“Don’t have a conniption,” Woo In said aloud, in apparent response to a voice I could not hear. “Am’s Story, you’re almost as bad as my real big sister.”
The stranger’s cloak blew around her as she stormed under the canopy, doffing her deep green hood. “Honestly, it’s no wonder Crown Princess Min Ja disowned you,” the woman sniffed.
“Kathleen,” I breathed.
She ignored me, placed her hands on Woo In’s chest, and shut her eyes. The crackling energy intensified, and healthy color flooded Woo In’s lips. Kathleen examined him, and when it was clear his strength had returned, she slapped him.
He only laughed. “I’ve missed you too, Kat.”
“Really?” Kathleen demanded. “Really? First The Lady gets captured, then you disappear for three weeks without contacting a single council member? I was worried sick, Woo In. We thought you were dead.”
“You’re the one who ignored orders,” he retorted. “Fleeing to the safehouse the moment there was trouble—”
“It was standard procedure,” she hissed. “If The Lady is taken, her council returns to Bhekina and regroups. That was the plan.”
“Not for us,” Woo In said. “You and me, we protect the heir.” He pointed at me, making me flinch. “Those were The Lady’s orders, Kat. Protect the heir, no matter what. And if you hadn’t left your post at the keep, we never would have lost track of her.”
“It hardly matters now,” Kathleen sputtered. “She’s safe, isn’t she? And you can’t follow any orders if you’re dead.”
“I wasn’t alone,” Woo In responded after a pause. “I . . . I had a song-healer.” For the first time, Kathleen noticed Kirah, who stiffened.
“I’m thirsty,” Kirah announced, and turned on her heel, marching off toward Melu’s pool. Sanjeet and I followed her, grateful to distance ourselves from the foreign energy surrounding Woo In and Kathleen.
“It’s proof,” Sanjeet said as the three of us knelt in the grass. I had brought one of Melu’s baskets, and we breakfasted on dates and kola nuts by the sparkling amber pool. “The Lady anointed her own council,” Sanjeet insisted. “They’re using The Lady’s Ray.”
“Or it’s witchcraft,” I shot back. “Or—I don’t know, we’ve been out in the wilderness too long and we’re going insane.”
“Am’s Story, Tar,” Kirah snorted. “How many more signs is it going to take? Why can’t you believe that your mother has the Ray, and that you have a gift, just like her?”
“Because—” I bit my lip, hard. “Because the Ray is supposed to pick good people, all right? My mother forced an enslaved being to bed her on this very spot! One sip of that”—I pointed to Melu’s pool—“and I become some soulless monster who lies to her friends and stabs them! The Lady and I aren’t gifted, Kirah. We’re cursed.”
“The Ray,” Sanjeet said, “doesn’t pick good people. The Ray picks leaders. And if I’ve learned anything from serving on the Imperial Guard, it’s that leadership isn’t good or evil. It’s what you choose to do with it.”
“You didn’t call me a leader when Dayo was bleeding under that tree,” I said, and immediately regretted it. Sanjeet’s and Kirah’s faces crumpled with pain, and the clearing fell into silence.
“He forgives you, you know,” Kirah muttered after a moment. “Dayo. He made me promise to tell you. Once you’ve broken your curse, he wants you back as a council member.”
Tears of relief flooded my throat. I forced them back down. “Then Dayo’s a fool,” I said.
Sanjeet shook his head. “That’s all you have to say? Am’s Story, Tar, give him a break. After everything you both have gone through—”
“That’s the problem,” I sputtered. “After everything we’ve gone through, he shouldn’t want me back! He shouldn’t want anything to do with me! But he was raised in a gilded hothouse where everyone adored him, and so he’ll never see the world for what it is: cruel and stupid and full of monsters. Monsters that look like me.”
Kirah pressed her lips together. “I wasn’t born in a gilded hothouse,” she pointed out. “And neither was Sanjeet. But we’re still here, in the middle of nowhere, doing everything we can to help you. What does that make us? Just more fools in your cruel, stupid world?”
“No,” I said after a sheepish pause. “I’m sorry.” I sighed, fidgeting with the sunstone. It had grown cold and dim at the base of my throat. “I’m just . . . tired, Kirah. And I don’t know what to do. Melu says the only way to get rid of my curse is to find a purpose. A place in some big, grand story.”
She brightened and sat up. “Of course. A bellysong: the cure for any soul in bondage. I should have thought of that.”
“A belly what?”
“That’s what we Blessids call it, back home.”
Home. What a foreign concept. The chilly white walls of Bhekina House loomed in the distance, reminding me that I had never been part of anything—not until I joined Dayo’s council.
“The place closest to your soul isn’t your heart,” Kirah explained. “It’s your stomach. Anger, love, and sorrow simmer together there, like bubbles in a cauldron. People of the Wing believe that when the Pelican breathed each soul into being, it wrote two secrets on a burning coal: your greatest good and your best desire. You swallowed the coal before being born, and it burned in your belly. That’s why we wail as newborns, Mama would say.”
Kirah smiled into the tall grass, as if seeing her parents there, and the many infants for whom she had helped to care. She had real siblings somewhere, blood brothers and sisters that she had left behind for this. Being priestess to the world, and sitting with a monster in the wilderness. I wondered if she ever regretted it.
“High Priestess Mbali says that people have many gifts,” Kirah continued. “But our greatest good is the one we can’t contain: compassion, loyalty, softness, fierceness. The ability to win hearts, or recognize beauty, or weather a storm . . . Our gift could be anything, really. And when we use our greatest good for something beyond ourselves, that’s our best desire. Our purpose.” She paused. “But the coal inside us gradually grows colder. We forget our cry as newborns, our bellysong. We forget our knowledge of why Am made us, and our frustration at being too small and weak to fulfill it. We grow old and content, and unless we try very, very hard—we never wail our bellysong again.”
I broke off a stalk of grass. “Why Am made us,” I repeated, ripping the stalk into pieces until my fingers were stained lurid green. “Why Am made us.”
Sanjeet blinked at me. “Are you all right?”
“I guess I’d better be,” I said, standing and throwing the grass into the pool. “Because if Kirah and Melu are right, then we’re all djinns. Just lines in the poem of an almighty griot.” I flopped my arms like a puppet, then dug my nails into my fists. “If Kirah’s right, then the Storyteller is no different than The Lady.”
Kirah recoiled, making the sacred sign of Am on her chin. “That isn’t true,” she said.
“You have to believe that. You’re a priestess.”
“What, so I don’t have a brain?” Kirah retorted. “The Storyteller isn’t a djinn-master, Tarisai. Singing your bellysong is a choice.”
“Not for me! If I don’t find a purpose, then Dayo dies, and The Lady wins, and the whole empire falls apart. What kind of a choice is that?”
“You have a choice,” Kirah said slowly, “because there’s another way. After you left Yorua Keep, I had to come up with a plan and . . .” She avoided my gaze, grinding her sandal soles into the dirt. “Look, it’s not what I want. Dayo refused to even consider it. But it’s a good plan, all right? He won’t be emperor for years, so there’s time to train a new Swana delegate. The rest of us could split your duties as High Judge, and . . .”
Sanjeet’s expression sickened. “You’re talking about Tar leaving the Eleven. You think she could stop being an Anointed One.”
She nodded grimly. “A living one, anyway. We would make up an accident. Find a body and say it’s
her. Hold an empire-wide funeral. She would be muraled on the Watching Wall, and of course”—she added gently—“we would place a likeness on her throne.”
The title of an Anointed One lasted beyond their grave. Council members who died prematurely could not legally be replaced, even if their duties were assigned to someone new. The emperor fashioned a bust from the council member’s ashes and placed it on one of the twelve great thrones of An-Ileyoba. There, legend rumored, the ghost of the lost Anointed One would remain until the emperor died, releasing the deceased council member from their duty.
“Council sickness will be bad, in hiding,” Kirah admitted. “But we would visit you. It would have to be a place no one could find, ever. A realm close enough to Oluwan that Sanjeet and I could slip away. Somewhere like . . .” Her gaze drifted down the plain, where she knew The Lady’s fortress shimmered invisibly.
Bile stung the back of my tongue. “Bhekina House,” I whispered. Back to watching the world from a window. Back to those four mudbrick walls, rising like night around me. “Forever.”
“Or not,” Kirah said hurriedly. “We could disguise you. You could live in Oluwan City, in an outer district, far away from the palace. The risk would be greater, but not impossible.” She chewed her lip. “Some people don’t believe in bellysongs, you know. To them, Am is just a concept, and Am’s Story is no story at all. It’s simply the essence of being alive: the soup in which we all live. I don’t know if I believe that, but those people find happiness, and you can too. What I’m trying to say is: You have choices, Tar. And you always will.” I nodded slowly. “And I’d go anywhere to keep Dayo safe.” Overhead, the tutsu from last night had dimmed, and they drifted in aimless patterns against the clouds. “But so much of my life has been a lie. I . . . I don’t think I want my death to be one too.”
Sanjeet’s features flooded with relief. “Then choose life,” he said. He locked his fingers through mine, as though I were in danger of vanishing. “Your greatest good, your best desire—whatever it takes, we’ll find it. All we need is time.”
After a long moment, I let my hand curl around his. “If we’re not going to fake my death, then I have to answer the emperor’s summons. I can’t afford for him to get suspicious and come looking for me.”
Kirah beamed. “So we’ll go to An-Ileyoba. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find your purpose there. There’s also a good chance Aiyetoro’s masks will be at the palace. Woo In told me that The Lady has searched for them everywhere except there.”
“Dayo will be at An-Ileyoba,” I pointed out.
“We’ll be careful—”
“I won’t see him,” I said firmly. “Don’t you dare let me. At the palace, I’m staying far away from him until I’ve found my cure. And thanks to Melu . . .” The ehru’s words curled around me like smoke. If you are ever to find your purpose, then you must know who you really are. Grimly, I set off toward Bhekina House. “I know just where to start looking.”
“You shouldn’t go in there alone,” Sanjeet countered as he and Kirah hurried after me.
“She won’t,” said Kathleen. She and Woo In were waiting by the gates of Bhekina House, leaning against a wall that Sanjeet and Kirah could not see.
Sanjeet shuddered, then scoffed. “You expect us to trust you?”
“We expect you,” Woo In droned, “to consider that we’ve protected her for six years.”
“You should have protected her from The Lady,” Kirah retorted, crossing her arms. Then she winced and uncrossed them, having clearly forgotten about her sprain.
“Can’t you fix that?” Woo In asked, eyeing her wrist with concern.
She scowled at him. “Soul-singers can’t heal themselves. That’s like—like trying to exhale and inhale at the same time. My Hallow doesn’t work that way.”
“Then I’ll help with the pain,” Woo In insisted, and before Kirah could protest, a whirlwind materialized in the savannah. The whipping air condensed into a shimmering ball, which Woo In directed toward her. “Your hand,” he said. “Please, Kirah.”
Slowly, she placed her bandaged hand into the levitating ball of wind. The ball attached itself to her arm, making it float, and her features relaxed instantly. “It isn’t throbbing anymore,” she muttered.
Woo In made an effort not to look pleased. “It’s the same airstream we used to fly. It doesn’t heal, but wounds tend to stabilize.”
I considered him suspiciously. “You never fully explained your Hallow to me,” I said. “It’s more than flight, isn’t it?”
“Much more,” Kathleen said, smirking at Woo In. “In a way, it’s really not even a Hallow, is it, princey?”
He sighed, rolling his eyes. “What you Arits call my Hallow,” he explained, “Songlanders call sowanhada: the language of nature. Unlike your Hallows, sowanhada can be taught, though some forces respond only to certain bloodlines. The silent language of wind and air, for example, may only be spoken by the royal family. Our military exclusively recruits fire-speakers. That’s why The Lady wants Songland’s army,” he added. “Sowanhada warriors can do a formidable amount of damage, even against Olugbade’s vast Imperial Guard.” He nodded at Kirah’s hand. “That ball of air should last a few hours. Enough time to search the house for clues about a certain person’s bellysong.”
My eyebrows shot to my hairline. “How did you know about—” Then I remembered a breeze whisking around Melu’s pool as I had spoken to Kirah and Sanjeet. “You were eavesdropping. Again.”
“Old habits, Lady’s Daughter.” Woo In bowed. “Shall we?”
Sanjeet bristled, but I only sighed. I didn’t feel like going anywhere with Woo In, but I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. He was too loyal to The Lady for that. Still, I crossed my arms at him. “Why would you want to help break my curse? Don’t you want Dayo dead?”
“I never wanted anyone dead,” Woo In said. “I just wanted The Lady crowned so she could save the Redemptors. But I have long felt . . .” He rubbed the bruise on his cheek and shot a furtive glance at Kirah. “More suffering is not the answer. There must be another way to crown The Lady.”
“We could exile Prince Ekundayo instead of killing him,” Kathleen suggested brightly. “Off to some island where he can never threaten The Lady’s claim—”
“Dayo’s not going to an island,” Kirah snapped at her. “Once we find Aiyetoro’s masks, Dayo and Tar can rule together. That’s how it’s supposed to be.”
I sputtered with exasperation. “Can we forget about my supposed Ray for a second and focus on protecting Dayo?”
Kirah ignored me, narrowing her eyes at Woo In and Kathleen. “You’re the ones who gave Tarisai that drum. So you have access to Aiyetoro’s possessions. Where do you think the masks are?”
“If we knew where to find Aiyetoro’s masks,” Kathleen replied, “then we would be breaking The Lady out of prison right now, not babysitting you in this backwater savannah. The empress and princess masks are the only remaining proof of The Lady’s right to rule. She has spent decades searching, and has never come closer to finding them.”
“What about the drum?” I asked.
“The Lady stole it from the palace as a child. When she found out that you had erased your memories, she made us deliver the drum to you in Ebujo, hoping your shared lineage with Aiyetoro would awaken your true identity. Clearly,” she added dryly, “it didn’t work.”
“We’ll help you search Bhekina House,” Woo In told me. “The Lady stored most of her records there. She likely has leads on where to look for the masks.”
I frowned. “If she did, wouldn’t she have told you?”
Woo In and Kathleen exchanged an uneasy look.
“The Lady told us what we needed to know for the tasks we were assigned,” Kathleen said at last, her tone defensive. “Not all Raybearers are as naive as your prince, spilling secrets left and right. The Lady likes her privacy.”
The insult to Dayo angered me, but the feeling melted to pity. Kathleen and Woo In had given their lives
to my mother, and still she held them at a distance. Where they could not hurt her, I realized. As her brother had, as the world had. I pitied The Lady too.
We turned toward the shimmering red rooftops of Bhekina House. The compound was smaller than I remembered. As a child, the palisade gates had towered over my head, an impossible-to-cross barrier to the whole world.
“Is anyone still living here?” I asked, my lungs constricting.
“The Lady dismissed most of her servants after sending you to the capital,” Kathleen replied. “But some of your tutors were my anointed siblings. They’re traveling to Songland as we speak, hoping to convince Queen Hye Sun’s army to break The Lady out of An-Ileyoba. A few servants still live here to open the gate and look after the chickens. But the compound never needed farmhands.” Kathleen looked unsettled. “The orchard has always cared for itself.”
The perfume of mangoes washed over me as Woo In called a password, and the palisade gates creaked open. A rheumy-eyed guard peered at us, then gasped when he recognized my features.
“She is not here,” he wailed. “The Lady is gone, gone.” Wrinkled, leathery skin covered his arms as he operated the heavy gate crank. I recognized him. The man had guarded the gate when I small. He had been just as old then as he was now. How could such a frail man survive for so long? Then again . . .
How could an orchard of mangoes bloom year-round with no one to care for them?
“What are you looking at?” Kirah asked me, squinting up at the guard, and I realized that she and Sanjeet could not see or hear him. They could not sense the towering gates, or even smell the ripe orchard yards away.
I shivered, bid them goodbye, and entered the compound with Woo In and Kathleen. When I turned back to wave, Sanjeet and Kirah stared straight through me, looking unnerved, as though I had vanished into thin air.
The courtyard, manor, huts, and fruit trees of Bhekina House were eerily still. The heat of Melu’s enchantment seeped through every wax-coated leaf, every brick and cobblestone. How could I not have noticed, before, how the walls hummed quietly with power? This place had once seemed so ordinary. Then again . . . it had been all I’d known.
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