Temper

by Nicky Drayden

  The original pair stands dutifully, though. Not even a hard shove disturbs it. I step up onto an overturned pew and dust off the gilded script inset where the sticks meet.

  “Stacks,” it says.

  “Stacks?” I say to myself. If I could stack these things any higher, I wouldn’t be standing here, wondering where the hell my brother is hiding. If I had more of the message . . . but, but what if this was it? What if this was Kasim’s answer? “Stacks. Like library stacks?”

  “Shhh. The walls have ears,” says a voice from behind me. “Even burnt-out ones.”

  On pure instinct, I turn, flex claws that refuse to erupt. Bare fangs that would impress no one. Sesay stands there, face haunting me, a reminder of her betrayal a final wound that my heart can’t bear. I’m too weak to slice her to pieces, but my hands still work, and are strong enough to squeeze the life out of a traitor. So I snatch her by the throat.

  She squeaks at me. I squeeze harder, and glare into the face that betrayed me.

  “I’ll take you to him,” she manages to rasp as her fingernails pry futilely against my grip. “No tricks this time.”

  “Why should I trust you?” I demand, but there’s no response, just her mouth gasping for air, and those once too-cute eyes bulging and bloodshot. I wait another second, another. Nothing she can say will erase her treachery—the memory of her pulling out her doubt signet, of those incantations in that awful, ancient tongue—but finally reason strikes me as I realize it’ll be nearly impossible to get answers from a corpse. I release her, and she falls to the ground, sucks in rapid breaths until she regains composure.

  “We need to wait until sunset.” She springs to her feet and steps over to the defting sticks. “Here, help me push this over. Don’t want to leave any evidence.” She leans against a stick. Finally, it topples, stirring up dust and ash.

  “Stay here if you want. I’m leaving now,” I tell her.

  “You can’t just walk out there, traipsing down the mountainside! If someone sees you . . .” she says, eyeing the blood still weeping from my arm. “Besides, if you don’t mind my saying, you look like you could use a little rest.”

  That’s true enough. The silence stretches, and I decide to pass the time by plotting my revenge on her, each iteration of her death more calculated and cruel.

  “Auben,” she finally says, eyes digging into mine, as if she could feel the thoughts of her sour heart being squeezed like a lemon in my fist. “I feel like I owe you an explanation—”

  “You don’t owe me anything,” I snap back at her. I strum nonexistent tethers, wishing the earth would swallow her whole.

  “I deceived you, but I thought . . . I thought I was doing the right thing, following Kasim. But then, we kind of connected, you know? You accepted me, I accepted you. Neither of us even flinched.” She pauses for a response I have no intention of giving, then she continues. “You know what it’s like, being from the comfy. I already had one strike against me. And Daki had two, being a lesser twin.”

  I growl at her, low, deep, and throaty.

  “That’s not my term, it’s society’s. I couldn’t care less how many vices a person has.”

  Heat buds in my eyes. My jaw clenches tightly, trying to contain my anger, but my tongue refuses to let her privilege pass. “That’s because you’ve never had to care! You don’t know what it’s like to be constantly underestimated, written off. Completely ignored just because of what’s branded into your arm!”

  “True, but I can imagine.” She casts her gaze down to her feet, twiddles her thumbs. “Society isn’t exactly kind to kigens either.”

  Oh, yeah. There was that. Cute little Sesay. The split has changed her, but differences are subtle—the added musculature, the set of her bones, the pitch of her voice. But when half the population is kigen, you get good at spotting these things, or else you get used to getting corrected, or yelled at, or worse. She was born a kigen, but even now with all her female genes back with Daki, Sesay still exudes her girlish charm. Maybe there’s more to self than science.

  Lesser twins, kigens, comfy stock, singletons, we all suffer silently, we all go ignored. It should be easier for me to empathize with her, but no matter how hard I try, all I can see are the lines drawn between us.

  “It wasn’t always like this, you know,” Sesay says. “Back before religion, before vice and virtue. Maybe even before gods, the genders were fluid, each person a drop in an ocean with their own way to be. I’ve read some of the old greats of literature—Okpara, Balik—”

  “Don’t you dare say Biobaku,” I grumble.

  “Heh, his work is derivative at best. He copied off Nambota, who copied off Naidu. You go read Naidu, and tell me you don’t wish you could have been alive then, when humanity was a simple extension of nature—before lines were drawn between men and women and kigen, before borders defined who we were, before schools told us what we should be.”

  “It does sound nice . . .” I bite back the smile trying to worm its way onto my face. “We have to find a way to get back to that sort of life, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still hate you,” I growl at her. “But it’s for what you did, not who you are.”

  “I know. This isn’t right, us being separated from our twins. You can’t even imagine how sorry I am.” She bites her lips, then looks up at me with those innocent eyes.

  I can’t take it anymore. If I sit here, listening to her babble, I’ll start trusting her again, and I can’t afford that. “Come on, it’s time to go,” I demand.

  “But it’s not dark—”

  “We’re going.”

  We stick to ditches and trenches and tunnels as the sun starts to set. The debris of the moon becomes more noticeable, stretching out wider and wider, like wings straddling the chunk that’s still intact. I keep my temper gripped tight, because even though I can no longer break moons, I can still break bones, and every bit of me still insists that I teach Sesay one last lesson. But she proves true, leading us through overgrown shrubbery, through another drainpipe, up through a copper floor grating and into the long-abandoned stacks of the Gabadamosi library.

  It’d been dusty before, but it’s caked in filth now. Gone are the patrons, the acrobrarians. Sesay lets loose a whistle. One comes back from the rafters. I look up, see him. I take a few steps nearer and I feel him.

  “That’s close enough,” he calls out. His voice is a rasp, but still jovial, and I can tell from here he is weak. Weaker than me. He’s exhausted, starving, and dehydrated, and I can almost feel how his bones are poking at his skin. “Sesay told me about your handiwork with the moon. Temper got the best of you?”

  “Something like that,” I mumble. “What about you? You look like shit.”

  “Being Grace is hard work. And I apparently kind of suck at it.” He looks off for a moment, caught in a web of thought, then laughs the laugh of a fool. “I think I’m as awful at healing as you are at killing.”

  I’m not so awful at it. My most recent kill swamps my mind, and I grit my teeth. I dare not tell him of Ruda’s fate. He’s precariously perched up on a third-story shelf, and if he lost his balance . . . I shake the thought. Why the hell should I care about what happens to him?

  “We’re pathetic, aren’t we?” Kasim says. “I tried to keep up, to keep the plague at bay, but there were just so many people asking for so much. Humans are just so fragile and needy.” He looks down at Sesay. “No offense.”

  Sesay shrugs, and turns her attention to flipping through the pages of her giant three-ring binder, the very same one she’d accused me with so long ago. I scowl in her direction, but it goes unnoticed and unappreciated. “You’re sure we’re safe here?” I ask.

  “For now. No one goes looking for god in a library. Plus, it’s nice here. Quiet. No more prayers to deal with, at least.”

  “You answered mine,” I say.

  “I was holding out, focusing all my energy listening for you. Clinging to hope that you’d reach out.” And as bad as he looks, I’d gu
ess that stubbornness nearly destroyed him. Kasim can cling to whatever hope he wants. Still won’t buy him an ounce of pity from me.

  “Well, I’m here now,” I say. “I’ve got nowhere else to be. Mother . . . she wants nothing to do with me. All she cares about is that machination of hers. You know, she knew about us, all along. She admitted to paying some guy to swap our greed and charity so we wouldn’t discover our powers. Sesay knows about him.”

  “Sall Iweala is the man who performed your Discernment,” Sesay says with a nod. “His registers were submitted as evidence during his trial, and I got ahold of them. Of the hundred and twenty-seven Discernments he performed that year, only one of them lasted longer than an hour. Yours.” She looks pointedly at me, like she’s waiting for me to connect the dots. Aunt Cisse’s words come flowing back to me, how I was born so perfect.

  “Mother said she had him do everything he could. Do you think he switched all of our vices and virtues?” I ask. “All of them except greed and charity?”

  “I suspect he switched a lot more than that. Eleven hours is how long your Discernment lasted. I thought it was a mistake on the paperwork. But now . . .”

  “Maybe that’s how we ended up with a prayer-intolerant Grace and a blood-repulsed Icy Blue,” I say, trying to wrap my head around the possibility. I’ve spent so much time denying Grace, hating Grace, forsaking Grace, that the thought of actually being him has me grasping at my vices just to make sure they’re still all there.

  “Shit,” Kasim says. “We were doomed from the start. All that holier-than-thou bullshit I pulled all those years. I was awful to you. Judging your every vice when the whole time it was me who—”

  “Hey, I’ve seen vices build an entire city, one brimming with innovation and community. We both made mistakes.” The words slip out of my mouth so effortlessly. I’d been clutching my anger so tightly, it takes a moment to realize that all this time, I’d been so desperate to finally let it go. A weight lifts from my chest. Kasim smiles, and kicks his feet like a child, like he’d jump down and hug me if he weren’t sure the resulting proximity pains would kill us both. Something dark sweeps over my mind, though, the image of me lying in a pile of broken glass, Kasim’s breath still hot and wrong against my lips, shivering so hard, I could have brought all the stars crashing down on us. It still cuts, deeper than I’ll ever admit, but I can’t hold on to those other wrongs, either, not if we’re going to restart our brotherhood anew. “I forgive you for everything . . . including Ruda.” Her name comes out in a pained rasp.

  Kasim stops kicking, looks down at me with a smoldering of temper in his eyes. “What do you mean, ‘For Ruda’?”

  I bite my lip, feeling like coming here was a big mistake. “Never mind. Forget I said anything.”

  Kasim shakes his head. “No, I want to know what you mean by that.” He leans forward, his balance even more precarious now. “Because I can certainly tell you why I forgave you for Ruda. I was there, Auben, sitting in the back of the auditorium during her audition, arms full of flowers. I was going to ask her out. When she didn’t come out from the dressing room afterward, I went backstage looking for her. I saw you, heard how she laughed at me. The revulsion on her face when you mentioned my name killed a part of me.”

  I recall my compulsion that night, how my will to kiss her had bent so hard, so suddenly, and how it would have broken completely if I hadn’t jabbed a rusty nail through my palm. But it wasn’t Icy Blue driving that time. “You used your mind tricks and tried to make me kiss her. And you knew . . . knew what that would do!”

  “I wanted to destroy her, and you in that moment. I’m not proud of my actions. It took a long time, but I built up my distance. I forgot about Ruda, and what she did to my heart. Maybe I had to put some distance between me and you as well, but I forgave you. Then I buried myself in virtues. Everything I could do to live, breathe, and eat for the good of all.”

  I close my eyes, realizing now what I’d done. What I’d undone.

  “Then when I saw Ruda strut into Kalukenzua House . . . for a split second, I was fooled. Auben, that split second was the absolute best moment of my life. I thought I’d locked away my heart from everyone, but I swear, it nearly burst out of my chest. And my pants, I won’t even mention what was going on in my pants, but I shed my virtue in that instant. By the time I realized the truth, it was too late. What you unleashed, my dear brother, could not be put back into its box. And now here you are, forgiving me . . .” His eyes flash, and suddenly he’s lurching toward me, falling through the air. I’m caught between the urge to protect myself and to soften his fall, but I don’t get the chance to do either as the pain of proximity ratchets up, causing me to crumple. Kasim screams. His torso lands on mine, his limbs thump against concrete. I hear something break, and when he looks up, the pain I see runs so much deeper than fractured human bone.

  Sesay gets up, tries to pull us apart, but she’s swatted away. We grapple, bite, scratch. He pounds his fist into ribs I’m sure are already broken. We’re bitter, petty. Fighting like five-year-olds, only I’m damn sure hugs and candy aren’t going to smooth this one over.

  There is a boom like thunder that shakes the sense back into me, and suddenly it’s snowing. No, not snow. Tiny bits of paper. Kasim and I stop struggling long enough to see the gaping hole in the bookshelf inches away from our heads. Sesay stands nearby, mouth in a perfect O. I follow her gaze down the stacks, and see Nkosazana’s father, or the man who’d pretended to be her father, holding a big brass gun. Wisps of smoke curl up from the end of a barrel so thick, so long, it’s more like a portable cannon. He braces himself, steadies his footing, then fires again. We scramble around the endcaps, and watch as the shot sails past us.

  “Someone must have followed us,” I say, my shoulder pressed hard into Sesay’s, clutching my bruised side.

  “No shit,” Kasim says from the next aisle over. He holds his arm close to his body, wincing.

  “So, Auben, you thought you could get rid of me by locking me in the trunk of a carriage?” comes Nkosazana’s voice ringing throughout the library. “These hands built that carriage.” Her shoes tap up the aisle that separates us.

  “Come on,” Sesay whispers. “I know another way out.” She tugs at my shirt, and waves for Kasim to join us. He peeks his head around into the aisle, but is met with another cannon blast. He backs up and runs the other way.

  “Kasim!” I yell, but it’s too late. Nkosazana is almost upon us. Sesay practically drags me away. She and I cut back up two aisles over, but another sect member spots us.

  Sesay cusses and pivots. Runs smack into my chest. She pushes me backward, nearly knocks the wind out of me. “Go up that aisle and hang a hard left!” I do as she says, and she sprints past me, then ducks down, pulling at the spines of several large books. I think she’s making some sort of obstacle, when I notice the dark recess behind the shelving. She waves me forward, and I squeeze myself in, shouldering past the rubble of scattered books. The crawl space is tight, leading left and right, with a wider path in front of me that leads to safety. I turn around and grab through the shelving for Sesay’s arm. “Come on,” I yell. She slides her binder in. I push it to the side, then reach for her arm, but her eyes go wide. I tug, but something’s tugging her back.

  “Go!” she yells. “Save yourself.” Her fingers slip from mine. “I’m sorry. I really am.” And then like that, she’s gone. I hear her fighting and flailing.

  I glance back, considering the dimly lit hallway that leads to my freedom. The temptation is real, I can’t deny. I could go off to Nri, or travel the world. Or anything. No one to tie me down. No one to let me down. But I draw away from the thought of such an empty existence. There would be no one to be tied to, no one for me to worry about letting down. I can see proximity as a gift or a curse. I can see it as both, but no matter what, it’s worth fighting for. I grab Sesay’s binder and duck into the narrow passageway to my left—the reverse side of the shelving, sprawling with pages and p
ages of nondescript books. I sidestep softly, trying to keep a mental count of where I am. I pull a couple books from the shelf and peek through.

  “Come out, Auben,” Nkosazana says. “We’ve got Kasim and your little friend. Don’t want to show up late to your own farewell party.”

  Out of nervousness, my fingers strum nonexistent tethers. I haven’t heard any more shots. Maybe I could reason with her.

  An eye peeks through the opening in the books, disappears, and then is replaced by the round lip of the gun. I duck, banging my forehead on the shelf in front of me. The blast throws me back, nearly knocks me unconscious. I look down, feeling my chest for a hole, but Sesay’s binder stopped the bullet. My brain has taken a beating, though, and I’m sure my ears are bleeding. I turn to run, but a hand reaches through, grabs me, pulling the entire shelf section along, too. Stunned and disoriented, my life wobbles before my eyes.

  “You’ll pay for what you did to Ruda,” Lwazi grates, sounding like his words are coming up from a very deep well. I shake my head, trying to process what’s going on, but it’s too damn hard. I can’t stop seeing Nkosazana and her father together, feeling like I’m supposed to be getting yelled at for keeping her out too late, for causing her grades to slip . . . anything but this.

  Kasim looks up at me with a swollen lip, still clutching his busted arm.

  “It was an accident,” I plead. I know damn well it wasn’t. I had fully intended to put my lips upon Ruda’s, to turn her to ice, to make her feel as cold as their charade had left me. But that revenge had proven bitter instead of sweet.

  “Well, I can promise your deaths won’t be nearly as pleasant,” Lwazi says.

  “Or as quick,” Nkosazana adds. “We’re going to drain every ounce of blood in your veins first.” She grins, eyes spitefully hidden behind her sect-issued, mirrored goggles. “An event like this deserves a spectacle. It deserves an audience!”