Raybearer

by Jordan Ifueko

  “What did you think of Dayo’s ruling?” Kirah asked.

  “What does it matter?” I stared over the golden domes of An-Ileyoba. In the city beyond, Oluwan’s orange harvest festival was beginning to gain revelers. “The priests made it clear what council sisters are for. We should focus on protecting Dayo, not changing his rulings.”

  “Priests don’t know everything.”

  “Now, now.” I nudged Kirah’s shoulder, teasing. “Is that what Mama would say?”

  She smirked. Kirah had long ceased to quote her mother’s prim truisms. When we were younger, the other candidates had mocked her—Mama says, Mama says—until she turned pink with anger, and sealed her mouth shut. “They’re spoiled rich brats,” she had complained to me in private.” They’ve never seen a desert, or herded goats, or worked a farm. They were raised to be tested at the palace. They’ve never had a real family.”

  “Neither have I,” I’d pointed out. Kirah knew about my lonely childhood at Bhekina House, though I had kept ehrus and wishes out of it. “Do you think I’m spoiled?”

  “Well . . . yes.” Kirah had flushed, straightening her prayer scarf. “No one made you change soiled nappies. Or chase vultures for miles to find water. Or dry camel dung to fuel the cook fires.” She’d paused, considering me. “But your mother never sang to you, or made you cinnamon milk, or stroked your hair when you were sick. I guess there are different ways of being spoiled.”

  Now, from the rooftop, we could see men and women dancing in the Oluwan City markets, paint shining on their glistening bodies as drums gave a low, infectious heartbeat.

  “Mama believes what the priests say,” Kirah said, answering my question. “That people are like rocks stacked in a totem: men over women, women over children. We accept our roles, or the whole tower falls apart.” She watched the palace’s sun-and-moon banners twist in the wind. “A songbird was not meant to soar as an eagle.”

  I frowned, remembering The Lady’s words on the day I had last seen her. You caged me like a bird, but you could not make me sing.

  “What about Empress Aiyetoro?” I asked. She had surfaced out of the genealogies drummed into me by tutors. Her name was old Arit, and I faintly remembered what it meant: peace from shore to shore. “Aiyetoro ruled Aritsar for decades. She’s the reason women can join the Imperial Guard. She founded the Imperial College, and abolished the interrealm slave trade, and—”

  “Wait.” Kirah held up a hand, cocking her head to listen. “Dayo’s wondering where we are. I’m telling him we’ll be down in a few minutes. Sorry—what were you saying?”

  “Never mind.” I looked away, trying not feel resentful. Kirah was my best friend. The roof had always been our space, away from the spying walls of the Children’s Palace. But Kirah wasn’t mine anymore. She belonged to Dayo and her council siblings now, with their minds connected through the Ray.

  My gaze fell on the Watching Wall, which cut through Oluwan City below. In a muraled parade of conquerors, rainbow plaster enshrined every Kunleo emperor and council. Someday, Dayo’s face would join that parade. And Kirah’s, and perhaps Sanjeet’s as well.

  My brow furrowed as I counted the painted emperors, comparing them to the genealogies in my head. Edebayo the First, Oluwatoyin the Vanquisher, Edunrobo Imperion, Abiyola the Third, Adeyinka the Mighty . . .

  “Empress Aiyetoro isn’t there,” I said at last, blinking with confusion.” They didn’t paint her.”

  “Aiyetoro was an exception,” Kirah said. “I asked the priests about her. They say she was a fluke: Am only gave Aiyetoro the Ray because her father died without male heirs. An exception does not negate the rule.” She flicked a pebble over the edge of the roof, fidgeting with the tasseled edges of her prayer scarf. “You know—when I left home, I believed no place would ever be quite as beautiful, quite as right as the Blessid Valley.”

  “I remember.” I grinned, imitating Kirah at age twelve. “Mama says the Blessid Valley sky was woven by the Pelican itself. A tapestry with no snags, floating over honey-colored mountains.”

  The corner of Kirah’s mouth lifted. “Beauty and order were our idols. To Blessids, a pot is not finished until every lump is smooth. Our parties are always the same: the same songs, the same food. Stories we tell over and over again.” She sighed. “Don’t laugh, but when I first came to the Children’s Palace, I used to fantasize about talking to Mama. In my dreams I’d tell her, ‘Today, I learned how to use a spear!’ Or, ‘Today, I solved a logic puzzle faster than anyone else!’

  And Dream Mama would say, ‘My wise and disciplined girl! See how my Kirah takes her good home training into the big wild world.’ But now when I dream of Mama . . . I say things that make her frown.” Kirah paused, watching a flock of synchronized swallows soar across the red-streaked sky. “I say, ‘Why don’t Blessids ever let women lead the caravans? They do just as much work as the men.’ Or, ‘Why do Blessids wash their hands after trading with other realms? Those people are no dirtier than we are.’ And Mama cries and says, ‘Where did my Kirah go? Who is this sneering girl who spits on her home, who questions her elders? Does the world love you better than your family? Does it swaddle you at night, and fill your belly with goat’s milk? Where is my Kirah?’

  “And I say, ‘I’m here, Mama’—but I’m not.” Kirah bit back a sob. “I’m far away, Tarisai. From all of them. And the more I learn, the farther I feel. I don’t know where home is anymore.”

  I took her hand in mine. We sat in silence, watching the clouds fade to purple, and the torches flickering for miles across the city, like golden prayers in the dark.

  I was not an Anointed One, and so my sleeping mat was far away from Dayo’s platform and the pallets encircling it. But every night—after the candidate-minders had retired to bed, leaving the Hall of Dreams unattended—I embraced my popular role as Dream Giver to the Prince’s Council.

  “I want steamy dreams this time,” said Mayazatyl, propping herself up on her pallet with one hand. She grinned at me, wrinkling the red bar tattooed across her nose. “Can you manage that?” Mayazatyl was Dayo’s council sister from the rainforest realm of Quetzala. She was a prodigy of architecture and weapon design . . . and equally skilled at amassing love notes from tormented candidates.

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine. But I’m not putting in anyone we know.”

  She winked. “Once Dayo completes his council and they send us to Yorua Keep, we’ll be locked in that castle a long time, you know. When you finally let Dayo anoint you, you’ll have to be less of a prude.”

  I looked away, wincing at finally. I was still cursed by The Lady, and until I found a way to break it—to protect Dayo—there would be no anointing. “Go to sleep, Maya.”

  She hastened her slumber by chewing kuso-kuso leaves, and when her chest rose in snores, I touched the top of her silky black hair. I gave her a silly, made-up memory of a handsome warrior stumbling upon her bathing. She subdued him with a crossbow she had designed herself, then seduced him as she nursed his wound. Mayazatyl snuggled into the pallet, sighing contentedly.

  To Kirah, I gave dreams of her mama and baba, who kissed her cheeks and stroked her hair, and said they weren’t angry about her leaving them. For Kameron, Dayo’s rugged council brother from Mewe, I fabricated a pack of hunting dogs, nipping cheerfully at his ankles as he tracked a boar in the forest. Dreams of blooming roses were for Thérèse from Nontes. Adoring crowds were for Ai Ling from Moreyao, and handsome swains for Theo from Sparti. To Umansa, a blind weaver boy from Nyamba, I gave new patterns for his tapestries, swirling them around him in a brilliant prism. Finally, to hard-faced Emeronya from Biraslov, I gave flurries of sweet-tasting snow and a wizened woman who wrapped her in wool, humming a dissonant lullaby.

  Dayo’s sleeping platform was empty. I stared at the satin pillows and panther coverlets, remembering my first day in the Children’s Palace, when Dayo had let me sleep there. For weeks afterward, he had insisted I share the platform with him, and I had pressed my head aga
inst his, feeding dreams into his brow.

  Sighing, I made my way through the maze of mats to a window alcove in the corner: the same place I had found him hiding years before. The curtain was drawn, and a shadow sprawled on the broad sill behind it.

  “It’s weird how often you go back here,” I told the shadow, poking it through the curtain. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll fall off the ledge?”

  The damask screen pushed back an inch. I passed inside, climbing onto the cushioned ledge. The window was unglazed, and so we were exposed on one side to balmy night air.

  Dayo didn’t look up when I sat across from him. His hair stuck out in locs. The laces of his nightshirt lay undone, exposing his collarbone as he cupped an object in his hands.

  “You shouldn’t have that out, you know,” I whispered. “It’s dangerous.”

  The mask was slightly smaller than his palm, and carved to resemble a young lion. A word in the tongue of old Oluwan was engraved on its brow: Oloye. Crown Prince. I shuddered, remembering my first day at An-Ileyoba, when Olugbade taunted me to kill him. Olugbade’s mask was identical to Dayo’s, except that his was marked Oba for emperor, and its mane boasted all twelve colorful stripes.

  “This is the only place I can look at it,” Dayo said, then stared over the window ledge at the blackness below. “It’s hard to believe, sometimes. I could slip over the edge—fall ten stories down to the courtyard—and nothing would happen. I wonder if other princes have ever tried.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” I said, eyeing the mask warily. Nine stripes colored the obsidian mane, jewel tones glittering in the moonlight. For each person Dayo anointed, a new color would appear, representing the immunity that Dayo had gained, in addition to the one with which he was born. Raybearer princes wore the mask around their necks, hiding it always beneath their clothes. They showed it to no one, lest an assassin discover the kinds of death to which they were not yet immune. Only when a Raybearer’s council was complete did he wear the mask openly, displaying his deathless power to all the world.

  Three colors were missing from Dayo’s mask—one for a Djbanti candidate, one for Sanjeet, and one for me.

  “Orange, purple, and red,” Dayo murmured. “Gluttony, contagion, burning.”

  “Shh!” I hissed, slapping his knee. “You want all of Oluwan hearing how to kill you?”

  Dayo didn’t answer; instead he stared longer at the mask before replacing it on a gold chain that hung around his neck and slipped it beneath his tunic to rest with his vial of pelican oil. “Why won’t you let me anoint you?”

  I shrugged, avoiding his gaze. “The Ray doesn’t work on me. It gave me a headache. You know that.”

  “That was four years ago. Before you knew me. Before you—” He broke off and stared hard at the moon. The words he did not say, loved me, hung between us. “I was a wreck in court today. I had no idea what to tell Zyong’o . . . But you did.”

  I flinched. He crossed his arms, raising an eyebrow. “You had a better ruling,” he said. “I could tell. You were scowling into space, like you do when you’ve solved one of the testmaker’s hardest riddles. Am’s Story, Tar—why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you correct me, like you did when we were little?”

  I shrugged. “You’re the Raybearer. It’s not my place to make rulings.”

  “Even if I’m a buffoon at making them?”

  The question made me squirm, but I set my jaw and said, “Oloye” When nothing happened, I waited for emphasis and repeated, “Oloye” Still nothing. “Now you say it,” I pressed him.

  He frowned. “You’ve made your point, Tar.”

  “Say it,” I insisted.

  “Oloye” he sighed, and through his tunic, the eyes of the mask flashed.

  “See?” I said, once the stars stopped spiraling in my vision. “It’s like the stories say. The mask only responds to its rightful owner: a Raybearer of Aritsar. Am chose you for this, Dayo. You don’t need me.”

  “But I do—”

  “Well, you shouldn’t,” I snapped, then winced, regretting it. It wasn’t Dayo’s fault he trusted me so blindly. For four years I had protected him, resisting Mother’s wish by refusing his anointing. But if I’d had any shred of a spine, I would have left him years ago. I would have found a way to escape the Children’s Palace, keeping him safe forever, instead of staying to bask in his affection.

  As if reading my thoughts, Dayo said, “Promise me you won’t leave.” His voice was quiet. But his gaze was dilated, volatile with fear. “Promise you won’t abandon Aritsar.”

  I tried to laugh. “Don’t be dramatic.”

  “I can’t explain it, Tar,” he whispered. “But the moment I first saw you, I knew we were linked. We’re beans in a pod, you and I. I think it’s both of us . . . or neither.”

  My blood ran cold. I didn’t understand. They were words a lover would say, but that was not how Dayo meant them. All I wanted was to be gone from that alcove, away from the raw vulnerability in those dark eyes.

  “Fine. I promise,” I said, wriggling off the ledge and opening the curtain. “Get some sleep, Dayo. And for Am’s sake—stop taking out that mask.”

  I returned to my mat on the girls’ side of the hall, carefully wrapping my hair in its sleeping scarf. Then I lay on the ground, hands folded stiffly beneath my cheek. For what felt like hours, I fought sleep—until at last, heavy footfalls crept to my side, and a shadow fell across my mat.

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” I whispered. “Where in Am’s name have you been?”

  He looked haunted as he stared down at me, and faint, as though he hadn’t slept or eaten all day. He swallowed hard, holding out a hand to help me up. “Please,” he said.

  “Did the emperor ask to speak with you? It’s all right. If it was scary, I can take the memories away—”

  “My amah is dead,” Sanjeet whispered. “Father was taken to prison.”

  CHAPTER 9

  I let Sanjeet Pull me up, and we walked silently to the abandoned palace playroom. Sheet-covered toys rose in white mountains around us. We sat on a dusty divan, Sanjeet’s head in his hands. My insides twisted in knots. I rubbed his broad shoulder as he shook with sobs. After a moment I reached for his face, removing my sleeping scarf to swab at his tears.

  “Should we—” I paused. “Should we burn something for her shade?”

  I had only seen a funeral twice before. The first was in Swana, when a deafening procession had passed Bhekina House: adults and children wailing, rattling seed-filled hosho gourds, and beating bruises into their chests.

  The other time had been here at the Children’s Palace, when Dayo had anointed Theo of Sparti to his council. The moment Dayo had touched Theo’s brow, a Sparti candidate named Ianthe had risen from the banquet hall, walked calmly to the Hall of Dreams, and thrown herself from a window.

  After retrieving the girl’s body, the Children’s Palace attendants had wailed and beat themselves, just like the mourners from Swana. But their eyes, I noticed, were dry. Their wailing was merely a ritual: It was unlucky to bury an unmourned body, and the Sparti girl had no family to cry for her. Ianthe had crossed two thousand miles to reach Oluwan and try for the council. Many Children’s Palace rejects, I would later learn, had traveled alone, and could not afford the lodestone journey home.

  Once the mourners had left and the Hall of Dreams hushed with sleep, the High Priestess of Aritsar crept to the window from which Ianthe had jumped. Of all the Emperor’s Eleven, Mbali visited us most often. At night, she would drift between the lines of pallets, soothing younger candidates who had wet their sheets, and coaxing thrashing children from nightmares.

  Pretending to sleep, I watched as Mbali placed a palm oil lamp in the windowsill and drew a gauzy cloth from her pocket: Ianthe’s candidate sash. She wept—real tears, not the shrieking performance of the earlier mourners—and held a corner of Ianthe’s sash to the lamp. As the cloth burned, the air in the hall suddenly turned cold. I froze in horror as a t
ranslucent girl floated into the hall, shadows clinging to her body like a shroud. She headed straight for Mbali.

  I leapt to my feet to warn the priestess, but she held out a hand to stop me. “Don’t,” she said. “It’s the only time she has left. Shades can only appear once after death. They often don’t come at all . . . if they died at peace.”

  Carefully, the High Priestess held out her arms. Ianthe’s shade rushed into them, and to my surprise, she embraced Mbali with arms as solid as a living child’s.

  “I’ll miss you,” Ianthe said.

  “Not for long,” whispered Mbali, kissing the girl’s translucent head and seeming to suppress a shiver. “You won’t miss a thing where you’re going. Go, child. You’re free at last.” Then she murmured a blessing, and Ianthe vanished.

  “We should burn something of your mother’s,” I told Sanjeet, retrieving an oil lamp from a sconce in the playroom. “Then you can see her again.”

  Hope flickered across Sanjeet’s face. He hesitated, and then pulled a golden anklet from his pocket. “It’s all I have.”

  “It doesn’t have to be the whole thing,” I said, removing a tiny bell from the chain. A memory passed into me—a woman’s foot beating rhythmically on a dust floor, and the ring of throaty laughter. I cast the bell into the lamp, watching as the metal curved and smoldered.

  Nothing happened; the air in the playroom was stagnant. Sanjeet’s expression fell.

  “Mbali said shades only visit if they aren’t at peace,” I said. “Or if they have to tell you something. So maybe it’s a good sign.”

  He nodded woodenly. Desperate to feel useful, I taught him the blessing that Mbali had spoken over Ianthe. We stared into the dwindling lamp and spoke it together: You are immortal now. Immoveable, a thousand hills rolled into one. May you join Egungun’s Parade and pass into paradise at Core.