Raybearer

  I grimaced, remembering the edict’s incentives for giving children empire names. Rashly, I slipped another coin from my purse and pressed it into Keeya’s palm. “For Bopelo,” I said. When she gasped, I winked and added, “I think Tegoso will come around.”

  Keeya fussed maternally over my yarn-plaited hair, admiring the gold accents but gasping at the roots. “So tight, ah-ah! This is how fancy ladies are wearing braids in Oluwan? Cutting off the air to their brains?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

  “Doesn’t it hurt?”

  “Only when I think about it. It’s better this way,” I explained. “Everything under control.”

  I asked about Melu’s pool. Keeya told us that only one kind of creature could help us find an ehru: tutsu sprites. A blind hermit was said to have control over the tutsu, and she lived several miles north of the nearest market town. When we reached a dirt compound with a high, broken gate, Tegoso stopped the cart.

  “Old Mongwe lives in there,” he said, helping Sanjeet and me down. We wobbled, still queasy from the lodestone. “She helps travelers. It’s the duty of her holy order, the priests of the Clay. If she cannot find Melu, she can at least settle your stomachs.” He dimpled. “I suspect most imperial warriors do not have such refined accents, nor do they carry purses full of gold coins. But I will not ask your true names. Go well. If ever you pass through Pikwe Village, know you have a friend in Tegoso.

  He gave me three bangles, and a cobalt blue blouse and wrapper dyed with yellow stars. Sanjeet received a flowing tunic in the same fabric. We waved until the melodic chants of Tegoso’s daughters—Black and gold, isn’t he perfect?—faded in the distance. Then we turned to a tiny thatch farmhouse. Beyond the gate, tendrils of acrid smoke rose from the overgrown courtyard.

  “Are you just going to stand there?” called out a nasal voice. “The sprites said you two would be late, but they did not mention that you were dawdlers.”

  CHAPTER 21

  We crept up the short dirt path, through a broken gate, and into the courtyard. At first, I thought the mud-thatch house was covered in bits of glass. But every minute or so the clusters of bright specks moved, adjusting themselves in the sun. Tutsu. Hives of them.

  A green mound rested by a cookfire. No, not a mound: a woman, barely four feet tall, wearing a cloak woven from fresh leaves and rushes. A wizened arm stuck out from the cloak, stirring a pot of bubbling brown slime.

  “You have come on soap day,” she complained. “If you had waited a week, I would have had solid bars. Eh! You will have to wash with mash. Beggars cannot be choosers. Not even fancy beggars in imperial armor.”

  A mud-and-stick mural of a woman’s face splayed across the ground. Her nose was soft and broad, and her lips dark and full. Round stones swirled to form a crown of hair. I had not been brought up in a religious sect, but I had seen this sacred mural before. Mbali had tried to teach me how to make one, since Swana belonged to People of the Clay. The believers often meditated by assembling portraits of Queen Earth, made from natural or living materials.

  Beyond the mural, a rough linen screen flapped on a clothesline. Behind it sat two washtubs, towels folded neatly over each rim. Waiting.

  The woman turned her ear toward us when we didn’t move, rustling the leaves on her hood. Her eyes were milky glass.

  “Are you Old Mongwe?” I asked.

  “No,” said the Clay priestess with a straight face. “I am Mongwe the Newborn Babe. Old Mongwe is in the other sprite-covered earth shrine in the middle of the wilderness. Sit down and drink your tea, you tiresome child.”

  A kettle and two cups of golden liquid rested on mats beside her. We hesitated, then sat obediently and claimed the clay mugs. The tea didn’t smell enchanted or poisoned, and the steam relieved my lodestone nausea instantly. Sanjeet frowned at Mongwe before taking a sip. “How did you know we were coming?”

  Mongwe rolled her sightless eyes. “How could I not know? Those chatter-mouths love stray adventurers.” She gestured toward her house, where tutsu hovered sleepily in the eaves. “All day they whine, ‘Mongwe, a boy is on the road taking a magic cow to market. Mongwe, a dairy maid is running away to be with her true love. Mongwe, a wuraola and her friend have come to seek an ehru.’ You are all the same, young people. Full of questions and deaf to ugly answers. Leaving your safe homes, your warm beds because—let me guess—you want to follow your heart.” She laughed, a dry, wheezing sound. Then she turned back to her pot, stirring as she muttered. “Should a fool follow his heart? A thief? A murderer? Your heart is not your friend unless you know who you truly are.”

  “Thank you for the tea,” I said after a confused pause. “What’s a wuraola?”

  “How should I know?” She sniffed the pot, then dumped it in a vat of ashes. “You will have a hard time convincing them to take you to Melu. Protective of alagbatos, the tutsu. Especially when it comes to him. The last time they helped someone find Melu . . . Well. He suffered.”

  I stared at the bottom of my teacup, heart sinking. If the tutsu knew that my mother had enslaved Melu, they would never help me.

  “Name your price,” Sanjeet told Mongwe. “The tutsu will listen to you. We’ll pay anything.”

  She snorted. “Haven’t the two of you slung gold around the savannah enough today? You will be robbed and toothless before the evening is out.”

  “Please,” I begged. “Dayo’s life depends—”

  “What am I supposed to do? I am a priestess, not a sprite whisperer. You need a bath, a cure for the common cold, I’ll help you. But tutsu?” She sucked her teeth. “I just let them nest on my home. In return, they keep beetles away from my yams. They also guide me to honeycomb, if they are feeling grateful. But other than that, I ask them no favors. You will just have to convince them that you are someone worth listening to.”

  I sighed, glancing at the roof. “At least they look calm.”

  Mongwe’s cracked lips spread in a grin. “Those are only spritelings. It is their parents you will have to persuade.” She cocked her head and sniffed the air, grimacing. “You smell like a frightened hare. Perhaps you should bathe first—”

  “We don’t have time,” I said, standing. “Tell us where to go.”

  She pointed beyond the house, where knee-high grass rustled in an airy field. I realized then that the constant, high-pitched humming in the compound was not wind.

  “Let me go alone,” I told Sanjeet. “We wouldn’t want to spook them.”

  When I crept into the soft, dense grass, the air throbbed with silvery voices, an army of mouths and wings I could not see. Specks of lavender light danced in intricate patterns above me. Some of them hovered close to my face, investigating my heavy braids, ash-covered arms, and borrowed imperial uniform. The tutsu whined and tittered, flying in circles until I felt dizzy.

  I was being mocked.

  “Understood,” I muttered. “I’m a mess. But I’m guessing you know why I’m here. Please, I just need to find Melu. Don’t you want Aritsar to be safe? I’m tired of being dangerous; help me be normal.”

  The tittering increased in pitch, drowning out my voice. I bit my lip in frustration.

  I tried again, struggling to be heard above the whining. “If I can break The Lady’s hold on me, then Melu will be free too. Don’t you care about him?”

  The tutsu did not break their lazy patterns, continuing to swoop and dart as though I had not spoken. Even the few that hovered around me lost interest, going to join their brethren in the dance above my head.

  I yelled and pleaded. I insulted. I even threatened to trap them in jars, like the merchants who sold sprites in markets. “You could be night lamps for all I care,” I said. But nothing worked. The tutsu ignored me.

  Hot-faced, I stomped back to Sanjeet. “It was worth a try,” he said. “We can find Melu’s pool another way.”

  I nodded grimly. “We’ll visit every puddle in Swana if we have to.” But my heart sank. Swana was the second-largest realm,
bigger than Djbanti and Nymaba combined. It could take us weeks to find Melu’s pool on our own. Months. And if The Lady had as many spies as I feared . . . she would find me long before then.

  “Back already?” said Mongwe when we returned to the courtyard.

  “They didn’t care,” I said. “Not about Melu’s curse, or keeping Dayo safe—none of it. They don’t care about anyone but themselves.”

  Mongwe laughed that dry, wheezy sound again. “Of course they don’t.”

  “Then why did you let me try?”

  Mongwe hummed, savoring the harsh, nutty smell wafting from her soap pot. “First lesson of growing tall,” she said. “People never listen to what you want. They listen to who you are.” She paused and cocked her head toward the house. “The tutsu are chanting about you, girl. They say there’s someone you are desperate not to hurt.”

  I straightened, alert. “Yes, there is. Do they know how I can protect him?”

  She listened. “No. They think your case is hopeless, for the most part, though the gem that he carries”—she pointed to Sanjeet—“will help.”

  Sanjeet blinked in surprise, then shyly drew a small, fiery object from his pocket. The sunstone I had given him on Nu’ina Eve; he had kept it. Even after calling me a monster.

  “Maybe that’s it,” I whispered. “Maybe the stone can cure me.”

  “Of course it can’t,” Mongwe snorted. “I don’t know what ails you, girl, but I know a sparkly bauble isn’t medicine.” She frowned, considering. “Sunstones are known to strengthen the will, however. In some. If you are tempted to do harm, a sunstone will not protect you. But it may make it easier, just a whit, to resist.”

  My heart sank, but when Sanjeet insisted, I took the stone, threading it through a leather tie meant for my hair and suspending it from my throat.

  Mongwe smiled. “Now. Doesn’t a bath sound nice?”

  She had arranged the washtubs on opposite sides of the linen screen. Still scowling, I stalked to one side and peeled off my grubby uniform, but I kept the sunstone on. Miles of dirt and dust chafed my skin, and when I lifted myself into the tub, my scowl melted away. The water was cool, and fragrant rosemary and neem leaves floated on the surface, clinging to my legs. I scrubbed with a lump of soap mash, still warm from Mongwe’s pot. At first, I held my braids atop my head, craning my neck at awkward angles to protect each yarn plait from the water. The roots throbbed, and my scalp itched with sweat and grime. I paused then, noticing my shadow on the linen screen. My shape was contorted and stiff, like a rooster perched in a barnyard. I felt ridiculous.

  So I plunged my head in.

  A bubbled sigh escaped my lips as my roots soaked up the water. I could feel the yarn frizz, curls escaping from the tightly coiffed edges. Unruly, the palace braider fretted in my ear. Shameful. Think of your title. Ladies rein every strand into place.

  But what title would ever describe me?

  Assassin? High Judge Apparent? Puppet demon? Vanquisher of Bush-spirits? I had betrayed Dayo. I had saved his life. No yarn, no matter how tight, could hold back the jumble of contradictions that was Tarisai of Swana. I lathered my scalp and dunked the braids again, letting the suds froth around my ears.

  When I emerged from the water, I gasped, braids streaming in a sopping mantle down my back. My limbs felt oddly light. I hummed as I wrung the plaits over the sweet-smelling water. After, I reached for my dusty Imperial Guard uniform, and then thought better of it. Instead I opened my travel pack, pulling out the starry blue garments from Tegoso.

  What title can contain me?

  The cotton chemise was soft, with sleeves that hung loosely to my elbows. Over the chemise I wound the wrapper, tying it snugly at my waist. I smiled, admiring the woven pattern as it clung to my hips.

  Sanjeet was quiet for a moment when I stepped out from behind the screen. Then he said, “It suits you.”

  He had bathed and changed too. The kaftan from Tegoso looked imperious on his towering form, and droplets sparkled in his hair. “Ready to go?”

  “Not until I’ve said goodbye,” I said.

  He followed me, puzzled, as I marched behind Mongwe’s house and strode into the field of tutsu. They whined and tittered again, but I spoke louder, chin high.

  “You don’t have to help me,” I told them, shaking my head of gloriously clean, wet hair. “But you will listen when I speak. You will listen, because there is no history I cannot see.” My chest was burning, but this time it didn’t hurt. Instead, the sunstone warmed over my heart, soaking up the heat, and sending it in pleasant tingles down my collarbone. I reached with my Hallow into the ground, consuming the births, deaths, and dances of a million sprites, drinking the tiny stories of power seeping into every blade and flower, every tree and anthill in the vast savannah.

  “I am Tarisai of Swana,” I murmured, “and I’ve seen your stories now. They belong to me, as mine belong to you. You don’t have to help me change the world. But you mark my words; when I get going, this world will change. And you can be a part of that . . . or you can stand back and watch.”

  The field went quiet. The specks of light grew still, hovering like stars in the daytime. My heart thrummed in my ears.

  Then the tutsu swarmed.

  The specks of light dove at me with a deafening hum, surrounding me in a tunnel. I held up my hands in defense and heard Sanjeet cry out . . . but no pain came. Instead, warmth radiated over my skin as the tutsu streamed beneath my arms, over my shoulders, through my hair: a living breeze.

  “They aren’t attacking me,” I yelled.

  “No,” Sanjeet yelled back, laughing incredulously. “They’re choosing you.”

  My feet left the ground. As the tutsu continued to swirl, something fell into the grass. A length of yarn. Then another, and another. The tutsu unbraided my hair, removing the hundreds of plaits with blurring speed, until there was nothing left but my midnight cloud of hair, unbound and unyielding, bursting from my scalp in a dark halo.

  The tutsu set me down at last, and then hovered at a distance. Waiting for orders.

  I glanced back at Sanjeet. Mongwe had joined him at the field’s edge, arms crossed.

  “Well now,” she said placidly. “Didn’t I tell you a bath would help?”

  CHAPTER 22

  Sanjeet and I followed the tutsu for what must have been several hours, though it seemed like minutes. My head floated on my shoulders. I realized then that I had suffered from a headache for days, and only now had it vanished.

  As the tutsu swarmed above us, a low, rippling cloud across the savannah, I found myself babbling to Sanjeet: a side effect of my new, weightless freedom. I told him the stories I had made up when I lived in Swana, as a child forced to watch the world through a window.

  “This savannah might as well have been Biraslov,” I said, catching a jewel-toned dragonfly as it hummed past. I cupped the annoyed creature in my hands, drinking in its memories of sparkling ponds and seas of grass. “I’d never gone farther than the Bhekina compound. I forced my tutors to describe things I couldn’t see—villages, markets, weddings. I’d make a picture in my mind, and put myself inside. My favorite story was called school. I made up six brothers and sisters, and an evil school mistress who paddled us. I’d never been spanked before. I thought it sounded exciting.” Sanjeet laughed, and I let the dragonfly escape. “My tutors wouldn’t dare touch me. They were too afraid I’d steal their memories. I would have been spoiled rotten, if The Lady hadn’t sent me away.” I glanced dubiously at Sanjeet. “Were you ever naughty as a boy? I can’t imagine it.” Sanjeet had more self-control than anyone I knew. Even now, as we walked, he was shortening his stride to match mine, every movement a conscious decision.

  Sanjeet looked thoughtful. “I was taller than my mother at eight years old,” he said after a pause. “By eleven, I’d passed Father. They forgot that I was still a child, and so I stopped being one. Mistakes were expensive. I broke things all the time, awkward with my own strength. And once I figured
out my Hallow, well.” He grimaced, then shrugged. “Emotions were expensive too. I could see any person’s weakness, and so revenge was . . . easy for me. Effortless. I realized it was safer not to feel. If I was never too happy, then no one could make me sad. And if I was never sad or angry, then I would never hurt someone. Except in the fighting pits, of course. When Father made me.”

  He spoke casually, as though recounting someone else’s life instead of his own. Sadness welled in my stomach as I examined him anew, remembering every time I had watched that face smooth into passive stone. I had always assumed he was shutting the world out . . . not shutting himself in.

  I slipped my hand in his. “We were both of us raised in cages.”

  His fingers curled slowly around mine. “I guess that’s how we survived the Children’s Palace.”

  The sun was low in the sky, dyeing the savannah in red and gold. The tutsu were slowing down, congregating over a scatter of trees in the distance.

  “That’s it,” I muttered. Then I laughed, breaking into a run. “We did it! That’s it—that’s Melu’s pool.”

  When we arrived, the clearing was just as I remembered. The sighing brush, the purple and white river lilies, bobbing on their tall, slender stems. The amber pool was mirror glass, reflecting the tutsu, who hung like stars against the reddening sky. Far off, the rooftops of Bhekina House smoldered in the setting sun. I shivered. Did The Lady know I was here?

  I remembered the man with cobalt-fire wings, bending over me with those warm, slanted eyes, placing a finger on my brow: I bargained with The Lady for the privilege of naming you.

  I had missed Melu, I realized with a pang. I had never craved a father, at least, not as I had craved The Lady. But that night in the savannah, the ehru had made me feel . . . seen. Had he missed me too?

  I scanned the clearing eagerly—but instead of a blazing man, a dark, narrow form rested on its side by the pool. It did not move as we approached. Blue wings lay dormant in the dust, smoldering like a waning fire.