by Evan Winter
Esi saw the man who’d spoken. It was another Lesser, another big Lesser who wore the uniform of a general. Under any other circumstances, she would have found the pairing funny, but the Lesser in the uniform of a general was trying to save their lives.
“Ayim!” he said again, hurrying up the stairs as five of the six ignored him.
The only one who moved a muscle was the enormous Lesser.
“Tau …,” the big man said, stepping between her and Tsiora’s savage.
“Move or be moved, Uduak,” Tsiora’s champion said, and though the one named Uduak was head and shoulders bigger than the scarred champion, he did as he was bid, clearing the way for the demon.
“Stop it, Tau!” the Lesser general shouted from halfway up the stairs.
But Tsiora’s champion did not stop, prompting Abasi to take Esi’s wrist and pull her behind him. “I surrender, and will give the queen’s sister into your care, if you promise she’ll not be harmed.”
That was not the plan. Abasi had said she’d be fine, that they might both be fine, but Esi understood how, standing opposite that madman, Abasi had to wonder if they were both about to be cut down.
“Champion to champion, tell me you will not harm—”
“You, a champion?” Tsiora’s savage rasped, shaking his head. “No, Abasi Odili, you’re a traitor, usurper, coward, and murderer, and I will have justice.”
“This isn’t it, Tau,” said the Lesser general, holding a hand to his body, just below his chest, and coughing as he ambled over. “We’re better than this.”
Tsiora’s champion licked his dry lips. “I am this.”
“Give us the sister, Abasi Odili,” said one of the warrior women, dressed like a caricatured cross between an Omehian handmaiden and a hedeni savage.
Goddess wept, Esi thought, it was Auset and Ramia. Esi couldn’t believe it and wondered if they might help her.
Abasi, however, had his eyes on Tau and his body in front of Esi’s. He didn’t know the women were Tsiora’s handmaidens.
“Can you guarantee her safety?” he asked Auset.
“I can,” Auset said. “Give her to us, quickly. I do not think you have long to live, and if she is with you when this begins, she may not survive it either.”
“I’ve surrendered and have no weapons,” Abasi said, using his hold on Esi’s hand to guide her away from him and toward the sisters. “Is this to be the way of the new world under Queen Tsiora?” He handed Esi over, and though she tried pulling away, Auset’s grip was bronze and Esi’s choices were to go with her or have her wrist broken.
“Is this an indication of how life will be?” Abasi asked.
“Leave those worries for the living,” Tsiora’s champion said, swords aimed for Abasi’s chest.
“Stop him,” Esi said, begging action from the sisters. “Stop him!”
“Look away, princess,” Ramia said. “He can’t be stopped.”
SISTERS
Sister!” called a voice that had shadowed Esi her entire life.
“Tsiora, call him off!” Esi shouted, trying to step closer to the balcony so she could see her sister.
“Champion Solarin! Await us,” her sister said.
“Queen Tsiora, if you will,” said the Lesser general, “give us a moment before coming up.”
The constant shouting seemed to have wearied the general, and he kept touching the same point below his chest. It looked, to Esi, as if the Lesser was breathing like he had to pull his air through a hollow river reed.
“A moment, my queen,” the general shouted, having gathered his strength. “We have not yet searched Princess Esi and Abasi Odili for weapons or other danger.”
“Search them, then, Grand General Buhari,” Tsiora said. “We wish to see our sister.”
“Tau, back off,” the general hissed.
The champion moved neither forward nor backward, and the general pushed his way past him to stand in front of Abasi.
“Listen to me, Odili,” the general said. “Listen very carefully, because—”
“You have an offer for me, Lesser?” Abasi asked. “Is it similar to the type of offers you made in the Queen’s Melee, perhaps?”
Esi did not know why Abasi goaded the man. He seemed the only one with any reason among the Lessers.
“Search them,” Hadith said to the smiling one and the oil-footed Lesser.
The smiling one went straight for her.
“Themba, you can search Odili with Yaw’s help,” the general said. “Leave the princess to the handmaidens.”
Esi’s quiet voice laughed when she heard the sisters called handmaidens and went silent when they began to grab and squeeze at her body, checking her over.
“Odili, the champion named you a traitor, and you are one.”
“Am I now, Gener—”
“Don’t waste my time or your life,” the general said as the other two Lessers grabbed and groped Odili, searching him too. “The queen is going to come up here in a moment, and what you do and say will determine if you live or die.”
“Hadith …,” growled Tsiora’s champion, but the general pressed on.
“No weapons on the princess,” said Auset.
“I cannot tell you that you won’t hang,” said the general, “but if you chastise yourself, swear fealty to our true queen, and renounce your actions, you may spend whatever natural days you have left in a prison instead of dangling on the end of a rope.”
“No weapons on the traitor,” said the smiling Lesser.
“Why?” asked Abasi. “Why do you want this from me?”
The Lesser general squinted at Abasi. “The Xiddeen will be re-forming their alliance—”
Abasi’s eyebrows lifted. “And you need my public support so that my soldiers, as well as the armies fighting in the Curse, will accept your leadership.”
“I need them to accept their rightful queen.”
“And for that, you need me,” Abasi said.
“Hadith …,” the champion growled.
“What of surrender to the hedeni?” Abasi asked. “Is that still Tsiora’s aim?”
“It was never meant to be a surrender,” said Hadith. “It was meant to be peace.”
Abasi had that look he got when explaining something he shouldn’t have to explain. “Buhari, you’re young, but you’ve lived and achieved enough to know that the things we mean to do rarely match the things we actually accomplish. If she’d had her way, it would be the end of who we are. You must see that.”
The Lesser general had no time to answer. Tsiora had climbed the stairs, and the balcony went quiet.
Queen Tsiora Omehia, Esi saw, was wearing black from head to toe, and as was her custom, she was in a formfitting dress. But to Esi’s surprise, she also wore a cloak and hood that looked very much like a Gifted’s robes.
Still, it was her dress that held Esi’s attention. The material was layered and overlapping, simulating the appearance of scales, simulating the appearance of dragon skin. The effect was striking, and when Tsiora stepped onto the balcony, she didn’t look like a queen—she was one.
Her sister’s companion completed the air of regality that seemed to emanate from her. Tsiora was with Kellan Okar, and though Esi hadn’t seen him in cycles and though he now had strange scars on the sides of his neck, she knew him on sight.
His was not a face that fell from memory, for the Goddess made few women or men who could draw the eye like Kellan did. It was embarrassing to admit it, but seeing them together made Esi feel as if she should bow her head. They were a perfectly matched pair and she couldn’t understand how her sister could make a scarred and limping wretch her champion when men like Kellan Okar existed.
The only answer was that she really was the person Abasi feared her to be. Tsiora, queen of surrender, hewed closer to the path Ukufa had wrought than the one the Goddess made. Tsiora was on the wrong path, and as much as that thought sickened Esi, she did believe that women could change the direction of their lives but w
orried it might be too late for her sister.
Tsiora might be too far gone. She was so debased she let that Lesser touch her, had probably let him lie with her, and could it matter if Tsiora changed who she was, when he would always be some part of who she’d been?
“Esi,” her sister said, sweeping onto the second-floor balcony as if she were being drawn onto a dance floor. “Our Esi.”
She was perverse.
“Tsiora,” Esi said, the unadorned name causing her sister’s smile to slip and her steps to slow. “Queen Tsiora,” Esi added.
The smile returned, brighter than before, and Tsiora took Esi in her arms, kissing her on both cheeks.
“Esi, we were so worried, but it’s over now. You’re safe now.”
Esi’s quiet voice howled.
“Oh, Esi, your head,” her sister said. “It’s … it’s happening right now, isn’t it?”
They were all looking at her, and Esi’s shame burned almost as hot as her fear.
“It’s not,” she said, barely able to hear herself over the quiet voice’s clamor. “It doesn’t happen anymore. I’m well. I’m well now.”
“There’s a priestess. Her name is Hafsa Ekene, she may be able to help.”
“I’m well,” Esi said, pulling back from her sister’s embrace. “I don’t need help.”
“Queen Tsiora, please,” Abasi said. “It makes it worse to speak of it, and—”
Her sister rounded on Abasi, stabbing a finger in his direction like it was one of her champion’s blades. “Silence, you. Speak again without our leave and we’ll have your tongue.”
The speed with which Tsiora could become cruel had always startled Esi, and it had been that way since they were children. She still remembered every time her sister had become angry or upset and lashed out, telling her that she’d never be queen.
Tsiora used to tell her that all the time. She’d tell Esi that, though they looked alike, they were different in all the ways that mattered. She’d tell Esi that she wasn’t special and she’d call her broken, mocking her and changing the words to her favorite songs to nasty poems about how Esi didn’t speak to the Goddess, but just to herself.
The worst of it, though, was that when Tsiora had just threatened Abasi, it had also smashed Esi’s illusions. She’d known they were still in danger, of course she had, but seeing her sister, being held by her, it made some small part of the nightmare feel just a little bit safer. But Esi didn’t feel that way anymore.
“Queen Tsiora,” said the Lesser general, “I believe I have an understanding with Councillor Odili.”
“Do you, General,” Esi’s sister said.
“Odili will publicly claim responsibility for endangering the Omehi queendom and submit himself to both your rule and justice.”
“How very generous of him,” she said.
“My queen, his crimes are great and the harm he’s caused is immeasurable, but by accepting guilt he will invalidate any outstanding resistance to your rightful rule. It’s a means to—”
“What happens to him?” asked Tsiora’s champion.
“Beg pardon?”
“You heard me, Hadith.”
Champion or no, Esi expected her sister to chastise the man for speaking out of place, but she did nothing.
“It’s my suggestion that Abasi Odili’s lands, titles, and wealth return to the queen and queendom,” said the Lesser general, “and that the man himself be sentenced to imprisonment for the rest of his natural—”
Tsiora’s champion laughed and Esi jumped. It was a dirty sound that maddened her quiet voice.
“No, Hadith,” the champion said.
“Tau, there’s so much at stake, and—”
“Queen Tsiora, I have done all that you’ve asked. I led those closest to me to the walls of Palm City, and we came with an army of Lessers at our backs. The rebellion is quelled and your sister stands safe next to you. But my task, the task you set for me, was one of vengeance, and I would see it finished.”
Esi could see that Abasi wanted to speak, but he didn’t dare. Her sister was as good as her word and she wouldn’t balk at having one of the barbarians cut out his tongue.
However, the Lesser general was not under the same threat. “Tau, this won’t bring any of them—”
“Ask us,” Tsiora said to her twisted champion. “Ask anything of us.”
The Lesser stared at her sister like no one else existed in all the world, and Esi saw it then. It was faint, but she could see it running horizontally between them, moving as if it were alive, spiraling like the pillars of fire the guardians spit. It was a dark and grotesque energy and it leashed them to each other. Her quiet voice saw it too and, in its dolor, came closer to overpowering her than it had since she was a girl.
Run, it told her, run, run, run.
“A blood duel in the Great Circle of Palm City with Lessers and Nobles filling it to overflowing,” Tsiora’s champion said. “I want to fight him to the death.
“And you will, my champion,” the queen of the Omehi said. “You will.”
FAITH
Run, run, run, her quiet voice shouted, when it had to know she wouldn’t abandon Abasi. Esi loved him, and though her quiet voice was right that they were in danger, it was wrong about how to survive it.
They couldn’t run, but they’d been handed a chance to fight, and for the sake of the Omehi, Abasi, and the life growing inside her, Esi would take it.
“You’re allowing this?” she asked her sister. “A blood duel between two champions?”
“Two champions?” her sister asked.
The Lesser general was standing beyond Tsiora, and he was in her line of sight. Esi saw it when his eyes widened, as if, impossibly, he’d already grasped her intent. Seeing the danger before the others, he tried to stop her.
“Don’t do it, Princess Esi,” Tsiora’s grand general said. “Things are not as they seem—”
She refused to be foiled by a Lesser. “I feel the Goddess’s voice inside me, sister.”
Tsiora turned to her and Esi could see the cruelty rising from wherever it was that her sister kept it hidden. “Esi, you’re confused and don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Oh, sweet sister, I know exactly what I’m saying.”
“Stop it,” Tsiora said. “You know the Goddess doesn’t speak to you. She never has and never will.”
“Because I’m not Gifted, sister? Because I’m not like you?”
“What does that mean?” Tsiora asked.
“He’s right, you know that, don’t you?” Esi said.
“Who?”
“Bas.”
“Abasi Odili?”
“He’s right about you. You’re not fit to lead.”
“How dare you,” Tsiora said.
“Do the rest of them know that I was born first?” Esi asked.
“The stress has undone you.”
“They don’t know, do they?”
“Esi …”
“Do they know that the Gifted come to princesses when they’re just little girls? Do they know that they sent us to the demons over and over again, pushing us to see if we could hide from them, calling it a game, and—”
“Stop it, Esi—”
“I couldn’t hide, Tsiora. I couldn’t hide and the monsters would find me and hurt me, and those evil black-robed slatterns kept sending me back to them.”
“Shut up—”
“I was a child, Tsiora.”
“Shut up!”
“A child. Remember, Tsiora? Remember how our dear mother wouldn’t name us until after were tested? Our mother who called us ‘girl’ and ‘child’ until she could be sure that she was giving the right name and the right to rule to the right one.”
“Esi …”
“That’s not my name. You have my name. I was the firstborn, but here you are, Tsiora, queen of the Omehi, a thief who stole her sister’s name and life because of a gift you did nothing to earn.”
“Esi, you should be car
eful now,” her sister said.
“Tell me something. You say you speak for the Goddess. Tell me, does She shape the world as She wishes it to be? Is that why you, second born, are queen, and I am called a usurper for taking back what’s mine? What do you think, Tsiora the second?”
Her sister had her hands squeezed into tight, tiny fists. “Everything that happens, happens because She wills it.”
And just like that, Esi had her. “If you believe that to be true, don’t demean the Goddess by fighting your champion against mine with nothing at stake but their blood. Let it be known that the victor of the duel shall determine who among us is the rightful queen of the Omehi. Will you do that, faithful Tsiora?”
Abasi risked having his tongue cut loose. “No, Esi, I can’t—”
And Kellan Okar, beautiful as he was, did an ugly thing. The Greater Noble slammed an elbow into Abasi’s stomach, doubling him over. “Stay silent, Odili. You heard the queen.”
Odili spluttered, working to draw breath, and Esi wanted to go to him, but she had to finish it.
“Let the Goddess decide which queen must rule,” she said.
“There’s only one queen,” Tsiora told her.
“There will be, when Ananthi proves who it is, in front of thousands.”
Tsiora leaned back on her heels. “You blame us for your childhood, when we were a girl too? You blame us and let a man use you to tear our people apart. Esi, what do you want from us?”
“Want? From you?” Esi asked. “I want to know if you’re as faithful as you claim. I want, more than anything, to find out if the Goddess really holds you as close as you kept telling me She did when we were growing up.” Esi took a step toward her sister and the handmaidens closed in. “What do I want? I want much the same thing your Low Common does. I want our champions to fight to the death, but I want it so that the Goddess can choose Her true queen and I can finally have the life She told me was mine.”
Tsiora slammed a fist through the air. “It’s not Her you hear speaking!”
“We’ll see.”
“Enough!” Tsiora said, rushing over to stand toe-to-toe with her, and, surprising herself, Esi didn’t flinch.
She held her ground against Tsiora, who’d been so quick to hit when they were younger, and before her courage failed her, she let the rest of her speech tumble out. “A duel between champions to determine the true queen of the Omehi. No Guardian scale, bronze only, and one sword each.”
