Crown of Thunder

by Tochi Onyebuchi

  Everything hurts, but I can’t move. Even as some of the enemy tastahlik bind me in chains and restrain Juba.

  “Juba,” Abeo begins.

  “Address me as Ayaba!” she hisses, even though she can barely stand while in the grip of the two tastahlik flanking her. “I am your queen. Designated by Olurun to be your leader.”

  “You were designated by your blood,” Abeo sneers. “You are only Ayaba because your father was Oba. When did you ever prove yourself worthy of your title?” He draws closer to Juba, and I want to hit him, but I can’t get up from where I kneel. “We were once a fierce tribe. Wandering the lands and taking what we needed no matter the cost. We avoided the arashi because we would fight whoever held us in one place for too long. Then you became our Ayaba, and we found water, and we stayed. And we grew weak.” He waves a hand at the death and destruction behind him. “So easily, we are broken.” He looks to me. “You let a boy with a bounty on his head take residence with us. You endangered us all.” His gaze returns to Juba. “No more.” He gestures with an arm. “Take her away.” Then he walks to me. “You, we will bury with your friend. You will go where the refugees died. And you will suffocate under the weight of their uncleansed souls until you die as well.”

  His back is the last thing I see before something hard hits me in the back of the head, and I fall into darkness.

  CHAPTER 26

  WHEN I WAKE up, my legs won’t move. My head feels like someone is building a house inside it. I try to touch it, but pain burns through my shoulders and back. My arms are bound behind me, tied to a pole. All around me is darkness. The wind howls overhead, screaming. That’s when I realize where we are. That’s not regular wind. It’s inyo. Uncleansed spirits. The air is thick with them. This is where the refugee camp used to be. Before the ground opened up beneath it and swallowed it whole. I’m probably surrounded by dead bodies.

  Bo slumps in his chains. They’ve been wrapped tightly around the pole, so that his arms are trapped behind him. My eyes adjust to fully take in the sight of him. At the sound of my stirring, he looks up.

  It might be a trick of the shadows, but his eyes look like they’re glowing red. I can’t take my gaze away from him, from how still he is, even though his entire body must be aching from having all of those sins removed. That could have been me. If I had stayed in Kos, Karima would have turned me into that. A soldier, a killer who would stop at nothing to fulfill her wishes.

  The red glow in Bo’s eyes flickers, then leaves. His eyes are normal again. And exhausted. A dirty, red-stained bandage wraps around his leg where Wale’s staff had stabbed him.

  “Bo,” I whisper. “Bo.”

  He can barely support himself. I want to help him, to hold him upright, but with every move I make, my chains dig into my skin. “What did you do to me?” It comes out first as barely a whimper, then again, louder. Still a question. The anger in his voice has left him. The fury, the violence. He sounds lost.

  I remember that first sin-lion I turned into light. Then I remember the army of inisisa that the Healers and I cleansed. I had been moving on instinct, getting my mind out of the way so that my heart could guide me. “Forgiveness,” I whisper. The memory of Zaki’s voice hums in my head. “Forgiveness.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Even as I speak, I’m piecing it all together. But forgiveness is how I unlocked it. “I forgave.”

  I can see Bo’s confused frown, even in the near darkness.

  “I forgave myself. For abandoning Kos. For abandoning you. I . . . I wanted to save you.”

  For a long time, Bo is still. Then he sniffs away a sob. “I didn’t deserve it. After everything I’d done for Karima, after all of that death. I didn’t deserve it.”

  I jerk at my chains. I want to hold him. I want to tell him, Yes, you did deserve it. You do deserve it. “They tried to change you.” My mind is only now catching up to me, so many questions, so many pieces falling into place. Zaki’s words, Aliya’s equations, Iragide. But there’s still so much I don’t understand. “What did they do to you?”

  Bo looks to the sky, and we both watch the inyo blot out the sun. Then he looks to the ground, ashamed. “She made it easy.” Bo sounds as though he is saying it to himself more than to me. “She made it easy to sin. To kill.”

  “She removed your guilt,” I whisper.

  This is how the Mages and algebraists did it. This is how they turned Bo into this hunter. My eyes widen at the idea of aki walking through Kos, now able to sin as much as possible without falling ill, now able to Eat as much sin as Karima commands them to without Crossing. Mages have removed their guilt.

  Bo shakes his head. “But there are limits to their abilities. Still, I was able to carry an army of inisisa inside of me so that everywhere I went, I could call them forth and have them consume others. Then, when they were finished, I could Eat them again and have them live within my bones.” He flinches at the memory of it.

  My eyes widen at the power Karima has unlocked, at the consequences of it all, at the fact that she now has everything she needs to bring the entire kingdom to its knees. Then I remember how much it must hurt. Even with the guilt removed, it is still one of the most agonizing things in the world to Eat a sin. Yet that did not matter to Karima. Aki will always be nothing but tools for her. Weapons. She never saw me as a person, as a lover. Even back then, when I stood on the steps of the Palace and she tried to call me to her side while Kos burned all around us, tried to convince me that I was worthy of her, I was never to be her heart-mate. I would always be a weapon to her.

  Bo relaxes in his chains and sits down. “There is only one way my journey ends.” The raised edges of his sin-spots cover almost his entire face. This has been his work. This is what Karima did to him. “Will they kill me?”

  Thunder crackles overhead. Right after, rain patters on our heads.

  “I don’t know,” I whisper. My hair slumps over my ears. Before long, our clothes hang on us, drenched rags. I sneeze. And I can’t even move my arms to wipe my face.

  Soon, muddy water soaks into my flats. Bo hasn’t moved at all. Even as the water rises past his knees.

  “Bo,” I call out. “Bo!” Is he asleep? “Bo!”

  I look up. Rain pelts me in the eye. It’s not stopping. It’s not even slowing down.

  “Bo!” I start to struggle against the chains binding me.

  A peaceful look comes across Bo’s face. Like he’s grateful for what’s happening.

  “Bo!” Now the water is up past our waists. We need to get out of here. Water falls in sheets over the ridge of the crater. Something’s going on. The crater is filling up too fast.

  Bo is on his feet now, looking around nervously. Water rises above our chests.

  My wrists and shoulders are on fire. Energy leeches out of me like blood from an open wound. This isn’t normal. None of this is normal.

  It’s up to our chins now.

  “Help!” I cry out. No one can hear me over the storm. “Help! Somebody!”

  Bo sputters on muddy water.

  Something bumps against me. I squint and see an arm, then a torso. A dead body. “Chai!” I shriek. Then more and more of them. The dead refugees. The water opened their graves. Pretty soon, Bo and I will be among them. “Bo!” I shout, tears streaming down my face. “Bo! Bo, stay with me.”

  He’s swaying. He can barely stand upright. Water fills his nose.

  “Bo!” I pull and pull and pull. Water starts to lift me off my feet. “Bo!” My feet catch on the wood of my pole. Pain, like fire, gallops through my shoulders, but I catch debris below my feet. And, balancing against the pole, I shimmy my way up. The water rises with me, chasing me. Just a little more. A little more. My arm is about to pop out of its socket. I have to close my eyes against the water that has swallowed us. Higher. Higher. Then, freedom! I reach the top of the pole and slip my arms over.
My chains unfurl around me, but my manacles stay locked tight around my wrists. Still, I can move.

  I break free and dunk myself underwater, then swim to Bo and take his chains in my hands.

  They’re solid. There’s no key. I fumble around and stop when I get to the stump where his hand had been. It all comes back to me: the massacre, the fight. I shake myself out of my stupor. My lungs are about to explode. I make for the surface and gulp in air. I can’t free him.

  But I can keep his head above water for now.

  Floating, I grip his face and tilt it upward to keep the water out. He chokes, then spits water out.

  I bring my face close to his. “Bo,” I say. “Bo, look at me.” His eyes are wide—afraid—but there it is: He sees me. He sees who I once was to him. All of a sudden, we’re two brothers again, running around Kos, tackling each other in the streets, trying to flirt with girls from other towns at Zoe’s. Let this be how I remember him.

  Peace seeps into me.

  I hug him close, careful to keep his head above water for a little longer. Karima couldn’t break us.

  Thunder crackles, then booms overhead. I hear voices. Whispers. The sound of more inyo.

  Then a loud splash.

  Something heavy smashes into me, breaking Bo and me apart. I feel myself pass through a series of hands until I hit the wall of the crater. My gaze darts back and forth until I notice a rope ladder next to me. What? I look up to see Arzu several rungs down with her arm outstretched. Rain continues to blanket us. I look back, and someone has Bo over their shoulder, paddling to another ladder at the other end of the crater.

  “Taj!” Arzu shouts above me. “Take my hand!”

  I take it, and she pulls me up. Halfway up the ladder, the storm stops. No more rain, no more thunder.

  More hands pull me up over the edge of the crater, and I try to get to my knees, coughing, but can barely find the strength.

  It feels like I’ve been coughing forever, but eventually I stop. Standing over me are Arzu and Aliya. Not far from where I lie, Zaki attends to Bo. He’s not moving.

  “Bo,” I whisper, reaching out to him. A hand grips my shoulder.

  “Taj.” It’s Arzu. “Can you stand?”

  I fall onto my back and try to catch my breath. “What happened?”

  Aliya looks to the sky. “We came to free you.”

  “But Abeo. The others. Juba. Where is she?”

  When I sit upright, Arzu slaps my back, and more water spills out. “We have to get out of here first. The storm bought us some time, but we have to move quickly.”

  “The storm . . .” I stare at Aliya. “You did that?”

  She works fast at removing my chains. I don’t know how she does it, but she breaks apart my manacles. They fall away. “I had some help.” She darts a grin at Zaki before hauling me to my feet.

  The inyo move faster around us now that we are out of the sinkhole. Arzu pulls a scarf up over her mouth and nose. Aliya coughs against the dense, poisoned air.

  “Hurry,” Zaki says.

  We stumble out of the darkness, and, with a suddenness that stops me in my tracks, the sun is out again. The day shines bright. Zaki’s house is a speck on a hill in the distance.

  “Abeo’s tastahlik are busy guarding Juba and the Larada who weren’t able to escape. There aren’t enough of his people to send any to my dwelling,” Zaki tells us. So, we hurry in that direction. Aliya holds me up. The sun warms my body. Her touch warms me even more.

  “I saved him,” I tell Aliya in a soft voice. “I brought Bo back.”

  CHAPTER 27

  THEY BRING BO inside, but Aliya and I remain on the front steps of Zaki’s home. Feeling has started to return to my body.

  “Aliya, I’m ready.”

  Her robes, still dark from the rain, hang off her frame. When she goes to squeeze water out of them, she has to roll up her sleeves and reveal the markings winding up and down her arms. Letters and numbers cover her skin the way beasts cover mine. I feel like we’ve been joined by something magical, something bigger than ourselves. Something Unnamed.

  “I’m ready to go back to Kos.”

  She pauses in the act of drying herself, eyes wide with disbelief. Then a smile breaks across her face. She hugs me, and I sink into her. It feels genuine, full. It is, I realize, what I’ve wanted for so long. Almost without even knowing it.

  Then she breaks away. “We have some work to do first.”

  “Juba,” I say, and she nods.

  Inside the cabin, Zaki and the Healers congregate around the two desks that have been turned into a bed for Bo. His eyes flutter open, then close, but his breathing is normal. When he hears me come in, he sits up and swings his legs over the side of the table. He’s not ready to stand just yet, but color has returned to his face.

  In two leaps, I’m before him, and I hold the back of his neck, pressing my forehead to his. “Brother,” I say. He doesn’t resist my grip. “It is good to have you back.”

  “Until I’m strong enough to beat you in a wrestling match again,” he says with a weak smile.

  I chuckle. “Should I press my advantage now?”

  I look up. Zaki is pulling scrolls from shelves. Aliya comes in from behind me to help him. The Larada whisper among themselves, a few of them still eyeing Bo with suspicion. “Where’s Arzu?”

  Zaki looks up and seems to notice for the first time that his daughter isn’t in the room with us.

  “She left to pray,” one of the Larada says.

  I find her out back, behind the house, sitting down with a small string of prayer stones in her clasped hands. She murmurs words I can’t quite make out, then says, “May my head and my heart find Balance.” She stands, then looks to the sky. “The sky is our ceiling, the earth our bed.”

  I wait until she’s finished. “Hey.”

  When she sees me, she has an expression of bottomless sadness mixed with anger on her face.

  I raise my hands in defense. She looks at me like I’ve offended her, barging in on her prayer. “Your temper won’t boil your beans,” I joke, hoping to get her to smile.

  She lets out a half-hearted laugh and wipes the tears from her eyes.

  “Today’s royal decree will be tomorrow’s suya wrap.” Keep calm, I’m saying. Nothing lasts forever.

  This time, her chuckle turns into a full-on laugh. “A chicken can run from Kos and still end up in a pot of soup.” You can’t escape your destiny, she is saying.

  “Spoken like a child of the Forum!”

  “Yes,” she says with a soft chuckle. She wipes tear streaks from her cheeks and looks at the prayer stones in her hands. “When Juba would visit, we would sneak out of the Palace and wander the Forum, listening to the way the people of Kos spoke. The proverbs . . . Juba was drawn to them. We were children, so it was easy to learn.” The way she speaks of Kos, I can tell she misses it. She grips her prayer stones, then slides them through her belt. “I heard you and Aliya speaking earlier. I’m coming back too.”

  A part of me is glad Arzu is saying this. But a part of me breaks. I think of the way she and Juba look at each other and how she is never far from Juba’s side. The way they move around each other, it’s like they’re in this really simple dance. Like they know each other’s rhythms. And the way Arzu wept when she saw Juba for the first time since they were children. They are in love.

  Arzu casts her gaze in the direction of the village, where the girl she loves is no doubt being held in chains.

  “It is strange. I only know this place from the tales my mother told me. She painted such a vivid picture in my mind, so different from Kos and the Palace. But I feel lost still.”

  My brows furrow. “Lost?”

  “I am returned, yes, but I feel as though I do not belong here. This is my homeland, but . . . it is more my mother’s than mine. I can barely spe
ak the dialect here. I am torn between two places. I belong to neither. No one here knows me. And my mother was so skilled at removing her roots from the soil here that few people know or remember her. The tribes migrate so much, and some tribespeople settle elsewhere while others from different tribes join ours, and there has been so much mixing and matching and mingling that I don’t think my mother would recognize this place were she here to see it.” She looks at her folded hands in her lap. “The people she told me of were always moving. I pictured caravans and growing up being chased by arashi and tastahlik who were . . .” She trails off. “These people have stopped moving. They have found shelter, and they live at the bottom of a calabash bowl made of earth. Just like the dahia in Kos.”

  “Can’t seem to get away from the city,” I murmur, trying to make it a joke again. Kos is the city of my birth. The city where both of us were born, really. Only, it was always my homeland. Mama and Baba had no tales of faraway lands for me, no stories about people who were so much like me and so very different from the people I ran with in the streets of Kos. My family was Marya and Auntie Sania and Auntie Nawal and the aki I shared a cramped room with. That was my tribe.

  “I have no home here,” Arzu says at last.

  “You have Zaki,” I say. “You have your baba.” Which is more than I can say for myself.

  Arzu nods. “There is the family you are born into and the family that you make. You. Aliya. The rebels. That too is my family. That is my home. Where you and Aliya go, so I will go also.” She smiles and walks up to me, then puts a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go home?”

  I put my hand on hers. “Let’s go home.”

  CHAPTER 28

  ALIYA HAS MOVED all the books from the study to the living room. Zaki stands over a pot in the kitchen, and the aroma of egusi soup thickens the air. The house smells like my first memories of living with Mama and Baba. On days when we were paid well enough, the rooms I and the other aki once shared in the shantytowns of Kos would smell like this too.