by Evan Winter
It stepped closer, its body pressed against the palms of her outstretched hands, and Esi dropped to her knees.
“He’s going to be a father,” she said, looking up and into the demon’s cruel face as she let go of their secret. “Goddess’s mercy, please.”
The demon stopped, its sword dipped, and, slowly at first but increasing in speed, it changed, becoming more human until even the red in its eyes, the last sign of its true nature, disappeared.
“He’s going to be a father,” she said.
Tsiora’s scarred champion paused, then shook his head. “No, he won’t,” he said, his voice a violent rasp that was still, somehow, melancholic, and then he turned and left.
From her knees, Esi crawled to Bas. He was on his back, facing the hot sun, and she used her body to shield his face from its harshness.
“Bas,” she said softly.
His neck and chest were pulsing as he gasped for air he couldn’t hold.
“Bas,” she said.
He heard her the second time, and his eyes jerked toward her as she hovered her hands over him, not knowing what to do or where to touch or how to help. And then he lifted his hand, blood dripping down fingers wrapped round the hilt of a small golden dagger. Slowly, so slowly, he moved his hand to hers and pushed the dagger at her.
“No,” she said. “I can’t.”
His lips moved without sound and he pressed the dagger into her hands, conveying with his expression what he could not manage with words, and Esi cried, sobbing hard enough that it set her whole being heaving. Bas’s body was destroyed, her hands were covered in his blood, and there was only one mercy left to give.
“I love you,” she said, pointing the blade at his chest. “I love you so much.”
She stabbed down as hard as she could, and when the dagger plunged into him, Abasi’s back arched, his mouth flying open to wail at the harm she’d done. Esi had missed her mark.
She came close to collapsing. The Goddess wanted too much from her, but Bas needed her too, and it was him who she could not fail. In shaking hands, she drew the dagger from Bas’s flesh, lifting it high into the air before slamming it down on the place where she laid her head at night to hear his heart beat.
Her aim was true and Bas’s body spasmed before going still. Esi had broken his heart, and she watched as the life left the eyes of the man she loved.
She curled over him in grief, and her tears fell onto his cheeks as her face touched his. She’d lost everything, and the real war was just beginning. The demons were coming, and they could not be stopped. They’d remake the world, and she knew that, when they did, no one and nowhere would be safe.
So, Esi Omehia, the giftless, went to Isihogo and took from a “mother” too weak to do what must be done to protect Her children. She stole as much power from the Goddess as she could hold, and glowing like a new sun, Esi braved the demons one last time so that her unborn child would never have to.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
REWARD
Tau was limping to the pavilion and had his back to Odili when the man died. He waited to feel different. He’d balanced the scales, and that had to count for something, but his father and Zuri were still gone, and it didn’t hurt less because the man responsible was dead.
Instead of relief or a sense that justice had been done, Tau felt tired, hollow, and he kept picturing the things he’d done to Odili in the circle. It made him feel sick, and Tsiora had borne witness to it all.
He had to get to her, because he needed some kind of absolution, and she was the only one who could offer it. After seeing the hate her twin had for him, Tau needed Tsiora to look at him without Esi’s revulsion.
But each step was hard. He didn’t know what he’d do if Tsiora saw him as a monster, and he was torturing himself with that thought when Esi screamed.
Hearing her sister’s scream, Tsiora stood and stared past Tau, her expression telling him more than enough. He didn’t need to look back to confirm it. He could guess what Esi had done, and though it was probably too late already, Tau flung himself to the underworld to save her.
Isihogo welcomed him with its shrill winds and perpetual twilight, but something wasn’t right. Princess Esi was screaming so loudly she could be heard over the underworld’s winds, and even that wasn’t it. It sounded as if she shouted with two voices.
Tau turned to look at her, thinking that he’d left too much of his mind in Uhmlaba, thinking he was hearing an echo of her terror reflected in the underworld, but what he saw was so horrifying it smothered his other concerns.
Esi was a few strides away, kneeling in the murk, shining like a small sun. She’d taken energy from Isihogo into herself, courting the demons, and they had set upon her. She was swarmed, and the monsters, eager to release the power in her veins, ripped at her.
Tau ran to fight them, aware of how little it would matter. Esi had been mauled, was close to death, and he didn’t want to think how things would be for her back in Uhmlaba with psychic wounds that deep.
Guardian swords to hand, he swung at the nearest demon, his blade burying itself in its temple at the same time that he felt the pressure of a new presence behind him. He didn’t look back. He moved faster, desperate to get to Esi before it got him, picturing the horned one running him down with that bastard blade it carried, and for the first time in lifetimes, the mists and the things it hid scared him.
Reaching Esi, he stabbed one of the creatures digging its claws into her and swung his other sword to keep the others back. He was struck then, and as much as he’d expected to be caught, the force of the blast surprised him.
Knocked aside, Tau lost control of his underworld body, and his mind splintered.
He felt himself falling until his knee smacked the stones of the Great Circle back in Uhmlaba. He was badly shaken and had dropped to the ground, but glancing up, he saw Tsiora with her hand outstretched. It’d been her, not the horned one. She’d hit Esi with a wave of expulsion and caught him too.
His senses and orientation coming back to him, Tau heard the crowd react. He heard the gasps, cries, and rising panic. He heard it, prayed Tsiora had been in time, looked over his shoulder, and found his prayers unanswered.
Princess Esi, rocking on her knees, was a unique ruin, and Tau had seen demon-deaths before. The oozing blood, corrupted skin, boils, and rashes were familiar, but the extent of them and seeing them on Tsiora’s twin hit hard. He stumbled to his feet, and for the second time in breaths, he went to her.
At the last, Princess Esi, blood pooling in her eyes and blinding her, reached out to him before collapsing into his arms. She was light as a leaf, and Tau held her as she died. Her last words were about a little girl and the name they would give her the moment she was born.
Shadows extended over them then, and Tau heard footsteps. He looked up, and the heaviness in his heart was enough to push him into the stones beneath him. Tsiora was there with Kellan, Hadith, Auset, Ramia, and Thandi, and the expression on the queen’s face, the sorrow and loss in it, made him relive the day his father died.
“I’m so sorry,” he said as she went to her knees in front of him and touched her sister’s face.
“Esi?” Tsiora asked, calling out to her sister.
“She’s gone,” said Tau.
“Esi?”
“At peace.”
If Tsiora heard, she didn’t show it.
“Kellan,” Tau said.
The Greater Noble nodded and called over the Queen’s Guard. They formed a ring around them, giving Tsiora what privacy could be had in the middle of the Great Circle of Palm City with thousands and thousands watching.
“Shall I put guards on Odili’s body?” Kellan asked Tau.
“Have him taken and prepared for burning with the others who died in the battle for the city,” Tau said, finding it strange to be saying such a thing and thinking that, after everything he’d done that day, it was the one mercy he could offer.
He hadn’t struck the final blow, but
the last man responsible for the death of his father was gone. He’d expected that the Royal Noble’s death would change things, but looking around the circle, Tau saw hundreds more women and men just like Abasi Odili.
As Esi made clear, those Nobles all had lives and loves, duties, aspirations. They could be kind and a comfort to their friends and families. But there was another truth about them as well. Nobles granted themselves a humanity that they did not extend to people like him, and because of that, they thought little of ruining or even ending a Lesser’s life.
It made him wonder if anything other than killing them all could prevent the harm they seemed determined to keep causing. He’d already lost his father to their whims, and living each day without him felt impossibly hard. He’d lost Zuri as a result of Noble betrayals, and along with her life, they’d stolen everything she could have accomplished and everything she could have been.
After the things the Nobles had done for generations, Tau didn’t think the Goddess would call him evil if he chose to visit more vengeance on them. But kneeling near Tsiora, close enough to feel her grief as she kissed her dead sister’s forehead, Tau found that, though his own pain had not been vanquished, much of his stomach for vengeance had.
“Tsiora,” he said, and she lifted her head, her face despair-stricken. Not knowing if she’d reject him, he reached for her. She saw him do it, dropped her eyes, and placed one of her bloodstained hands in his.
“We’re tired, Tau,” she said. “Every fight leaves us with less to love in this life. Do we even have time to burn and mourn Nyah and Esi?” she asked. “Tau, Kana is coming.”
The news rattled him, but if he was truthful with himself, he’d known Kana would come. Tau had killed his father.
“Thandi told me before the fight,” Tsiora said to him. “It was an edification from General Bisi. They were attacked on their march here and were forced to flee, but Kana is pursuing them with his army.” Tsiora bent down to kiss her sister’s forehead again, and when she sat up, there were tears in her eyes and blood on her lips. “We’re so tired.”
“Then you’ll rest and you’ll mourn, and whatever comes, I’ll be here with you,” Tau said, realizing how much his promise to Nyah meant to him.
The day had taught him that there was little justice to be found in dealing death, but he’d do whatever it took to keep Tsiora and Chibuye safe.
“Let Kana come,” he said. “He won’t like what he finds here.”
PYRES
Night had fallen and Tau was at the burning. He stood behind his queen but in front of the damaged walls of Palm City and in front of a crowd larger than those who had come to see him fight Odili. He counted it an obvious but notable mark of hope that more people attended the ceremony to wish their loved ones goodbye than had been present to see a man killed.
As one, they faced out toward the point where the Amazi River’s two forks came together. The waters, rushing over the rubble of the Trident Bridge, had flowed beyond the riverbanks at that joining. They had flooded a little of the land there, making the night seem brighter because of the many points of firelight reflected in the shallow swathe of the false lake.
In front of Tau and past Tsiora, who had an arm around the softly crying Chibuye, there were hundreds of mass pyres extending out to the newly forged water’s edge. Each pyre was watched over by a soldier standing at attention with a lit torch held at their side. It was pretty to see and hard to look at. It made Tau feel like he was in Kerem again, but with the dead having multiplied many, many times over.
Wearing ceremonial masks of nickel, sculpted in the likeness of the Goddess with Her foreign features, Sah priestesses and priests were spread throughout the area. It was the only way that more than a few of the living would be able to hear any words spoken for the dead, and when the Sah began to talk, Tau didn’t listen to much that was said. He was watching Tsiora’s back and thinking about what Nyah had told him. He was thinking about how she’d warned him that Tsiora could only take so much before she’d break.
Nyah had known the queen better than anyone else still living. Tau knew that. He also knew what it took to stay standing when the whole world wanted you on your knees, and he believed that Tsiora would stand until she had hold of the things she wanted or she was cut down.
Her strength, clarity of vision, and determination were unyielding. They kept her upright during the speeches and for the length of the ceremony. Then, to help the dead on their way, Tsiora and Chibuye took a torch to the pyre that held the wrapped bodies of Nyah and Esi. The pyre caught fire and burned bright, sending their loved ones home to the Goddess.
The crying, once a blanket of murmurs, became louder and disjointed as emotions peaked and valleyed while the flames rose to free the dead. Tsiora had Chibuye standing in front of her then, and she had both arms around the child as they stared at the flickering pyres.
Hadith, whom Tau had not spoken with since before the duel, came to stand at his side along with Kellan and Gifted Thandi.
“Yes?” asked Tau.
“It’s General Bisi,” Hadith said. “We need to join our strength to the soldiers under his command.”
“What is our strength, Hadith?”
“We’re trying to mesh two armies who, very shortly ago, were killing one another. We’re trying to bring them together, and the only reason it hasn’t failed entirely is because we’re facing a common threat.” Hadith ran a hand halfway over his scalp. “Tau, I’m not sure we can wage any kind of war with what we have. We’ve needed to imprison nearly every inkokeli in Odili’s army. We have soldiers in scales, claws, and wings with junior leadership and confused loyalties. I can’t even be sure we won’t take swords in our backs from those we’re trying to fight beside.”
“It’s fight with us or die to the Xiddeen. Make the stakes clear,” Tau said.
“I’m trying,” Hadith said.
Kellan cleared his throat. “Champion, I’d like to second the grand general’s thinking. Our best chance is to combine our military with the rages under General Bisi’s command. There’s a valley north and east of Palm City. It has a high ridge on its north side and it runs right up against the Central Mountains on its southern side. It’s a tight space for a fight, and being outnumbered, it’ll suit us better than anything else we have.”
Tau moved his eyes between the two men. “You’re arguing that we should fight in a valley and not from the city?”
“The walls are down and the river’s easily passable,” Hadith said. “If we let the fight come to Palm, we’ll be pinned in it and putting every single citizen at risk.”
“So you say, knowing well I’m no military strategist. Tell me what you want,” said Tau.
“We need to speak with the queen,” Hadith said.
“The queen is mourning.”
“Champion, we know, but this is urgent,” Kellan said. “If we’re going to make it to the valley in time, we must march at first light.”
“In the morning?” said Tau. “I thought I was supposed to be the impulsive one. Hadith, you’re telling me that you haven’t been able to replace the inkokeli you’ve removed from duty, that the army is one or two incidents from open revolt, and you want to march that same army in a few spans? You want to take that army to war?”
“There’s not much choice in it,” said Hadith, “and we need to tell the queen the options.”
“Options? You’ve told me one thing,” Tau said.
“It’s what we have.”
“No,” Tau said. “She’s strong, but she should at least have this little time to mourn the loss of those she loved.”
Gifted Thandi, sighing, pushed her way between the two men. “She should, Champion. She should have the time, but she doesn’t. Bicker with each other, if it makes you feel better. I’ll tell her what she needs to know.”
She marched over to Tsiora and spoke with her. Then the three, Tsiora, Thandi, and Chibuye, walked back to Tau, Hadith, and Kellan. Tsiora’s eyes were red from havi
ng cried, but when she spoke to them, her eyes were dry.
“Prepare the army to march at first light, Grand General,” she said.
MEASURES
Back in the palace, Tau waited while Tsiora put Chibuye to sleep. She’d had an extra bed brought into the royal apartments for Nyah’s daughter, and though the apartments were made up of many large rooms, the bed was placed in the same one in which Tsiora herself would sleep.
Tau was with them, keeping his eyes on the floor and holding himself still as Chibuye went from muted weeping to ragged sniffles to deep breathing. Tsiora sat at the edge of the bed, a hand on the child’s back, waiting for her to come to a complete rest. It took more than a span for the little one to do so.
“She’s asleep,” Tsiora whispered. “Where’s Hafsa?”
“In the adjoining room with the others,” he said.
“Good. If she wakes, we’ll send Hafsa to her.” She stood up.
“You’re sure you want to do this now?”
“We’ll be fine,” she said.
Tau slid the door to the bedroom open. It didn’t swing in or out. Instead, there was a gap in the wall in which the door could be hidden, and Tau marveled at the ostentation of splendors that sought to turn even basic concepts like doors upside down. The queen walked past him, and he followed her into the room where the others were waiting and slid the door closed.
Everyone was sitting around a circular table. Most of them held hot cups of rabba, using the drink’s heat and bitter taste to stave off the weariness of a long night. When they saw the queen, they rose. Acknowledging the women and men in the room, Tsiora took a seat at the table. Tau took the chair on her right, and once he was settled the others sat too. At the table were Thandi, Hadith, Kellan, Uduak, Auset, Ramia, and Hafsa.
“Only one Noble,” Tsiora said.
“I know, Your Majesty,” Hadith said. “We do not reflect the composition of the army well enough, and the Nobles in it will not think on that kindly. I’ll look to remedy the situation as soon as I can, but for now, and with your approval, I’d like to give Kellan Okar command over all the Indlovu, ours as well as the men who were under Odili’s command.”