“Eh, who is this olodo?”
I squint into the darkness, and out steps that tastahlik I saw fight in the street. He’s still wearing the same torn shirt. Dried blood spots it. And beneath the tears, white bandages are wrapped around his torso and chest. He’s got a flask in his hand, and as he walks forward, he takes a couple of huge gulps.
“Eh-eh, what are you doing here?” He walks up, and because he’s so short, he has to crane his neck to see me.
I make sure not to move at all.
He looks me up and down as he walks in a circle around me. “Abeo, who brought him here?” He raises an eyebrow at the tall one, the one who moves like wheat avoiding the scythe. The short one takes his place against the wall where he stood before. That stench from earlier almost overpowers me. The boy sways with it, moving like water in a glass. I start to get dizzy.
Abeo slings his arm around my neck. “Do not worry. This one”—he slaps me on the chest hard—“this one is strong. You saw how he beat that beast for you, Wale.”
Wale glowers at Abeo, then at me. “Strong? He is not even able to stand the smell of stagga-juice. I bet he still only drinks his mother’s milk.”
I slip out of Abeo’s grip, and before I know it, I have Wale pinned against the wall. His flask hangs limp in his hands. My face is so close, his hot breath wafts over me. My hands twist his shirt. I nearly lift him off his feet. “How about I make you eat that flask?”
Wale grins. Everyone is silent.
Then someone yanks me back, and I’m slammed against the wall and Wale is behind me, my arm twisted so high up my back I yelp.
How did he . . .
Anger rips through me. I flick my wrist and break out of his grasp, spin around and try to hit him with my elbow, but he catches it, and somehow I’m upside down in the air. I land hard on my back, staring up at the sky.
The crowd erupts in a cheer, and some of the older, taller tastahlik gather around Wale. One of them shoves a flask in his hands, and he takes three long gulps that look like they’ll go on forever. Stagga-juice runs like a river down the side of his mouth, but he barely blinks. He finishes drinking and coughs, and I half imagine him breathing fire. The others roar and clap him on the back.
“I think that is a new record,” says one of the female tastahlik, upside down from where I lie.
A hand appears in front of me. I look up and find myself staring into Abeo’s face.
I grab his hand, and part of me tenses in the event that this is all some trick that’s gonna land me on my backside yet again, but he pulls me all the way up, then starts patting the dust off my clothes.
“Not bad,” Abeo murmurs, sounding very unimpressed. “I think that makes you two even.”
Pain wraps around my torso. “What do you mean?”
“You interrupted his show.”
“His show?”
Abeo steps back and looks over his handiwork like he never heard my question. Then he nods, satisfied. I’ve apparently been cleaned up enough.
The others peel off the wall and start slinking away in the same direction.
“Where are they going?” I ask him. It still hurts to say words.
“We’re going to eat. Watching you two took a lot of energy out of us.” He nudges me in the ribs with his elbow, almost sending me to my knees. Then he jogs off.
“Wait!”
He turns, running in place.
“What does ‘olodo’ mean?”
Abeo grins from cheek to cheek. “Olodo is ‘one who owns zeroes.’” At the confusion on my face, he says, “One who only knows how to lose.”
CHAPTER 16
MANY OF THE refugees have been moved out to rest in the camp on the outskirts of the village. But a few remain. My ribs are paining me, but I know it’s best right now to walk off the fight—if I can even call it that. Which is how I wind up at the sick tent.
The little girl who was out in front of that crowd of refugees when they first got here, weapon in her hands, ready to cut me down, has the whole place to herself.
I sit down by her bed and watch her chest rise and fall with every breath. Sweat sheens her forehead. They’ve dressed her in a white gown made of light, coarse material to keep her cool.
She looks so small and sickly on that bed, and I wonder at all the things she’s done to get here. What did she survive to make the journey? What did she have to fight? Or kill? I remember being a street child in Kos, having to lie and steal and fight until Mages found me and put me to service Eating sins for a living. Where are her parents?
I know this feeling. It’s the guilt—my own guilt—for not wanting to go back.
I remember Juba’s words about tastahlik and Larada and how we’re meant to pull blemish from souls, and I close my eyes and try to still my heart. My breathing slows. I put my hands to my chest and feel sin bubbling up my throat.
I open my mouth, and the inky sin jets out onto the ground. It takes the form of a small, sharp-taloned eagle. Sitting on my knees, I can see eye to eye with it. It flaps its wings a few times to hop back, then does a quick circuit in the air before landing in front of me again. We stare at each other. I can see the sin inside the inisisa. My selfishness. It moves in the rippling shadows of its feathers.
To Eat it would be nothing. But that’s not what I need to do.
I close my eyes and empty my mind of thought. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. My hand goes out to the eagle and touches its forehead, like I saw Juba do with the boy’s sin.
Slowly at first, then with greater speed, its shadows peel away. As though it’s being bathed in light.
When its true colors are revealed, its skin glows. Its feathers are on fire. I feel lighter.
A voice rings in my body, but it doesn’t feel like a voice. I know someone—something—is speaking to me. It is touching my heart, poking and prodding and caressing it.
The Unnamed . . .
This is forgiveness. It is sin and guilt melting away.
“You did it,” someone murmurs behind me.
I turn to see Aliya propped up on her staff, tired, her eyes barely managing to stay open. But she’s looking at the eagle, returning its gaze.
My heart hammers in my chest. I gather myself, gulp a few heavy breaths, then try to go back to that place. I put my hand to the eagle’s forehead and close my eyes.
I can feel it growing warmer. Warmer. Like light is pulsing beneath its skin. And I know it’s only a matter of time before it turns into a flash of light like the inisisa that Juba cleansed. I try to hold my focus. I press my palm a little harder into its feathers.
I open my eyes to chance a glance, and the eagle still stands there in all its color, staring at me through my fingers.
It hops back, out of my grasp, and I nearly fall forward. I catch myself just in time; then, with a few flaps of its wings, the eagle darts out over my shoulder and past Aliya through the tent flap and out into the village sky.
I let out a breath. It’s still there. It didn’t turn to light. I didn’t cleanse it.
I wanted to be a Healer. Juba always says the word “Larada” with such pride. I wanted to be part of that. That has to be why this hurts so much.
I am on my knees, staring at my hands, when Aliya kneels next to me. She’s stiff getting to the floor, but eventually she settles and puts her staff to the side. She closes her eyes and leans her head on my shoulder.
“Taj?” she asks softly.
I steel myself, afraid she’ll talk about Kos again. About duty and Balance and going back to fix things.
“Can I show you something?”
I nod.
She starts shaking and takes her head from my shoulder. I watch as she grips her trembling arm and closes her eyes and wills calmness into her body.
“Aliya,” I say softly.
Scratches and marks cover
her arms. When she sees me staring, she wraps them around herself, hiding them in the sleeves of her robe. “Come for a walk with me.”
I smile. “I can do that.”
* * *
• • •
The path begins at the edge of the village and winds through a low, sloping plain. Here, the rim of the bowl isn’t so steep. It almost feels like I’m walking on a straight, level path, but eventually I turn around and see the village tiny and quiet beneath us. Aliya leads the way, making slow but steady progress with her cane. After a while, grass replaces the dirt. I look around. I’ve never seen this before. The line between desert and greenery is so stark that when we reach it, I step back and forth over it a couple of times to make sure it’s real. But as I continue, the green deepens and spreads out in all directions.
Up ahead, not far away, is a small shack. It looks like it was made from stuff that doesn’t come from this land. The buildings in the village are largely mud and stone with some wood, while the structure before me is some melded combination of wood and brick. It’s a simple house with a shingled roof and a path leading up to it lined with flowers. They sprout in bunches, carefully arranged clumps of gold and light purple and red. Everything about this house and the land it sits on feels impossible.
We get to the entrance, and just as Aliya reaches for the doorknob, I put my hand on hers.
“Whose house is this?” I ask her. “What are we doing here?”
“Trust me.” Aliya pushes open the front door, and I follow her in.
The place is sparsely furnished. A chair or two made out of wood, a desk, and that’s about it. Books form a pyramid against one wall. On the desk is a stack of parchment; some of the papers have fallen to the floor. I don’t have a daga with me, or any weapon, really. But I try to keep as much of the room in my line of sight as possible. My ribs still throb from the way Wale cracked me.
Aliya leads me through the living room to a smaller room, what looks like a study, then hunches over a desk, digging through cabinets.
“Aliya. What are you doing? This is someone’s stuff.”
“Exactly!” she says, turning to me. She points to the books rolled and stacked on top of one another on shelves that line the room. Then she gestures at the books on the floor, a few of them unrolled, the text disjointed and nonsensical. “These are someone’s things. And they were here recently!” She grabs one of the books from the desk and thrusts it toward me. “Look. Equations.”
I put the thing to my eye and twist it. The same gibberish that Aliya’s always talking about. Algorithms and proofs. Numbers and letters, all lahala to me.
“This is the work of a Mage. A kanselo.”
Suddenly, I understand what Aliya’s getting at. “We don’t know that it is. Juba says they do equations and all of that other stuff here too. It’s one of their languages.” I look around at the mess she’s made. “Have you been here before?” She doesn’t answer. “Have you been taking things from here?”
“At first, I only found this place because I needed to practice walking. My . . . my illness has made it hard sometimes. While you were off doing whatever it is you were doing, I found this place and saw these advanced equations, and so I brought them back to our room.”
“Aliya, you’re stealing from our hosts.”
“Whoever this Mage is, they do not belong to this tribe!” She shouts loudly enough that it shuts me up. “They’re from Kos. Taj . . . Arzu’s father was a Mage.”
“And you think this is his place? All the way out here? Where no one can find him?”
“Where no one can bother him.”
“Sounds a lot like you.” I snort.
I look around at the room. So many pieces point to Aliya being right. “We can’t tell Arzu about this . . . not yet.”
“Why not?”
In my mind’s eye, I see Arzu’s face when she looks at Juba and the way her face glows even more brightly when Juba looks back. I see how happy and content Arzu is to be here. To be home. Why would I disturb that lake? I struggle to figure out a way to tell Aliya what it’s like to hope for something, to wish for it with all your heart, then to realize the dream will never become reality. What has she ever lost? “Let’s just figure out what this is first.” I turn toward the desk and reach for the parchment. Hurt shoots through my ribs, and I nearly double over. That fight took more out of me than I thought. Aliya shoots me a questioning look. And now it’s my turn to say, “I’m fine,” and wave her away in completely unconvincing fashion. “Let’s just not steal anything this time.”
We get outside and close the door behind us, and I sense Abeo before I see him. I turn, and he peels himself from the shadows in front of the building. Hands in his pants pockets, he sways back and forth like he’s been drinking stagga.
“Eh! Taj, you did not tell me you had a heart-mate. Chai!” He circles us, leering at Aliya, and I want to crack him across the jaw for it. He must have been listening. How else could he have learned my name? “Come on, gal. Tell me your name.”
Aliya stares at him, then glances at me.
Abeo snorts a laugh. “They don’t let me be a part of the welcoming committee, and for the life of me, I do not know why.”
“Abeo, this is Aliya. Friend. Not heart-mate,” I say.
“Pleasure to meet you,” Aliya says, but I can tell by her eyes that she’s lying.
“The pleasure is mine! Anyway, I should be going.” He turns and heads back down to the village. “Taj!” he calls over his shoulder. “When your friend gives you permission, come eat with us.”
Aliya waits until he’s out of earshot before nudging me. In the ribs. “Taj, who was that?”
“Abeo. He’s . . .” I struggle for breath. “He’s Onija.” I straighten, then shuffle forward. Aliya opens her mouth to say something, but I cut her off. “I’m heading back. Are you going to stay here awhile?”
“Yes,” she says, “just a little longer.”
“OK. Be careful.”
As I head back into the village, I wonder if Abeo ever tried to be a Healer. If he ever had a moment when he tried to cleanse an inisisa, turn it into a beast made of light, and opened his eyes to see the thing, his failure, staring right back at him. I wonder if he has inside him the same anger I realize I’m always carrying around. Anger I can’t seem to let go of. I wonder if the fighting, the battles—or “shows,” as they call them—help with that. It’d sure be nice to find something I had permission to hit.
When I look behind me, I don’t see Aliya. Part of me worries for her. In her condition, she can’t defend herself. But another part of me is relieved. Without her around to remind me of the past, of Kos, I don’t feel frustration crawling like a swarm of ants under my skin. I don’t feel guilt.
So I don’t feel bad trailing behind Abeo, following him to where the fighters hang out.
CHAPTER 17
BY THE TIME I find my way to where little Wale stretched me out, the sun is on its way down. It’s quiet here. A few animals slink through alleyways, but no one seems to live here anymore. After a little bit of wandering, I hear chatter. And laughter.
In this part of the village, there are more shadows. The place where everyone has gathered has a beaded curtain, and I can’t see what’s inside until I walk through. It takes my eyes some time to adjust. I hear them before I see them, and then there they are, lounging in a far corner of the room on cushions with plates of fruit and bowls of chin-chin spread out among them. They have that same pretend-laziness about them, their feet up on cushions stacked high or spread out along the floor. I see Wale there, laughing with some of the others at a story someone’s telling.
Abeo notices me. “Eh! Boys, I think he sniffed his way here.”
One of the others, with some gray braids threaded through otherwise black hair, barks out a laugh. “Abeo, is his nose still working after having to breathe Wale�
��s air? Or did it get broken in the fight?”
“My nose is working just fine,” I tell them.
They pause for a second, then burst out laughing, and Abeo beckons for me to join them. When I find a space, he hands me a bowl of diced melon. “You’ll begin with soft food,” he says. “Wale hit you pretty hard.” He looks at the Onija with gray mixed into his black hair. “Ignore Lanre. He never learned proper manners.”
I have to take my time sitting down. My ribs are still on fire. I let out a sigh when I settle, then take a few melon slices from the bowl and pop them into my mouth. The juiciness provides such relief that, out of instinct, I close my eyes. It feels like what I imagine eating that first date after a day of fasting must feel like.
“Ah-ah!” shouts Abeo. “Are you making love to the melon or what?”
The others holler, rolling on their backs or their sides.
“My side is paining me-oh!” cries one of the tastahlik, tears in her eyes from laughter.
“Easy, Folami!” Lanre shouts. “Before you knock over our dishes!”
I suddenly feel a pang of homesickness. A wave of of guilt washes over me, and I swallow hard, forcing the lump in my throat away.
I sit back and pick up more melon pieces, then grab some chin-chin from other bowls as I listen to them talk about the village and about life and joke about every old thing. Their bravado, their cockiness, the way they always seem ready to strike, even as they lounge and make themselves comfortable . . .
It’s like sitting in a circle full of other Tajs.
This is not what I expected when Juba first told me of the tastahlik and how they had to separate themselves from family. Or when she seemed to warn me away from the Onija like they were the wrong kind of sin-eaters.
“You look confused,” Abeo says.
“I just . . .” I shake my head. “When Juba told me about you, about the Onija, well, this isn’t what I pictured.”
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