Raybearer

by Jordan Ifueko

  “You were perfectly happy,” she continued. “I provided every comfort you needed, and you repaid me with hatred. You chose to forget your own mother.”

  “I don’t hate you.” This was not how I had imagined our reunion. I had envisioned The Lady smiling as I appeared on the landing, holding me through the bars as we cried in each other’s arms. I had thought she would tell me about her days in exile, her years as a child bandit queen. I had planned to talk about my life in return, sharing the adventures that spies could never tell her.

  Instead, The Lady crossed her arms and stared over my head. Her features were stony, wounded, a queen betrayed by her vassal.

  “I was scared,” I protested. “You told me to kill someone. An innocent person.”

  “Everything I said,” she replied, “everything I did, was for you. For our future together.”

  “You never told me anything. I didn’t know—”I broke off and glanced at the guards farther down the landing, lowering my voice even more. “I didn’t know you wanted to be empress. But Melu told me everything. About Aiyetoro’s masks. And about . . . you.”

  The whites of The Lady’s eyes flashed. “Then Melu is a fool,” she growled, “and he has put you in grave danger. If Olugbade’s brat ever finds out that you have a right to his throne . . .”

  “I don’t want Dayo’s throne, Mother. Even if I did, I wouldn’t hurt him. I can’t do it. I won’t.”

  A tarnished cup lay by The Lady’s hand. She plunged it into the murky bucket of water and drank. “Did Melu show you,” she asked, “what your darling prince’s father did to me?”

  “He shouldn’t have banished you. I know that was wrong. But Dayo isn’t responsible—”

  “Did Melu show you what happens to a palace girl who is thrown onto the streets?”

  My heart sank. I shook my head.

  She continued in a cool tone. “Did Melu let you see the bruises on my body? The scars that never faded? Did he show you the starvation and the cold? Or did he shield you from those things, as I shielded you in Bhekina House, where you never felt a pang of hunger or endured a single day of suffering?”

  Shame heated my face. “I didn’t mean to be ungrateful,” I stammered. “I’m sorry, Mother. About everything.”

  “And I will forgive you,” she replied, “because you are mine. But your years under Olugbade’s thumb have made you weak.” She sighed. “I expected more of you, Made-of-Me.”

  I swallowed hard and said, “Say my name, Mother.”

  Her jaw hardened. She pressed her lips together and was silent.

  “You’ve never done it before,” I said, gripping the bars. “I . . . I just want to hear you say it.”

  Tears glinted on her smooth cheeks. “So Olugbade has won after all. You have let him convince you to disown me. You despise being made of me, you are ashamed.”

  “No. No, Mother, I just—”

  “You would let him poison your mind. You would cast off your own blood, your own family.”

  Humiliation washed over me. I remembered just minutes earlier, bowing with a docile smile before the emperor, who had signed my mother’s death warrant.

  “I won’t abandon you,” I whispered.

  “What a coincidence,” murmured The Lady. “That is what Woo In said months ago, when I was captured. I told him to ensure your safety first. But here you are, safe and sound . . . and he is nowhere to be seen. So much for council vows.”

  “Woo In read your journal at Bhekina House,” I said. “He thinks you’ve betrayed him.”

  For the first time, The Lady looked unsettled. She picked at the frayed edge of her mantle, muttering almost to herself. “He will forgive me, of course. He loves me. He is mine, just like all the others.”

  “What is the Redemptor curse? Why did Woo In think you could control it?”

  The Lady dipped her cup again. She poured the water over her fingers, washing away the dried blood until a pale red puddle pooled on the floor. “Do you know why you are more fit to rule Aritsar than that bumbling Kunleo prince?” she asked. “Because your blood is stronger. Thanks to Melu and myself, your veins run with both mortal and immortal royalty. When you anoint a council of your own, that strength will flow into them, just as theirs flows into you. Such power comes with choices, Made-of-Me. And no matter what you say—no matter what promises you make—you must always choose to preserve yourself.”

  My stomach twisted. “I should go.” I stood and backed away from the bars. “I’ll visit—I’ll help you. Don’t worry.”

  “You have never worried me, daughter.” The Lady sighed, turning away. “You have only disappointed.”

  When I returned to my tower, I’d hoped for solitude, a place to release the tears building with each step as I descended from Heaven.

  But the room was a henhouse of attendants, bustling to arrange furniture and cushions as Sanjeet hunched awkwardly in the center. A manservant wrestled another bed pallet into the room, and nodded at me for instruction before setting it down.

  “Will your Anointed Honors need . . . contact?” the head manservant asked me and Sanjeet. “We can connect the pallets.”

  “Of course she needs to touch him,” said Bimbola, bangles ringing as she giggled. “Their Anointed Honors must ward off council sickness. Perhaps it would be better if they shared—”

  “No,” Sanjeet and I blurted in unison. We glanced at each other and reddened.

  “Anointed Honor Sanjeet is here as my personal guard,” I announced stiffly. “Separate pallets are fine. He just needs to sleep between me and the door.”

  The manservant placed the pallets side by side, gave a sidelong glance at me and Sanjeet, and then pushed the pallets together. My attendants built up the fire and laid out basins for washing. Then they stripped Sanjeet and me to our shifts, tittered to themselves, and disappeared.

  We had shared a room before, of course. In various inns on our way to Swana, and beneath the canopy in Melu’s savannah. On the road, conventional propriety had mattered little as we escaped death by Bush-spirits, and followed tutsu sprites to find a mystical ehru. But this was different. Here in the palace, surrounded by hidden whispers and perfumed wall hangings, the space felt . . . heated. Charged.

  Mortified, I sat on one of the pallets and faced away. I busied myself with wrapping my hair in its sleeping scarf. Sanjeet cleared his throat, then retreated to the washbasin. Every sound was magnified: the swish of silk on my ears as I wrapped, the splash of water against his skin.

  I slipped beneath the bedding and felt Sanjeet climb onto his pallet. The scent of rosewater wafted from his hair, mixed with his smell of leather and clay. For several minutes, we lay unnaturally still. Then a breeze whistled across the window, and I thought of The Lady, alone and exposed on the An-Ileyoba turrets. My breath caught. What I intended as an exhale came out as a long, low sob.

  Sanjeet hesitated, then rolled over and touched my arm. “The attendants said you saw her,” he mumbled. “I didn’t know if you wanted to talk about it.”

  “I’m a horrible person,” I whispered.

  “I’ve met worse.”

  For some reason, his clinical honesty made me laugh. I turned and touched his brow, showing him my conversation with The Lady. “She was just a child when the emperor banished her,” I said after the memory had finished. “She was abused and abandoned for years, and all I did was hurt her more. How could I be so ungrateful?”

  Sanjeet stared at me as though I were raving. “She starved you of affection,” he said. “On purpose. She forbade people from touching you. All so you wouldn’t learn enough to ruin her plans.”

  “And to keep me safe,” I pointed out.

  “She let you make your first friend,” he said slowly, “and then ordered you to murder him.”

  I frowned in the dark. “But she was trying to give me a future. She risked everything she had, and I forgot her on purpose. She thinks I hate her. That I want the emperor to kill—”

  “She�
��s manipulating you, like she always has. She made you ashamed of wanting your own name. Tar, how can you think that’s what love is?”

  “I . . . don’t know.” I wiped my nose and shrugged. “You only get one mother, Jeet. It’s like your father. He hurt you, but can you imagine—truly imagine—having any other kind?”

  Sanjeet was silent for a long time, then swallowed once. “No. No, I can’t.”

  Ever since the attendants had left us alone, I had been avoiding his gaze. Now I met it and saw my own ghosts mirrored there. In that moment, the curse of our parents’ legacy—the monsters we loved and feared, and the scars covering us both—tethered us together.

  “I shouldn’t have brought him up,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine.” He shook his head, smiling wanly. “I guess the only gift Father gave me was a way to understand you.” His thumb brushed my tear-streaked face. “A way to share the burden.”

  “I don’t want to share, Jeet. If I fall again, I’m not bringing anyone else with me.”

  “That’s the problem, sunshine girl.” His voice was a rumble in his throat. “When it comes to you, I will never stop falling.”

  He kissed me. It was the first time since Nu’ina Eve, when he held me against the spray of the Obasi Ocean. I longed to lose myself in those solid arms, to believe the promise in each caress. You are not dangerous. You are not cursed. You will never hurt anyone; you will only be loved.

  When we parted, Sanjeet untied the pouch containing my seal from his neck. He pressed the ring into my palm, and didn’t let me give it back. Then something else fell from the pouch, glinting in the dying firelight: the cowrie shell anklet. Sanjeet unhooked the anklet’s clasp and Ray-spoke.

  I love you.

  But I knew, deep down, that love had never fixed anyone. It had only given them the strength to try over, and over, and over again. So when Sanjeet reached for my foot on the pallet’s edge . . . I moved my leg away and said, “I can’t offer you something I don’t have.”

  “I don’t want something. I want you.”

  I closed his fingers around the anklet. “And I don’t belong to myself. Not while The Lady’s still controlling me. I love you too, Jeet, but you can’t be my savior.”

  “Well, I won’t be your jailer,” he retorted. “So what can I be?”

  I held his heavy fist to my lips and caressed the scars. “My hope,” I said. “For a future when kissing you isn’t dangerous.”

  A future, I added in my head, where no child was bound by curses, and every daughter had a name.

  CHAPTER 27

  I laid my head on Sanjeet’s chest, lulled to sleep by his heartbeat. I dreamed first as myself, chasing the scent of jasmine through large, abandoned halls. Then I was a twelve-year-old boy with limbs too long for my body.

  A cramped balcony is my refuge on a street that smells of cardamom. I love my sleepless city of Vhraipur, though Father has done everything in his power to make me hate it. Pure voices drift from the temple across the road, where child acolytes sing on the rooftop. An Ember priestess dances before an altar, her stained arms and legs glistening in the moonlight. With every leap of her body, light shoots into the sky, dissolving in soft clouds of red and purple: a visible prayer. The children worship the Storyteller and Warlord Fire in tandem: Give us mercy. Give us justice. Let it burn, burn, burn.

  I mimic the strong movements of the priestess, sending up a prayer of my own. Protect Amah. Punish Father. Make me brave, brave, brave.

  The rustle of curtains startles me. I drop my arms and pretend to punch the air. “Practicing,” I mumble. “For the fight tomorrow.”

  But it isn’t Father. Amah laughs from the balcony door. “You were dancing,” she says, reaching to stroke my cheek. I am taller than my mother, but still I hang my head, ashamed of my lie. She smells of fennel. Sheer pink muslin drapes her sturdy frame, and dark, curling hair falls to her waist in a gray-streaked braid.

  I reach up to touch her fingers. Then just in time, I remember that my hands are dangerous. I pull back.

  “Don’t tell Father,” I say.

  “I won’t. But you pray so beautifully. Would you like to be a temple dancer?”

  I want to snort. As if Father would let me near a temple, or any building that did not exist for profit. But I shrug instead, not wanting to hurt Amah’s feelings. Sometimes, when she thinks I’m sleeping after a day of pit fights, she sits on the edge of my pallet and watches me. Her hands tremble as she wraps the bruises and wipes away the blood dried on my knuckles. She curses the money that falls from my shirt. Coins thrown at me after each victory. Coins that Father missed. I am a prize bear: a hero in this city that bets on boys like horses.

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  “No child,” Amah whispers, “who has been forced to kill is fine.” Sendhil’s name hangs unspoken between us. “What do you want to be, my son? A blacksmith? A healer? I have seen you set bones before. You sense alignment, find bruises before they appear. You have a gift, Jeeti. Tell Amah what you want.”

  Her arms wrap around my torso. I long to hug her back.

  “Let go,” I say, not moving an inch. “I could hurt you by accident.”

  “You will learn to control your strength. Prince Ekundayo is building his council, and they need candidates from Dhyrma. Your Hallow means a path to Oluwan, my son. A way out.” Her eyes gleam, and I notice a dark purple mark on her shoulder.

  “What’s that?” There are daggers in my voice.

  She pulls away, hastily covering the mark with her shawl. “An accident. Nothing.”

  “Father,” I growl.

  “Nothing,” she repeats, fixing me with a gaze feral in its protection. “I will get you out. Away from this house, from this city. You will not become the man I married. I am sure of it.” She stands on her tiptoes, and kisses my cheek. “You will never make your living by causing pain.”

  Knuckles rapping on wood roused me from Sanjeet’s memory-dream. We sat up, squinting blearily as an imperial warrior marched into the bedroom and bowed. Bimbola and my other attendants scampered in after him.

  “Apologies, Anointed Honors,” Bimbola panted. “We told him you were still sleeping.”

  The warrior handed one calfskin to me and another to Sanjeet. The messages bore the emperor’s seal.

  My summons was from Thaddace. I was to present myself at the Imperial Library, where I would begin my research for The Lady’s trial. When I read the summons aloud, Bimbola made protesting noises.

  “She’ll burn with fever,” she pointed out, confronting the warrior with her hands on her hips. “You expect an Anointed One to spend hours without a member of her council?”

  The warrior inclined his head. “The Prince’s Council will be studying in the Imperial Library today. Anointed Honor Tarisai will have company.”

  “I’d rather study alone,” I blurted, then added, “Or with Jeet.”

  But Sanjeet shook his head. His face had been soft with sleep just moments before, free of shadows and lines. Now, after reading his summons, the stone mask had returned. “The High General requires Dayo and me to drill with the Imperial Guard.”

  “Drill?” I frowned. “For what?”

  “The ‘suppression of dissent.’” He contained a grimace. “We’ll be practicing riot control.”

  Remembering the boy in my dream who had feared his own hands, I stroked Sanjeet’s arm. The attendants noticed and giggled, chattering behind our backs as they brought our trays of breakfast. After we ate, they dressed us in matching outfits, humming with pride when they finished. Apparently, even the Unity Edict couldn’t convince palace courtiers to exchange their finery for empire cloth, though I wondered how long until the request was mandatory. Over his sparse imperial uniform, Sanjeet wore a black robe of crisp jacquard, woven through with gold patterns. I wore a mantle of the same fabric, draped over a silk halter gown the same hue as my skin. The gown’s earth-colored train whispered behind me as I walked, balancing o
n high-soled slippers. I continued to hide the sunstone beneath my clothes.

  The Imperial Library lay just outside the An-Ileyoba gates, a castle in its own right. Orbs of captive sprites lit the cavernous, muraled ceiling, and the walls blazed with wax-dyed tapestry. Black, brown, and scarlet books towered down the aisles, titles tanned on calfskin spines. Boughs of palm fronds and pear blossoms spilled from vases, filling the air with their perfume. A griot’s pure tenor floated above the hush of studious whispers.

  Every family in the empire received library ribbons after paying the imperial tax. Scholar-class ribbons were black, good for five visits a week. Noble-class ribbons were blue, and good for three. Gray-ticketed merchants and peasants were allowed one visit a month. When I flashed my seal, the guards waved me in without a word. There was no limit on knowledge for an Anointed One.

  The central hall ceiling was one of the oldest in Oluwan, with a mural commissioned by the first Imperial High Priestess. It was unusual: Most murals portrayed a story, usually a battle or a coronation. The Imperial Library ceiling, now heavily faded, portrayed two overlapping gold discs, bordered by a multicomplexioned circle of linking hands.

  “Who painted that?” I asked the chief librarian, trying to remember where I’d seen the image before. “Do you know what it means?”

  The heavily robed man frowned, scratching his graying head. “I’m afraid not, Anointed Honor. The mural was commissioned by Aiyetoro, back when the Imperial Library was first being built. Most of the relevant documents vanished over centuries ago.”

  “Aiyetoro?” I echoed. I remembered then where I had seen the symbol of discs and linking hands: tanned faintly into the border of Aiyetoro’s drum. “She built the Imperial Library?”

  The librarian frowned more deeply, nodding. “Yes. Making knowledge accessible to the public was very important to Aiyetoro Kunleo. Too important, in my frank opinion. Knowledge, after all, is dangerous in the hands of the wrong people.”

  “Like an empress who isn’t supposed to exist?”