Suddenly I was airborne; Sanjeet had swept me up, and I laughed as his burly arms wrapped around me. He placed me on the barnacle-covered boulder, and revealed what he had been working on when I arrived: an anklet of tiny gold bells, the same one he had shown me that night his mother died. Sanjeet had linked the cowrie shell onto the chain.
“I kept Amah’s anklet with me to remember. But it’s yours now.” He insisted when I hesitated: “You let me carry your story. I trust you to carry mine.” His hands cupped my foot, dusting off sand and red earth from the festival grounds. The cream-colored shell winked against my ankle as he clasped the chain. The faint sensation of another woman’s fingers pricked in my thoughts. I heard her laugh, bells shivering against her heels as she danced and sang.
“I want to give you something too.” I fumbled with the folds of my wrapper and held out the fiery sunstone.
“You shouldn’t,” he said. “That’s special.”
I snorted. “I have no plans to ‘bear the fruit of dominance.’”
He chuckled and accepted the stone. “But this isn’t a token for trading.”
“No. But the cowrie shell is,” I intoned in my best impression of the solemn village elders. “You must take something in return.”
Warmth spread like butter over Sanjeet’s face. He pulled me to the boulder’s edge, bracing my hands on his shoulders. “I choose the girl who walks through fire,” he said. “I choose sunshine.”
I had kissed boys before. We all had, at the Children’s Palace, in the games children play when they’re bored. Every touch had been a dare, a cheap thrill, a way to flaunt our developing bodies and to sample adulthood.
This kiss was different. As his mouth pressed into mine, there were no games or experiments. Just a silent pledge that shook the earth beneath me.
When his tongue grazed my bottom lip, the kiss deepened. I ran my fingers through his hair, and his hands tightened on my waist. He still tasted of honeywine, heady and sweet. When we parted, his face remained close, lashes brushing mine.
“There’s a tree,” I said after a moment. “Enitawa’s Quiver. Mayazatyl . . . she told me it’s where . . .”
“I’ve heard of it.” He raised an eyebrow, searching my face with surprise and amusement.
“I’ve never been before,” I said quickly, feeling flustered. “But maybe that’s where we can go later. To talk. And . . . be like this.”
The stubble on his jaw tickled my neck. I shivered. “When?” he asked.
“Tonight,” I said. “Tonight.”
We both stiffened. A barrage of distant voices echoed in our minds, vying for attention. The Ray.
Sanjeet groaned. “Our council’s worried.”
I nodded, resting my head against his. “We’d better go back. You don’t suppose they’ve guessed?”
“They can’t read our thoughts unless we let our mental guards down,” Sanjeet said. “I’ve got nothing to hide if you don’t.” Dayo’s forlorn expression after the dance flashed in my head. Sanjeet read my features, guessing correctly where my thoughts had gone. “We’ll keep it between us, then.”
“For now,” I said.
“For now,” he agreed.
We held hands until the festival grounds were in sight, then reluctantly walked side by side, keeping space between us. We fooled no one, of course. Once our council siblings saw we were safe, they nudged each other and threw knowing smirks in our direction.
Well, well, if it isn’t the Judge and the Bear! Found a better party than this one, eh?
I avoided looking at Dayo. He could never hide pain, and never had the pride to try. But when I gave in and peeked, his face merely shone with relief. We grinned at each other, sheepish. Dayo had not wanted to be my lover any more than I had wanted to be his. I wondered, then, about the bond between us, different than what I felt for my council siblings. In some ways, it was even stronger than the spark between me and Sanjeet.
Before I could return to the Prince’s Council dais, an Imperial Guard warrior stepped into my path. She bowed to me, then pointed at Thaddace and Mbali’s dais across the festival grounds.
“Their High Anointed Honors have summoned you,” the warrior said.
I gulped. Had they disapproved of my disappearance from the festival? I sighed and slunk obediently to the far dais, bracing for a reprimand.
Mbali and Thaddace stared down at me from their tasseled cushions, looking resplendent in their festival wear. Mbali represented Swana, like me, and wore stacks of rainbow bangles on her willowy arms and neck. Thaddace was swathed in green Mewish tartan. I knelt on the dais steps, staring nervously at their gold-trimmed sandals.
“I’m sorry I left the festival,” I babbled after an unnerving silence. “I know it’s unseemly for Prince’s Council members to travel alone. But we’re so close to the keep. And I was worried about Sanjeet, and—”
“We’ve put you in a difficult position,” interrupted Mbali.
I opened my mouth to bleat out another apology, then closed it. “Anointed Honors?”
“We know what you saw in the keep, Tarisai.” Mbali waited until I could have no doubt about what she meant. My face heated.
“I assume,” Thaddace intoned, “that you have told your council.” He stared over my head, and I realized that he was embarrassed. Poor Thaddace. I had seen him naked, and he still had to be my law tutor.
“It’s only natural if you told them,” Mbali added kindly. “They’re your council siblings. But our secret is very dangerous, Tarisai. It could threaten Aritsar’s stability. Your discretion is essential.” I nodded, but she continued in a neutral tone. “In his letters to the emperor, I hope you will encourage Dayo to be discreet as well.”
I gaped like a fish out of a stream. Mbali and Thaddace wanted me to keep a secret.
From the emperor.
But why would Olugbade be worried about his council members having a dalliance? What threat could it pose to him, except the mild scandal of court gossip? Still, I nodded again, fidgeting with the beads on my wrists. “May I be excused, Anointed Honors?”
Mbali learned forward to peck me on the cheek. “I think you will make a wise Delegate to Swana,” she said. “And an excellent High Lady Judge.”
I tried to return to my council’s dais, where my siblings were busy accepting gifts and blessing the village children. But as I turned toward them, my head swam, as though struck with a sleep dart. I swayed on my feet, and a sweet musk filled my nostrils.
I heard myself mumble an excuse, though no one was close enough to hear: “Going to relieve myself.” Woodenly, I glided away from the firelit festival, where that familiar musk drew me, growing stronger with every step.
Several minutes outside Yorua Village, a masked elder stood in a crop of acacia trees. The brush was still, and the moon bathed us in deathly white. The elder’s mask was female: a round face of ivory bone with red slits for eyes. Its brow had an edge of jagged points, as if to imply a queen’s crown.
“Do . . . do I know you?” I whispered.
For some reason, I found it difficult to form words. I wished I could identify that smell—its name danced out of reach, like warning bells too faint for hearing.
The elder tilted her mask and bowed. A vessel rested in the crook of her strong, shapely arm. With her other hand, she held out a smooth-handled drinking gourd.
With effort, I shook my head. “I’ve already selected a token. We’re not allowed more than one.”
But my muscles relaxed as another fragrant wave rolled over me. I’d felt this way before. Small. Submissive. My fingers closed around the drinking gourd’s handle, and I dipped into the vessel when she offered it. The liquid was clear amber—not golden, like honeywine.
“What is this?” I asked.
The elder tensed impatiently, pantomiming for me to drink. The longer I stood in her presence, the hazier my thoughts grew. I could think of no objection, no reason to disobey. I brought the gourd to my lips and drank. It was the
n that I remembered the name of that smell.
Jasmine.
Fire burned over my skin, waking sounds and images that had slept for five years. This will be the day—The Lady will be so pleased—Melu, won’t you come out and play?—When you love him the most, and when he anoints you as his own, I command you . . . to kill him.
I stumbled back and the gourd fell from my grasp. As the liquid splashed on my open sandals, a sob caught in my throat.
I remembered everything.
The third wish. Our mango orchard. The tutors. The journey from Swana. Kathleen’s warning. Woo In setting the Children’s Palace on fire.
“What have you done?” I gasped at the elder. “What have you given me?
“Water from Melu’s pool,” she said with a laughing, melodious voice that made my veins run cold. “You wanted to forget. But the ehru inside you knows who you are, daughter. It knows what you were made for.” Then the figure removed her mask, and I was staring into a mirror. A face chillingly like my own: the first face I had ever loved.
The Lady smiled, her brilliant dark eyes glittering with tears. “I have missed you, Made-of-Me.”
She kissed my forehead, and my heart grew as hollow as the drinking gourd. The Lady took my hand. Her wish draped around me like a mantle, and I sighed with horrified relief, like a warrior who had cheated death too many times—a fugitive tired of running.
“I was so hurt when you chose to forget me,” The Lady whispered. “Your own mother. But I forgave you, once I realized the truth. You rebelled because you are me.” She laughed softly. “Strong-minded. Independent. I cannot fault you for mirroring my strengths.”
She smiled, and lay a small silver dagger across my palm. Obediently, my fingers closed around the hilt.
“It is time,” The Lady said, and I nodded. I walked as if through water back to the village. Back to my council siblings—to warmth and innocence and light. You don’t belong here, whispered the pit flames, shadows dancing on my siblings’ faces. And you never did.
CHAPTER 17
When the palanquins returned to yorua keep, my council siblings were clumsy with honeywine. They slept fully clothed on their pallets, snoring in heaps of jewelry and wax-dyed mantles.
I lay among their sweaty bodies, watching their chests rise and fall. Dayo’s breaths tickled my neck. I listened to the guards change watch as the night grew old.
I waited.
I had promised to wake Sanjeet once the others were asleep. He lay on the edge of the sun-and-stars floor mosaic, backlit by the arched windows. All night, his fingers had searched for mine at the festival, restless and tender. I had teased him into chalice after chalice of honeywine, pretending to drink with him. Now, as he lay across from me in the banquet hall, he Ray-spoke drowsy messages through the dark: Promise you’ll wake me up when it’s time.
I will, I replied.
Sanjeet fell asleep, his mental guard down, and I stole into his thoughts. He was dreaming of Enitawa’s Quiver. I tried to make myself crawl over to his pallet. I tried to feel something. Anything.
But cold emptiness spread like fog through my mind, and I shook Dayo awake instead.
My lips caressed the burn scar on his jaw. He roused, confused, and I held a finger to my lips. I pulled him up, and hand in hand we wove around the sleeping bodies, slipping from the banquet hall. We stole through keep corridors, bare feet pounding on stone.
“Tar, what’s going on?” Dayo yawned. I didn’t reply, snatching a torch from its sconce and hurrying down a staircase. He puffed to keep up. “Are you all right? Is someone hurt?”
He sounded distant, an echo in my head. “Enitawa’s Quiver,” I told him, rounding a corner. After several drinks at the Nu’ina festival, Mayazatyl had revealed the tree’s hiding place. A passage ran through the bowels of the keep, circumventing the guards and leading outside Yorua.
Dayo stopped dead in his tracks.
I glanced back at him impatiently. His pupils were dilated from sleep and disbelief. He wore nothing but trousers and a linen shirt, undone to reveal his collarbone.
“Tar,” he whispered.
“What?” I asked. “Isn’t this what you want?”
His gaze searched mine, shy and vulnerable. “I—I don’t know. It’s what’s expected of us. But then I saw you with Sanjeet, and I thought—”
“You thought wrong,” I said, seizing his hand and sweeping down a narrow staircase. We passed through a heavily barred door into a passage beneath Yorua Keep.
As we charged into the damp darkness, Dayo noticed my torch. “Aren’t you afraid of fire anymore?”
“No, Dayo.” The flames snickered in my ears. “Not anymore.”
According to Mayazatyl, the passage let out onto a mossy plateau, shielded from outside view by an outcrop of brush and sharp boulders. Before long, a breeze teased my face in the passage. I hung the torch in a niche and stepped out into the open.
A single tree grew in the plateau’s center. It had a slippery pale trunk with branches like twisting arms, tinted purple as they reached for the sky. A soft, high moan shivered in the air as Enitawa’s branches sang, heavy with the secrets of lovers who had rolled beneath its shadow. The ground was spongy beneath my feet, damp with a bed of ochre leaves.
“Come,” I said. Run, Dayo. A dim voice struggled to rise in my thoughts, like a seabird keeping abreast in a storm. “Come here.”
Run, Dayo. Run, please.
“I don’t understand,” he said, but drew near anyway. When I stroked the raised scar on his jaw, he relaxed into my touch. Words seemed to escape him as my fingers traced the veins in his neck. I explored the bones beneath his warm skin, admiring their weakness. Marveling at how easily they could break.
Dayo, get away. Run as far as you can. The voice was wheeling, drowned out by waves and crashing thunder. My fingers were steady and cold as they peeled off Dayo’s shirt, caressed the obsidian mask, and danced across his bare chest. He stiffened.
“Tar,” he whispered. “There’s something I should tell you. I don’t . . . I don’t think I want sex. Ever. And I don’t mean with you, I mean—with anyone. Girls, boys. Anyone.” He stared at the leaves on the ground, smooth brow furrowing. “I mean, I’ve had crushes before. On you, on Jeet, and some of the others. I’ve just . . . never been interested in the sex part. Sometimes I wonder if I’m broken.”
You aren’t broken, protested the voice inside me. You’re the kindest, most loving person I know. Run. Live.
“But I’m crown prince,” he continued, grimacing, “and I have to have heirs someday, so . . . I guess—if I could choose anyone—”
“There is no choosing,” I intoned. There were only suns and moons. Demons and wishes. Curses written into the stars.
He sighed. “Do you love me now, Tarisai of Swana?”
“She did love you,” I whispered. “But she wasn’t strong enough.”
Then the girl under the tree, the one who shared my face and voice, plunged the silver knife into Dayo’s stomach.
“Don’t look.”
We are twelve years old, sitting side by side in a palanquin as it ambles through the Oluwan City Imperial Square. Dayo peers through the embroidered window flap. I wrestle him away, ignoring his protests as I clap my hands over his eyes.
“Don’t look,” I tell him again.
“Why?” Dayo’s head nestles against my neck, tickling me with his soft curly hair. He thinks I’m playing a game. He laughs, a warm, gurgling sound.
Through the window flap, guards lead an old woman in white rags through the square. Her hair hangs in matted clumps. Onlookers spit and hiss as she is forced to climb a platform. Traitor. Traitor. Her bruised knees shake.
“Let me go, Tar,” Dayo whines. “I never get to see the city.”
“It’s not good. It’s an execution.”
“Well, I’ve got to see one someday,” he retorts.
“Please, Dayo.” My throat is dry. The woman on the platform kneels, forced to lay h
er head on a wooden block. “Please don’t.”
“Why?” The hollow thud of imperial drums fills our ears, pulsing beneath the crowd’s roar. “You think I’m weak, don’t you, Tar? Just like everyone else does.”
“No. I think you’re too good.” I hold Dayo close as hazy noontime light glints on the executioner’s ax. “You think people are kind and soft and pretty.” The ax falls, and blood runs from the platform to pool on the paved square. “I’ll make it true, Dayo. When I’m grown-up, I’ll make the world better, just for you. But for now, close your eyes.”
He sighs into my chest, and I bury my face in his hair.
“I’ll keep you safe, Dayo.”
He gasped as my knife slid into his side. We fell together to the leaf-carpeted earth, like the lovers for whom Enitawa’s Quiver was intended. He gaped up at my unseeing eyes, his features contorted in agony. “Tar.”
“Will you come home now, Mother?” My voice was a monotone. “It’s so lonely in Bhekina House. The servants won’t touch me and I don’t have any friends and I hate it when you leave; please come back . . .” I blinked, suddenly very, very tired. “Mother?”
Where was I? And why was it so cold?
Bhekina House wasn’t drafty. The tutors had boarded up my windows . . . No. I didn’t live there anymore. Mother had sent me away to Oluwan with Kathleen and Woo In. Then the fire happened, and it was all my fault. I had been responsible for protecting Dayo. He had trusted me, everyone trusted me, but they shouldn’t, because I was a demon and Mother had sent me here to—
To—
Every hair on my neck rose as I registered the person in my arms.
“No,” I said. A scream worked its way up my throat, but came out as a croak. “No. It’s not—you’re not—Stay awake, Dayo! It’s over now. I’m back. I’d never let anything hurt you; I wouldn’t—Damn it, damn it.” I sobbed, pawing his face. I didn’t dare touch the knife.
He watched me hyperventilate. “You remembered,” he said.
“Don’t talk. Rest, I’ll get help.” His words didn’t make sense. My tears were a torrent; my ribs shuddered with each breath.
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