes. She’d figured it out too, but now . . .” I grit my teeth, ball my hands into fists on the table. “Now she’s . . .” I still can’t say it out loud.

  Miri looks away. There’s a moment of silence before she continues. “We will have our forces scatter to the dahia simultaneously. We don’t have time to move one by one. Karima will discover us and assemble her army in no time. So, we must move as one. Then, when we have control of the inisisa, we will send them toward the Palace.”

  “And draw the attention of the arashi.”

  Dinma steps forward from where he had been standing by the wall. “Our scouts have been doing a regular reconnaissance of Kos. Each dahia has the exact same number of inisisa patrolling it. It is to maintain balance; otherwise, the arashi equilibrium would be disturbed, and she would lose control.”

  It’s a pattern. All those shapes and equations Aliya had written on all those pieces of parchment, all those scribblings in the books in Zaki’s home. Aliya knew the pattern.

  There’s a part of their plan that no one has brought up yet. If the inisisa are all sent to the Palace, the arashi will destroy the Palace and everyone in it. Karima will be gone, but so too will all the algebraists working there, the kanselo, even the servants. Some of them are there by choice, but many of them are not. Maybe Karima has threatened their families, or maybe they are paying off debts, or maybe this is simply the life that has been chosen for them. All of those people will die.

  I can tell by the way Miri looks at me that she knows this. And that she’s come to peace with it.

  If we’re going to save Kos, I need to come to peace with it as well.

  There’s movement from the other end of the room, and light shines in the cave. A Mage stumbles in with Arzu in his arms and rushes past me to lay her on a table. Blood spills over the maps and equation-covered parchments laid out.

  In two quick strides, I’m at her side. Her breathing is slow, difficult. I hold her hand and make sure she knows it’s me standing over her. Her eyes wander, searching, then her gaze finds my face, and she smiles.

  I squeeze. “You found us.”

  Her smile broadens, then several people push me aside, swarming to attend to her.

  I back away, and when I turn, I stop. A figure stands in the entrance to our cave. Someone who makes me forget everything else happening around me.

  It can’t be. It’s like Ras stuck a stick of dynamite down my throat and lit the string. My whole body trembles. There she is, smiling, her smock soaked through, for some reason. The cotton is plastered to her skin, where I see the letters and numbers and symbols sketched in. Patterns. Order. Balance.

  I run to her and gather her in my arms. Her body pressed against mine is the greatest feeling. I don’t ever want it to stop. Her warmth, the feel of her breath on my shoulder. Her fingers pressed against my back.

  Tears run down my cheeks as I pull away and stare at her face, taking in every feature, every curve, every angle. Before either of us can say a word, my mouth is on hers, and once again, it is like she is breathing life right into my body.

  Aliya.

  CHAPTER 34

  ALIYA SMILES. LIGHT pulses beneath her skin. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. As she slowly pushes away from me, I have trouble letting her go. She keeps a hand on my arm as she faces everyone. Dinma comes forward and drapes a woolen blanket over Aliya’s shoulders, and Aliya nods her thanks.

  Miri stands before the both of us and slides her hand out, palm up.

  “To you and yours, Aliya.”

  Aliya, with a grateful look in her eyes, slides her palm over Miri’s. “To you and yours,” Aliya says softly.

  Then Miri backs away and joins the crowd facing Aliya.

  Arzu is standing again, but color has drained from her face.

  Aliya scans the room, then steps forward. “They are not hungry for sins.” She turns to Dinma. “The arashi do not consume sins. They consume inyo.” She looks at her hands. The markings have spread. “When the uncleansed become inyo, they cannot immediately rejoin the Balance. They are an extra unit on our side of the equation.” She pulls up a wet sleeve to reveal a dizzying array of numbers and letters. “The arashi terrorize us so that they can gather our souls.” The Mages look at her in wonder. Someone gasps audibly. “The arashi balance the equation.”

  The silence in the room is so sharp you can hear every drop of water in the whole prison. Is she saying the arashi are . . . necessary?

  Aliya puts her fingers together, tips pointed to the ceiling, and draws downward. Gradually, a thin stream of water, pulsing slightly, appears like a string out of thin air. Just like when she had that seizure by the river and her spilt water rose from the earth. I’ve seen her break stones and turn air into fire, and it still kicks the breath out of my lungs to see her do this. Aliya snaps her fingers, and the thread of water bursts apart, evaporating before the drops even have a chance to touch the ground. “Balance is connectedness.” Symbols and numbers round her fingers. “For so long, we thought of our skin as a barrier to the world.” A smile flits across her face. “Our skin is a vessel for the Unnamed.”

  A murmur surges through the crowd, but everything quiets when Miri steps out from the group and people see the look on her face.

  She is the only one not gawking. In fact, she looks as though Aliya has just committed the most grievous sin and she must hold herself back from caning her senseless. Aliya lowers her sleeve.

  “Iragide,” Miri says slowly, as though the word is venom rolling on her tongue.

  Several people gasp loudly. All heads snap in Aliya’s direction. In some of those faces, there’s wonder. In others, there’s shock, and in others still, fear and horror. Then I remember what Aliya said back in Arzu’s village. Iragide is forbidden. Has been since the time of the Seventh Prophet. This must be like seeing someone do something people have only read about for centuries. It’s not supposed to be real. Then again, neither were the arashi.

  “Yes,” Aliya says, straightening. “Know the elements in the air, break them down, and re-form them. We can turn air to water. We can turn it to fire. We can change the face of the earth beneath us.”

  Several of the Mages hiss and look at Aliya as if she’s cursed, and I glare at them, fists clenched.

  “Where did you learn this?” asks another from the crowd of Mages. His voice is thick with despair.

  Aliya puts a fist to her chest and smiles. She has the look on her face of someone in the midst of a pleasant memory. “A Mage taught me. One as curious to know the secrets of this world as I was. Who loved knowledge and the search for it. His name was Zaki.”

  Miri scoffs. “The heretic.”

  “Do you think Karima’s Mages and algebraists care that Iragide has been forbidden for centuries?” Aliya shoots back. “That so many call it heresy? Do you think Karima cares when her people are using it to create her army of armored inisisa? The time for worrying about such things is over.” Then her voice softens. “We need to save this city. We cannot win by fighting the old way.”

  “But this is blasphemy!” shouts a Mage from the back. Too much of a coward
to show his face.

  Aliya puts a hand to her chest. “If it is, then I will answer for it in Infinity. But the Unnamed knows my head and it knows my heart, and it knows that I quest for Balance. And that I will do everything in my power to right the wrong that Karima has committed on our city. On our people. But if we’re to make this plan work, I will need all of you.”

  Everyone is still.

  Noor shoulders her way to the front where the Mages stand and stares straight at Aliya. “What is your plan?”

  Aliya walks to the map of Kos. The others, staring at her as though she has just fallen from the sky, make way for her. “Taj will control the inisisa, and we will control the arashi, and when the people of the dahia are smuggled safely into the tunnels beneath Kos, we will direct the inisisa in the dahia to the Palace.” She draws these motions out with her finger. And even as she points and presses, I see she is making a shape. A pattern. An equation. “The arashi will give chase and destroy Karima and everything she has sought to build since she took the throne. When they are satisfied, they will leave us.”

  “How will we control the arashi?” asks one of the Mages, an older man with wrinkles at the corners of his snakeskin-colored eyes.

  Aliya pauses for a moment, like she’s gathering courage, then says, “You will have to be marked. To control the arashi, you will have to be marked like me.” She gestures to her left arm. “This will have to be written on your skin.” She gulps, but her face never loses that steely expression of resolve. “We will have to share blood.”

  A gasp goes up from the crowd.

  “Which means there is a chance that you will have to share in the fate waiting for me.” She waits for the noise to die down. “Karima binds metal to the inisisa with blood. On every piece of armor they wear, the Fist of Malek is written. Karima needs several Mages and algebraists to etch the proof into the metal and bind it with blood to the inisisa. The proof to do this is written on my skin. And it is written in my blood.” Aliya turns my way. I catch her gaze, and I see in her eyes that her mind is moving through the memories of our time in Juba’s village. “The secret is guilt. Consequence, as we experience it in our souls. It binds us together through our actions. It is the hurt that governs our relations with one another. Guilt forces us to right wrongs. Guilt brings about Balance. Guilt uncleansed drives us mad. It feeds the arashi. It is what connects us to Infinity. The Seventh Prophet understood this.” The look in her eyes changes. “The reason your markings do not fade, Taj, is because you can bear the guilt of so many others. It is now the same with me. The Unnamed has chosen us, and it has written itself in the very cells of our blood.”

  She’s thinking of Bo and how I brought him back to himself. Back to us.

  Almost brought him back.

  The Mages know what she means. They know she means that they will have the power to control the most powerful beasts in the Kingdom of Odo. They know she means they may succumb to the fate that befell the Seventh Prophet: madness and violent, agonizing death.

  Noor considers Aliya’s words, then nods. She stands apart from the crowd until Ras joins her, then Nneoma, then more and more aki. One by one, the Mages move toward them. But a few of them remain where they’ve been standing. Miri is the most prominent of them. She does not join the others. If anything, the sneer on her face has deepened.

  “Miri,” Aliya says, and reaches out with her tattooed hand.

  Miri was one of the first Aliya had brought me to in the beginning of the rebellion, back when the plan was to deliver Kos by capturing King Kolade. Aliya had deferred to Miri, had made me remember that Miri was our leader, that she was the architect of the rebellion, the general. There’s a part of Aliya now—I can see it in her eyes—that wants Miri to join her, not just to confirm that she has the right idea but because it will mean approval from her mentor. Sometimes, that is more important than anything else.

  “Please,” Aliya pleads.

  For a long time, Miri stares at Aliya’s outstretched hand in silence. Then she says, “For many, many years, we have been preparing for this day. We who have known have girded ourselves and studied the Word and practiced our art to glorify the Unnamed, so that when the day came that we would be called upon to deliver our city from tyranny, we would be properly pure. We would not be sullied. We would be as untainted as we were when the Unnamed raised us out of the ground to which we shall one day return. Now that we are here, at this crucial point, I will not throw all of that away. You speak as if you are the Unnamed. You speak of the power to make fire and to break the earth. The Unnamed is what bestows order. The Unnamed determines Balance. Not you, not anyone else. I cannot be a part of your plan, Aliya.” With that, Miri bows her head and walks past us to the cave’s entrance. Her cape whispers behind her as she rounds the corner. Then she’s gone.

  Aliya watches her go. Tears pool in her eyes, but they don’t spill. All it takes is an instant, but Aliya’s face firms. She sniffs once, then turns to the rest of us. “Our plan doesn’t change. Anyone with an objection, you are free to follow Miri. You will not be judged. You will not be cursed or spat upon. It is your decision.” She looks around, waits.

  Then she returns her gaze to the table and the curled parchment atop it. She undoes a scrolled book whose pages are blank, calls for a stylus and ink, and sets to explaining an equation. On paper, it looks like a fountain of gibberish. In the sky, it is the arashi. A piece of Infinity. In the beginning, it was all lahala to me, all harsh consonants and missing vowels, letters and words that made no sense. Now, even though it’s still a language I can’t understand, there’s a beauty to it I couldn’t hear before. An order. With stylus in hand, Aliya sketches out a series of algebraic proofs. All numbers and letters crammed together. At the center of her swirling script is a single equation. The Ratio. She then reaches for a stone, and the first of the willing Mages comes to her and rolls up the left sleeve of his robe. Aliya carves. The Mage grimaces, then it is finished, and she cuts a wound in her palm and a wound in the palm of the other Mage.

  “To you and yours, Mage,” Aliya says, sliding her hand out, palm up.

  “To you and yours, Prophet,” the Mage says back, grasping Aliya’s hand. Drops of their mingled blood splash onto the cave’s floor.

  CHAPTER 35

  WE BEGIN BY sending groups of aki and Mages out through the tunnels and into the dahia. The gear-heads follow, fortifying the tunnels where necessary, creating nooks and hiding places and traps for guards, if they try to follow us. I can’t imagine how long some of them have been down here, trapped without seeing the sun maybe for days or weeks at a time. Some of them might have been down here for a whole moon, preparing for just this day. Or night. I can’t even tell anymore. But they set about their tasks. I even see some of the aki from the northern dahia where mining is what everyone does working alongside the gear-heads. Some of them are silent and determined, others whistling old songs from their neighborhoods. Some of them converse about the rebellion or about what they’ll cook to celebrate when it’s all over.

  Arzu is to stay behind, resting. She sleeps on the bed that’s been made for her, attended to by some of the aki and Mages who remain behind. When she wakes up, Kos will be liberated, I tell myself. And the thought nudges a smile across my face.

  I’m to follow Aliya to where she will stand once the preparations have been completed.

  The others have found a proper robe for her and have given her the chance to dry off. Before we head into the tunnels, I take her arm.

  “Hey,” I whisper.

  She turns. “Hey,” she says softly.

  “How did you . . . I thought you were dead.”

  She faces me fully and puts her hands on my arms. It’s the lightest touch, but still, I feel a shiver up my spine. “Arzu and I were separated, but the rebellion is everywhere. We are not alone. The Unnamed is with us, Taj. It spoke to me.” She smiles. “It speaks to me still
.” By now, the smaller groups of aki and Mages are all gone. “Come. Soon, the advance parties will have begun clearing the city of innocents. We must be ready to move as soon as everything is in place.”

  I nod. Then, together, we hurry into the maze. Aliya doesn’t slow down as she leads me through the twists and turns. I concentrate completely on following her lead. Otherwise, I’d easily lose myself in this tangle and get stuck down here with all the action happening right above me and no way to get to it.

  After what seems like no time at all, we reach a metal ladder that ends in the ceiling. There are grooves near the top, and I can tell there’s movable stone there. “Here, let me go,” I say, and climb up first, then try to push the stone aside. When it doesn’t budge, I twist on the ladder and push my back against the stone, straining with all my strength until I hear it groan and shift. With one last heave, I get it off to the side, then peek my head through. There’s brush and dirt all around, and I shake it out of my face and hair before climbing through and going into a crouch, my daga in hand.

  We’re clear.

  I reach my arm through the hole where Aliya waits. She grabs my hand, and I pull her through. Then, once we’re both aboveground, I get down and drag the slab back over, leaving enough space so that it’ll be easier to move next time.

  It’s so dark outside that I can barely see my feet. A starless night with no sound at all, not even the bootsteps of Palace guards or prelates. I don’t even hear the wailing of children who have decided they all of a sudden don’t want to sleep. None of the hum of conversation that seems to hover over Kos at all hours. Nothing.

  Wind stirs our clothes against us, then again. Gusts of it, like something flapping its wings, and I look up, and fear clenches my throat. An arashi, its shape outlined against the sky, circles overhead. It moves in a slow circuit, its tail lashing back and forth. It’s high enough that I can see its whole body. It looks like a bat nearly the size of a city, the way its six leathery wings spread out and contract. Lightning courses through it and around it. When it turns, I can even see its face. Sunken eyes and an opened jaw large enough to clench itself around whole houses.