Temper

by Nicky Drayden

  I tell him. Everything. From Icy Blue’s first whisper, to Ruda, to our father, to our powers, to the killings, to our mother, to Ruda, to the kiss, and Kasim’s lecherous scream that had broken every single pane of glass at Gabadamosi, closing the school indefinitely, and closing my heart indefinitely, as well.

  “Grace is a twisted bastard,” Tshidino slurs, eyes wide and bloodshot. “And he just left you there, like trash?”

  Not like trash. More like the trash can, a receptacle for his vices. I don’t care what’s been branded on his arms, I saw much more than greed in Kasim’s eyes as I lay there in the quiet room, glass pressed into my cheek, his sour breath lingering upon mine. “He said the world needed him to be Grace more than I needed him to be my brother.”

  “He didn’t deserve you anyway. Serves him right to be holed up in the Sanctuary with his precious false prophet! How did he say it? How did he say . . . Ama . . .” Tshidino’s head is too heavy, and it lands on my shoulder. “Amawu . . . Amawusiekeseiya?”

  Tshidi, that’s what his friends call him, is midsentence, blubbering away about all of the reasons I’m better off without Kasim, when I make the careful slit. He bleeds out in a matter of seconds, the alcohol sharp and comforting in my silenced gut. I hold his hand tightly until the longing has disappeared from his eyes. Tshidi doesn’t thank me. He doesn’t have to.

  True charity expects no compensation.

  I peel myself up from the bakery floor, trying to clear my head of the drunken stupor I’ve inflicted upon myself. The morning has come and gone. The sun sits high in the sky, and there is something odd afoot. There’s too much traffic outside for this time of day. Lunchtime has passed, but the business day is not quite through, and yet hundreds, thousands line the streets. The air smells faintly of musky-sweet smoke.

  “What’s going on?” I ask, grabbing the arm of a woman striding down the sidewalk.

  She takes one look at me and screams. I let her go, and turn to my reflection in the glass front of the bakery. My skin sits oddly upon my face, like a jacket two sizes too big. My jowls hang like an old hunting dog’s, pockets of red drooping beneath my eyes exposing flesh and nerves. Deep wrinkles gouge every inch of my face. I look like something beyond ancient. I shake it off, skin goes taut, eyes brighten.

  “What’s going on?” I ask, grabbing a passing kigen this time.

  Ey points my attention to Grace Mountain. “They’re burning fine bush at the Sanctuary. Twenty-four hours from now, Gueye Okahim will be making a big announcement.”

  My gut stirs and my knees go weak. If Kasim has risen as much as I’ve sunken since our proximity break, then there’s only one thing this could be about. “He’s announcing his new apprentice?”

  “No, not an apprentice. This is something major. Like once-in-a-lifetime major.” The kigen pulls away, and stares at me like I’ve stolen something from em.

  I move my hands to my face. My skin feels right, and my teeth are still blunted.

  “Pardon, but I’ve got to go,” ey says, voice atremble. “I need to get a good seat for this. I’m probably already too late.”

  I pry further, but everyone is too harried, too flustered to be bothered. I catch snippets of rumors and speculations. Gueye Okahim is sick and dying. Gueye Okahim has taken a lover and is stepping away. Gueye Okahim has received a new Covenant from Grace. But there is nothing concrete.

  Gueye Okahim is a false prophet . . .

  Kasim’s words strike me hard. What if he hadn’t mispronounced Gueye Okahim’s title? Sylla be damned, if Kasim had said it, it must be the truth. That means a liar has taken Kasim under his wing, to mold him with his duplicitous tongue, and do whatever the hell else. But why should I care? Kasim chose this path, and has forsaken our brotherhood in the process. I turn my back to Grace Mountain, and walk the other way. He no longer holds an obligation over me.

  The pain whips back to my stomach. I hunch over, then bite past it, my eyes scanning the crowd for my next act of charity. There, that woman. Old and gray. Graying at least, some around the temples. Debilitated by some affliction that makes her favor one leg over the other, though perhaps it’s only the sole of her shoe gone bad. But her scent, her scent is divine. Smooth and sharp, like she’s got garlic butter pumping through her veins. I take a step toward her, and her eyes flick to me. Kasim stares out from those too-wide pupils. I back up, set my eyes on another mark. My brother stares back at me yet again.

  “Leave me alone, you sick bastard!” I yell at the kigen.

  Ey looks at me, concerned. “Sir, you’re going the wrong way. Gueye Okahim is making a big announcement.” Ey points me in the direction of Grace Mountain.

  “Gueye Okahim is a false prophet!” I yell. People brush past me, without hearing, without notice. Here I am, invisible again. My words are powerless. Doubt rolls me over, does a wicked number on me, but from the grisly depths of hopelessness, I see light. Here is my chance to do the ultimate charitable act. I can prove to these people that Gueye Okahim is not who he says, and free them of his mind tricks. I need proof. Solid proof. Then they’ll see me. They’ll thank me. They’ll worship me.

  I’ll dig. Dig deep. Gueye Okahim, Gabadamosi, Class of ’71.

  “Get outta here, kid,” the maintenance worker scolds me. He sweeps up two-hundred-year-old glass into a large plastic bucket, giving it no more thought than cleaning up spent beer bottles after one of Soyinka House’s parties. “You’ll slice yourself to pieces standing round here.”

  “I’m here to retrieve some papers,” I say, my tight fake smile threatening to shatter my teeth like every last piece of glass on this campus. I keep my thoughts firm on my goals, getting to the administration building, finding Gueye Okahim’s files, and not letting my mind wander to the delectables held behind the worker’s orange jumpsuit. “I promise, I’ll be careful.” Just as I’ve promised the last twelve maintenance workers. This one will make a baker’s dozen.

  “No skin off my teeth, then. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya,” says the worker, not bothering to look up at me this time. I flex my claws, then notice the statue of Grace and Icy Blue standing before me—the one where they’re wrestling. Or not wrestling. Grace is missing his head. Icy Blue is gone from the chest up. The rest of their entwined bodies is a million shards with a large crack running between them, but still their muscled bodies cling together by the forces of temper and regret.

  Carefully, I stoop down to pick up a large sliver that contains Grace’s ear and cheekbone. I hold it in my hands, and my whole body goes numb.

  “Good Grace, kid!” the worker yells at me, sweat beading on his brow. “Look what you’ve done. Stand still. Don’t panic.” With his heavily gloved hands, he plucks the glass from my grip, then tears the sleeve from his jumpsuit. He wraps it tightly around my hand. Blood blooms through quickly, angrily, then begins to eat away at the fabric. “Stay here and keep pressure on that. I’m going to go hail an ambulance.” And then he’s gone.

  The glass at my feet glows molten white where my blood drips upon it. I suppose there’s pain, but Kasim’s betrayal cuts so much more deeply, it doesn’t register.

  I’ve got a straight shot to the administration building. No more questions. No more blood.

  Inside, light seeps in through the orifices that used to contain windowpanes. My every step is filled with the crunch of broken glass. My frigid heart stirs when I pass the closed door to Munashe’s office. It’s like I still feel her presence in there, the quick beat of her pulse in my ear, the warmth of her breath. Guilt piles onto me, but I need my head clear for this. I dampen my senses, concentrating on finding the file I need. I make quick work of the locked cabinets in the back of the room. Thousands of files hang, embossed Gabadamosi folders tucked inside. Alphabetical order. I make my way through the Os . . . Okadigbo, Okafor, Okahim. I pull Gueye’s too-thin folder. It’s empty. My temper cracks like a whip.

  “Shit!” I growl, throaty and deep enough to send the shards of spent glass reverberating upon
the floor.

  A muffled squeal comes from Munashe’s office. I release my senses, and smell her now. The scent so obvious. I wasn’t imagining things. I twist the knob on Munashe’s door, force it open. I shiver at the sour smell of her corpse, though it has long since left the room.

  “Come out,” I demand from the door, somehow managing to keep the fear out of my voice. She has to come out, because I’m sure as hell not going in there. There’s no delusion deep enough to convince me that Munashe’s death involved any sort of charity.

  The pulse quickens. Munashe’s chair moves back, and a small hand reaches up from under the nook in her desk. A forehead peeks, tattooed with a scripted I, and then Sesay’s stoic face slowly comes into view. “Auben,” she says, holding her ground like a cornered cat. “Or do you prefer Icy Blue?”

  “What are you doing here?” I growl.

  “Same thing as you, I suspect,” she says, nodding to the empty folder I’m carrying.

  “You took the files?”

  “No, the folder was empty when I looked last night. I’d been compiling my interview notes on Kasim and his exhibitions, but his first interaction with Gueye Okahim stood out against the others. It didn’t feel right. I thought about downplaying it, even omitting it altogether to write that bit of embarrassment out of history, but that felt even more wrong. That’s when it struck me: Kasim hadn’t misspoken when he’d called Gueye Okahim a false prophet. I started digging, and found—” Sesay’s eyes, wide and vulnerable, suddenly flick to meet mine, narrow and hungry. “You know, I’m telling you all of this because we’re on the same side now. We’re both working to reveal that Gueye Okahim is a fraud. I can’t do this without you, and you can’t do this without me. We’re teammates. Friends.”

  She’s a fast talker, but her comfy wiles won’t work on me. She’s twelve steps ahead of me, though, and she’s right that I can’t do this without her. “Friends.” The word slips coolly between my bared fangs. I offer out a clawed hand to shake on it, but Sesay has conveniently looked away.

  “Good,” she says. “So I went to the library, dug around, found this . . .” She slips a playbill in front of me. The Mouse Prince, it reads, one of Biobaku’s plays apparently, starring one Gueye Okahim. “He was in the Theatrics Club here.”

  “Gabadamosi has a Theatrics Club?”

  “It used to. Up until about fifteen years ago.”

  “That’s right around when Gueye Okahim became the Man of Virtues, right?”

  “Mmm-hmm. So I couldn’t dig up his files, but I figured someone else in the cast might have some insight. I pulled them this morning, did some research. Every single one of them is dead.”

  “The Class of ’71 was quite a while ago.”

  “Yeah, but the last four surviving actors all died within a month of one another. Fifteen years ago.” Sesay raises a brow, gives me a meaningful look. “Nkitidoroane, the previous Man of Virtues, took Gueye Okahim as his apprentice a few months later. And a few months after that, Nkitidoroane passed on. The rumors were that he’d lost contact with Grace a few years prior, and the abandonment had driven him mad. That’s eighteen years ago, if you don’t want to do the math. Right at the time a certain pair of twins were swimming around in their mother’s womb. People were losing faith left and right. Secular groups were gaining a foothold, making their own schools, promoting scientific explanations of twinning, the origins of the universe, and everything. And the subseculars were getting bolder as well, setting out to prove Grace was a lie all along. Something had to be done before the whole system came crashing down. If they couldn’t find someone who could communicate with Grace, they could at least find someone who could fake it.” Sesay clears her throat. “That’s my theory, anyway. We need solid proof if we’re going to bring Okahim down.”

  But this is enough proof for me. My claws flex, imagining Gueye Okahim pleading for his life, spilling his truths to his faithful congregation as I spill his guts from the perch of his pulpit.

  “Thanks, friend,” I say to Sesay, giving her a slick, toothy smile.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Her voice is sharp and knowing.

  I let the silence stir along with the ghosts in this room. The flavors of her fear and desperation commingle, resonating as I sip them in. I’m going to take my time with this one.

  “Please, don’t do this,” she says. It’s what they always say. “Don’t do this to Daki.”

  My fangs retract halfway. I think maybe I’ve heard her wrong, my mind too knotted from the drumming of her heart arousing every nerve in my body. “Daki?” I say.

  “She’ll be all alone without me. She’ll snap off, I just know it. I can’t have her go through that pain. I can’t—” Sesay starts bawling into her hands. The scent of her tears is delicate, sweet like a rosebud. She is not crying out of fear, but out of love. I take a second whiff to make sure I am not mistaken.

  “Maybe you’ve already broken from each other, though. She says you are twinemies. You abandon her each day to go have lunch with your greater twin friends. I’m sure she’s used to you not being there for her.”

  Sesay shakes her head. “We knew what we were signing up for when we came to Gabadamosi. The finest education comes at a steep price. During the school day we play the parts, but we promised to do whatever it took to keep this place from driving a wedge between us. Every evening, back in our dorm room, I say a million sorries to her, and she forgives me a million times before I utter a single word. It’s stupid and I hate it, but in four years, when we both graduate from this place with honors, we’ll have the knowledge and power to do something about it.” Sesay looks up at me with her pitiful big brown eyes. “At least, that was the plan.”

  Her comfy wiles nearly crack their way through my heart, but I’ve caught her in her velvety lie. “Twins aren’t allowed to room together at Kalukenzua House.” With the next breath, I am at Sesay’s throat, the welcoming beat of her jugular strumming against my fangtips.

  “It’s not allowed,” Sesay squeals. “But I dug up some dirt on the housematron. Turns out she was a housematron of a different sort back in the day—the kind of establishment where lechery paid the bills instead of students’ tuition. I pointed this out to her, and she found a way for Daki and me to room together.”

  “You blackmailed her?” I say, a devious smile spreading upon my muzzle.

  “It’s the best kind of mail,” Sesay says, giving a pathetic wheeze of a laugh. “Doesn’t even cost a stamp.” Her eyes plead, tugging at something buried deeply within me.

  Kasim was right. She is so fucking adorable. My bones go to dust, and I put on my Auben cloak. It feels so wrong on me now, itches all over like cheap wool, but Sesay looks less terrified, and I need her. I may be smart, but she’s operating on a level I can’t even grasp. “So how do we get to Gueye Okahim?”

  “With the announcement coming, the Sanctuary is going to be heavily fortified to keep the masses at bay.” Sesay smiles, and amazingly, it’s not relief in her eyes. It’s knowing. And that makes me feel like I’ve made the right choice in not killing her . . . yet. She shrugs, as if recognizing that, and says, “But I’ve been doing some digging . . .”

  Three hundred meters down from the Sanctuary and its fortifications, there’s a patch of vegetation, more lush and vibrant than any other spot upon Grace Mountain. The greens of the leaves are rich and deep and unnatural, and in the spring, when all the different species of plants bloom, it’s like an intricate stained-glass design unrivaled by what human hands could create. I’d noticed the patch before, of course, but I never knew it had a name. Grace’s Kiss, Sesay tells me. I shudder as the undergrowth brushes my shins, trying not to think about the power of life that sits upon Kasim’s lips, nor the opposite power of mine.

  “There, I see it,” says Sesay, pointing up toward the top of the patch, along the border where the plant life again takes on its natural hues. Through a tangle of reeds and vines, there’s a metal grating. I pull it, and the
n peer into the drainpipe. It’s narrow. Too narrow for Auben’s shoulders—my shoulders, I remind myself.

  Sesay exhales, sticks her head in, and wriggles back and forth until she’s waist deep. “It’s tighter than I thought, but it’s doable,” she calls back to me. She inches forward into the darkness with unwavering resolve. If she has doubt, she keeps it close to her chest.

  I shrug off my cloak, and four tawny paws press into the soft fertile earth. Instantly, the scent overwhelms me—the sharp and syrupy tang of iron. Blood. Goat blood mostly, some sheep. My reflexes buck, and I have to restrain myself from latching onto Sesay’s ankles dangling around in front of me like worms on a fishing line. I wait until they’re safely out of view before following her in.

  “What is this place?” I growl at Sesay, hoping she doesn’t notice the wetness of my words.

  “Slaughter room runoff,” Sesay says, nonchalantly, like it’s an everyday occurrence for a girl and her pet caracal to be squeezing themselves through blood-soaked drainpipes. “Oh, shoot. The blood. I didn’t . . . Are you—”

  “I’m fine,” I say. “Just keep talking.”

  “About what?”

  “Anything but blood.”

  “Can I tell you a secret?” she asks. The echo of her words helps to drown out the rhythmic sluicing in her veins. Some. All this blood has got my olfactories in a knot. I could swear Sesay’s scent is laden with masculine signatures. I’m getting light-headed and disoriented in this long span of dark. If I can’t trust my smell, what can I trust? I rein in my senses as tightly as I can manage.

  “Sure,” I say.

  “I think I might have made a mistake. Phila talked a good talk, and got me to believe with all of his fanatic raving. I wanted to believe. I did my research, of course, but now I’m thinking I didn’t do enough.” Sesay groans. “And I have this stupid tattoo on my forehead now.”