“I know. This isn’t my place,” I say. “I belong with the aki.”
I believe that. I do. But still, when she moves her hand up my arm and to my shoulder, I feel a chill run through me and have half a mind to tell Izu no, just so I can stay here with Karima a little while longer.
But then I remember Izu’s ultimatum. And the dahia he threatened to destroy. Karima could keep me here, with her, but could she save that dahia? As much power as she has here, she can’t truly keep Kos safe from Izu.
“I’ll be here when you return,” she says, placing a soft kiss on my cheek. I watch her leave, stunned, placing my hand to the spot where she kissed me. She’s asking me to choose between her and my home. Sadness fills me. She could never understand my choice. She has spent her entire life sheltered here. The people of Kos are probably nothing to her. I was a fool to think I could be her heart-mate.
It takes me a second to realize Arzu is waiting on me.
“Well,” I say, sticking my chest out, “are you just going to stand there or are you going to help me figure out how to dress for training camps? You’re the only one I know who’s been beyond the Wall.”
Arzu smiles. “I do believe that I can help you with that, sir.”
CHAPTER 20
ARZU GIVES GOOD advice.
One of the first things I do in preparation for leaving the Palace grounds is get rid of that stupid outfit. In my room, I practically tear it off, and then stuff it at the bottom of the closet, almost like I never want anyone else to ever see it again. Maybe if I shove it deep enough into the shadows, I can erase any memory that I ever wore it.
The rags I came in here with are long gone. But there are some undershirts here, loose-fitting cloth with tougher fabric than what is normal, and I take one of those off the rack. The sleeves hug my arms tightly, so I tear them a little to let my limbs breathe. Same with the leather breeches. With my knife, I cut the cuff by my ankle into strips that I can tie together. The clothes are all brown, like Arzu’s leathers, and now that I see the resemblance, I smile at my reflection. I’ve seen how she moves and how even the way she wears her clothes tenses her muscles and works her limbs loose. This’ll do nicely.
A retinue waits for me outside my room. Palace guards lead me down several corridors until we get to the main hall, and I stand at the balcony flanked by two staircases that wind their way to the main floor. At the bottom stand two Agha Sentries and ten servants carrying what look like bags of supplies for me. I want to tell them to drop it all, but I don’t have the energy. It feels like the Palace is forcing this on me. This is how they’re going to parade me to the Wall and beyond.
The massive doors to this part of the Palace open out onto a wide staircase that begins the path leading to the Forum. I step out onto the raised space right before the stairs, and up above hangs a ringed balcony from which public proclamations are delivered. Is this the closest King Kolade ever gets to the city?
Servants stand in rows on either side of me, and the sentries have moved up to the front, forming a V shape, like the tip of a dagger.
I wish Arzu could come with me. As we start moving, I turn back to the stairs, but she’s not there anymore. She has already left.
The road here is paved. My flats whisper when I shuffle along. The homes here are made out of the same material as the Palace, only they are smaller. Many of them belong to the algebraists and lawyers and the Palace functionaries. The dwellings sit high up on smaller rolling hills with a single trail branching off from the main road to their complexes. Grass coats the hills. They’re so green. Gardens line some of the trails, flowers I can’t name making all kinds of colors on the pathways leading to those homes. I hear bubbling, the same bubbling that signaled the rivers threading the Palace grounds, and I realize that the same things also irrigate these homes. The little tributaries I see scattered throughout the hill sparkle in the sun. I can’t believe that this too is part of Kos.
We get to the hill, and the Forum spreads before us. Before I can take in the view, the sentries proceed down the trail that will bring us to the Forum’s front gates. I almost wish the servants would crowd in around me and hide me from the judgmental gazes of the Forum-dwellers.
The last time I made this part of the trip, it was just me. And a sin-lion had just been burned into the skin of my forearm.
I’d practically tripped down the main stairs outside, then I’d made my way to the front gates of the Palace, where Bo had been waiting for me. And together, we’d walked down the hill. I’d never paid attention to the homes before. I was always so eager to get to the Forum. But we’d spent a moment at the crest of the hill looking out over our home before racing each other down.
This time, the whole retinue makes too much noise. It’s enough to silence the music of the market, the melody of Forum-dwellers talking and arguing and singing. Some Forum-dwellers pretend not to notice the troop stomping down the main thoroughfare, but most watch. Or it feels like most of them are watching.
No matter how much I try, I can’t keep facing straight ahead. I’m constantly glancing to one side or another, looking for familiar faces, hoping I don’t see them.
I frighten them.
Gear-heads sit on stacked barrels, their pockets full of metal parts, legs dangling over the edges of their perches. Maybe some of them recognize me from Zoe’s. Maybe they don’t.
The people from the Palace parade me around a corner.
I recognize the street, even though it’s crowded on each side with Forum-dwellers and men and women wearing auto-mail. I turn, and suddenly, I’m staring straight at Auntie Sania. Auntie Nawal stands next to her. Their hands are folded before their robes. I stop dead in the middle of the street and can’t turn away. Servants pass me by. I want so badly to break off and explain everything to them, but what would I say?
The troop stops around me. The sentries have turned to see what is holding up the caravan. I can’t stop staring at the women who took me off the street when I was young and still learning about my Hunger and had nowhere to go. I want them to smile at me the way they always did. I want them to pluck at my puffy hair and wonder yet again when I’ll find a nice girl to braid it for me.
Something or someone bumps into me. I’m jolted out of my trance, and a sentry stands in front of me.
“Sir,” she says. And it sounds in my ears like she’s shouting it loud enough for the whole Forum to hear.
“Right,” I say quietly. The prelate returns to the head of the caravan. We keep walking.
Aki stare out from the crevices and holes and alleyways they hide in. Half the time, I don’t even have to look to see them. I know the feel of their gazes on my back.
Bo is somewhere in the crowd. Hidden. Anonymous. But I can probably find exactly where he’s standing. I can’t bear to look at him. I can’t think through the fact that he’s seeing me like this. Ifeoma and Sade and Tolu and Emeka are probably with him. I’m ashamed to think about what expressions they’re wearing on their faces right now. They probably think I’ve spent all this time simply getting fat off sugared puff puff and thinking I was better than them, that I belonged in that Palace rather than out here in the Forum and the dahia. Sade would joke about it, and maybe Ifeoma would find some funny way to mock me, but they would do it as friends. Tolu and Emeka and Bo would see me as a changed person. Not aki. Not Kaya. And they would probably refuse me.
If only I had the chance, I would try to tell them what it was really like in there. I’d tell them just how sinful the Kayas really are, that the food is nothing like in the dahia, that there are Mages everywhere. That there is nothing there worth wanting. But if I told them that, it would be a lie. Like the snake tattoo running along my left shoulder, where Karima once touched me.
We near the main entrance to Kos, the gate that traders and itinerant preachers march through on official business. This is the entrance that no one I know ever
uses. It’s the biggest patch of Wall the Seven Scribes haven’t touched yet.
The gate is impossibly high, and I hurt my neck trying to see the top of it.
I’m leaving Kos.
The thought sits with me for a moment, and I turn back to take one last look at the city I’ve spent my entire life in. My eyes scan it, the mud-colored homes, the people, the market, the stillness of it, and then I see Omar.
For some reason, that one hurts more than the others. The look on his face is somewhere at the center of sadness, disgust, and anger. He looks like I’ve betrayed him.
If I could, I’d tell him that I was wrong. That, sure, thinking only of yourself will make it easier to Eat, less painful, but I’d also tell him that sometimes you can’t avoid caring about what happens to others. Sometimes you get tricked into it. I want to tell him that I’m saving someone’s dahia by doing this. But every time I try to put the sentence together in my head, it comes out like I’m trying to justify myself. Like I’m trying to make myself blameless.
He’ll never understand.
When I nod to the Agha Sentry that we can keep going, there’s movement to my right, and a Mage shuffles through the row of servants, then stops at my side.
She pushes her hood back and nearly knocks her spectacles off her head. The frames get tangled in her hair, and after some fumbling, she leaves them be.
Aliya.
A full-toothed grin bursts open on her face. “Oh, this is wonderful. I didn’t expect to see you! I’ll finally get to witness you at work. An actual sin-eating ritual. And you are the best, aren’t you? Everyone calls you the Sky-Fist. The Lightbringer.”
For a moment, her joy and energy stun me into silence. Then, I feel my face soften. “Just Lightbringer. You don’t have to say the.”
“Oh, right.” She shrugs, hugs her bound cylinders of parchment to her chest. “There can only be one.”
And that’s what gets me to smile. “Right. There can only be one.”
Aliya walks next to me all the way into the forest. All the way to the tents and tables laid out in straight rows. All the way to the future waiting for me in that clearing.
“Thank you,” I say, but she is already conversing with other Mages outside one of their tents. She hasn’t heard me.
It has to still mean something, though. Just saying it.
“Thank you,” I say again. This time, it’s even easier.
CHAPTER 21
DURING BREAKS FROM their fight sessions, the smaller aki lug gourds and push barrels of water for the drinking pool and the bathing area. The little ones struggle to keep the water from sloshing over the edges. They know how precious that water is, so they take extra care. Their shoulders are stiff, arms straight as iron rods. Some of them look to me for guidance. Sitting on a small boulder that looks out over the grounds, I nod in the general direction of the drinking pool.
It’s free time right now. I watch as one young aki with a long braided ponytail throws combinations against the leather padding of an older aki’s mittens. Another group of aki comes by, rolling a barrel along, and I silently direct them to the bathing area.
The aki, at one point or another, marked the trees, some with lettering and others with symbols, showing what dahia they come from. Cliques are forming. Already, I’ve had to break up a few fights between some of the rowdier ones, and the little aki sometimes don’t know where to go or who to turn to, so they move with the older aki from their dahia. Mages occasionally wander through here, like where we aki live and train is some sort of shortcut, but they mostly leave the order-keeping to me. A lot of the time, it’s boring. Just me telling some of the kids what to do and acting tough when they decide not to do it.
Another young aki pushes a broom around a clearing, sweeping away the discards from a previous meal: chicken bones and uneaten pieces of moi-moi, and the bugs that cling to it all. In a sandpit in the distance, an older aki helps a younger one wrap his hands with cloth to protect his knuckles while he trains.
Some days, I’m the big brother; other days, I’m the joking friend; others still, I’m the strict overseer. On those days, all I need is a whip.
Truth is, there’s too many of them for just me. I think about naming some of the older aki as my lieutenants, dispatching them to oversee the smaller groups, but power corrupts. And I like being the guy in charge.
Besides, they all have to be here. They have no choice. And if I don’t train them properly, then they’ll have to fight a sin that will beat them, a sin they won’t be able to Eat. It’ll stand there in front of that paralyzed aki, jaws wide open, saliva dripping fat raindrops from its bared fangs, tongue lolling in anticipation. Young aki are pretty easy for an inisisa to digest.
I leap down from my perch.
“All right. Break’s over,” I shout. Time to work. “Now, who’s ready to take me on?”
A dozen training fights later, I let the kids catch their breath, and I take a rest myself beneath a large tree, part of a circle that rings a small clearing. Some of the training happens here, but for now, it’s all peace and quiet. I think nobody rests here because the pine needles prick their backsides and the skin behind their knees. Some of those kids really wore me out, so I don’t have the energy to move my legs, just adjust them slightly so the needles sting less. It’s a battle, really, between me and the pine needles, to see which one of us moves first. But I’m too tired to lose.
The Wall is a circle, with watchtowers connecting the swaths of stone at certain points. The towers are topped with observation booths. Some days, I catch older aki climbing the forest trees while the younger ones trail behind and watch the sentries and sometimes even the Palace guards amble back and forth. Patrolling. Sometimes, when they’re all sleeping and I can’t, I climb up to where they sat or hunched or hung, and I watch the guards and listen to them talk and argue. Complain about their children, complain about how little they’re paid. I watch them get tired. I watch them worry about how their sons are doing in school, which daughter is hoping to train as a scholar with the Ulo Amamihe. Sometimes, I track when they come and when they go. I don’t know why, really. It’s not like I’m plotting my way back into Kos. If I leave, then someone’s dahia gets Baptized, but I don’t know. . . . Seems like a small-enough act of rebellion.
Right now, however, I’m just trying to get feeling back in my arms and legs.
Something moves in the tree in front of me—a rustling on the branches right below my line of sight. The breeze whistles through the leaves, and I swear I hear something or someone whisper. I try to sit up and focus. Nothing. Just a breeze.
Then again. A shadow leaps from one branch to another. One branch bows beneath new weight, then the shadow doubles back. Passes over me, then continues off into the distance. It moves way too fast to be an aki, even another human being. But it’s bigger than any forest animal I’ve seen out here so far. My stomach drops with fear. Could be an escaped inisisa. If it is, I need to get after it fast.
The branches have grown still.
It was a blur of brown and black, the thing. Leaves rustle again. Closer. I push myself to my feet, aches and pains and all, and flick my daga from its strap into the palm of my hand. The beast leaps down, then lands in a small copse of brush right at the base of the Wall, beneath a mural of a horned mammoth crashing through a painting of a wall. Movement stops. I step closer. Closer.
I gasp.
Out slinks a small form. Slowly, it uncurls itself, standing up straight. What? It’s a person. She wears gray rags, and every inch of her skin is covered in sins. I can’t even tell if, beneath her sin-spots, she had been born with the light skin of the wealthy hill people or the dark skin of Forum-dwellers. A tattoo of a spider marks her forehead, a single black dot with long jointed legs that arc around her eyes and down her cheeks all the way to her jaw. Her hair falls down to the small of her back. She stoops to pick up a twig
and, in a few deft movements, twists her hair into a loose bun atop her head. More sins wash down her neck, along her collarbone, and deep into her shirt.
She has even more sin-spots than me.
“You’re their new Catcher,” the other aki says to me. Her gray rags sway in the breeze, and neither of us has moved. I don’t know her name or anything about her, but she feels so familiar. She wears a blue stone on a bracelet around her left wrist.
“You’re here to help out?” I ask her, because I can’t think of anything else to say. I don’t realize how stupid the question sounds until it leaves my mouth. Questions trip over one another in my head, and suddenly I want to know how long she’s been out here, what dahia she originally comes from, what the Mages have her here for, what else lies beyond the Wall. Like most aki, there’s very little of her past written on her other than the sins she’s Eaten. She wears no gemstones in her ear. She doesn’t have any coal either, to commemorate the dead. She’s the only aki I’ve ever seen who’s older than me.
She flexes her fingers into a fist, right hand, then left hand, then right again, twisting her wrists. She looks restless all of a sudden, like even though she’s not going anywhere, she needs to be moving. Her arms settle at her sides, but she still looks poised to strike. She reminds me of Arzu. She flexes her right ankle, cracks her knuckles, then starts to limp past me.
“It is sad what they plan to do with you,” she tells me as she walks past. She drags one leg in a semicircle with each step, and I wonder if she hurt herself coming down from one of the trees. She looked fine a moment ago.
“Hey!” I start after her, but suddenly she’s able to bend her legs, and she sets off at a run, then leaps into the trees, higher than I’ve ever seen anyone jump.
By the Unnamed, what was that lahala? And why am I so sure I’ve seen her before?
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