by Ayana Gray
Ekon shuddered, remembering those bodies too. Those people hadn’t just been killed, they’d been mauled, mutilated. The thought sent a fresh chill down his spine.
“I even remember the day your father died,” Brother Ugo said quietly. There was pain in his voice. “It was a horrible thing to see, to watch the light leave his eyes. Believe me when I tell you that kind of violence was the work of a beast, Ekon.” He met his gaze. “It was not the work of a man.”
Something cold and unsettling seeped into Ekon’s body then, turning his mouth dry as paper. Slowly, he rose from the bench and stared down at Brother Ugo.
“I wasn’t with my baba when he died,” he said. “By the time the Sons had found him and brought him back to our home, he was long gone. The coroner believed he’d been dead for hours, that there was no chance he could have been saved.” He held his mentor’s gaze. “So how did you see the light leave my father’s eyes?”
Brother Ugo frowned. “I—”
“And a second ago, you called the Shetani a she,” Ekon continued, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “Why would you do that?”
It happened slowly. Brother Ugo’s lips stretched into a nasty smile, exposing pink gums and broken teeth. Gone was the fright in his eyes, and when he spoke, his words were cool.
“You’re so much like your father,” he said, standing. “Attentive, astute, an active listener. It’s what has made you such a good servant, Ekon, and it’s what made Asafa weak.”
Servant. The word struck Ekon as odd, wrong. Fragments from his memory stitched together, then came apart. He saw his father telling him to run, remembered what Brother Ugo had told him and Kamau later. Baba had been recovered at the jungle’s edge; Brother Ugo had been the one who’d found him dead. Brother Ugo, who was now saying Baba hadn’t been dead when he discovered him. Something tightened in his throat, a wave of nausea roiling inside him.
“He knew too much,” the old man said quietly. “It was a tragedy, killing him, but a necessary one.” He steepled his hands. “Certainly, he was more difficult to get rid of than Satao was.”
Ekon focused on a singular word, felt it etch itself into his psyche letter by letter with the cruelty of a dagger’s tip. Necessary. Words and stories blurred together in his mind, like hot tea poured over ink. In the back of his mind he had a thought. Scholars had said Satao Nkrumah had disappeared. They’d searched, but had never found him . . .
“I knew you would be different, knew you wouldn’t fail me or ask too many questions,” said Brother Ugo. He began to pace. “You were the perfect combination—young and athletic, smart and meticulous. Most importantly, you were keen, desperate for approval. It made you easy to mold into what I needed. I thank you for that, Ekon, for your obedience, your loyalty.”
Ekon cringed.
“Our plan was almost foiled, though.” Brother Ugo went on without looking Ekon’s way. “When your foolish act of compassion forced the Kuhani to expel you from candidacy, I thought our hopes might be dashed.” His eyes danced. “But then another idea came to me, better than the first. The rest was easy. You were already so eager to prove your worth, all I had to do was feed you a speech about destiny, set you on the path . . .”
Ekon felt as though he was sinking below some unknown surface as the words washed over him. The man speaking looked like his mentor, their voices were the same, but . . . none of this sounded right at all.
“You killed my father.” He could barely speak the words. “You killed Master Nkrumah.”
“Yes.” Brother Ugo bowed. “I did.”
“I—I don’t understand,” Ekon stammered. “I thought the Kuhani—”
“The Kuhani?” Brother Ugo actually stopped pacing to give Ekon a considering look. “You thought Father Olufemi would be clever enough to orchestrate such things? You thought he could compel warriors to kill their own for nearly a century undetected?” He shook his head ruefully. “You overestimate him, Ekon.”
“You—” Ekon struggled to find the words. He cast a look over his shoulder, at the garden’s still-open trapdoor. It looked impossibly far away. “Where is the real Brother Ugo? What have you done with him?”
The old man’s expression was almost pitying. “You stupid boy.Brother Ugo never existed.”
Ekon’s head swam. Instinctively, he stepped back, and the old man mirrored his steps. His outline was beginning to blur at the edges, eyes growing redder.
“It was a clever disguise,” he said. “A kindhearted old man who kept largely to himself. Funny, no one ever could remember when I arrived here.” He gave Ekon an almost-amused look. “I suppose people just thought I’d always been around.”
Ekon was struggling to string words together to form a coherent sentence, let alone any kind of question. He stared at the old man with the familiar face but foreign voice. A terrible chill shuddered through Ekon’s body. “Who are you?”
“You still don’t know?” The old man cocked his head. “I thought it obvious.”
And then it was obvious, so obvious Ekon hated himself for not putting the pieces together sooner. He whispered the name.
“Fedu.”
The god of death nodded. “You have proven invaluable to me,” he said. “I have been trying to get Adiah out of the jungle for years, and in a matter of days you not only retrieved her, but delivered her to my feet. It is a shame you are not a daraja. I would have liked for you to be part of the new world I intend to create with her power.”
Ekon’s mind was racing, trying to make what he was hearing and seeing come together with some logic in his mind. A single question escaped him.
“Why? Why are you doing this?”
To his surprise, the grin slipped off Brother Ugo’s—or Fedu’s—face momentarily, and for the length of a single second, he saw something else in the old god’s expression. Sadness.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” he said. “But as you’ve served me well, I will tell you. My brothers and sisters came together to create the world you know, a world you think is good. After their work was done, and they were content, each of them returned to their realms. Even at this moment four of them sleep, oblivious.” The god’s eyes glinted. “But I did not sleep. I remained awake, eyes open, and I watched.” He gestured past the walls of the garden, as though seeing something far beyond them. “I saw the world produce things my own siblings could have never imagined—war, disease, famine. I watched darajas fight, and sometimes even sacrifice their very lives to maintain order among mankind, a terrible waste of skill and power.
“The others choose to look away from the brutal parts of what we have created, they choose to believe that what we have created is without flaw, is inherently good, because that was what they wished.” Fedu continued: “But I do not see things as I wish they were; I see them as they are. This world is covered in filth, and the time has come for it to be cleansed.”
“By killing people,” said Ekon quietly. “By killing millions of people.”
“Yes.” The god nodded, solemn. “You will recall that, when you were a little boy, I once told you that the hardest choices often required the strongest minds.”
“She won’t help you,” said Ekon. “Adiah knows what you are now. She’ll never help you do this.”
“I convinced Adiah once,” said Fedu calmly. “I am confident that she can be convinced again.” There was a dangerous undertone in his voice. “One way or another.”
“She’s gone.” Ekon said the words as confidently as he could, moving slowly back toward the garden’s entrance. It wasn’t far; he could make it if he timed it right.
Fedu quirked an eyebrow, curious. “In all the years I helped raise you, I never took you for a liar, Ekon.”
“I’m not lying.” Ekon forced the words. “She and Koffi escaped, I made sure of it.”
“Ah yes, the other daraja,” said Fedu. “That is
no matter. You will take me to them.”
“No, I won’t—”
There was no warning before the pain racked his body. Ekon fell to his knees, his back arching as pain pulsed through him in agonizing waves, like a thousand knives pricking every inch of his skin at once. Never in his life had he felt something like this; he wanted to die. As suddenly as it came, the pain disappeared. Ekon crumpled into a ball, half his face pressed into the dirt. When he forced one eye open, he found Fedu standing above him.
“A curious thing about the splendor,” he said softly. “It can enter the body of someone who is not a daraja, though I’ve been told it is excruciating when it does so.” He flicked his finger, and the pain returned tenfold. Ekon screamed. “I wonder how long it will take before I break you, before you tell me what I want to know?”
Another wave of pain ricocheted through Ekon’s body. This time, it wasn’t like knives, but fire, burning across his skin, scalding him from the inside. Through the haze, he watched Fedu stoop beside him. His eyes were cold.
“And what I wonder most,” he whispered in Ekon’s ear, “is what will kill you in the end—the pain, or the madness?”
Ekon couldn’t answer, couldn’t speak as his lungs began to restrict, growing tighter as the pain enveloped his body.
The last thing he heard was the far-off thud of the garden’s trapdoor.
CHAPTER 33
Heart and Mind
Koffi heard another scream.
At the sound, Adiah swiveled, nostrils flaring. She raised her nose to the air to sniff, then let out a roar more terrifying than any Koffi had heard before. Their eyes met in the darkness for only a moment before a decision was made.
“Come on!” Koffi turned on her heels and pelted back into the temple. Adiah needed no further prompt as she stayed on Koffi’s heels, snarling and snapping. Koffi knew they were being reckless, knew that at any moment they could run into more of the temple’s workers or the Sons of the Six, but luck stayed with them. Somewhere far off she could hear the clink of glassware, laughter. Was there some sort of party going on? She didn’t have time to think about it.
Ekon. Her eyes shot down each hallway, confused. Where are you?
She didn’t know the layout of the temple outside of what Ekon had told her: The hallways and doors leading into darker passageways seemed endless. Adiah roared louder as another scream erupted from one of the hallways, this time closer still. Koffi followed the sound until she reached a door slightly ajar. She opened it more and saw a narrow set of steps leading up to what looked like a trapdoor above. White moonlight illuminated its outline. She charged up it, Adiah at her heels, and tried to push it open, but it held firm. She heard a low growl and barely had time to duck before Adiah’s claws tore through the wood in one vicious motion. Koffi covered her head and closed her eyes as bits of the destroyed door fell all around them. There was a roar, and she felt Adiah push past her, and when she opened her eyes again, the end of her bottlebrush tail was already disappearing up the square opening above. Koffi hoisted herself up it, then stopped.
She knew the garden before her must have been beautiful at one point; there were old, dead flowers blanketing every inch of it. In another time, another era perhaps, it had likely been a sort of paradise, a haven. But she didn’t care about the flowers; her eyes had fixed on the two people in the garden’s center. One was standing with his back turned to her, and the other was on the ground. She focused on the latter.
Ekon.
Something was terribly wrong—she knew it the moment she saw him. In the silvery moonlight, she couldn’t see any physical wounds on Ekon’s body, but he was shaking, trembling as she’d only seen one time before. Tears streaked his cheeks, and his eyes were blank, as though she weren’t there at all.
“Ekon!”
He winced at the sound of her voice, looking pained. Slowly, he blinked, and the gesture seemed to help him refocus his gaze. The muscles in his shoulder relaxed, and he looked up at her from the dirt. His eyes went wide when they found her.
“Koffi.” He said her name in a dry rasp, audibly pained. In that single word, she heard an emotion; it took her a moment to name it: fear. Ekon sounded afraid. He began shaking his head, screwing his eyes shut.
“No . . .” A moan escaped him as he pressed his palms against his head, trying to block out something she could not hear. “No, you can’t be here. You have to—”
“Ah, the darajas,” said a thin, unfamiliar voice. “Come at last, as I knew you would.”
Koffi started. She’d been watching Ekon so intently that she’d almost forgotten about the figure standing a few feet from him. It was unnerving; in the darkness, he was almost impossible to see, a silhouette she did not know. Behind her, Adiah snarled.
“Who are you?” Koffi’s words echoed against the stone walls of the garden as the figure stepped forward, face still obscured. She pointed to Ekon. “What have you done to him?”
“After all this time, we are reunited,” the voice said silkily. “It has been far too long.”
Koffi paused, confused. That wasn’t the answer to her question; those words didn’t even make sense. It wasn’t until another growl filled the air that she understood. The words didn’t make sense because they weren’t for her.
The figure took yet another step closer, finally illuminated in the moonlight. He was small and frail, with chestnut skin and wavy white hair. Wrinkles were etched deep into his features, and he looked old enough to be her great-grandfather. But something about him wasn’t right. Koffi stiffened as he extended a hand.
“I see you haven’t changed.” He wasn’t looking at her, but over her shoulder. “At least, not in any of the important ways. Tell me, Songbird . . . do you still sing?”
In answer, Adiah roared, but it wasn’t like before. There was another audible emotion beneath the bellow, a terrible anguish. Koffi could practically feel the crackling splendor in the air. She didn’t dare turn around to look at the other daraja; she wasn’t sure what she would see. The name the strange man had called her was unfamiliar.
Songbird?
“I am glad you have finally come to your senses,” he continued. “And that you have chosen a path of less resistance. You’ve even brought me something fresh, an assistant to aid in our efforts.”
To aid in our efforts.
It hit Koffi then. She understood. Ekon had gone looking for his mentor, an old man he’d believed had been harmed. He’d found someone else instead, someone who wasn’t his mentor at all.
“You’re Fedu,” she whispered.
“Clever girl.” The god turned his gaze upon her with a chilling smile. “I believe thanks are owed to you too. My understanding is that you helped Ekon procure my daraja. You brought her to me.”
“She’s not going anywhere with you!” Koffi gritted her teeth. Beside her, she felt a hum of power as Adiah crouched low, understanding. For his part, Fedu looked between them, amused.
“I do not relish spilling daraja blood.” There was laughter in his voice, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “But make no mistake, child, you are but an ant in my path. Should you attempt to stand in my way, I will deal with you as such.”
Koffi didn’t answer, didn’t wait. Her toes curled as she focused her mind and summoned the splendor, shuddering as it danced up her limbs and instantly warmed her. She heard a bellow and felt the ground beneath her shake as Adiah snarled.
Then they were moving in tandem, Koffi running to the left while Adiah moved right. She’d never done this before, never tried to use the splendor in a fight, but the power coursing through her seemed to understand what she wanted, as though it had a mind of its own fusing with hers. She spun on her heels and felt the thrum of more power enter through one hand, passing through her heart, then exiting through the other side. A golden ray of light escaped her like a ribbon, like a snake coiling in the air b
efore it lashed across Fedu’s cheek. He hissed, turning to face her, but before he could react, Adiah charged him from behind, headbutting him so that he went flying back, though he landed on his feet with unnerving ease. He turned as Koffi came at him, raising one of his hands in a flick, and white-hot pain grazed Koffi’s cheek. She felt herself flying backward. She groaned as she landed in the dirt, the wind knocked from her body. A dull haze clouded her vision, but through it she could just make out Fedu and Adiah. They were circling each other.
“Come now, Adiah,” Fedu said softly. “You make this more difficult than it has to be.”
The daraja snapped her teeth. She lunged at him, a flurry of claws swiping at his face, but he dodged her with ease.
“Look at what you have become after all these years, Songbird.” He danced out of her reach easily as she swiped at him again, his lips splitting into a wicked smile. “Look at what holding in all of that splendor has done to you. You used to be the greatest daraja to walk the earth—intelligent, beautiful, and powerful. It seems you’re little more than a fumbling beast these days—stupid, ugly, and weak.”
He’s baiting her, Koffi realized. Adiah screamed; there was no other word for it. It was a sound of fury and violence, but also a sound of agony. She charged again, and Koffi understood a second too late what Fedu was going to do. Her lips tried to form the warning words, but not fast enough. There was a horrible crack as Fedu’s fist connected with her jaw, striking her with an inhuman strength. The force of the blow sent her back, landing inches from Koffi. She did not rise again.
Fedu brushed the dirt off his clothes, unfazed. “If you will not give me what I want,” he said testily, “then I will take it.” He started toward her, steps slow and deliberate.
Adiah. Koffi didn’t move—she didn’t want Fedu to know she was still conscious—but she tried to meet the other daraja’s eyes, to will them open. Adiah, please wake up.
