by Rena Barron
I’m nervous about seeing him after all this time. It feels like years. In truth it could be only a few weeks, or two decades. He could be Vizier now. He could have married and started a family of his own. Knots twist in my stomach. I don’t like that thought at all—Rudjek with a wife. Outside of my father, he’s all I have left. I need to lose myself in his obsidian eyes, if they can make me forget for even the briefest moment.
As I reach the Vizier’s estate, sunlight stretches across the sky, pushing the last of night away. A chill creeps up my spine when I don’t recognize the guards, or the porter leaning against his station. I’m exhausted and dirty but force myself to stand tall. I can’t think the worst—not yet. There could be any number of reasons the Vizier replaced his staff. Maybe he found out that Arti had spies in his household. “Good morning.” I clear my throat. “I’m sorry to bother you, but—”
“This isn’t a charity house.” One of the guards frowns. “Go beg somewhere else.”
I bite back my annoyance that he should assume me a beggar, even if I look the part. The regular porter knows me. He wouldn’t be so rude and I’m in no mood for this foolishness. “I’m a friend of Rudjek. Apologies for calling at this early hour, but it’s an important matter.”
The two guards flash each other a look that I don’t very much like.
The porter steps closer and grips the gate. “If you were a friend, you’d know that he left for the North months ago to meet his betrothed.”
My breath catches in my throat. “His betrothed?”
The words crash against my ears. They dig into my flesh. They punch me in my gut.
His betrothed.
How long was I gone? I was a fool to think Rudjek would wait for me, especially after I never sent him a message. He would have come to Kefu, if he’d known, if I’d sent the damn letter. He would’ve come like he promised. I swallow hard and square my shoulders to show them that I don’t care, but my head feels airy. I need to sit down. The energy that kept me going all night flees, and exhaustion settles in my bones.
“Oh, are you sad?” The porter spits on the ground. “Did you think someone of your low status would have a chance with the Vizier’s son?”
My best friend is gone—Rudjek’s gone to be with another girl.
The guards laugh and hot anger fills my chest. I have the urge to snap both of their necks. Now that I have magic, real magic, I could wipe the smile from their faces without so much as lifting a finger. The temptation is so strong that it pulses in my every pore. They must see murder in my eyes because they stiffen, their hands slipping to the shotels at their sides. I stumble back and almost lose my balance. Even with their taunts, my own reaction confuses me. They’ve torn my heart in two and I want to break them. I’m not like her. I’m not my mother.
I peer into the courtyard behind the gates once more, remembering our last day together. He wielded his shotels with cool efficiency against the men who attacked us near the sacred tree. Then he tried to fend off a dozen elite gendars to get to me. Now he’s traveling to the edge of the world, to a land of ice and snow, for another girl.
I remember the times we sat in our secret spot by the Serpent River, fishing rods in hand. His wide smile, him stealing glances at me when he thought I wasn’t paying attention. I stole glances too and inhaled his sweet scent. How can I face the Vizier to tell him about my sister? How can I meet his dark eyes without dissolving into sobs? He wouldn’t believe me anyway. To hell with him too. He’s as bad as my mother.
I’m numb inside as I wander through the streets of Tamar in a daze on my way to the Kelu estate—Majka’s family home. If anyone knows Rudjek’s mind, it’s him. I want him to tell me that Rudjek searched for me. That he didn’t give up easily, that he tried to find me like he promised.
Majka stands with his arms crossed in the courtyard and my heart leaps. Near him, Kira sits on a bench with Essnai curled against her side. The two speak in hushed whispers. Sukar paces back and forth, cursing under his breath. They look as grim as the patrons in the market—but they also haven’t aged. Then that means Rudjek . . . that he didn’t wait for me.
Majka catches sight of me first. “Arrah?”
Essnai bolts upright. Both she and Sukar sprint across the courtyard and open the gate. Kira follows close behind them.
My quiet, brooding, beautiful friend Essnai smiles through her tears. “Is it really you?”
I nod, too choked up to speak.
Sukar scratches his shaved head. “Not bad for a ghost.”
I press my hand to my heart in the Zu greeting, pushing back tears of my own.
“You know what happened?” asks Sukar, sucking in a deep breath.
“Are they . . .” I struggle to get the question out. “Are they all really gone?”
“Everyone in Tamar with a drop of magic felt their deaths,” Essnai answers for him.
The three of us huddle together in a circle—Essnai, Sukar, and me—our arms draped across each other’s shoulders. Sukar’s tattoos pulse with soft light. We stay that way for a long time, and neither Majka nor Kira interrupts our silence. As the eighth morning bells toll, Essnai recites an Aatiri burial rite and Sukar chants a Zu farewell. I’m the first to pull away, thinking about Koré’s final words to me.
“We need to go to the Temple,” I say. “I’ll explain on the way.”
Essnai looks from Sukar to me. “You have magic now?”
I wince, aching for the tribal people, aching for Rudjek. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later.”
“Then you’re the last one.” Sukar gawks at me in shock.
“The last what?” My heart pounds against my chest.
Sukar’s protection tattoos shimmer in the morning sunlight. They’ve been glowing this whole time. I’ve only seen them like that in the tribal lands around a lot of magic. “The last witchdoctor.”
I rub my throbbing head. Everything is such a complete mess. In both Grandmother’s and my own memories, I see her reading the bones. At every Blood Moon Festival before the last, the bones always landed in the same way. Now I understand the grim truth: in her vision she saw me standing in the valley outside Heka’s Temple alone. She didn’t know exactly what it meant, but she knew that a great tragedy would befall us all.
“Did you hear from Rudjek?” asks Majka, cutting through the noise in my head. I notice for the first time that neither he nor Kira are in their red gendar uniforms.
“I guess the Vizier got what he wanted.” I shrug to pretend that I don’t care, when it’s eating me alive. “I heard he’s betrothed to a Northern girl now.”
“Twenty-gods,” Majka curses. “They’re still spreading that lie?”
I frown. “What do you mean, lie?”
“Rudjek went looking for you.” Majka shifts on his heels. “He wouldn’t let us come.”
“What?” I whisper. “How long ago?”
“Right after you left,” Kira adds, breaking her silence. “Three months ago.”
“I didn’t see which way your ship headed.” Majka grimaces, his expression riddled with dread. “There were too many ships and the fog, but Tam told Rudjek that he’d overheard the Ka-Priestess say at the Temple that your family would go to the Aloo Valley.” Majka rocks on his heels and glances away. “Rudjek went to look for you . . . and no one’s heard from him since. The Vizier sent shotani and gendars, but they weren’t able to find him.”
His words ring in my ears. Rudjek would have to go through the Aloo Valley to get to the Dark Forest. He will die in the Dark Forest. Arti warned me on the ship to Kefu. I didn’t believe her. Rudjek had no reason to be there. Except he had. He’d been searching for me.
That weasel Tam—it’s his fault. He lied to Rudjek. I lean against the gate, my legs weak. This can’t be real. None of this. It’s all a nightmare. My mother, Efiya, Rudjek, the tribes. So much destruction. He’s dead, then. Like she said.
Now Essnai and Sukar stare at me like I’m some kind of savior, when all I am
and will ever be is a charlatan.
Thirty-Two
In the heart of day, Tamar’s wounds are visible beneath a bruised sky of violet and gray clouds. Trash litters the streets and orisha statues lie smashed to pieces in the usually pristine West Market. Essnai, Sukar, and I walk through row after row of boarded-up shops. The place is all but abandoned, and there’s more windswept garbage than people on the streets. Chains bar the mammoth doors to the coliseum where Arti butted heads with the Vizier for years.
I pause in front of my father’s shop. It’s much the same, except for a few scratches to the yellow paint on the door. Thanks to the protection spell that Oshhe cast years ago, no one can enter the shop without one of us present. I want to go inside and curl up on the pillows in the back and cry myself to sleep. I could pretend that these last few months have all been a dream. I’d wake to the smell of mint tea and milk candy, the sound of my father telling another story.
“We should keep moving,” urges Sukar. “The West Market isn’t safe these days.”
Thieves have kicked in some of the shops’ doors and stolen the wares inside. Although it’s never been my favorite of the two markets, I can hardly believe what’s become of it.
I step around a broken cart left in the middle of the street. “Where is the City Guard?”
Sukar watches everyone we pass and they do the same to us. “Most fled after the deaths.”
I stop cold. “More children?”
“Children, adults,” he answers, his shoulders tense. “People from every age and status.”
“Whole families,” adds Essnai, shaking.
I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood. Tamar has become a city of death and despair. Soon my sister will lay siege to it with the full weight of her army, but not yet; no, that wouldn’t be any fun. She wants to toy with them first. This is another one of her games.
The witchdoctors’ whispers seep into the edges of my mind, faint this time. When they all speak at once, it’s hard to understand them, but a sense of urgency pulses through me.
“Heka cursed Tamar,” Sukar says, his usual playfulness gone, “as punishment for what the new Almighty One did to my uncle and the other seers.”
He peers west toward the royal palace, a shining beacon above the decaying city. There’s darkness in my friend’s eyes that wasn’t there before—a coldness. “The new Almighty One?”
“Tyrek.” Essnai clasps her staff so hard that her hand trembles. She spits on the cobbles and lets out a slew of Aatiri curses. Sukar has his sickles too. As a Temple attendant, he never used to carry them in the open while in the Kingdom. I didn’t notice earlier that they both had weapons.
Tyrek was a prince, but not the Crown Prince. I last saw him at the coliseum in the skybox with his father and his brother. He’d been watching the political games play out between the Vizier and Arti with keen interest. He wasn’t destined to become king, but now his fortune has changed. This must be another one of Arti’s schemes since Efiya hasn’t found the Demon King’s ka. But to what end? I can’t ignore the sinking feeling in my chest.
“He became the new heir after Crown Prince Darnek died in an accident,” Sukar explains.
A hunting accident, Sukar and Essnai tell me. Tyrek claimed that their guards ignored his brother’s cries for help. Upon hearing this story, the Almighty One ordered the guards be put to death. Not one full moon later, an attendant found the Almighty One murdered in his bathhouse. Tyrek accused his mother and the seers of conspiring to take his crown. He imprisoned his mother and had the seers executed. Now a sixteen-year-old boy runs the Kingdom.
Sukar hides his pain behind a hard face, but anguish shines in his soft brown eyes. My heart breaks too. His uncle is dead. Barasa had always been kind to me, and he and Sukar were close. “His ka is at peace, my friend.” I recite a tribal blessing, knowing that no words will be enough. “May he join with the mother and father, may he become one with the kingdom of souls.”
Sukar nods, glancing away.
“That little runt Tyrek has a price on his head,” Essnai bemoans, as if she’s so much older than him. “He moved gendars to the palace grounds for protection and sent the rest on some secret mission. Rumor is he tasked the shotani with infiltrating rival nations. He says that he will unite the world under one god.”
“He calls this god Efiya,” Sukar spits out my sister’s name. “No one has ever heard of her. Some believe that she is the Unnamed orisha come back to reclaim her name and glory.”
My sister raised a demon army, destroyed the tribes, and left Tamar in ruins in three months? All those times she slipped into the void, I thought she was searching for the Demon King’s ka. And she was—along with killing orishas and seeding chaos in Tamar too.
Efiya will leave nothing of the world when she’s done.
My stomach sinks as I recall the serpents coiled around the Unnamed’s arms. The thought that my sister could be her would be preposterous had I not seen Efiya’s powers. The Unnamed’s anonymity isn’t by accident, I realize, now that I know the truth about the demons.
But as I see my friends’ grief, guilt wrenches my thoughts back to the here and now. They want answers, and I’m the only one who can give them. Now it’s my turn to speak the truth, and I find it difficult to get the words out. I can’t bear my friends’ shock as I tell them who Efiya is—that she is my sister. A demon, not an orisha. I expect a weight to lift from my chest, but the terrible news about the tribes and the Kingdom gnaws at my bones.
Essnai and Sukar stop in their tracks—both speechless as a pair of robed scholars skirt around us. Unable to hold their intense stares, I look away. Shame settles in my limbs.
“She’s your sister?” Essnai hisses, her face twisted in disgust.
I duck my head, heat creeping up my neck.
Sukar laughs. “Talk about plot twist.”
Usually Essnai or I would scorn him for his ill-timed jokes, but right now, it’s good to see my friend’s sense of humor back. As we continue toward the Temple, they ask me endless questions and I answer what I can. We pass a shadowed alley, and the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. The magic warms in my veins. Sukar’s tattoos shift like puzzle pieces sliding into a new configuration. A spiked circle covers most of his forehead; more complex Zu symbols settle on his cheeks.
Catching me staring, he shrugs. “A gift from my uncle before his death.”
We turn our attention to the mouth of the alley, but I already know what’s in there. The sting of demon magic taints the air. Sukar draws his sickles, and Essnai readies her staff. This time we won’t be fighting tribal boys with the barest grasp on their magic; we’ll be fighting demons. The chieftains’ magic gives me confidence, but I’m no fool to rely on that alone, or let it lull me into false security. Yet, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t glad to have it.
When we stalk into the alley, I startle. It’s the old scholar woman who came to my father’s shop to extend her life. She squats over a man slumped against a wall and pries his lips apart. Her mouth opens like a gaping hole—like my father’s the night Shezmu consumed the children’s kas. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. She sucks the man’s ka out of his jerking body. His soul is a gray mist that seeps from his lips. Essnai curses under her breath and Sukar clucks his tongue. The demon swings her head around and smiles.
“What a fortunate day,” she says, her voice as slick as ice.
She wipes her mouth as she rises from the ground, her moves slow and deliberate. There’s nothing left of the scholar in the demon’s eyes, only greed and insatiable hunger. With the powerful witchdoctors’ kas inside me, I have more magic than I could’ve ever imagined. Magic to see across time, to call firestorms, to travel the spirit world, to manipulate kas, to heal. So many gifts that my mind spins as I search for one to strike down the demon. Before I can decide, a curved blade pierces the center of her chest. Someone steps out of the shadows behind the demon, shoving the sword farther through her heart. The
demon stares at us, slack-jawed, as the blade shimmers with her blood.
“One more demon on my sword,” Tam sings. “Another one dead and I’m so bored.”
Tam rips the sword from the demon’s back, and she crumples to the ground. Without thinking, I rush across the space between us and shove him hard in the chest. “You told Rudjek I went to the Aloo Valley!” I scream. “You bastard.”
Tam squints like he doesn’t recognize me at first. I poke my tongue against the hollow place where the missing tooth should be, feeling a flush of heat creep up my neck. “I was at the Temple the day of the fire.” He frowns. “When it was clear the Vizier was going to exile your mother, I heard the Ka-Priestess say she’d go to the Aloo Valley.”
I push back my tears. I don’t know if it’s true, but I can’t put it past my mother. She must’ve known the news would make it to Rudjek’s ears one way or another. “Either she was lying,” I spit. “Or you’re lying now.”
“I’m sorry.” Tam shakes blood from his sword, but he doesn’t sound sorry.
“As much as it pains me to admit it, he’s been helpful.” Sukar wrinkles his nose. “He warned us that it was demons stalking the city and killing people before anyone else had a clue.”
“And how would you know?” I say, itching to let my new magic burn Tam.
Tam cocks his head. “You said it yourself, that day in the Temple when you asked about the green-eyed serpent. I told you that was what the orishas called demons.”
Magic stirs around the dead scholar woman at our feet—it lifts from her skin in wafts of smoke. The sight of my father’s magic guts me—and I stumble back. With her death, the woman turns wrinkled and old as the magic leaves to rejoin the sky. “If demons are this easy to kill, then why did the orishas have such a hard time stopping them before?”