Redemptor

  First, remember that you need not die.

  Clenching my fists, I forced my strange, airless breaths to slow.

  “Still alive,” I croaked. My voice made clouds in the dim chamber. Already the cold was setting in, turning the ends of my fingers to stone. I closed my eyes, focusing on my decelerating pulse. An hour could have passed—or ten. Ye Eun had warned me that time passed differently in the Underworld. Depending on where I was, and what delusions the spirits made me suffer, what felt like a week could be a day in the world above . . . and vice versa.

  You are all alone again, sighed the chorus of ojiji spirits, who had a tangible presence, like feathers brushing over my skin. Alone, alone, in a room with no windows. Just like in Bhekina House. Did you ever have friends, Wuraola?

  “Still alive,” I yelled over them. “Still alive. Alive, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” I tried to laugh then, but it hurt my chest, and I stopped. Instead, I chanted the names of my siblings—all twenty-two of them, as I struggled to a sitting position.

  Second, came Ye Eun’s voice, fight the cold.

  Invisible stones weighed on my limbs. Even my head was a burden. The cold seeped into my joints, as though I were slowly turning to marble, but after months of enduring Hwanghu’s icy essence, ambushing me from head to toe . . . slow, I could handle.

  When I moved, the pile beneath me shifted, and I slid to a packed dirt floor. Objects clattered around me as I fell: tiny weapons, like slings and daggers. Defensive charms. Child-size cloaks, bundles of food. Small stuffed toys. The belongings of past Redemptors—objects for comfort and survival. Every single one abandoned once their unfortunate owners had learned what things weigh in the Underworld.

  If it weren’t for the cold, I might have added my wrapper and sandals to the pile. But though their weight hindered me, whatever lay beyond this cavern, I did not want to encounter naked. I checked my hand: Ye Eun’s dried lily blossom was still there, stuck to my palm. I peeled it off and carefully fastened it behind my ear. Before me were two long tunnels jutting in sharply different directions. Most paths in the Underworld, I knew, led more or less to the same place, though some routes were more convoluted and treacherous than others.

  Third: Follow the map.

  The patterns on my arms and forearms had begun to glow. A new glyph appeared—a bursting sun, symbolizing myself, pulsed in a small round chamber on the tip of my longest right finger. I scarcely needed the map, since Ye Eun had told me what to expect—but I was grateful for a real-time guide. Farther down my arm, some of the glyphs coalesced around a crosshatched square, shifting into words I could understand: BRIDGE OF THE WARLORD’S DEATHS.

  Fourth, cross the bridge.

  After squinting at my arm, I entered the tunnel to the right. The tiny sun glided along my skin, a gentle pulse as it mirrored my trek through the Underworld.

  “Dayo, Kirah, Sanjeet.”

  I wielded their names like a mantle against the cold, gritting my teeth to keep them from chattering.

  “Theo. Mayazatyl. Thérèse.”

  I turned a corner—and nearly pitched headfirst into a pit teeming with scorpions. I stumbled backward, then stopped, glancing at my map. The sun pulsed in the middle of a tunnel . . . and did not show a pit. I forced myself to laugh—a weak, rasping sound, but a laugh all the same.

  “Zathulu!” I cried out, charging into the writhing bowl of scorpions. “Umansa!”

  No creatures scattered up my limbs or stung me with pincers. And after I leapt, my feet hit bare, solid ground. The illusion had vanished the moment I challenged it. I laughed again, though it dissolved into a cough—the air still stank of death.

  “Emeronya,” I sang, letting my voice echo off the sickly green stalactite. “Kameron. Ai Ling . . .”

  I cycled through all my original siblings, and the vassal rulers too, until my tongue ran dry, blending the consonants together. How long had I been walking now? A day? Two?

  My muscles ached, as though I had crossed a continent, but that meant little. My body seemed suspended—I was frozen and exhausted, but not thirsty or hungry. Even without my Raybearer immunities, as a living soul, I could not die in the Underworld unless I wished to—so I could not starve or faint of dehydration. Without such markers, however, measuring time was impossible. Ye Eun had warned me not to sleep—staying still would make me even colder, and every time I closed my eyes, it would grow harder to open them.

  Phantom voices whispered from alternate tunnels, long, winding routes that my map warned would lead me in circles.

  I quoted one of Chief Uriyah’s dusty proverbs, mimicking the old man’s chiding baritone. “ ‘The wise young ruler is not led by passing fancy,’ ” I told the tunnels, and continued on my way.

  Then came Kirah’s voice. “Tar?” It was so real, I could almost see her in the distance, her tasseled prayer scarf rippling in the frigid cavern wind. “Help me. I don’t know how I got down here, but I don’t have a map, like you. Don’t leave me. Stay, we’ll escape together . . .”

  I bit my lip and ignored the false spirit, charging on. “Min Ja wouldn’t fall for that,” I said aloud. “She would stab her own brother, if he meant her harm. So I’m not listening to you.”

  Days or hours later, I came to a crossroads and stopped to consult my map again. Then someone else spoke, in a strident, resonant tenor that made my knees weak.

  “Well done, my Idajo,” said Zuri of Djbanti. “I knew you’d keep your promise to the Redemptors.”

  CHAPTER 32

  The shade hovered right in front of me, swathed in grand, robe-like shadows. As when he lived, his skin was brilliant and black, his smile square and flawless. Gold cuffs winked in his locs, as though he were back in court again, but his voice was low and genuine—the one he had only ever used with me.

  Tears sprung to my eyes. “You’re not real,” I said.

  “I’m not alive,” he corrected. “I died, Idajo. And this is where the dead go.”

  “The dead go to Egungun’s Parade. You’re not real.”

  His features crumpled with pain. “Not all of us can bear the parade, you know,” he said quietly. “With every step, you feel the pain that you caused others in life. Some of us prefer to wander the Underworld. And there was one sin I just couldn’t relive.” He stepped closer, and I could smell him—the heady scent of agave and iron, mixed with the Underworld’s sulfur. “The pain I caused you, Idajo.”

  I should have walked right by him. I knew where to go—the pulsing sun was on my thigh now, indicating the correct tunnel to reach the Bridge of the Warlord’s Deaths.

  But instead I asked, “What do you want, Zuri?”

  “To apologize.” He gave that sad half smile I had so loved when he was alive. “For keeping secrets. I said we were a team, and you deserved my trust. In the end . . . you always tried to do the right thing.”

  He emphasized the last phrase, which for some reason made me squirm. “Well,” I said. “You’ve apologized. So let me pass.”

  “Of course. But I want to make amends.” His brow wrinkled, as if torn with indecision. “Tar . . . there’s something you should know about the abiku. They’re up to something. I caught a glimpse of it when I left the parade, something to do with the old Redemptors. The ones whose souls they stole.”

  My pulse raced. “The ojiji?” I breathed, reaching out to take the memory from him.

  He drew back, frowning. “It was . . . obscene. At least ten thousand children, lined up and drilling, like they were part of an army. Something rotten’s going on. Those children should have passed into Egungun’s Parade the moment they died in the Underworld. If they’re still down here, it means their souls have been enslaved for five hundred years.”

  “I know.” Disgust and pity churned my stomach. That boy who had murdered Thaddace—he had seemed so confused. All his memories appeared to have vanished—or at least have weakened, as though his soul was trapped in the preserved corpse of his body.

  “Wh
atever the abiku are planning, it’s happening soon,” said Zuri. He turned on his heel, gesturing for me to follow him down a tunnel—the opposite route of where my map told me to go. “If we want to stop them, we’ll have to hurry.”

  Heart pounding, I began to follow him down the murky, narrowing tunnel . . . and then I stopped.

  He glanced back at me, raising a concerned eyebrow. “Idajo?”

  “This is the wrong way,” I said.

  “I know.” He sighed. “But we can come back here once we’ve saved those children. You have your map, don’t you?”

  He was right—I could always turn back. But for every moment I spent in the Underworld, I grew weaker. And the weaker I became, the more likely I would give in to the abiku, begging for the sweet release of death.

  Zuri shifted on his feet—so impatient. So full of life, anxious to be useful. Nothing he’d said so far rang false in my ears. Still, my eyes narrowed.

  I had always been good at puzzles.

  “All right,” I said softly, smiling at him. “I’ll go with you.”

  “Good. There’s no time to lose—”

  “I’ll go with you,” I said, “if you kiss me.”

  He blinked, then grinned. “I’ll kiss you all you want Idajo. After we stop the abiku, we can”—

  “I’ll go,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “if you kiss me right now.”

  Zuri nodded, coming toward me with confidence. Again his cologne overcame me. “Have it your way.” When he leaned in, I trembled.

  “Ask me,” he whispered. “Ask me to kiss you.”

  “I’m ready.”

  “I know.” His beautiful dark eyes searched mine, warm and pleading. “But I want you to ask, Idajo. Because—”

  “Because you aren’t Zuri,” I said calmly. “You are one of the abiku. And for as long as we’re in the Underworld, you can’t touch me unless I tell you to.”

  He froze, looking puzzled, and then he—it—smiled, mouth stretching wider and wider, teeth sharpening to points as the spirit shrank to a child’s height, Zuri’s form and features melting away.

  “Such a pity, Wuraola,” sighed the abiku, in a voice like rust on iron. It stared up at me, a creature with ashy gray skin and red-pupil eyes. “If you had only come now, your journey would have been so much shorter. But never worry.” A narrow white tongue flicked out of the creature’s mouth, licking its thin, cracked lips. “You and your friend will join us soon.”

  “All my friends are safe—far away from you,” I snapped. “Be gone!”

  And with a cackle, the abiku obliged, bursting into a cloud of flies and vanishing in a swarm down the opposite corridor.

  Once the creature was gone, I collapsed against the damp cavern wall, trembling with relief and anger. Had this been what Old Mongwe’s warning was about? Before vanishing into the sky, she had said not to trust something—or someone. Perhaps the false Zuri had been the obstacle she feared.

  I charged on down the correct path, steps buoyed by my victory over the Underworld spirit. This time, I stopped for nothing, not even a distant voice that sounded strangely like Ye Eun, or a shriek of a water phoenix, echoing through the caverns behind me.

  After another round of day-long hours, I emerged from the tunnels and found myself standing on the ledge of a vast canyon. To my surprise, there seemed to be a sky here—or something like it. A deep emerald zenith twinkled overhead in either direction, as far as the eye could see. The smell of sulfur remained, but it combined with something organic—pungent and sweet, like decaying leaves on a forest floor. The canyon was so deep, I could not see the bottom. A stone bridge stretched across the chasm. It was wide—hundreds of yards across—but purposely unfinished: a formidable gap yawning in its center.

  I clenched my fists. Ye Eun had prepared me for this. All I had to do was walk across—and to fill the gap, I need only answer a question.

  My sandal touched the smooth, bone-white stone of the bridge—and I gulped. Every single step echoed through the canyon. Hurriedly, I made my way to the gap, muttering the names of my Anointed Ones like an incantation. “Ji Huan. Beatrix. Min Ja, Kwasi, Danai . . .”

  I peered over the edge of the gap . . . and voices roared up from the deep. Husky, ancient voices shook the stone beneath me, rattling the drums in my ears.

  “WELCOME, WURAOLA.”

  I wet myself.

  Dozens of beasts, each the size of a small house, emerged from the darkness in a cloud of wings, fur, and claws. They landed with a whoomp on the bridge, surrounding me in a semicircle. Woo In had been right.

  There were far more Deaths than thirteen.

  “Well, girl,” they rumbled as one. “What have you to ask the beasts of Warlord Fire?”

  The sight of them awoke something primal in me: the pure, manic revulsion that every living thing held for death before its time. My nerves demanded that I run, and I heartily agreed with them. But still I stood firm, summoning my training from Ye Eun.

  Remember that you need not die.

  “Th-Thank you,” I bleated after regaining control of my voice. “I . . . I need to pass. P-Please, kind beasts.”

  The beasts roared again, shaking, and I realized after a stunned moment that they were laughing.

  “She calls us kind,” rasped a beast with hair like bristles. Its scaly tongue smoldered, a dying coal, and flicked the creature’s eyes as it spoke. “Death is often kind, to those exhausted by the boon of living. Are you exhausted, Wuraola?”

  “N-No,” I stammered, lifting a stubborn chin. “I want to live.”

  “Oh?” Another creature crept closer, eel-like, with veiny, translucent skin and unblinking, fishlike eyes. In a low, gurgling voice, the beast who could only be Drowning asked the question I had been waiting for. “And out of all the souls of the Overworld—the mortals who have died, and are dying, as we speak—why should you be allowed to live?”

  I inhaled, then blurted the answer I’d rehearsed with Kirah: “Because I’m saving lives,” I said. “I’m a good empress. And a good person.”

  Again, laughter shook the bridge, causing bile to roil in my stomach.

  “Such hubris,” hissed Poison, a boil-covered beast with foul green breath. “Only a year ago, your hands ran with the blood of an innocent prince.”

  “And from birth,” grunted Organ-Death, a tusked boar with twitching arteries, bulging like vines beneath its skin, “your days were gilded in wealth and privilege. Everything you own—your crown, your palace, even the friends you call your Anointed Ones—was bought with the lives of children.”

  The words lashed like whips. Organ-Death spoke the truth. Without Redemptors, Enoba Kunleo the Perfect could never have brought peace to Aritsar. And without peace, he could not have reigned as emperor.

  All this time, one beast watched me without saying a word: a sharp-clawed lion with blank, milky eyes, and a floating translucent mane. A sickening metallic smell filled my nose as I watched it, and I knew instinctively that this was one of the Unnamed Deaths—a terror beyond words.

  “I’m trying to make things right,” I croaked at last. “But how can I change Aritsar if I’m dead? I deserve to live because I care. I can fix it!”

  “All you could achieve,” wheezed the hairy, snub-nosed beast of Suffocation, “was fulfilled when you entered the Underworld. The new Treaty is complete. You are the last of history’s Redemptors. In death, you have accomplished far more than your life ever did.”

  “To the thousands of souls already lost,” added a frost-white wolf, crouching to its massive haunches, “to the Redemptors sacrificed before you . . . you are no savior. The only thing you have left to offer them is justice: an eye for an eye.” From the hunger in its cloudy yellow eyes, I knew without a doubt that this was Old Age—one of the beasts, along with the Unnamed Deaths, who could still kill me. “Your life,” it said, “for the ones your ancestors took.”

  I had heard these words before, of course: in the pounding melody of my headaches, t
he song at the edge of my nightmares.

  Pay the price.

  I slumped, my courage draining away. Perhaps this was why Zuri had let those commoners murder him. Had he been right? After defeating the warlords, had his death been the only thing left to give?

  My chin hardened. Yes, Zuri of Djbanti had died for justice. But he had also died to escape—to kill the guilt that had plagued him all his life. He had looked at comfort with disdain and regarded rest as weakness. Zuri had died because it was easier to be legendary than human.

  “My death won’t solve anything,” I said. “And maybe my life won’t either. But . . .” My hand rose to my ear, and Ye Eun’s lily blossom fell into my palm. A complicated memory passed into my skin: snippets of her marred innocence, her jaded hope, at battle inside her. I thought of Thaddace, growing ashen as the life left his body, and of Adukeh, glowing with pride in her coral akorin beads. I thought of panicking in Zuri’s bathtub, covered in blood, and of the rainbow spring, washing me clean as Sanjeet bathed me in kisses. I thought of Da Seo’s memory, in which violence stole her words, and of my golden-hued birthday party in the orchard, where courage brought her words back.

  Then I smiled up at the Warlord’s Deaths, who shifted their great heads in confused surprise.

  “I want to live,” I said, replacing Ye Eun’s lily behind my ear, “because life is . . . is worth it. Because as long as we can imagine a better world, we should stick around to see it. Even if it doesn’t exist yet. Even if we have to build it from scratch, brick by muddy brick.”

  Their ancient, glittering eyes bored into me, searching for a shadow of doubt—a thread of uncertainty. I closed my eyes awaiting my fate.

  But when I opened them, the Deaths had vanished. No—they had moved into the gap, mending the bridge with their vast, heaving bodies. They had accepted my answer. I . . . I had won.

  I willed my legs to move, but they remained frozen. I was supposed to step on the Deaths—Ye Eun had told me this—but the idea of touching death itself turned my very mortal stomach.