Raybearer

by Jordan Ifueko

  We sat on the terrace farthest from the stage, shielded from view by ferns that needed trimming. From our hiding spot, I could still make out the scene below.

  During festivals, griots performed in the Theatre Garden, declaiming praise poems about the emperor and his council. This afternoon, however, the lower terraces were crowded with Imperial Guard warriors. Nearly naked and glistening with sweat, they drilled in groups as Sanjeet barked orders from the stage.

  “Hyena Cohort, shields up!” His voice was hoarse and joyless. “Hold. Shoulders square. Hold your position, I said. Lion Cohort, charge. Again. Again.”

  Repeatedly, a group rushed forward as the other stood its ground. A wall of shields braced against the onslaught of shoulders and spears. The men and women were training, I realized, to contain riots.

  Anointed Honor Wagundu, Olugbade’s High Lord General, observed the drills with stern approval. Then a gangly young man rushed onstage, bobbing apologies for being late.

  Kirah stiffened. “Tar—”

  I dove behind the terrace’s hanging ferns, blocking my view. My vision blurred and reddened, but before kill, kill began to pulse through my veins, I fumbled with the neckline of my wrapper and seized the sunstone.

  The murderous lust still burned in my throat, but my mind cleared. “Hold my arms,” I whispered to Kirah. “I need to see how bad it gets.” She complied, and I steeled my jaw and peered through the curtain of ferns.

  It was the first time I had seen Dayo since leaving him in the keep, still bleeding from my knife wound.

  I drank him in, blessing his legs for standing, his side for being whole. From this distance, I couldn’t tell if his torso had a scar. But he looked healthy, albeit awkward, shifting from foot to foot as he nodded at the warriors. My heart brimmed with sympathy. Dayo had always shrunk from violence. But he was required to watch the Imperial Guard with Sanjeet and help design their drills. His face looked wan and sleepless. After a day of studying with his council, he probably spent his nights helping Olugbade prepare for the Treaty Renewal, which was two days after my First Ruling.

  “Get strong,” I murmured, gripping the sunstone until it cut into my palm. “Stay safe from me.”

  Kirah helped me stand and we hurried away, leaving our confused handmaidens to fetch the prayer mats and scurry after. “He misses you,” Kirah whispered, threading my arm firmly through hers until the Theatre Garden was out of sight. “He barely sleeps unless I sing, or Thérèse makes one of her teas. If you won’t see him, you could at least write.”

  I had refused the notes Dayo sent daily to my tower, worried they would weaken my resolve to stay away. “Studying is better than writing,” I said. “If I find a purpose to break the curse, I won’t have to stay away.”

  Kirah huffed a laugh. “We’d better find your purpose quick. Rumors are getting out of control.”

  I turned sharply. “What rumors?”

  “There aren’t many reasons why two anointed council members would sleep in a tower all by themselves,” she pointed out. “Even our council’s getting suspicious. Mayazatyl’s demanded regular reports of your belly size.” When I looked blank, she wiggled her eyebrows. “She thinks you’re carrying Sanjeet’s pikin. To save you both from palace scandal, she’s concocted an elaborate plan for Dayo to pass off your love child as his own.”

  I snorted. “She would. Am’s Story,” I groaned. “When we move to An-Ileyoba for good, Mayazatyl’s gossiping rear end will fit right in.”

  “I hope we never move here,” Kirah blurted. “I mean, I know we will. We have to. It’s what we’ve trained for our whole lives. It’s just . . .” She sighed and stopped in the tiled northern courtyard, letting the pristinely groomed peacocks explore the hem of her priestess kaftan. Beyond Palace Hill, the roofs of Oluwan City spread in a jagged sea. Smoke rose from bonfire mountains, where the stories of griots burned. “When I was in the Blessid Valley, I longed for a bigger world. I wanted to travel the empire, learn all there was to know. But the more I learn about Songland, the more suffocating Aritsar feels. I don’t know what I want. I only know the world is big, and I’m sick of pretending it’s smaller.”

  The day of my First Ruling crept closer. Crowds of dignitaries, nobility, and commoners would attend, and so the palace bustled in preparation. Many royals, I learned with chagrin, would attend as well. This was unusual: The continent’s rulers typically sent a proxy to everything but the grandest imperial events. But since my First Ruling would occur so close to the Treaty Renewal, many of the empire’s royals would be at the palace already.

  Kirah and I searched fruitlessly for the lost masks of Aiyetoro, the only proof that empress and princess Raybearers truly existed. We combed the Imperial Library for leads every day, and searched the palace crypts at night. I continued to visit Heaven. I could not come often, in case word got back to Olugbade, and his suspicion of me grew. But after hefty bribes, the guards allowed me to bring small gifts: a lump of soap, a thin blanket, a pot of salve for The Lady’s wind-whipped skin. After sliding the items through the bars of her cell door, I would sit—sometimes in silence, other times asking questions. She mostly ignored the latter, especially ones about her childhood. She only paid attention when I babbled about the inner workings of Yorua Keep, or about being tutored by Thaddace and Mbali.

  “You rarely speak of the High Judge without mentioning the priestess,” she observed one day, cocking her head.

  I shrugged and blushed. “They’re always together.”

  “That sounds like a story, daughter.” When I hesitated, she laughed and patted my hand through the bars. “Do not worry for their reputation. I am hardly in a position to spread gossip.”

  I was eager to make her smile again. Shyly, I recounted the time I had stumbled on Thaddace and Mbali at the height of passion. The Lady listened intently and chuckled. I joined in, the first time I had ever shared a joke with my own mother.

  I wondered if she had heard the rumors about me and Sanjeet. Mothers, according to Kirah, were protective of daughters when it came to young men. But if The Lady suspected that I had flirtations, she never asked about them. The existence of a love affair—or any aspect of my life unrelated to her master plans—never seemed to cross her mind.

  Sanjeet collapsed, exhausted, into my arms every night. He would gather me to himself, limbs rigid as amber until at last he relaxed, discarding the mask he wore for the Guard. On the worst days, the mask remained even as he slept. Frowning with worry, I would rub circles into his clenched jaw until it released.

  “The drilling’s over,” he said one night. “We’ve begun our campaigns in the city.” The smell of bonfires still lingered in his hair. His hands were newly bruised from when civilians had fought back, resisting when their drums and books were wrenched away. Against Sanjeet’s Hallow, they would not have resisted long.

  “You won’t have to enforce the Unity Edict forever,” I said, though the comfort sounded hollow even to me. “People will get used to it. And things could change when Dayo’s emperor.”

  “How many nightmares will I have by then? And how many will I have caused?” He smiled grimly, turning away on the pallet. “I guess Amah was wrong. I will always earn my keep by breaking bones.”

  I scowled into the darkness, tracing patterns on his muscled back until he fell asleep. “This is not,” I whispered, “what I crossed a coal pit for.”

  In the small hours of the morning, I lit a palm oil lamp and penned a calfskin letter, sealing it with my ring. Then I rapped on my tower door, which I had insisted be locked at night. I slid back the wooden hatch that hid a grate in the door’s center, allowing me to peer into the antechamber where my attendants slept. A yawning Bimbola staggered to the hatch, and I stuck my hand through the grate.

  “This letter must be posted at first light,” I said, and dropped a hefty portion of my imperial allowance into her palm. “Divide this among the runners. They’ll have to use lodestones. Spare no expense.” Bimbola nodded, eyes rou
nd with curiosity. As she bustled out of the antechamber, she snuck a glance at the letter’s sealed front, which was addressed in my hurried script: KEEYA THE MERCHANT. PIKWE VILLAGE, SWANA.

  CHAPTER 29

  The night before my first ruling arrived, and the empress Raybearer masks were still nowhere to be found.

  I paced my tower room, trying to drum out the parade of death in my head. Poison, contagion, gluttony, burning. The grit of sandstone pressed into the balls of my feet. Sanjeet watched worriedly as I tried to crush the words into the floor, pound them to dust, where they could never hurt anyone.

  Drowning, suffocation, bleeding.

  “The emperor doesn’t know,” I said aloud, shredding the hem of my sleeping scarf. “The emperor doesn’t know what The Lady’s weakness is.” The Lady had never finished anointing her Eleven, which meant she could still be killed by someone other than her anointed. Olugbade only needed to figure out how.

  Beast mauling, disaster. Organ-death, witches’ hexes, battery.

  “He’ll probably try every one until he finds it.” My voice was barely audible. By now, the edge of my sleeping scarf was a tangled mess of thread. “It will hurt her. Even if she doesn’t die, it will hurt. Jeet—I don’t—I don’t know what to—”

  He folded me into his chest, but I stood rigid as steel. “Dayo and the others will be happy to see you again,” he murmured. “They’re in the Children’s Palace, preparing for your ruling right now. When I left them, Kameron and Theo were, ah, debating whether Kameron could smuggle a meerkat pup into the ceremony.”

  I laughed weakly, accepting the distraction. “Why?”

  “Kam thinks you could use the emotional support.”

  Sanjeet fetched The Lady’s enchanted glass from the window seat, and I watched as my council siblings stood like mannequins around the Hall of Dreams, swathed in jewels and finery, teasing each other as palace garment-makers hovered, attaching buttons and hemming trains.

  Yesterday, the garment-makers had come to prepare my First Ruling garments, clucking over which hues suited me best. I had almost chosen a spicy green silk, embroidered with bursts of gold. Then Bimbola had cleared her throat.

  “The emperor suggested you wear this, Anointed Honor.” She held up a stiff ream of brocade, bleached as bone, with the Kunleo sun-and-stars glittering in a pattern across the hem.

  Empire cloth. So the world would know who owned me.

  I spied on the Children’s Palace long into the night, even after Sanjeet had fallen asleep, and my siblings had collapsed onto their pallets. But one bed in the Hall of Dreams, I noticed with a frown, was empty.

  A soft knock sounded on my tower door.

  I sighed. That would be Bimbola, come to chide me for burning a lamp instead of resting. I padded across the room and opened the door hatch, peering through the grate.

  My attendants had vanished from the antechamber. Only one person stood outside my door, shadowy in the dim moonlight.

  “Dayo,” I breathed.

  My hands flew up to my throat, seizing the sunstone. His broad features were still smooth and unlined, but somehow he looked older. Wiser. He wore only his bedclothes, laces undone at the collar to reveal his obsidian mask. He had been dressed the same way my last night at Yorua, when I’d lured him to that cliff.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, choking through the flood of violent urges that still controlled me, and thanking Am for the locked wooden door. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You haven’t been reading my messages.”

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Because you’ll try to kill me again?”

  His matter-of-fact tone made me shiver. As I watched his face, I realized with slow, pressing discomfort that I had no idea what Dayo was thinking. The sensation was foreign. From the moment we met, Dayo’s features had been a page for me to read as I liked. Even when we stood apart in a room, the warmth of his Ray glowed at the edges of my mind, relaying his emotions and fleeting desires. His Ray did not reach for me now.

  I searched his pure black eyes in the dark, smarting at the caution I saw there. His former trust had seemed like weakness to me, a folly, not a gift. Now I knew that trust was a privilege. Suddenly, I regretted burning his letters.

  “I only came back because of your father’s summons,” I mumbled. “I didn’t want to put you in danger again.”

  Dayo considered me, grave and guarded. “Sanjeet told me about Melu’s pool. He said that The Lady’s hold over you will end if you find a purpose. Or if—”

  “If I sentence her to death,” I finished. “But it doesn’t matter if I break The Lady’s curse, Dayo. You don’t have to take me back. I know I’ve lost your trust.” I shifted, wondering how he could look so calmly at someone who had slid a knife into his gut. “I’ll leave after the ruling. Forever, if you like.”

  “Leave?” For the first time, his features gleamed with pain. “So you would break your promise again.”

  “What promise?”

  “The night of the fire in the Children’s Palace, you said you’d never abandon me or Aritsar. We made a pact.”

  “You should never have anointed me,” I said. “We both know that. If I had told you from the beginning—what I was, what I’d been sent to do—”

  “I knew, Tarisai. I knew the whole time.”

  Speech deserted me.

  Dayo shrugged, playing with the strings of his nightshirt. “Do you remember when we used to share my pallet in the Children’s Palace? When we were little. Once, after you fell asleep, you put your hand on my face. And I saw everything. The alagbato, The Lady. The day she showed you my picture, and wished for you to kill me. You didn’t mean to share that memory, I think. But you wanted to. Looking back, you tried to warn me a million different ways. Even while you slept.”

  “‘You remembered,’” I murmured. “That’s what you said when I stabbed you.” Suddenly I was kneeling beneath the quiver tree again, Dayo’s voice rasping in my ear. You missed my heart. That means you’re stronger than her.

  “I tried to help,” he said. “I thought I could keep you from remembering, so The Lady couldn’t control you.”

  “That’s why you always kept me from thinking about Swana,” I said slowly. “And why you never let Mbali tutor me. You were trying to protect us both.” My head spun. “If you knew what I came to do, then why not have me killed? Why anoint me?”

  “Because you could have let me die so many times. When you saved me from that fire, I knew you weren’t The Lady’s pawn. I needed you. More importantly . . . I knew Aritsar needed you.” He swallowed hard. “It’s hard to explain. When I woke up after Enitawa’s Quiver, and you were gone, it felt like being stabbed again. Losing you wasn’t like losing a friend, Tarisai. It was like . . . being erased. Like losing half of myself.”

  “I tried to kill you. It didn’t make sense for me to stay, not then and not now. It isn’t safe.”

  “What if you found the empress and princess masks?”

  I froze, and my throat went dry. No. He couldn’t. He couldn’t possibly know unless—

  “Don’t be angry at Kirah,” he said slowly. “She confirmed it when I asked, but I’ve always known you had the Ray. I could feel it when we were children. And I’ll admit: It scared me, Tar. I had trained my whole life to be emperor, but deep down, I knew you could do it better.”

  “That isn’t true,” I snapped. “To be as kind as you are—to see the best in everyone, the way you do every day—that takes more courage than I’ll ever have. You’re exactly what this empire needs, Dayo. Aritsar would be heartless without you.”

  “But it would be weak without you,” Dayo retorted. “You see a mural where I see fractured pieces. You see systems. I only see people.”

  “Am didn’t give you the Ray for nothing. You were meant to rule.”

  “We were meant to be a team. And you made a promise.” Dayo reached through the grate. Shaking, I released one hand from the sunstone, and let him entwine my f
ingers with his. “Swear you won’t break it again, Tar. This isn’t our parents’ story. Swear on our blood bond that you’ll do whatever it takes to stay.” His grip tightened, and his expression was bright, desperate. “Whatever it takes.”

  I closed my eyes. In that moment, my hours of meditation with Kirah came to a crystal clear solution.

  My bellysong was to protect Dayo. And the only way to ensure his safety—the only path to my freedom—was to kill The Lady.

  My heart sank to my sandals. I knew what I owed Dayo. I had failed him once already, and no matter how his father had wronged The Lady—no matter how that girl in the Bhekina House study still longed for her mother—I could not fail Dayo again.

  I gripped his fingers in return. “Tomorrow,” I said quietly, “I will be who the empire needs me to be.” I kissed the seal of his imperial ring and added, “That’s a blood promise.”

  I twisted the gold cuffs on my arms, rubbing the scarlet marks they had dug into my skin. The sun had barely risen over An-Ileyoba, and thousands of Arits—including the kings, queens, and chieftains of twelve realms—were filling the Imperial Hall to witness my First Ruling. From the corridor where I listened, floors above, I could hear them: a dull echoing roar.

  Sanjeet stood beside me at the double woven door flaps of a dressing lounge, where our council awaited my entrance.

  “Mayazatyl will be disappointed you aren’t pregnant,” Sanjeet observed. I laughed so I wouldn’t cry. His hand closed around mine. He looked magnificent in the sweeping, pearl-studded black kaftan of Dhyrmish nobility. Waiting to be ceremonially dressed before our council, I wore nothing but a silk robe and the sunstone.

  “I should have found a way to visit them,” I said. “I should have been braver. Now I won’t have time to explain.”

  After the dressing ritual, I would enter the Imperial Hall in a grand procession, flanked on all sides by my council siblings: a display of empire unity. The whole continent would be watching—but in this moment, I only cared about my council siblings. Would they forgive me for staying away all these months? How would I ever explain?