Redemptor

  “Get up,” said Ye Eun. Her voice was surprisingly gentle. “Now, Empress Tarisai.”

  “I c-can’t,” I wheezed. “I c-can’t b-breathe.”

  Ae Ri wailed, and Dayo shielded the baby’s eyes, looking close to tears himself. “Don’t worry, Ri-Ri,” he said soothingly. “Aunty Tar will be just fine. You’ll see.”

  “Make Hwanghu stop,” Bunmi snapped, her hands balling into fists. “It’s killing her.”

  “Her sprites are still shining,” Ye Eun said calmly, glancing at the arched windows. “Get up, Lady Empress.” She circled me slowly, bending so her steely, birthmarked features were close to mine. “When you enter the Underworld, the cold will be just as bad. Only you won’t die. You’ll just keep suffering and suffering, until you convince yourself to move.” Her voice softened. “It gets better with every step. So get up.”

  “M-Make it stop,” I whispered. “J-Just . . . make it stop.”

  “If you say that down there,” Ye Eun warned, “the abiku will kill you. No creature of the Underworld can harm you without invitation. But they are listening, always, and those words will suffice.”

  “Think of something warm,” Dayo suggested anxiously, sending beams of heat into my mind.

  “Don’t,” I snapped at him. “Your Ray can’t reach me in the Underworld.” I had to do it myself. Teeth chattering, I summoned memories of fire, but that only reminded me of when Woo In had set the Children’s Palace aflame, nearly murdering Dayo in the process. I shivered harder. Outside, the sprites began to wane.

  “That’s the sign,” Bunmi growled. “Lady Empress—”

  “No,” I gasped. “Just a little longer.”

  “You need more than warmth,” Ye Eun said. “Think of something that makes you feel safe.”

  Immediately, Sanjeet’s face blossomed in my mind, followed by Dayo’s, Kirah’s, Mayazatyl’s, Ai Ling’s . . . I exhaled. I thought of my council siblings on the beach beneath Yorua Keep, doubled over with laughter as they splashed one another in the water. I let their loving voices hum through me, eleven harmonies filling the air in vibrant unison.

  Tar is ours

  Tar is ours

  and Tar is enough.

  Slowly, as though my joints were made of glass, I rose to my feet.

  “One step,” Ye Eun whispered. “Just one step, Empress. And in the Underworld, the rest will follow.”

  My lungs began to shut down, shriveling beneath the oppressive cold. Shadows crept at the edges of my vision. The ojiji apparitions had filled the room like fog, wheeling, keening.

  Your siblings are gone. They left you. You didn’t deserve them anyway.

  You can’t do anything right. Give in. Pay the price. Pay for our lives.

  Truth and lies. Lies or truth . . . who could tell? Maybe the ojiji were right. I was so tired, so fed up with fighting for a better world. I could give them what they wanted—pay the ultimate price. But even in my haze of exhaustion, my family’s voices still rang in my ears, faint, but present all the same.

  Tar is enough.

  I stepped. Ye Eun made a swift gesture, and the ice water fell to the floor with a violent slap. My skin was miraculously dry, and beneath me, the water began to evaporate, rising into the air until Hwanghu regained their shimmering form. The emi-ehran looked smaller, now, and weaker. I wondered how many times the bird could disintegrate before dying altogether. But I chose to believe they would rise again, as all phoenixes were fated to do.

  Though dry, my body still shook with cold. My hearing grew fuzzy . . . then without warning, my legs buckled.

  Strong arms caught me before I hit the ground, and I peered up with bemusement at Bunmi’s tersely wrinkled face. My fevered brain jumbled her features, morphing them until I stared up at Sanjeet’s tea-colored eyes. He hadn’t left me after all. He had been here, all along, and I’d just been too silly to notice. He frowned in concern, but I smiled up at him, dreamily.

  “If you’re not careful, Jeet of Dhyrma,” I giggled, “your face will freeze that way.”

  “She’s going into shock,” said Sanjeet, though he sounded strangely like Bunmi. “Emperor Ekundayo—your Ray! Now!”

  Heat surged through me as Dayo’s Ray united with mine, sending doubled power into each of my limbs. Ye Eun brought over one of the billowing dust sheets from the Children’s Palace furniture and tucked it around me. I sneezed. My fingers and toes prickled with pain as blood seeped back into them. Outside, my sprites began to glow again.

  “Thank you,” I whispered to Bunmi, who looked like herself again. Then I lifted my head from her chest and found Ye Eun. “Again.”

  “No,” barked Bunmi and Dayo in unison. Their voices hurt my ears, echoing from the hall ceiling. Sensing the tension in the room, Ae Ri began to wail.

  “I need to train,” I insisted. All around me, the wispy ojiji children floated, shrilling in a treble chorus. Do more. Justice. Have to pay. “I need to be the best Redemptor I can be.”

  “Why?” Dayo demanded, patting Ae Ri’s back as her cries rose in pitch. “What’s the point in learning how to survive if you kill yourself now?”

  “Our ancestors sent thousands of children into that cold,” I reminded him. “If they had to endure it, why shouldn’t I?”

  Dayo’s full lips pressed together, and his large black eyes glistened with hurt. “I knew it. You aren’t really training, are you?” he whispered. “You’re punishing yourself. Something’s wrong with you, Tar. You haven’t been all right for a long time, and . . . I’m worried. All of us are.”

  He is blind, hissed the ojiji. He is blind, they are all blind, andyouarealone—

  I wrenched out of Bunmi’s arms and teetered to my feet. “I’m tired,” I rasped, “of being treated like I’m crazy. Of being the only one who seems to care that our empire killed people for hundreds of years! We tortured children! We still do, if you count the quarries and mills. And I’m going to fix it.” I swallowed hard, voice dropping to a whisper. “I’m going to be Tarisai Idajo.

  “Again, Ye Eun.”

  “This must be doing wonders for your ego,” I quipped several evenings later as Zuri deposited me in a heap on the courtyard training grounds. It was the fourth round of sparring I’d lost.

  I squinted up at Zuri, irritable. The setting sun made a halo around his bare, glistening shoulders, winking on the metal cuffs in his locs. Far above, my sprites congregated in the sky, dipping and wheeling. The creatures had remained on edge ever since I started training with Ye Eun. I would have been training now, if Dayo hadn’t fainted after my last session. Only then had I agreed to rest for a night—though by “rest,” I meant studying for the Pinnacle and holding my first sparring session with the Crocodile.

  “You aren’t that bad,” he said, smirking and helping me up. He gestured to a scrape on his chest. “You scored a hit.”

  “Once.” A hiss escaped through my teeth as I retrieved my weapon. My leg throbbed. I wore a crimson training skirt, slashed on either side from hip to ankle for ease of movement. On my exposed thigh, a black bruise had begun to form. “Is that why you asked to spar?” I asked, scowling. “To show me how weak I am?”

  “Quite the opposite.”

  “You have a fetish for vague answers,” I muttered, brandishing Sanjeet’s gift: the finely balanced spear, engraved with golden letters. Already the bruise on my thigh had begun to fade—thanks to my nearly complete council of Anointed Ones, I was immune to bleeding, even internally.

  I had thought my growing resistance to earthly deaths would make me feel like a god. But instead, with every rapidly healing injury, I only felt more like a ghost—detached from this world, floating higher and higher until all that felt real was the ojiji’s song.

  Should have saved us. Should have cared. Do more. Do more.

  Zuri and I dropped into a combat stance and circled each other again. My face heated, thinking of the time we had first met: whirling in each other’s arms at the Peace Banquet. I fought in the Swana st
yle, advancing with a spear and long leather shield. Zuri used Djbanti weapons: a pointed pole in one hand, used mostly to block and disarm, and a club in the other, for close-range offense.

  “Come on, Empress Idajo,” Zuri purred, “lure me in. Mesmerize me. The same way you’ve managed to lure in twelve rulers for your council.”

  “I didn’t lure anyone,” I objected, lunging for his side and grunting when he danced out of the way. “They chose me.”

  “Congrats on anointing Kwasi, by the way,” he said, feinting and launching a blow I barely blocked. “I was worried my demonstration at the market might have ruined your outing.”

  “It helped, actually,” I admitted, smiling in spite of myself. Kind old King Kwasi had already loved me, in his way. And when I disappeared at the blood-soaked market . . . Kwasi had been so relieved when I turned up later at the palace, clean and safe, he had accepted my anointing on the spot.

  I lunged again, and Zuri skirted me. The force of my missed blow threw me off balance, and before I knew it, Zuri had thrust an arm around me from behind, pressing me against him, his club a bar across my throat.

  “Do you know what your problem is?” Zuri said into my hair. “You fight like you’re defending something behind you. Always pushing your targets back, instead of drawing them in.”

  I cursed the pleasant shiver that chased up my spine. “It’s what they taught us in the Children’s Palace,” I whispered. “Protect Dayo. Preserve the Raybearer.”

  He murmured in my ear, “You were not born to be a bodyguard, Wuraola.”

  He slackened his grip then, expecting me to break away. But I remained in his embrace, heart hammering.

  “I’m going to use my question now,” I said.

  I felt him shift, curious. “Question?”

  “My prize from the Peace Banquet.” I turned to meet his dark, calculating eyes. “You promised me I could ask you anything.”

  His expression turned carefully blank. “That I did.”

  “Who killed Thaddace of Mewe? And how do you know Prince Woo In?”

  “The first question,” he said, “is the one I asked you.”

  “I know. But it seemed like you were testing me.”

  He blinked, thoughtful. My pulse raced. Could Zuri know the answer to the mystery that plagued me? Did he know where those undead children came from? What they were, who they worked for?

  “I have no idea who killed your old mentor,” he said, and from his steady gaze, I knew he told the truth. But when I sagged in disappointment, he added, “I rather hoped his killer was you.”

  I did break away then, whirling around, enraged. “Why in Am’s name would you hope that?”

  “Because a ruthless empress is a powerful one,” he said. “And power can be harnessed.” Then in a fluid movement, he slipped a hand behind my neck. I recoiled, but too late. He leapt away with his prize: my obabirin mask. It had hung from a cord, concealed beneath my blouse, before he slipped the cord over my head.

  “Give that back,” I growled. “Right now.”

  He twirled the cord on one finger. “Make me.”

  “Are you a child?” I gasped, incredulous with anger. “That’s an imperial artifact. I could have you thrown in prison—”

  “I wonder which ways our empress can die,” he said in a singsong, counting the stripes on the mask, still sashaying out of reach. “One more ruler to anoint. One missing stripe left. That means, besides old age, my little Idajo can still die of”—he squinted, examining the mask—“organ-death. Ah. But I’d still have to be creative to kill you. You’re immune to bleeding and battery, so a mere stab wouldn’t work. I suppose I’d have to carve out your heart altogether . . .”

  My veins ran cold as he watched me, circling like a cat. But when humor crinkled his eyes, I realized he wasn’t threatening me at all. He was trying to make me angrier . . . and it was working.

  “I said,” I rasped, vision tinting red, “give that back.”

  “No.”

  “Do not”—I roared, and as if with a will of their own, my arms rose, pointing the spear at him. Heat seared up the shaft, and the engraving, WURAOLA, smoldered against the wood—“contradict me!”

  Zuri’s smirk vanished. Then he trembled, and every limb in his body appeared to seize. Blue light emanated from his skin. His spear and club thudded to the dirt, and then, with rigid slowness, he came toward me, arm outreached. The mask dangled from his finger. When I snatched it, he fell to his knees, gasping, and the blue light faded.

  “Zuri?” My vision cleared, anger draining away. “What’s wrong with you?”

  He clutched his chest, still breathing hard. But when he looked up, he smiled. “Well done.”

  Suspicion crept into my voice. “What are you playing at?” I demanded. “What did you just do?”

  “My dear Empress Idajo,” he laughed, gesturing at the spear I still brandished over him. “I didn’t do anything.”

  Slowly, I lowered the weapon. “I . . . something happened,” I stammered. “I wasn’t myself. There was heat. I was so angry, and then . . .”

  “And then I did what you said,” Zuri finished, glowing with excitement. “I had no choice, because of the noble okanoba in my blood. Your anger awoke the full potential of the Ray inside you.”

  “I don’t understand,” I breathed.

  “Have you truly never used it before?” His eyes narrowed. “Never once have you commanded a blueblood, and had them bend to your influence, without question?”

  I began to say no . . . and then Adebimpe’s eager, pliant face appeared in my mind.

  That moment at my Rising—when I had ordered her to be kinder. To change her demeanor at court and protect the weak.

  To this day, she had kept her word. I had seen her in the hallways, flocked by a cloud of shy, plainly dressed girls, fussing over them like a hawk defending her chicks. I had expected Adebimpe to improve for a day, perhaps two. But ever since, she’d been a different person.

  There had been other times too—when I ordered the nobles at my Rising to be silent. When I had compelled the rulers to sit at my Peace Banquet. And now . . . when Zuri had fallen to his knees, offering up the mask when I willed it.

  “It—it can’t be,” I stammered. “That isn’t what the Ray is for.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Am the Storyteller,” I snapped. “Or Am’s memory, anyway. On a cave in Mount Sagimsan. I saw it all—where the Ray came from, what it’s for, everything. Melu granted the Ray to Enoba the Perfect, so the emperor could unite a council and gain immunity to death. That’s it.”

  “No,” Zuri said quietly. “That is only one purpose of the Ray. Melu granted Enoba three wishes, remember? The first—to make one land out of many. The third—to unite souls. And the second?” He watched the memory dawn across my face, before saying it aloud: “The power to rule an empire for eternity. And what is power, but the ability to command the powerful?”

  “How do you know all this?” I whispered. “And why haven’t I heard it before?”

  “The Kunleo family is fond of secrets,” he replied vaguely. “I imagine Olugbade would have told Ekundayo, had he not died prematurely.”

  “You haven’t answered all my question,” I hissed. “How do you know Kunleo secrets? Does this have something to do with how you know Prince Woo In?”

  His face went blank. “I only owed you the answer to one question. You wasted it asking about Thaddace.” He flashed a rakish grin. “Dance with me at another banquet, and I’ll answer more.”

  “Or,” I said, “answer them now, and I won’t lodge this spear in your backside.”

  He stepped closer, gaze cold and bright. “Why stoop to violence, when you can compel me with your mind?”

  I stepped back, faltering. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t deny what just happened,” he snapped, suddenly severe. “You made me give you that mask. So . . .” He leaned in, breath tickling my cheek.
“Make me say what you want to know.”

  My palms beaded with sweat. Whatever I had done to Zuri had scared me more than anything in months. I hadn’t felt so angry, so powerless since . . .

  Since I knelt over Dayo beneath Enitawa’s Quiver, a knife sticking out of his gut.

  At my horrified expression, Zuri sighed and held up his hands. “How about this?” he said. “I’ll tell you everything I know, as long as you don’t ask how I know it. Deal?”

  I chewed my lip, wiping sweat from my brow. “Fine,” I huffed at last.

  Zuri retrieved his spear and club from the ground and resumed a sparring stance. I nearly refused to fight him, but my nerves were so wired from that strange, foreign energy, I couldn’t keep still. I mirrored his stance, and our weapons clacked and swung. The more effort he put into the fight, the more his smooth black skin seemed to glow with power—a subtle, midnight blue. Should it ever strike an assassin to try, Zuri of Djbanti would be very, very hard to kill.

  “Enoba the Perfect, first emperor of Aritsar, gave a gift to the empire’s gentry,” he panted. “Okanoba: a blessing on their bloodlines, giving them strength and longevity. This allowed them to subdue their native provinces, securing tributes for the emperor. Some nobles are aware of okanoba, though they do not speak of it often. For they know that just as Raybearers give okanoba . . . they can also take okanoba away.”

  I frowned with disbelief, but then I remembered Adebimpe, nonchalantly snapping a brush in two with one slender hand.

  Okanoba also explained why my power had no sway over Songlanders. They had never sworn fealty to Enoba. My heart raced with the possibilities. Could I really turn anyone into a blueblood? Give them the gift of strength, health, longevity?

  “The gift comes with a price,” Zuri continued. “If anyone receives okanoba, their will is tied to the Raybearer’s. The stronger the noble bloodline, the more the Raybearer could control them. So past Kunleo emperors struck an unspoken truce: They would allow bluebloods their freedom, so long as they stayed in line. The nobles at An-Ileyoba must have guessed that you and Dayo were unaware of your power,” Zuri said, “or else they never would have tried to kill you.”