The Gilded Ones

by Namina Forna

  “I’m awake, I’m awake,” I rasp.

  “Good,” she says. “I dislike being ignored by alaki.”

  “Alaki?” I repeat.

  “It means worthless, unwanted. That is what they call your kind.” White Hands peers at me. I can almost feel her frowning under her hood. “You do not know what you are?”

  I struggle to understand what she’s saying. “I’m impure,” I reply. Rivers of golden blood flow past my eyes.

  Amusement glimmers in hers. “Undoubtedly, but that does not fully explain what you are.”

  Something stirs inside me, a dull echo almost resembling curiosity. “What am I?” I ask. “And what do you mean by my kind?” Does she mean the other impure girls, the ones who died here?

  More memories surface—impatient whispers in the darkness.

  Why won’t she die?

  They always die by the second or third death. Beheading, burning, drowning. It’s always one of the three.

  She’s unnatural, this one.

  Unnatural…

  “If you make the correct choice, I will tell you.”

  The sound of White Hands’s voice returns me abruptly to the present. “Choice?” My head throbs and I want to go back to sleep.

  I begin to close my eyes again, but she pulls something from her pocket. It’s a seal made of solid gold, with a circle of obsidian stones in the middle of one side and an old Oteran symbol on the other: an eclipsed sun whose rays have been turned into wickedly sharp blades. This is the first time I’ve ever seen one so close before. Only officials carry seals, and it’s rare they come to Irfut. There’s something strange about the circle on the first side. I squint, forcing it to take shape.

  Stars. The stones are shaped like stars.

  “The ansetha.” White Hands’s voice answers my unspoken question as she points to the symbol on the seal. “It is an invitation.”

  Confusion lines my face, and I frown at her. “An invitation for what?”

  “For you, Impure One. Emperor Gezo has decided to create an army of your kind. He invites you to join it and protect our beloved Otera from those that would oppose her will.”

  White Hands begins untying her mask, and I recoil, unnerved. Is this a trick? Some kind of bizarre test? Women never remove their masks in front of strangers, only family or their dearest friends. I shut my eyes, frightened of what I’ll see, but White Hands’s amused laugh filters into my ears.

  “Look at me.”

  I squeeze my eyes tighter.

  “Look at me.” There’s iron behind the command now.

  I look.

  White Hands is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. My jaw drops nearly to my chest when I take full stock of her. Small of stature, she has short, tightly curled hair and glowing skin that gleams a smooth bluish-black, like the night sky at midsummer. Her most striking feature, however, is her eyes, deep black and fathomless, as if she’s seen the worst of humanity and survived to laugh at it all.

  I thought I’d endured unspeakable torture, but something tells me White Hands has not only endured but thrived, become stronger for her pain.

  She’s monstrous….The realization shudders through me, along with another. This is why the Infinite Wisdoms caution against talking to unmasked women, against even looking at them.

  They may be demons in disguise.

  White Hands moves closer. “Now then, tell me—what have you decided? You have only two choices, after all: remain here, where the elders can bleed you while pretending to enforce the Death Mandate, or come with me to the capital and make something of yourself—something even those greedy bastards upstairs cannot sneer at.”

  “I’m impure,” I say slowly, pushing back the futile hope that surges at her words. There’s no reprieve for me, no freedom. Nothing will change that.

  Oyomo, give me grace. Oyomo, forgive me my sins. Oyomo, please absolve me.

  I turn my head away, but White Hands’s gauntlets immediately return, digging into my skin. She forces my eyes to meet hers. “You can decide your fate, alaki, an option that was not given to your predecessors.” Her tone is pleasant enough, but there’s pure steel behind it. “However, if you do wish to have the Death Mandate enforced—”

  “Death Mandate?” This is the second time she’s mentioned it.

  “ ‘Never allow an alaki to live, nor anyone who aids her,’ ” White Hands recites, as if reading from a scroll. “Those are the exact words of the Death Mandate for your kind—the words that ensure that every girl in Otera undergoes the Ritual of Purity so that all your kind are found and executed without delay.”

  The ground falls out from under me. So that all your kind are found and executed…The elders suspected all along what I was, were just waiting for the Ritual to confirm it so they could finally end my life….

  “Listen well, alaki,” White Hands says, moving so suddenly, I feel the sting on my chest only after she’s sliced it open with her gauntleted claws. Unease shudders through me when I look down and see she’s made a cut in the same place Elder Durkas would have, had I gone through the Ritual of Purity.

  Gold is already welling up, staining my skin with its evil. I jerk away, cover the wound, but White Hands lifts a droplet and rubs it between her fingers.

  “This is the cursed gold.” She extends gold-stained fingers toward me. I watch them, mesmerized—horrified.

  Cursed gold?

  Such awful words…

  “It’s what marks you as inhuman, demonic.”

  Tears prickle my eyes, a mixture of horror and futile humiliation. White Hands doesn’t have to remind me of what I am. I know I’m a demon, foul and unclean, despised by Oyomo. No matter how much I beg, no matter how absolutely I submit, He never listens, never even hears me.

  Why won’t you hear me?

  I’ll try harder, I won’t scream, I won’t cry, not even if they dismember me again, knives slicing through fat, cutting past bone and—

  White Hands grasps my chin, claws digging in deep, and my thoughts still once more. “It also marks you as a precious commodity.” She rises to her feet. “The deathshrieks have begun migrating, and the southern borders are nearly overwhelmed. The jatu there will not be able to withstand the attacks much longer. Every day, those…creatures come closer and closer to the empire. It is only a matter of time before we are overrun, defeated by them.”

  I shudder from the memory, remembering the predatory look in the deathshriek leader’s eyes as they met mine. “What does that have to do with me?”

  White Hands shrugs elegantly. “Who better to fight a monster than another monster?”

  Shame wells up again, and the tears burn hotter in my eyes. I can’t even watch White Hands anymore as she continues: “You have died, what, seven, eight—”

  “Nine,” I tiredly correct, the methods flowing through my head. Beheading, burning, drowning, hanging, poisoning, stoning, disemboweling, bloodletting, dismemberment…

  Several dismemberments, only one of which killed me.

  The elders bring out buckets, that gold-lust surfacing in their eyes.

  “We’ll sell it in Norgorad. I know a merchant there who pays a fair price.”

  “Nine times.” White Hands’s voice wrenches me from my turbulent memories. “You have died nine times and revived each time. That means you have already been proven. You are perfect for what the emperor wants.”

  “He wants demons?” I ask.

  “No, he wants warriors. An entire army of impure ones, fighting for the glory of the One Kingdom.”

  My eyes widen. There are enough other girls like me to create an army? Of course there are. All those sisters and distant cousins taken over the years…

  White Hands looks down at me. “Once every hundred years, deathshrieks migrate to the primal nesting ground, the pl
ace from which they all originate. This year begins a new migration, and Emperor Gezo has decided it is the perfect time to strike.

  “In eight months precisely, when all the deathshrieks have fully gathered at the nesting ground, his armies will march on them and destroy them and their accursed home. We will obliterate them from the face of Otera.” Her eyes pin me in place. “Your kind will lead the charge.”

  My kind…Foreboding shivers through me, mixing with a twinge of disappointment. For a moment, I hoped White Hands was an alaki too. I force myself to return her stare. “Even if that’s true, why should I agree?” I rasp. “What would I gain from it, other than an eternity of painful deaths on the battlefield?”

  “Freedom from this farce.” She gestures around the cellar. “While you cower here in misery, those elders sell your gold to the highest bidder so nobles can make pretty trinkets from it. They enrich themselves by your suffering—parasites, quite literally draining the blood from you.”

  Nausea swells my throat and I struggle to swallow. I’ve known what the elders were doing, known that they were dismembering me for the gold. But I have to submit, have to pay the price for my impurity.

  Oyomo, forgive me. Oyomo, grant me—

  “Absolution.”

  My heart nearly stops when White Hands utters this word.

  “That’s the other thing you would gain.”

  Everything is so quiet now, I barely hear her continue.

  “Fight on behalf of Otera for a period of twenty years, and you will be absolved, your demonic nature cleansed. You will be pure again.”

  “Pure?” I repeat, all other thoughts disappearing, chased away by those incredible words: Pure. Absolved. Human again, just like everyone else…

  No more tingling, ever again.

  I look up at the ceiling, tears stinging my eyes.

  You were listening. This whole time, you were listening. You heard me after all.

  I barely notice White Hands as she nods in affirmation. “The emperor’s priests can ensure it, yes,” she replies.

  By now, so many thoughts are whirling through my head, so many feelings—relief, joy—it’s all I can do to keep from jumping up in agreement.

  Then I remember. “What about the elders? My father?” I ask.

  White Hands shrugs. “What of them? I am an emissary of Emperor Gezo himself. A living embodiment of his will. To go against me is to go against Otera.”

  Relief surges again, determination swift on its heels. I can be pure. I can find a place that accepts me, and even belong for the first time in my life. I can have a future—a normal life, a normal death….

  He will finally allow me into His Afterlands.

  “A word of warning, alaki.” White Hands’s voice interrupts my thoughts. “The training will be ten times more brutal than that of the regular soldiers.”

  When I cower back in alarm, she shrugs. “You are an accursed demon, a despised abomination in the eyes of Oyomo, and they will treat you as such.” As I look down, ashamed, she adds a few more words. “However, given what you have endured here, I doubt there is anything you would encounter during training that will ever come close.”

  She leans nearer, that seal dangling from her hands. An invitation. A warning. “Well, have you decided?”

  Decided? Is it even a question? All these days, I have been praying, submitting, in the hopes of belonging somewhere, and here I have it—the answer, the one I have been seeking. I look at her, my eyes certain.

  I accept the seal.

  “Yes,” I say, “I have. I agree—on one condition.”

  An amused smile curls across her lips. “Oh?”

  “You will make them tell my father that I am dead.”

  In the end, Elder Durkas doesn’t even argue with White Hands about my fate. All it takes is a pointed arch of her eyebrow, and I’m unchained and dressed with such extraordinary speed, it’s as if the hounds of the Afterlands themselves have risen to nip at the elders’ heels. The elders may hate to lose the wealth I’ve brought them, but they dare not go against an emissary of the emperor.

  It’s night outside when they lead me to the steps of the temple, and so dark the moon only barely sparkles on the snow-covered ground. A blast of icy-cold wind hits my face, sending tears to my eyes. It wouldn’t sting so much if I had a mask to cover my face, but I’m an impure woman. I’ll never be able to wear a mask now.

  The thought should fill me with despair, but gratitude sings through me. I’ve been freed from the cellar. I never thought I would be. I never thought I’d feel the wind again, never thought I’d glimpse the sky again. This almost feels like a dream—the blissful ones I have whenever I die and my skin takes on the same golden sheen as my—

  “Take these,” Elder Durkas snarls, shoving something coarse and heavy into my hands. “They’re an offering for the emissary’s mounts.”

  I look down, surprised to find a burlap sack filled with plump red winter apples. A sob chokes me. Winter apples are harvested only at the height of the cold season. If these are as fresh as they seem, I’ve been locked in that cellar for two full months, perhaps longer.

  More sobs come, each one more racking than the last.

  Elder Durkas’s lips curl into a sneer at the sound. “Wait here,” he growls, walking toward White Hands’s wagon, a small, rickety wooden affair with tiny windows on each side and a single door at the back. Two large creatures are attached to it. They look almost like horses, but there’s something funny about them.

  As I blink, trying to make them out through my tears, Elder Durkas calls to White Hands: “I’ve brought the demon, as you commanded.”

  Demon. I should be used to the word, but shame curves my shoulders, and I huddle into my coat. That is, until White Hands guides the wagon nearer, and I see the creatures clearly for the first time. They have human chests sprouting from their horselike lower bodies, and talons where hooves should be.

  The breath rushes out of me.

  Those creatures aren’t horses at all; they’re equus: horse lords. Mother used to tell me about them—how they ran through the desert on their talons, herding horses and camels. Similar creatures roam the more remote mountains of the North, but they’re larger and much more heavily furred. Strangely, these equus are wearing heavy coats over their glossy white bodies, and they even have furred boots over their talons. It must be too cold in the Northern provinces for their kind.

  The larger one sees me staring and nudges the other as they near the steps where I remain, huddled into myself. “Look, look, Masaima, a little human to eat,” he says. He has a stripe of black hair in his otherwise pristine white mane, and his nose is so flat, it’s almost a muzzle.

  The smaller one is pure white from head to tail, and his eyes are a large, gentle brown. “Looks tasty, Braima. Shall we share her between us?” he says with a smile.

  I shrink back, alarmed, but White Hands turns to me with an amused smile. “Do not worry, alaki. Braima and Masaima are vegetarians. They only eat grass…and apples,” she adds pointedly.

  I blink, then hurriedly remove two apples from the sack. “Oh, here, these are for you,” I say, walking over. I slowly offer them up, mindful of how much larger the equus loom over me.

  Greedy, long-fingered hands snatch the apples out of mine.

  “Mmm, winter apples!” Braima, the black-striped equus exclaims, crunching into his. Suddenly, he doesn’t seem dangerous at all—more like an overgrown puppy playing at being fierce.

  He’s obviously the elder of the twins. I realize that’s what they are now, because other than his larger size and the black stripe in his hair, he and his brother are identical, both beautiful in that ethereal, otherworldly way despite their powerful physiques.

  White Hands shakes her head fondly. “You should be nicer, Braima,” she chides. “Deka is our traveling compa
nion.” As I frown at this strange description of our circumstances, she turns to the elders. “What are you waiting for, then? Hurry it up.”

  The elders quickly do as they’re told. Warm clothes and a few packs of food are bundled into White Hands’s wagon, as are several flasks of water.

  The entire process takes only a few minutes, and then White Hands helps me up into the back of the wagon and shuts the door.

  To my surprise, someone else is sitting among the furs packed there—a girl my age with a plump figure and the blue eyes and blond hair so typical of the Northern provinces. She smiles at me cheerfully, her face half covered by an ocean of furs, and a tingle rushes under my skin, one distinctly different from what I felt when I first sensed the deathshrieks. This tingle feels almost like…recognition….Could she be one of my kind? An alaki too?

  “Hullo,” the girl says, and gives a pleasant little wave.

  She reminds me of Elfriede, the way she seems so shy and eager at the same time. Only the accent is different, hers flowing in the rhythmic up-and-down of the remotest Northern villages, the ones so high in the mountains it takes weeks to reach them.

  I’m so taken aback to find someone else sitting here, I barely notice the clinking until I glance up to see Elder Durkas approaching the front of the wagon, a pair of manacles in hand. White Hands is already seated at the reins, and she watches impassively as he nods at me, disgusted.

  “That one is unnatural, even for an alaki,” he sneers. “Refuses to die no matter how many times you kill her. Best to keep her chained away from the other one, before her bad blood spreads its influence.”

  I flinch at the words, shame growing, but White Hands’s expression freezes colder than the wind now whipping through the air. “I neither fear little girls nor need shackles to compel them,” she says, ice dripping from her words. “Now if you will excuse me.”

  She clicks the wagon’s reins.

  Just like that, I’m riding out of the only home I’ve ever known.