Beasts Made of Night

by Tochi Onyebuchi

  The visions of Baba and the Mage and the little aki who Ate Mama’s sin-spider are fading. I rub my eyes, trying to chase away the rest of the dream.

  When I sit up, there’s no pain in my body. None. I touch my arms and my chest and feel my legs, trying to sort out how I could have healed so quickly. My bad ankle is bandaged and elevated on one of the pillows. I squeeze my eyes tighter, then slowly open them, trying to figure out where I am.

  The entire room is white and gold, bathed in sunlight. Have I died and reached Infinity? Surely not with this many sins.

  “I must still be dreaming.” My stomach rumbles. There’s a platter of fruit on a marble table inlaid with gold. Grapes. Slices of melon. I rush to it so fast I nearly knock the whole thing over. I’m swallowing before I even finish chewing. Juice dribbles down my chin. It all tastes so good. I can’t remember the last time I tasted fruit so perfect—just the occasional bruised apple that makes its way to the Forum market. For a second I forget not to put weight on my ankle and sink down in my left hip. Pain shoots up my calf, and I have to hold on to the table to keep from falling.

  Fine. Definitely not dreaming.

  That means the Palace guards got me. I know that much. But why would they bring me here? The chase. I remember Auntie Sania and Auntie Nawal and the look on Auntie Sania’s face as the guards dragged me away. Then I see flashes of me darting across rooftops. Rolling down hills in the Palace estates.

  The sin-dragon.

  I drop the fistful of fruit I’d been holding and look around. There’s a mirror on the other side of the room. Framed in gold filigree, it’s as tall as I am. I lift up my shirt and turn around. There it is. The fresh mark of the dragon on my back. The wings spread across my shoulders, and its claws come down my arms to circle my biceps, its scaled neck burned into mine. The open mouth breathes tattooed fire up the back of my head and into my puff of hair. It’s all there. King Kolade’s sin.

  I tug at the strap of my pants, pull them down a little just to see how far the tattoo continues when I hear a shuffling.

  I whirl around and reach for my daga, but my armband is gone.

  The door opens, and there stands Izu.

  I relax, but only a little.

  “What’s going on, Mage? Where did they take Bo?”

  The Mage’s hood is pulled back, and his thinning hair has been combed over a scalp that shines in the lamplight. He glances at the plate of fruit and frowns when he sees the mess I’ve made.

  Instead of answering, Izu pulls a box out of his sleeve, and he places it on the table next to the fruit.

  “Why was half the Palace after me?”

  Izu motions to the pillows, then pulls a chair from by the door and sits down. He leans forward when he speaks, and even though he appears relaxed, it looks calculated, like he’s doing it just to throw me off.

  I lean into the pillows, but not so much that I can’t leap up and strike if the moment calls for it. “Tell me where Bo is.”

  “Let me begin by apologizing on behalf of the king for your rough treatment. Really, we wanted to secure you and your services. Your friend, well, call it guilt by association.”

  “Services? What are you talking about?” I know I should be watching my tone. A Mage like Izu could easily fit my life in the palm of his hand, squeeze it into nothing, and I’d be out of work and scavenging on the street again for however long it took before I wound up in prison. Baba would never pay off his debt. But I need to know where they took my best friend. “Where is he?”

  “He’s home.”

  “What?”

  Izu picks at a bit of cloth on his robe, flicks away what’s probably the remains of an insect—although I have a hard time believing any sort of insect would dare dirty this room, which, I assume, is part of the Palace estates. “Yes, a moneylender purchased his freedom. He might still be in prison were it not for that.”

  Nazim. It has to be. I can’t imagine what kind of danger it must have been for him. To put himself at risk of being noticed by the king. It must be like coming out of the shadows for him. Which, if you’re the type of businessman who occasionally deals with less than savory customers, is the worst thing you could possibly do. If they decide they want to look into this moneylender who suddenly has an interest in aki, that could threaten his business . . . or his life. I can see Nazim in my head now, back straight in his chair, scribbling figures onto his parchment with his stylus. I think back to every single time I wondered whether or not he took any interest in the lives of people around him, people whose fates and fortunes he scribbles out on that paper.

  I want to ask if Nazim has tried to pay my way, but I don’t want to get him in deeper than he already is. “You said something about services. What do you mean?”

  Izu looks down at his lap and straightens the folds in his robe. His eggshell-colored eyes glisten. “The king was very impressed with your abilities. And he and I have been in discussion for a very long time as to the proper use of your kind. There is a talent that you possess, most certainly, and we mustn’t let it go to waste.”

  What is this lahala? Talent? He sounds like that apprentice Mage at Zoe’s. Then it strikes me. It takes me only a second to realize that right now I’m sitting across from her teacher. That girl, Aliya, who talked so dreamily about equations and sin-beasts and shrines and how my body is covered in poems, is studying under this Mage. The same ruby-licker who drags me out to Eat sins, then never pays me all of what I’m owed. The same ruby-licker who bursts into people’s homes and steals their children to become aki.

  “So far, you have been earning just enough money to get by, and I understand a recent change in rates has made it all the more difficult for aki like you to build a livelihood,” Izu continues smoothly. “Those with your talents, well, they make do. But the lesser among you, they are left to fend for themselves. They can’t Eat nearly as well as you, and yet they are forced to take on more work than they can handle. To feed themselves. To feed others, maybe?” At that last part, he raises an eyebrow at me. A chill raises gooseflesh on my arms.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I understand your mother and father live in the Khamsa dahia.”

  I clench my fists at my sides. I want to punch Izu in the face, half because he can’t give a straight answer and half for mentioning Mama and Baba.

  “That dahia recently endured a Baptism.”

  I lurch forward, but Izu raises a hand to calm me.

  “They’re safe. For now. But who’s to say how long that will last?”

  “You’re threatening my parents now?” I hiss.

  “On the contrary, I want to keep them safe.” Izu smiles. “How would you like to guarantee their safety, as well as enough money in your pockets to keep them taken care of for as long as they live?”

  “What?” My spine straightens. “What are you talking about?”

  Izu stands and helps himself to the plate of fruit. “You would be in the employ of the Palace,” he says, his back to me. “You would be paid out of the official royal coffers. A handsome salary, most definitely above your station. But you would be conferring on the royal family a grand service.” He turns, meeting my eyes.

  “And what would that be?”

  “You will serve as King Kolade’s personal aki.”

  “What?”

  Izu doesn’t respond, only hands me the box. I open it to find my armband and the knife I left behind. The armband is new. Polished.

  “So,” he says, “do you think you’ll be needing these?”

  I say yes.

  CHAPTER 13

  IT TURNS OUT the room I woke up in wasn’t even the room where I’m supposed to stay. Just the first place the guards dropped me when they dragged me back to the Palace.

  Where I’ll be laying my head isn’t nearly as big as the rooms in which I’ve Eaten sins, but it’s a
palace compared to the shanties on the hill back home. The window faces west and opens out over Palace grounds that I now remember having rolled down and crashed through back when I was trying to get as far away from this place as possible. I kick off my dirty flats at the door because this room is too holy to walk through with those on. The tiles chill my toes. The floor is smooth and unyielding, like the soles of my feet are getting massaged. My bed has a canopy with sheer white sheets tied at each corner. The pillows look like the fluffiest clouds I’ve ever seen.

  I walk up to a closet with heavy, intricately engraved wooden doors. I press my face close and realize the doors are decorated with carvings of what I see now are meant to be arashi. Terrifying and beautiful at once. This is what we’re all supposed to be afraid of. Their wings sprout from hunched backs, and the faces are too big for the bodies. Growing up in the dahia, I always heard stories about how the arashi came down from the sky and razed the earth, paving it clean for each dahia to be built anew. I used to sit with Mama and Baba among the other dwellers of the dahia around each shrine, and we would pray to the arashi, whose essences were rumored to be contained within each black cube. It all seems like so long ago. Seeing these carvings in these doors now makes me think of Mama and Baba again, whose faces grow hazier every day.

  So many questions run through my head. Who did this? How long did it take? Could they have imagined that an aki like me would be using this thing just as a place to store clothes?

  I open the closet and find that it’s completely stocked. Pants made out of leather. I take them from the wire hanger, careful not to tear them, and press them to my waist. They look like a perfect fit. Robes lie folded on a shelf. I slip one on. It’s all white, but some of the threads embroidered in gemstones shimmer in the afternoon sunlight. This robe could feed a house full of aki for at least a month. I put my arms through the sleeves, and it hangs from me, loose and light. Next to the folded robes is a row of sashes. I take the dark-red one, cinch it across my waist, and turn toward the mirror on the inside of the wardrobe. It feels so comfortable. I breathe in the smell of the fabric. It all smells of a light, floral sweetness. Lavender.

  Now to see if I can actually move in this thing. I don’t want to damage it, though. If I stretch too much or if I tear it, it would be like tossing a quarter-year’s worth of food out onto the street.

  The back of the robe hangs lower than the front, so I flick the robe back, get it out of the way of my legs, then dart toward the bed and slide: an effortless glide against the tiles. I hop up, leap into the air, snatch at where my daga would be, and fling it at the invisible sin-beast lying in my bed.

  When I land, I feel like I’m going to sink forever in those blankets and that mattress. It feels like I went from flying to floating, and I’ll never have to touch the ground again. I close my eyes. Just for a moment.

  The memory comes to me in fragments. I’m a child, hugging the corner of a wall in our house and trying to keep quiet. I can tell it’s early afternoon because of how the light shines through our windows and illumines the jewels of the women who sit with Mama in the meeting room. The door is cracked open, and laughter bursts through, loud and clear. I can smell the lavender so thickly. Mama and the others, they’re talking politics and saying names I don’t recognize. Places, maybe. Rivers. Cities. I have no idea what they’re saying, but the women are loud and arguing and happy. They’re making dyes in that room, the scent of lavender heavy in the air.

  I’m awoken by a knock at the door.

  A young woman with green eyes and her blond hair tied into a bun stands in the doorway holding a white towel with the Palace sigil embroidered on it.

  “Sir, your bath is ready.” She doesn’t bow her head, doesn’t move, doesn’t even show a hint of an expression on her face. “We hope the water is at a suitable temperature for you.”

  “We? Who’s we?”

  She turns in the doorway, looking like she wants me to walk through. “This way, please.”

  I follow her through the door, down a small hallway, then into another room, this one smaller than the bedroom but only a little. There’s a tub in the middle of the room. Steam rises from the water. I turn to the girl. “Is this mine too?”

  “Your meaning, sir?”

  “This room. I mean, is this the water closet?”

  She neither nods nor shakes her head. “Yes, this is the water closet.”

  “This is my water closet?”

  I can’t believe it. It’s impossible. There’s no way this is all for me. “And nobody else uses this water closet?”

  “This water closet is yours, as I stated earlier.” She’s starting to get annoyed with me.

  I let out a sigh. It still feels like I’m dreaming, but I don’t want to test whether or not the water’ll stay warm forever. I undo the sash and slip the robe off, then fiddle with the drawstring on my pants when suddenly I turn. She’s still there.

  “Are you gonna . . .”

  She doesn’t move. “I am not to leave your side.”

  “What are you talking about? You can’t watch me undress. Er, the Word forbids it.” I can’t tell her the exact verse where it says a woman is not to observe a man in his natural element, but I know it’s in there. Somewhere.

  “I am your sicario, sir.”

  “What? What’s a sicario? Like, a servant?”

  She hasn’t moved an inch. There’s a bucket and a sponge by the tub, but I have no idea who put it there. She holds the towel by her waist and makes no move to shield her eyes. “I am tasked with guaranteeing your safety, your well-being, and with solving any and all problems that may arise with regard to your condition.” She waits for me to move, but I’m frozen, confused. Finally, she rolls her eyes.

  “You are not attractive to me,” she says bluntly.

  Eh-eh. The rudeness with this one!

  Still, it’s enough to eventually get me out of my clothes. I climb in, half expecting the water to burn me, but it’s actually at the perfect temperature.

  Before I can protest, she’s at my side, taking the sponge out of the bucket and squeezing the excess water out.

  She takes my tattooed arm. Her fingers are rough.

  “Now, tell me. What is your name?” I ask. I’m met with cool silence. I sink deeper into the water. “Look, it sounds like you’ll be something of a bodyguard. Which means we’ll be spending a lot of time around each other, no? It’d probably make things easier if I knew what to call you.”

  “Arzu.”

  No matter how hard I try, I can’t completely let my guard down. Izu has threatened to Baptize a dahia if I don’t do what he says. He seems willing to keep me here in the Palace, even to feed me and treat me like a royal. But I don’t trust him. I need to figure out what he really wants with me. I could spend the rest of my life in this bath and not wash off all the grime I feel on my skin right now.

  I lean my head back against the tub’s edge. A part of me still can’t believe all of this is happening, like I’m outside of my body and watching these events unfold from above. I can see the top of Arzu’s head and the little dip in the center of her bun. I can see the slope of her shoulders. I can see where my knees poke out of the water, already gray and clouded around my body. I can see the wings of the sin-dragon emblazoned across my shoulders.

  And I can see my body curl on itself in pain when Arzu starts scrubbing my arm as though it had grown a mouth and insulted her.

  It felt rough when she did it, but now when I look in the mirror in my chambers and rub my palms against my cheeks, they feel as smooth as a fish’s. She gave me bands too, rubber that stretched but was still tough to pull at, said they were for my hair. I don’t know what she means; it doesn’t get in the way of anything, and I can fight just fine with my puffy hair the way it is, but I try it out anyway.

  I pull the band down over my neck, then stretch it and push it bac
k up my face and to my forehead. Now it looks like I have a massive bun at the back of my head, but it shouldn’t be too hard to comb out. And it’s nice to have my hair out of my face. It feels a bit strange, but I’ll give it some time. Now that I’ve got new clothes and real money in my pockets, I can’t go looking like any regular aki on the street. I move with a new lightness. My arms, my legs, they feel unburdened. I don’t have to worry about Mama and Baba anymore. If Izu has guaranteed their safety, then that means King Kolade has guaranteed it. It’s such a new thought that it makes me smile. For the first time, I know they’re safe.

  A breeze pushes against the curtains, and I step out onto the balcony. My balcony. I don’t really know what people use spaces like this for, except it reminds me of when some of us would climb onto the roofs of our shacks or take the highest dwelling on the hill and spend the early part of the night counting the stars until they got too numerous. And some of the others would lie on their stomachs and watch Kos quiet down in the distance and try to count the number of people still out. We would try to see if there were more people on the ground or stars in the sky.

  The view of the sky isn’t panoramic here the way it is on the Hill, but I can see Kos. Nearly all of it. It’s all so far away that you almost can’t see the Forum from here. Like it’s buried at the bottom of the bowl. It’s nearly a speck against the Wall.

  And that’s when I notice it. For the first time, really. The Wall.

  On the ground, it’s just a fact of life. It’s invisible. When the sun shifts to tell you it’s a certain part of the day, you don’t think of the shadows the Wall casts. You think, Oh, it’s nearly time for evening prayer, or, Oh, I’ll be eating soon. But from here, you notice it. I finally see just how high it stands over all of us.

  Arzu shows up next to me. She follows my gaze, stares straight ahead. “Your meal is ready, sir.”

  I smell it. A massive plate of fufu and, next to it, a bowl of pepper soup with chunks of goat meat swimming among the greens. On another plate, freshly baked puff puff, the fried balls of dough coated with crystals of sugar. A dish of rice baked in a sauce made from blended peppers. I smell all of it. Out there, I never dared to even dream of food like this. It only makes you hungrier, especially when the last thing you ate was a day and a half ago and stale by the time you got it anyway. After I sit down, I take small bites, savoring each mouthful. Each one reminds me of the aki back home. They will never taste food like this. I swallow thickly, then push the food away without finishing.