The Gilded Ones

by Namina Forna

  The drawbridge goes down, and Gazal, the ranking alaki for this expedition, lifts her arm in a folded fist, then drops it commandingly. “Helmets!” she bellows.

  We quickly don our helmets—piercing, spiky affairs with war masks in the shape of snarling demon faces attached to the front.

  “Cross the moat!” Gazal commands.

  We obey, riding across the drawbridge. A strange feeling rushes over me the moment we reach the other side: nervousness, thrumming in my veins. This is the first time I’ve seen the outside of the Warthu Bera since I entered, the first time I haven’t been within its confines, secluded by its walls—protected by them. I shiver at the thought, my pulse rising. I wonder what the common folk will do when they see us exiting the gates. Despite all our armor, most of us are shorter and smaller than the recruits. Will they suspect what we are? Do they know about us yet?

  The novices tell us that the common folk mostly ignore them when they go on raids, but lately, there have been murmurs, rumblings of discontent we sometimes hear when we watch the novices exit. Who knows what will happen today….I curb the thought as our procession comes to a stop at the end of the drawbridge, where a market day is in full swing, with crowds of people milling around, buying fresh goods.

  Captain Kelechi rides over to welcome us. He’ll be heading our raiding party from now on—a surprising fact, given his rank as head of all the jatu. To my surprise, he rides over to me, then stops and gives me a slow, considering look down his long, aristocratic nose. It feels as if this is the first time he’s actually seeing me, even though I’ve seen him countless times before, his tall, dark silhouette and rigid posture unmistakable anywhere he goes.

  “You are Deka of Irfut,” he says coldly, brown eyes assessing me up and down. “The demon among demons.”

  I make sure to keep my face expressionless as I reply. “Yes, Captain.”

  He moves his horse closer. “It works only on deathshrieks? Your gift, I mean.”

  I’m confused by his question for a moment, then I understand. He’s asking whether my gift works on humans. On him.

  “Only the deathshrieks,” I confirm.

  The captain nods brusquely. “Ensure that you keep it that way,” he says. “Ensure that you keep your unholy ways well to yourself, because if I suspect for any reason that you are doing otherwise, I will give you so many brutal almost-deaths, you’ll marvel at my ingenuity from here to infinity.”

  I nod, the blood chilling inside me. “Yes, Captain,” I rasp.

  He nods, turning his horse around. “Move out!” he calls.

  I urge my horse onward, keeping my eyes steadfastly fixed on the road. Around us, the crowd mutters suspiciously, having noticed the alaki’s smaller stature, not to mention the obvious curves of our armor.

  “Whores!” I hear the word shouted more than once as we continue on.

  I hurry to catch up with Keita. His forbidding expression is a barrier only the bravest man would dare cross. Concern shades his eyes when he glances at me.

  “Is everything all right, Deka?” he asks. “The captain didn’t threaten you, did he?”

  “No, why do you think that?” I ask. I don’t want him to know about what just happened.

  “I saw him whisper to you,” Keita explains. “What did he say?”

  My face heats, and I shrug in what I hope is a casual way. “He just offered me some advice.”

  “About your gift?”

  I nod. I’ve already told him about White Hands’s revelations, our lessons, and what happened yesterday with Karmoko Thandiwe’s announcement. “He said I—”

  “Demons!” The word explodes from the crowd. “They’re all demons!”

  A shabby man pushes his way through, wild-eyed fervor blazing through his expression. “Don’t let them fool you! Every week they come out of those gates, clothed in the foul armor of corruption. They want to corrupt us, to rot Otera to its very foundations.”

  The crowd has begun to murmur now, many people nodding in agreement.

  “He’s right!” a man calls out.

  “Demons!” another shouts.

  “Whores!” This last declaration comes from one of the few women in the crowd, an old grandmother in a grotesquely smiling bright-yellow sun-figure mask, accompanied by two young boys—her male guardians, no doubt.

  It’s not long before the crowd is chanting the word: “Whores! Whores! Whores!”

  As the chants grow louder, I instinctively shrink toward Britta, who’s riding to my right. Even though we’re well trained, I know only too well the power a human mob can wield. I remember my village, remember what happened there after the deathshrieks attacked—the way the villagers all gathered around me, watching impassively as Ionas gutted my—

  This isn’t my village.

  I blink, realization rushing over me.

  These aren’t the villagers who turned on me, tortured me. I’m not the same girl who cowered and allowed myself to be dismembered. I’m stronger now, faster too. Most important of all, I’m trained for combat.

  The shabby man has whipped himself into such a frothing rage, he launches at Britta. “Demon-whores! I’ll kill—”

  I pull him up by the front of his robes.

  “Don’t touch my friends,” I growl. “I’ll break you to pieces before you can land a single blow.”

  “An’ I’ll help her scatter them all across Otera when she’s done,” Britta sniffs beside me.

  I drop him back onto the dusty ground and make a show of contemptuously dusting off my hands. As I do so, a warm, buoyant feeling steals through me. Exhilaration. I can’t believe I did it, can’t believe I defended myself—my friends—against that man. Just a few months ago, I would have just cowered in a corner.

  “Good on ye,” Britta whispers proudly to me as I continue on.

  Keita, meanwhile, moves his horse closer to mine, the other uruni swiftly mimicking him so they’re a barrier between the crowd and us. “I would never have imagined it,” he says with a laugh. “Our little Deka, finally showing her teeth.”

  “Keep twittering on like that, and they’ll sink right into you,” I humph.

  But now the man has turned to the crowd for support. “They’re demons!” he shouts. “You jatu can’t lie to us—we know what you’re up to on that hill. We know you’re doing all kinds of unholy things. We can’t have such filth among us!”

  “He’s right,” the grandmother in the sun mask calls out, clutching her grandsons closer.

  “We don’t want their filth here!” another man shouts.

  My tension begins to rise, and my hands steal toward my atika’s hilt. I’m grateful this one is made of steel, unlike our practice swords. I have to be prepared for anything.

  Captain Kelechi abruptly turns his horse to face the crowd. “Very well,” he calls out. “If you want them gone, then who wants to take their place? We’re embarking on a raid of a nearby deathshriek nest. Who wants to go?”

  The crowd quiets, confused by the question.

  Captain Kelechi continues. “If my soldiers are demons, and therefore not worthy of fighting—no—dying for Otera, who among you will replace them in our ranks?” He glances mildly at the man. “Will you?” Then he points to another member of the crowd. “How about you? Or you?”

  One by one, Captain Kelechi points out people in the crowd, asking them to take our place. The crowd falls silent with alarm…and shame. Scores of people, and no one can look him in the eye.

  When no one steps forward, Captain Kelechi nods again. “The next time you want to rob me of my soldiers, make sure you’re ready to take their place first.” He casts a severe look at the man, who slinks away sulkily. He wasn’t expecting anyone to question him, that much is obvious.

  I watch the man go, relief building inside me. The people in the capital are much les
s dedicated to their hatred than the ones in the villages, it seems.

  Once he disappears, Captain Kelechi turns to us. “What are you waiting for? Move out!”

  We quickly do as we’re told.

  As we continue down the street, the familiar sound of Emeka’s Tears thundering in the distance, I turn to Keita, perplexed. “Is he always like that? Captain Kelechi, I mean.”

  Keita turns to me and shrugs. “He’s both better and worse than you can imagine.”

  * * *

  The Eastern outskirts of Hemaira are dusty and dry, the orderly beauty of the city giving way to a wild, uncultivated plain filled with yellow grasses and towering baobab trees. Baobabs are native here, but the summer heat has so parched them, their leaves have shriveled on the stems. Even the streams and waterfalls have dried up, all of them evaporated by the sun’s unrelenting heat.

  The farther out we go, the higher my anxieties build. The nest we’re raiding is at the edge of the jungle, deep inside a cave. Captain Kelechi tracks the deathshrieks’ movements via coucals, the messenger birds he trades with his scouts. The creatures have been unusually active today. I can already feel them out there, a vague, distant presence that causes my blood to rush faster and faster. Ever since I started taking lessons with White Hands, my blood has gotten more and more sensitive.

  The plan is to attack the nest early next morning, when they’re at their most vulnerable. Like humans, deathshrieks are active during the day and sleep at night.

  As the day wears on, my nerves tighten more and more. I’m excited to finally begin killing deathshrieks—to finally fulfill the purpose the karmokos have been training me for and avenge Katya’s death—but what if I can’t use my voice? I’m used to summoning it during lessons with White Hands—what if I can’t do it here, without her to guide me?

  My nervousness grows as we set up camp at the edge of the jungle, my thoughts consumed by the fear of what if, what if. I’m so preoccupied, I don’t notice Keita when he sits next to me on the log where I’ve been mindlessly sharpening my atika for the past thirty minutes.

  “Still at it?” he whispers in my ear, amused.

  My heart nearly jumps out my chest. “Oyomo’s breath, Keita!” I gasp. “You almost made me slice off my finger!”

  He carefully takes the sword from my hands, examines it. “This is the fifth time I’ve seen you sharpening it since we set up camp, and it hasn’t even tasted any blood yet.” He glances at me from the corner of his eyes. “Frightened?”

  “Of course I’m frightened,” I sniff.

  “You’d be insane if you weren’t,” he agrees, leaning against the tree at our backs.

  He’s so close now, I can feel the heat of his thigh on mine. I try not to shiver from the contact.

  “On my first deathshriek raid, I vomited so much, I fainted,” he says. “By the time I woke, the raid was already over.”

  “What?” I turn to him, astonishment building. This is the first time he’s told me this. We’ve talked about his time at Jor Hall, but never this.

  “Disgraceful, isn’t it?” He shrugs. “There I was, covered in my own vomit, when they woke me.”

  “How old were you?” I ask, curious. Despite the time we have spent together training, I still don’t know much about Keita’s earlier life—but then, he doesn’t know much about mine. We both have secrets we want to keep.

  Keita pauses now, his eyes far away. “Eight,” he finally replies. “I was eight.”

  My eyes goggle. “Eight?” I repeat. Keita is seventeen now, which means he’s been raiding deathshrieks for nine whole years. “Why would anyone take a child on a raid?” I ask, appalled.

  “I insisted,” he says with a shrug. When I turn to him, he explains. “The deathshrieks had just attacked my home, killed my family—my mother, my father, my brothers….I wanted to avenge them. It’s not easy, going from being the youngest to being an orphan in the blink of an eye.”

  My stomach lurches. Everything makes sense now. This is why Keita’s so desperate for revenge, why he’s not as carefree and joking as the other boys. If everyone I’d ever loved had been murdered all at once in such a horrible way, I’d be closed off too.

  He smiles thinly, a sad, bitter expression on his face. “In the end, I couldn’t even stay conscious for the beginning of it.”

  I place my hand on his knee. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t tell you.” He shrugs again. “It’s all right, I suppose. You don’t become lord of Gar Fatu without someone dying first.”

  “Gar Fatu?” I echo. That’s the name of the region where Father served during his military tour. Then: “Lord of Gar Fatu?”

  I’d always thought Keita could be aristocratic, but an actual lord? And of Gar Fatu, of all places? Gar Fatu is the last stronghold guarding the border between Otera and the Unknown Lands, one of Otera’s most strategic castles. Why is he here with us instead of at court, doing whatever it is fancy lords and ladies do? His family is one of the important ones, the nobles. At least, it was. They’re all dead now, which is why he’s here.

  When I look up at him again, he’s giving me a rueful smile—an expression that doesn’t reflect in his eyes.

  The sight of it wounds me. “Don’t do that,” I say abruptly.

  “Don’t do what?”

  “Pretend like everything is all right when it’s not. Make horrible jokes to hide your pain. I know what it feels like to lose a parent. To lose your entire family. You don’t have to pretend with me. Never with me.”

  Keita seems startled as he looks down, his golden eyes peering into mine. Finally, he nods. “I won’t do it again,” he agrees.

  “You swear it?” I extend my little finger to him just as I used to with my mother, until I realize what I’m doing. I quickly retract my finger.

  To my surprise, he picks my hand up, intertwines his little finger with mine.

  “I swear it,” he says, and nods.

  We sit there, fingers intertwined, as the night air cools around us. The rest of the camp seems to recede in the distance—the other alaki milling around, the recruits huddled together around a board game to calm their nerves. Finally, the silence becomes too much. I awkwardly remove my finger, clearing my throat as I do so.

  “Did you go on any raids after?” I ask. “After the one where you vomited, I mean.”

  Keita taps his feet against the ground. “Countless,” he says. “That’s why I was assigned to Jor Hall. I’d seen more deathshrieks than all the jatu there combined, even though I was only a recruit, so they decided I wouldn’t be out of my depth overseeing a few alaki. Then they decided to send me to the Warthu Bera. It was a much more fitting match for me, they said. I had to give up my rank, though. Now I’m just a lowly recruit, like the rest of them.”

  “You’re much more accomplished than I ever imagined,” I say, impressed. “I’m glad you’re my uruni.”

  Keita grins, a glimmer of teeth shining behind his lips. The breath shallows in my throat, my whole world suddenly hanging on that expanse of white.

  “Just wait till we finally go on the campaign and I spend days without washing. My odor will impress you more than anything you’ve ever smelled in your life,” he says.

  I giggle, charmed despite myself. “Stop joking, Keita, I—”

  “Apt words, alaki.”

  When we look up, Captain Kelechi is standing above us, his mouth turned down in a disapproving frown. Keita and I immediately jerk upright.

  Keita clears his throat. “Captain, I was—”

  “Chattering with your partner when you should be inspecting the perimeter?” the captain interrupts, eyebrow raised.

  Keita bows. “My apologies, Captain,” he says quickly. “I will do so now.”

  Once he disappears into the shadows, Captain Kelechi turns t
o me. “Get some sleep, alaki,” he says. “We’ll need you at your best in the morning.”

  “Yes, Captain.” I bow, but by the time I lift my head, he’s already gone.

  The moon has just begun lowering in the sky when we reach the deathshriek nest early next morning. Even though the rest of the jungle simmers with heat, this area is bathed in a cold, clammy mist. It lets us know we’re in the right place. I stare up at the trees, wonder rising despite the tension gripping my muscles. In the forests back home, we never had such giants, vines dripping from their branches, brightly colored flowers nestled in their trunks. They’re so beautiful, they almost make me forget the fear gnawing at my mind.

  What if I can’t sink into the combat state? Even worse—what if I can’t use the voice? What if I freeze the way I did with Katya and someone dies?

  What if, what if, what if…

  Britta taps me, motioning for me to focus. I nod, try to push away these unhelpful thoughts by breathing deeply the way White Hands taught me. I’m mentally reaching for that dark ocean, the golden door inside it. Thankfully, it surges up easily, and just like that, I’m in the deep combat state, which allows me to see even more clearly in the dark, the creatures there shimmering with that strange, unearthly glow as I move soundlessly through the trees with the others. I quickly spot leapers, the deathshriek sentries hidden up in the branches. Their heartbeats shine brightest of all, living drums that pound so loudly, I can almost feel them vibrating under my skin.

  I motion for the group to stop, pointing up. There are two leapers up there, both well camouflaged in the trees. No one else has seen them yet—no one else has the advantage of being able to track them sight unseen, the way I can. Thankfully, they haven’t noticed us either. One false move and they will.

  Captain Kelechi points a finger at me and then motions. Time for you to go, the signal says.

  I motion that I understand, and then Britta and I are on the move, creeping slowly through the underbrush, making sure not to make any noises that would alert the deathshrieks. I’m dimly aware of Keita beside me, his shadow blending in and out of the trees. It seems the years of nightly deathshriek raids have made him as quiet as he is deadly. Britta, unfortunately, is not as graceful, but she makes silent progress across the jungle as well, steadfastly watching my back.