Raybearer

  “You missed my heart.” He smiled, voice gurgling with blood. “That means you’re stronger than her, Tar.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I breathed. “Dayo, stay—”

  His eyes fluttered closed.

  “No.” I wagged my head, baring my teeth at the sky. “Am, no. I don’t care if you’re the Storyteller; I hate your stories. Kill me instead. Doesn’t that make more sense? Write something better. I’ll give up anything. Anything.” Tears ran into my open mouth as I pressed my ear to Dayo’s bare chest. The dimmest of heartbeats pounded against my cheek. “Anything,” I said, and felt the uneasy sensation of a sealed promise.

  A footstep crunched behind me. Then I turned and locked eyes with a stiff, horrified face. Sanjeet stood over me in his wrinkled black festival clothes.

  “Thank Am,” I said. “Jeet, we have to get help; Dayo, he—”

  Sanjeet’s hand clamped my shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise. He wrenched me away from the tree, and I toppled, stunned.

  He knelt, shielding Dayo’s body with his broad back. “Little brother,” he said, “don’t sleep. Don’t you dare sleep.” Avoiding the knife’s hilt, Sanjeet’s fingers ran precise patterns across Dayo’s side, assessing the failing organs.

  I began, “We need help. I’ll—”

  “You shut up,” Sanjeet rasped. “Just shut up and stay back.”

  “Jeet,” I whispered. “It’s not . . . It’s not what you think.”

  “Who are you?” Sanjeet asked. His quiet voice was more ominous than any roar. When he looked at me at last, his eyes were wet and savage. “What are you?”

  “I don’t know,” I sobbed. “I don’t know, I don’t know.” Dayo needed help. My mind raced; he couldn’t be moved without making it worse. We needed a miracle-worker.

  I flung the Ray back toward Yorua Keep. With difficulty it traveled through the stone; my temples pounded with pain by the time I found Kirah. Dayo’s hurt, I said as her mind woke up groggily. We need you. Don’t wake the others. Hurry.

  “Kirah’s coming,” I told Sanjeet as my mind guided her to Enitawa’s Quiver. I could feel Kirah’s panic through the Ray; she barraged me with questions. Just come, I begged, adding to myself, Come and don’t hate me.

  At last, Kirah stumbled from the murky passage into the clearing. “Where?” she panted.

  I pointed at Dayo and said, “Please.”

  The color drained from Kirah’s face. “Am have mercy,” she wailed. “An assassin infiltrated the keep? How? Why didn’t the Ray protect him?”

  “Stay close to me,” Sanjeet snapped. He reached for Kirah, casting a searing glance my way. I nodded, keeping my distance. Kirah wasn’t mine anymore—demons didn’t have best friends.

  Kirah coaxed Dayo’s head onto her lap, muttering prayers. Her hands trembled as they clutched the tassels of her prayer scarf. Sanjeet found Dayo’s shirt and bunched the fabric into a tourniquet.

  “On three,” Sanjeet said curtly, and Kirah looked sick but nodded. He counted and pulled out the knife. As Dayo’s blood soaked the tourniquet, Kirah raised her veiled head to the moon and sang.

  Blessid chants resonated in the throat, packed with power to cross miles of desert sand. Kirah’s song soared into the night, so strident I could see the notes winding around the stars. She sang lullabies to slow the rush of blood, high-pitched trills to scare away infection, basket-weaving rhymes to knit the flesh together. But her last and longest chant was a mother’s plea to a restless daughter: a song to keep a soul in its body.

  “No rubies for my baby’s head, no satin for her feet

  No castles can I offer her, no princes dark and tall

  But wandering girl, come find your bed,

  sheets pressed with purple flowers

  For castles have no camel’s milk; my kiss is baby’s crown.”

  Kirah crooned the song over and over, her homesickness pouring into each note until blue tinged the predawn sky. Sanjeet pressed his hands on Dayo’s side, repeatedly searching for weaknesses and telling Kirah where to direct her healing song. At long last, they sagged with exhaustion.

  “The organs are intact again,” Sanjeet said. “Still weak, but getting stronger. He needs rest, lots of it. But you pulled him out of danger, Kirah.” He clapped her shoulder, his eyes glistening. “Thank you.”

  “We’ll have to carry him back to the keep,” she said hoarsely. “We have to be careful, but between the three of us—”

  “She will not touch him,” snapped Sanjeet.

  “Why not?” Kirah blinked, still disoriented from hours of chanting. She glanced at me, then up at the tree. “What happened here? Tar, were you having a dalliance with Dayo? But I thought you liked . . .” She trailed off, noticing the tension between me and Sanjeet. “Great Am. Jeet . . . did you stab Dayo because . . . because you were jealous?”

  “Jealous?” Sanjeet barked a laugh, and the sound pierced my stomach like a spear. “What for? The love of a monster?”

  “Tell me what’s going on right now,” Kirah demanded. “Don’t make me call the others—”

  “I tried to kill Dayo,” I said.

  For the first time, Kirah noticed Sanjeet’s dry, clean hands and my shaking, bloody ones. She took in the tears and mucus streaking my face. “You didn’t,” she said. “You couldn’t.”

  I said nothing.

  “You’re scaring me, Tar. This isn’t funny. Am’s Story, say something—”

  “You should tie me up.” I held out my wrists. “The cellar beneath the keep kitchens has a lock; put me there. Tell the others I’m sick. That I need to be quarantined. When it’s properly morning, I’ll have a guard smuggle me to the nearest lodestone port. I’ll go . . . somewhere far. A place I can never hurt him again.”

  Kirah’s face contorted with horror.

  “I’m half-ehru, Kirah.” The words came out as mangled as Enitawa’s branches. “Mother had three wishes; she gave one to me. I had to obey. I’ve resisted all this time, but she found me and I had to give in . . .” I shook my head. I sounded like a madwoman. But I had to make her understand. I couldn’t lose her, not Kirah.

  And as for Sanjeet—

  The phantom of his lips brushed against mine. How could that same mouth call me monster?

  “I can explain,” I said, stretching out my hands again. “Please. Let me show you.”

  Both of them were still. Sanjeet’s jaw hardened, and he placed a protective arm around Kirah.

  “If we touch you, you could steal our memories,” he said. “Like you used to steal mine in the Children’s Palace.”

  For a moment I floated above my body, watching the scene from above. The Crown Prince of Aritsar, barely breathing. Sanjeet and Kirah huddled together, shielding Dayo from the demon. The girl sniveling and stammering excuses. Even now, she was pretending to love them. Pretending to be sorry, to know what it meant to have a family. Looking in from the outside, I would have banished that girl to the traitor’s block in a heartbeat. My palms beaded with sweat. But I wasn’t pretending.

  Was I?

  Every mask, every Tarisai I had ever been scattered in the dark, puzzle pieces on a vast floor. The recluse of Bhekina House, willing to kill for her mother’s touch. The Prince’s Favorite, meddling in the minds of other candidates. The protector, carrying Dayo from the burning Children’s Palace. The High Lady Judge, making empty promises to Ye Eun. The lover, crossing a fiery pit for a brown-eyed boy.

  They were all true. All of them. How could I pick which one to believe? I was a monster, yes—but I could not let that be all that I was. Not now.

  I dried my hands on my wrapper. “I never stole your memories,” I corrected Sanjeet. “I only took your bad dreams.”

  “You should have let me keep them,” he said. “You are the only nightmare.”

  Kirah left Sanjeet’s side. She searched my face, looking for the Tarisai she knew: the girl who had giggled with her on the Children’s Palace rooftop. The girl who had cornrowed
stories into her hair.

  I’m still here, I Ray-spoke.

  Kirah placed her cool, soft palm over my bloody one. She seized Sanjeet’s hand too, so he was forced to listen. My story poured into them both like rain, making up for lost time in rivers and floods. When they had seen all my memories—the ehru, The Lady’s murderous wish, my self-inflicted amnesia—Kirah was still frowning. But she didn’t stop holding my hand.

  “Can you control it?” she asked. Bags puffed under her eyes, and her face was wan in the morning light. “Be honest, Tar. Can you keep yourself from making The Lady’s wish come true?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I could make myself forget again. But that only worked until Mother found me.” And she would find me again. She would always find me. My temples grew clammy as Melu’s voice echoed in the air: Until you grant her third wish, neither you nor I will be free.

  Melu’s name jarred in my thoughts, awakening after so many years. My father, the ehru. Bound to that savannah until I killed Dayo.

  “I have to go back to Swana,” I gasped.

  “Why?” Kirah asked, frowning. “Won’t your mother find you there? Isn’t that where she lives?”

  “Yes. But only Melu would know how to break the curse. He can’t free himself; he can’t leave that grassland. But maybe I could free us both.”

  Kirah’s lips pressed together. “I’ll come with you.”

  “You can’t. What if Dayo needs you to sing? He barely made it through the night.”

  “Swana’s four lodestones away,” Kirah countered, “not including the time you’ll have to rest in between. You’ll be feverish with council sickness by then. Suppose you don’t make it back?”

  “Then our problem’s solved.”

  Kirah glared at me, bottom lip trembling. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare take the easy way out, Tar. What would Dayo do if you died?”

  “Live,” I spat. “He would live!”

  “No. You’d just be killing him another way.”

  “I’ll go,” said Sanjeet.

  Kirah and I turned to stare at him. He was expressionless, a soldier volunteering for a thankless duty. I could no longer envision the tenderness with which he had fastened a gift around my ankle. The cowrie shell still dangled against my foot, cold as bone.

  “You don’t have to,” I said.

  “I know,” he growled. “But I will. For his sake.”

  He lifted Dayo onto his shoulders and disappeared down the passageway. Before they vanished, I memorized the curl of Dayo’s hair, the breadth of his nose, the slope of his narrow back.

  “I may never see him again,” I whispered.

  “Maybe not,” Kirah said. “But you aren’t a monster, Tarisai. No matter what Sanjeet says.”

  I sobbed as she stroked my back, rearranging the heavy yarn braids that hid my face. “I don’t deserve you,” I said.

  “Too bad.” Kirah gave a tired smile. “Because none of us will give you up without a fight. Dayo’s probably forgiven you already. He doesn’t know how to hate anyone. Not even a murderer.”

  “But do you think the rest of our council will?”

  She chewed her lip. “I think it would be best if they didn’t know. Not right away, anyway. But they’ll understand. Well, everyone except . . .” She looked wearily in the direction Sanjeet had gone. “You know what happened to Sendhil.”

  I nodded, swallowing hard. Sanjeet had almost lost his little brother for good, again.

  And it was all my fault.

  CHAPTER 18

  Dawn broke, and we washed the blood from our clothes.

  Dayo rested, feverish and delirious, in one of the keep’s rarely used bedrooms. “He was sleepwalking,” Kirah told our council siblings. “He took a fall.”

  The keep servants fussed, bringing tea and poultices from the kitchens. Thaddace and Mbali did not send word to the emperor, because no one was afraid that Dayo would die. Raybearers were immune, after all, to everything.

  Everything except me.

  Kirah prevented servants from fetching healers from the capital. “We have it all under control,” she told them, smiling a little too brightly. A bandage hid the stab wound on Dayo’s side, which could not yet pass as a bruise from an innocent tumble.

  I knew Kirah and Dayo would keep my secret, though Sanjeet was unpredictable. If the rest of my council siblings found out what I had done, I would lose everything. The council would side against me, and Kirah and Dayo would join them. They would have no choice.

  I stayed far away from Dayo’s sleeping body, memorizing the silhouettes of my council brothers and sisters as they huddled together, lighting incense to Am for Dayo’s recovery. Without seeing them, I could summon their voices, their tics and mannerisms. Kameron’s tongue, lolling thoughtfully in his cheek. Ai Ling’s jaded, strident laughter. Umansa’s sleepy smile. Thérèse’s pale eyebrows, furrowed in meditation.

  Why do you hate them so much, Mother? How could you take away the person they love most?

  Melu was my only hope. But even if he broke my ehru curse, I might never earn my council’s trust back. Perhaps it was best if I never returned.

  Unable to say goodbye, I stole away to my chamber. Clothes lay in piles from last night, when my only anxiety had been impressing Sanjeet on Nu’ina Eve. None of my possessions seemed appropriate to pack for the journey ahead: rainbow wax-dyed wrappers, jeweled council regalia, High Judge case scrolls. I especially avoided touching the piles of handmade gifts from villagers. Every item held a story of sweat and sacrifice, of love I did not deserve. Biting my lip, I remembered the last gift I received.

  “I’m sorry, Amah,” I whispered, and slipped the cowrie shell anklet from my foot.

  The pallet in my chamber was dusty from neglect, since our council always slept together in the banquet hall. But I had not rested for two days, and sank gratefully onto the mudcloth blankets. The coarse cotton, dyed with earth-toned patterns of brown, black, and white, chafed my face. I counted them feverishly until sleep fell like a shadow. When I woke, I was still clutching the anklet.

  “Time to go,” Sanjeet said. He stood in my doorframe and tossed a pile of leathery items on the floor. “Get dressed.”

  I rubbed my stiff face and squinted at the pile. “Imperial Guard uniforms?” Sanjeet already wore the dark draping pants and protective padding strapped across his bare chest and arms. An oval shield leaned beside him in the doorway. I frowned. “Wouldn’t peasant clothes draw less attention?”

  “Imperial Guard warriors patrol the valley, changing shifts every three hours. If The Lady is watching the keep, Guard uniforms allow us to leave undetected. We must conceal your absence from Yorua for as long as possible. If The Lady knows her weapon has been compromised, she may try to reclaim it.”

  “Weapon,” I repeated. “Is that my name now?”

  “It has always been your name,” he said, and shut the door flap.

  I changed into the black-red-and-gold armor. I had already cried every tear my body could spare, and so my face was dry when I looked in the mirror. A dark silk turban bound my telltale yarn braids. A dust mask would conceal the lower half of my face, helping me blend in with the guards leaving and entering the keep. I strapped a pack of supplies to my back, and as an afterthought, added Aiyetoro’s drum.

  I had barely touched the empress’s artifact since Woo In and Kathleen had brought it to me in the temple. They had thought it would restore my memories; perhaps it held a clue to breaking my curse as well.

  When I was finished, I presented myself to Sanjeet, holding out my arms like a spear dummy. “Search me,” I said. He balked. I reminded him coolly, “I’m a weapon, remember? If you’re traveling alone with me, you’d better make sure I’m not armed.”

  He paused, and then felt down my arms, breast, and thighs. Surgical and efficient. Never meeting my gaze. “Clean,” he grunted.

  “Good. Now you can be sure I won’t run off. Or stab you while you sleep.” I was being unkind.
None of this was Sanjeet’s fault, and I had no right to be petty about his coldness. But I couldn’t bear it. I needed—just once—for him to look at me.

  “We should go,” he said, staring hard at my sandals.

  I swallowed hard and tossed him a small woven pouch. “You’ll need these.”

  He shook the pouch’s contents into his palm. The first item was my council ring. The sun-and-moon emblem was still sticky, mottled from court cases I had signed with wax. I could not identify myself without my seal. No guard would let me darken the door of an imperial building. As long as Sanjeet had that ring, I could never return to Yorua Keep or An-Ileyoba Palace. Dayo would be safe forever.

  The second item was his mother’s anklet. When he saw it, Sanjeet’s stone expression shifted. For the first time, his tea-colored eyes met mine.

  I kept my tone light. “You can’t trust a monster with your story, right? Better save that for someone who’s human.”

  I hated this. He did too. I could see it in the lines of his face, rigid with pain. But we were griots in a pantomime, forced to sing every line in this grim story, dancing to a beat my mother drummed.

  Sanjeet put away the items and hung the pouch around his neck, tucking it beneath his leather chest brace. “We should get moving,” he said. “The nearest lodestone is a day’s journey as the pelican flies, but two days by the main road. We’ll spend a night at the village.”

  “We can’t,” I said. “Yorua Village is where I saw The Lady last. And we can’t camp on the road; there are lions this time of year. We need to travel to the lodestone directly.”

  Sanjeet stiffened, instinctively touching the curved blade in his halter. “So. We go . . .”

  “We go through the Bush.”

  Every Arit realm had a place like the Oluwan Bush. Nyamban people called theirs Shida-Shida. Nontish people, Trou-du-Fae. The Mewish name was most direct: Lost-Soul-Land.

  Enoba the Perfect had created the Bushlands by accident. When he united our realms as one continent, the magic had grown new earth. These enchanted lands, scholars theorized, tempered the climate of our vast continent, allowing for fertile ground in landlocked areas that would otherwise be rendered arid. But the land had also plowed over ancient ocean passages to the Underworld, trapping malevolent spirits between this world and the next.