Kingdom of Souls

by Rena Barron

  This is a mistake. It’s too late. I trip over my feet as I back away from her. Efiya frowns and her attention snaps to the wall again. “Go away! You’re scaring my sister.”

  My sister. Her declaration is so full of pride that she reminds me of Kofi, and how much I miss him. When I was younger, I always wanted a sister. Someone to trade secrets with. Someone to understand how hard it is to grow up without magic in a gifted family. Efiya can never replace Kofi. She can never be the sister I dreamed of, but she’s the one I’m stuck with now.

  Efiya has only to give the command once in her high-pitched child-voice, and the demons melt back into the wall. It’s impossible to tell that they were ever there. Her control over the demons is absolute, nothing like when Arti had struck a deal with Shezmu. I won’t let myself forget that.

  “I’ve . . . I’ve come to ask if you want to play in the gardens tomorrow.” The words tumble from my lips, my throat tight. “With me.”

  “Can we play hide-and-seek?” Efiya pipes up. “Terra taught me how.”

  I press a finger to my lips. “Shhh, you don’t want to wake Arti.”

  “She’s no fun!” Efiya whispers with her hands clasped around her mouth.

  I’m foolish for trying, but Efiya is still a child. I hope that my mother hasn’t poisoned her mind yet. Since breaking Arti’s curse, there’s no magic stirring in my chest, waiting to snatch away my freedom. I’m free to speak for the first time in what feels like an eternity. “You can’t help Arti release the Demon King’s ka.”

  “I only want to play, but she doesn’t like it,” Efiya whines.

  “You’re a child,” I say, my heart pounding. “You should be playing all the time.”

  Efiya pokes out her lips. “But the Demon King needs fixing like you.”

  I cringe, wondering what Arti has told her. “If you fix the Demon King, we can’t play.”

  She crosses her arms. “You said children are supposed to play!”

  “That’s right.” I force myself to step closer to her. “But if you release the Demon King, no one can ever play again.”

  Tears spring to her eyes and she stands there sobbing. I try not to feel pity for her, but it’s impossible. She’s at once a little girl, innocent and impressionable. She’s also Shezmu’s daughter—born from the death of others. In the end, it’s the little girl who wins out. I open my arms, and she climbs from the bed and hugs my waist. This isn’t permanent, or normal, but when Efiya asks to sleep in my room, I say yes. She tucks herself against my side, and it feels like we’ve slept like this our entire lives. I fall asleep with her in my arms.

  The morning is slow to come, but when it does, I awake excited about spending time in the gardens. I haven’t rested this well since Grandmother’s vision, when my trouble began. Efiya is gone. My first thought is that she’s in her room, but I don’t find her there. Now that I can move with ease again, I make my way to the first level. I pass the salon where Arti, Oshhe, and Ty sit in high-back chairs, eating their morning meals. Nezi is milling around the porter’s station and Terra is in the gardens. She’s facing a shade tree and counting to ten.

  “Where’s Efiya?” I ask. Last night as she slept in my arms, I managed to convince myself that if I keep eyes on her, she’ll stay out of trouble.

  Terra startles and sighs when she sees it’s only me. “Hiding in the gardens.” She wipes her hands on her green shift as Efiya ducks from behind a tree. I bite back a curse. My sister’s grown again. Now she looks like a child of ten, with twiggy legs and even wilder hair.

  “I have a new game.” Efiya runs across the grass barefoot. “I have a new game.”

  Before I can ask what game, Terra taps my shoulder and points to the gate separating the villa from the desert. Two dozen sand-swept faces stare through the wrought-iron bars. Nezi emerges from her porter’s station and tries to shoo them away. That is, until they start to chant my sister’s name, and Nezi smiles. “Efiya . . . ,” I choke, breath trapped in my lungs.

  This is my fault. My foolish wishful thinking led my sister to seek out these children. She wasn’t interested in playing with other children until I gave her the idea. I had her undivided attention before then. My broken body and impenetrable mind fascinated her, but like with all toys, my sister has grown bored. Now she’s turned the children of Kefu into ndzumbi.

  “Efiya,” I say again, louder this time. “Why are these children here?”

  “To play with us, silly!” She beams up at me and bounces on her toes.

  Standing impossibly still, Terra pales and looks on the verge of passing out from shock.

  “We don’t need them to play.” I wave my arm dismissively, trying and failing to sound unfazed. “Let them go home.”

  “They’re here already!” Efiya skips to the courtyard to greet them. A mangy ginger cat that’s come with the children sweeps around Efiya’s ankles. She giggles as she bends down to hug it. The cat tries to slip from her arms, but she scoops it up. With the children on her heels, she walks back into the gardens. My sister has too much power—too much magic and no one to teach her right from wrong. She couldn’t have known this was bad. I bite the inside of my cheek, hoping that I can teach her better.

  The children run themselves ragged playing all day. When I tell Efiya that they need to eat, drink, and rest to be well, she frowns and plops down under a tree. The other children sit too. If I’m miserable in the midday heat, they must be too, but they don’t complain. They look upon Efiya like she’s a god and hang on her every word.

  Terra runs to the kitchen to get food and drink as I settle on the grass. I have to convince my sister to send the children home after their midday meal. But I’m unable to get a word in as Efiya asks the children endless questions about their lives. Even if she can read minds, she seems to delight in hearing them tell their stories. Soon Terra and Ty return with trays of sliced fruit, almond paste, bread, and pitchers of water. Ty gasps when she sees the children with their blank stares. Unlike Nezi, she doesn’t smile at my sister’s perverse game. Now she sees the truth for the first time. I warned her, but she wouldn’t listen.

  Once Ty retreats back to the villa, Terra sits beside me. The nehet tree’s dense leaves cast much-needed shade upon us, and clusters of figs hang fat above our heads. The stray cat’s tail slaps against my hand as he slinks through the throng of children. He’s slept underneath a tree most of the morning, and now he’s stalking a bird foraging near the duck pond.

  Efiya makes us all play a game in which she pretends to be the Almighty One of the Kingdom. Her magic sticks to my skin worse than the sweat.

  “Boy,” Efiya drawls. “What can you offer to entertain me?”

  I don’t like the gleam in her eyes and the sudden shift in her mood. Her attention is on the boy at her feet. He sits on his knees with his hands on his thighs, gazing at her with reverence. Arti is the strongest witchdoctor in all the lands, and even she has to perform rituals to bend people to her will. Efiya needs no such thing. She is magic.

  “Anything, Almighty One,” the boy says. “What will please you the most?”

  “Almighty One.” The words taste as bitter on my tongue as blood medicine. “Shouldn’t you tell us who will be in your court? Who will be your Vizier? Your Ka-Priestess? Your seers? Your scholars?” I keep rambling to draw her attention, but she only spares me a knowing smile. My stomach sinks to my knees.

  Her eyes bear none of the innocence of a child anymore. None of the innocence of the little girl who climbed into bed beside me. They shine with hunger—the mark of her demon blood. She stares at me as she gives the boy her next command. “Cut off your thumb.”

  The boy doesn’t hesitate as he picks up a knife from one of the trays.

  “No!” I snatch the knife from his grasp. “Children don’t play like that, Efiya.”

  “Why not?” She pouts. “They will play whatever way I wish.”

  “Let us play!” the children chant together. “Let us play!”

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nbsp; If only I could shake some sense into her. I can’t give up. “Other people are not like you,” I tell her, my voice riddled with false calm. “Our bodies are fragile, and things that wouldn’t hurt you would cause us great harm, or even death. Do you understand what death is? People go away and never come back. You wouldn’t want to hurt your friends, would you?”

  “That’s not how death works, silly.” Efiya plucks up blades of grass, then one by one, lets them slip through her fingers. “Do you want me to show you?”

  A sharp pain knots in my belly. “Efiya, don’t do this.”

  “Why not?” she asks. “Don’t you want to play with me?”

  “A good queen doesn’t harm her court,” I croak.

  “Good?” She muses over the word, toying with it on her tongue. “Gooood.”

  In that moment I truly understand that my sister has no concept of good or bad. It was cruelty and hatred that brought her into the world.

  The pain in my belly cuts like a tobachi knife and I double over. “Please, Efiya.”

  “No!” She slams her fist against the ground. “I’ve listened enough; I want to play.”

  Her magic sends a second wave of pain through my entire body, and I ball up on the grass, unable to move. It isn’t like Arti’s curse that sought to control. This is something different, something that will only go away if Efiya chooses to make it stop. The boy pries the knife from my hand while the other children stare at me, their faces blank. Terra covers her mouth and sobs.

  I beg and scream and cry, but my sister doesn’t spare me another glance. The boy squats, spreading his fingers wide on the ground, and does as Efiya asks. He smiles through the tears that run down his cheeks. I bury my face against the grass for the worst of it. She could take away his pain, but that isn’t the point. She wants him to suffer.

  I catch a glimpse of Arti on the second-level balcony, looking down on the gardens. From here I can’t see her expression, but she clutches the guardrails. When Efiya asks another child to give her a gift, Arti shifts into white mist. The same shape she used when she snatched children in the market in Tamar. I wriggle, desperate to get to my feet. I have to do something, anything, to stop Efiya, but with the pain, I’m useless. The mist—Arti—snakes down from the balcony to the garden like a raging storm cloud.

  Arti appears in her physical form, standing in front of Efiya with her hands on her hips. Her eyes are vicious and red-rimmed with fire. “I’ve been patient long enough.” She bares her teeth at the children. “We have no time for these foolish games. There is much to do.”

  The boy picks up his severed thumb, his hands trembling. “Does this please you, Almighty One?”

  “I want to play!” Efiya shouts, ignoring him. “Arrah says that children should play.”

  “Fix his hand,” Arti demands, her voice menacing. “Now.”

  Efiya crosses her arms. “You can’t make me.”

  There it is.

  Arti’s magic sweeps through me, gentle as wingbeats, and brushes away the pain. Every muscle goes slack and I roll onto my side, panting, sweat stinging a cut on my lip. I dare not move as mother and daughter cast dagger-eyes at each other. When Arti reaches for the boy, she yelps and cradles her hand against her belly. The hand blackens and turns as hard as charred wood.

  “I said no!” Efiya screams and a flock of birds flee from the nearest tree.

  She let Arti take away my pain, when she could’ve stopped her from doing that too. She does care about me—and for better or worse, I do care about her. I can’t stop clinging to the idea that there’s some chance, no matter how small, that Efiya can help me turn this around.

  “You’re such a disappointment.” Arti flexes her fingers so that the ashes fall away and the color in her hand fades back to normal.

  Efiya’s eyes fill with fat tears, and against all logic I pity her. If only I hadn’t been asleep for so long after the ritual, I could have been there. I could have taught her the difference between right and wrong, good and bad. “Using magic for petty parlor tricks,” Arti snaps at her.

  The children boo and bare their teeth at Arti, but she pays them no mind. “Your sister gave her years for magic to get what she wanted. Although I detest her foolishness, she has conviction. You, Efiya, have none. You have no focus and no direction. You have everything that she doesn’t, but no sense.”

  “Stop it,” I spit. “Stop trying to manipulate her into doing your bidding. You’re the reason she’s like this.”

  “It’s your fault!” Arti whirls on me and points her finger. “You’ve poisoned her, and now she’s weak like you.”

  I tell myself that my mother can’t cut me any deeper, but she always finds a way to twist the blade. It isn’t Arti accusing me of being weak again that hurts. She’s accusing me of influencing Efiya, when I’ve done nothing but fail. I haven’t swayed my sister from her deadly course, only served as the smallest of distractions. My attempts have been futile, and deep down I knew they would be.

  “What of your other friends, Efiya?” Arti asks. “Will you ever let them out to play too?”

  My heart lurches in my chest as my mind falls on the demons in the wall behind Efiya’s bed. My sister grins as the mangy cat saunters up to her. She reaches her palm to the sky, and the fabric of the world splits like torn paper. From it, a gray mist emerges and lands in her hand. A ka.

  The cat doesn’t have time to sense the danger before the demon’s soul flies down its throat. The choking that follows is too much to bear, but the sight of the cat twitching on the ground is even worse. When the cat opens its eyes again, the color has changed from yellow to green. It stretches its limbs and snatches the boy’s severed thumb from his hand in one swipe of his claw.

  With the thumb between its jaws, the cat jumps into Efiya’s lap and curls up, a soft purr coming from its throat. Efiya pats the cat on the back.

  “His name is Merka.” Efiya kisses the top of the cat’s head. “He wanted a human body, but he has to earn it first.”

  Arti crosses her arms and smiles. “Well, that’s better.”

  The children cheer. As Merka picks at the bloody thumb, my last hope that there’s any good in my sister fades away.

  Efiya

  I’ve grown weary of Mother’s little game of house, and my pets no longer amuse me. Once it suits me, I give my favorite pet, Merka, a new vessel—the body of a man from Kefu. A fisherman with calloused hands and skin like rawhide. Merka isn’t at all pleased. He murmurs his complaints when he thinks I’m not paying attention, but I’m always listening.

  I hear every sound in the villa. Arrah weeping in her bed. Arti’s feverish whispering to her master. Oshhe screaming inside his head, cursing Heka and the orishas. The mice’s claws as they scurry across the stone floors. The greedy thoughts of all the demons who beg for me to unleash them upon Kefu. They promise to serve me. Still, I’m unsatisfied. I’m meant for more than silly games.

  In the mirror, I admire the lean lines of my arms, the curve of my waist and hips. My hair flows in wild curls, even prettier than Mother’s. My face is soft like the morning dew, and my eyes are gems that shine with eagerness. I’m the most luminescent shade of golden brown like Arrah, and I’m as tall as her now. Although I have no age, I make myself appear to be the same as her. So that when she looks upon me, I remind her of the perfect daughter she can never be.

  I hate the way she presses her lips into a tight line and tilts her chin up when she talks to me. All the little ways she is insolent because she knows I can’t see inside her mind. The mirror shatters into a fine powder that I suspend in the air with a thought. Such things are simple, but seeing inside of one pathetic girl’s mind is not. Nor can I find the Demon King’s ka.

  Mother says I must learn to channel my anger—that if I don’t, our enemies will use it against me. When she says “our enemies,” she’s thinking of hers—the Almighty One and the Vizier. Her hatred for Suran Omari is pure, visceral, and tastes sweet on my tongue.

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sp; Her feelings for Jerek Sukkara are peculiar, and ever changing. I see into her past. Her love affair with him, what the Ka-Priest stole from her. The bitterness that festered into seething hate. The time when they desecrated the altar at the Temple. How she still hates herself for being so weak but relishes the feeling of his hands on her bare flesh. The spark that still lingers between them. How she doesn’t want him now—instead she wants everything he has. She wants the Demon King to secure the Kingdom for her, but I can do that on my own.

  As I flick my hand to restore the mirror, I decide that I will destroy Jerek. It will free Mother from this burden that she calls love. Love, such a peculiar thing. Oshhe loves her, I see it in his mind, even if it’s buried beneath layers of hate. These emotions feel so frivolous and malleable that I’m not sure I want to experience them. I smile in the mirror as I fold myself into the space between time, the corridor the orishas use to travel great distances with one step.

  There’s no air in the void, but I don’t need to breathe. There are only the countless threads that connect everything like an intricate tapestry. At once I’m in my dark room in the villa and on the edge of a precipice where Tyrek, the Almighty One’s youngest son, sits overlooking the sea. I take one step forward and my sandal lands on rocky terrain.

  The wind blows against my back, threatening to push me over the edge of the cliff. It would be interesting to fall and break every bone. One day I’ll try it, but today I have work to do. I could kill Jerek myself—rip off his little protection trinkets and shove them down his throat—but there’s no fun in that . . . no finesse. I will make his own son kill him.

  One day I’ll kill my sister too and that makes me sad.

  Twenty-Eight

  Efiya is missing. It’s hard to tell how long she’s been gone, with the way time passes in Kefu. It could be days, or it could be much longer. Even in her absence, she leaves a piece of herself behind. It’s nothing I can see, only feel. A chill that creeps down my back in the heart of day, or a breeze so sweet that it makes my stomach ache.