The Gilded Ones

by Namina Forna

  “Deathshrieks!” Captain Kelechi shouts somewhere in the distance, having anticipated such an attack. “Shields!”

  Down, Ixa! I command, lifting my shield.

  Ixa huddles into the sand as the arrows rain down. Bloodcurdling shrieks are now shattering the air, sending many of the soldiers to their knees. The smell of piss and vomit rises, soldiers convulse off their horses, triggered by the sound. They’re not used to deathshriek screams the way the jatu and we alaki are.

  Above the din, the generals call to the troops from their mammuts. “Prepare yourselves!” they shout.

  It’s already too late. The deathshrieks are bursting through the mist, their bodies covered in crudely fashioned leather armor, their hands holding weapons—actual weapons. Massive swords and maces flash as they cut a bloody swath through the army, heading in our direction. The advance troops immediately assemble, trying to block the path to the emperor.

  “Use your voice, Deka!” the emperor shouts to me. “Use your voice!”

  As I nod, fumbling to pull down my helmet so my face won’t be seen, I notice something strange out of the corner of my eye—a leaper deathshriek with bright red spikes running down its back. Those spikes rattle in the wind, looking familiar—achingly so.

  “Deka!” the leaper shouts, jumping over the assembled ranks. Its voice is clearer than any other deathshriek I’ve ever heard. “Deka, stop! It’s me!”

  Tears sear my eyes, and my hands tremble.

  Why do I feel like I’m seeing a long-lost friend?

  “Deka!” Keita’s voice is strangely close to my ears. “Use your voice, Deka!”

  I raise my hands, channeling power, but stop when the leaper frantically does the same, holding out her own hands.

  Her hands?

  Why do I think the deathshriek is female? They’re all male, that’s what we’ve been told. That’s what we’ve always seen.

  A shadow falls over me—Keita’s. “Deka, pay attention!” he shouts. “Kill the deathshrieks!”

  “Yes,” I say, turning away from the strange leaper.

  I will my power to rise again, letting it surge through every part of me. “STOP WHERE YOU—”

  “DEKA, IT’S ME, KATYA!” the leaper shouts in that strange, clicking language, breaking into our ranks.

  “Katya?” My hands fall to my sides.

  No, it can’t be. I remember Katya, red hair spilling, skin turning blue as that deathshriek ripped out her spine. “You can’t be Katya!” I reply in Oteran. “This is a trick! You’re trying to trick me!”

  Keita looks from me to the deathshriek, shocked. “Deka?” he asks.

  The leaper hurries closer, batting aside any soldiers in her way. The battle is still raging around us, but somehow it feels like we’re the only two here. “No, Deka, it’s the humans who are tricking you! This is what happens to us when we die our final deaths. No matter the manner of our final death, this is what we become! You have to come with us, hurry!” she clicks.

  “Us?” I ask, the blood rushing past my ears. “Who is us?” I whisper.

  “Deathshrieks and alaki!” Katya cries. “We’re one and the same! When an alaki dies her final death, she is reborn as a deathshriek! The emperor knows that. That’s why he’s using you to kill us. He’s using you to destroy your own kind. He wants us all to die, forever this time!”

  The earth falls out from under my feet.

  “No…,” I whisper. “It can’t be.” But even as I say this, I remember the long-ago conversation I had with White Hands, remember her words. “Till our empire is free of those monsters.”

  Is this what she was talking about? Is this what she meant?

  “Deka,” Keita says, grabbing me. “What do you mean, Katya? Is that thing saying it’s her?”

  He looks back at her, disgust visible in his eyes. I can imagine what he sees—a deathshriek, snarling and horrific, but that’s not what I see now. All I see is my friend Katya, her deathshriek form still pale, and that red hair transformed into bright red spikes.

  It’s truly her.

  Even after all our prayers that she would have a peaceful afterlife, here she is, again on the battlefield.

  And now there’s a contingent of jatu approaching her—two to each side and two from behind. They’re going to kill her. They’re going to kill her all over again.

  Anger explodes inside me, rousing the foundations of my power. My voice emerges as an inhuman rumble. “Deathshrieks,” I roar to any who are within hearing distance, “protect Katya!”

  The deathshrieks’ heartbeats slow; their eyes glaze as my power takes over them. They hurtle toward Katya, destroying the soldiers in their path. Alaki, jatu, they all fall aside as the deathshrieks rush to obey my command.

  Keita’s face is pale now. “Katya?” he echoes, stunned. “Tell me what you mean, Deka!”

  A massive shadow falls over us as I form a reply. The emperor’s mammut. There’s a look on the emperor’s face I’ve never seen before—one of pure, unadulterated rage. He points a finger at me, infuriated.

  “That alaki has gone mad!” he shouts. “Kill the traitor! Kill Deka of Irfut!”

  My stomach plunges. “Your Majesty,” I gasp, stunned. “I—”

  Armored red hands drag me off Ixa.

  Deka! Ixa growls, charging them, but the emperor points to him too.

  “Destroy her animal as well!” he shouts.

  The jatu turn their swords toward him, murder in their eyes.

  “Ixa, run!” I shout. “Run!”

  Deka! he protests.

  “RUN, IXA! GO TO KATYA!” I bellow, pushing an image of the red-spiked deathshriek into his head.

  That’s the only command I have a chance to make before a gag goes over my mouth, and armored hands force me down into the sand so I can’t move my hands to make commands. As my helmet is removed, I dimly see Ixa barreling away toward Katya, dimly hear horrified gasps.

  “Look at her face!”

  “She looks just like a deathshriek! She’s one of them!”

  “No! NO!” Adwapa and Asha shout from somewhere nearby, joining the protests of the nearby bloodsisters.

  The emperor doesn’t care. “Kill her!” he shrieks. “Kill the deathshriek traitor now! Kill anyone who tries to aid her!”

  Shadows hurriedly move over me. When I look up again, Captain Kelechi is standing before me, a sword in his hand. He has a calm, resigned expression on his face.

  “You brought this on yourself, alaki,” he says, raising his sword.

  “WAIT!” Keita bursts through the ranks, but the other jatu quickly pin him down. My heart jolts at the sight, fear and relief rushing through me at the same time. He’s trying to save me. “No, you can’t do this, Captain!” he shouts, desperate.

  Captain Kelechi turns to him, shaking his head. “You can’t help her now, Keita,” he says. “You see what she is.” He turns back to me, sword raised.

  Keita’s eyes are determined as he shouts, “Then let me do it! Let me kill her. I’m her uruni—I should be the one responsible for her.”

  What did he just say?

  When the captain does not reply, Keita tries again. “She saved your life!” he cries. “She saved all of us—countless times! If you do this, you’ll just be dishonoring everything she ever did for you!”

  Captain Kelechi stills, turns to Keita, who nods desperately.

  “She needs a peaceful final death,” he whispers. “You owe her that much. We all owe her. Even if she’s a traitor, she killed for our side first.” He looks at me, and everything inside me goes still. I see the cold, distant look in his eyes, the absolute certainty. He’s not trying to save me. He’s trying to end my life.

  Just like Ionas did.

  A long, endless scream shatters inside me, silence and leaden heaviness
in its wake. Once again betrayed. And just like before, it is by the boy I loved.

  The captain looks down at me, considering. Then he turns to Keita. “If you try to help her escape, it’ll be your head,” he says.

  “I know,” Keita says. “I know there’s no escape for her now except death. But she’s my partner, my responsibility, and only I know how to end it. Only I know her final death.”

  Everything inside me is so dull now, I’m not shocked by his words. I can barely see anything anymore, barely feel anything behind this deep, aching emptiness growing inside me.

  Captain Kelechi looks up at the emperor, who has been watching the proceeding from his mammut. “Your Majesty?” he asks.

  The emperor nods. “How will you do it, young lord of Gar Fatu?” he asks Keita.

  Keita shrugs off the jatu holding him down and rises. “I’ll dismember her, Your Majesty,” he says.

  I blink, confused. I can’t die from dismemberment—Keita know that. He knows…

  The breath strangles in my throat. Keita’s trying to save me. Trying to ensure that I survive by executing me before someone else does.

  He ignores my muffled gasp as he continues: “It’s the only sure way to kill her.”

  “How do you know?” the emperor asks.

  Keita looks straight into my eyes. “She told me once. She told me the truth of her final death.”

  Tears flood my eyes. He’s sacrificing himself for me, signing his own death warrant. If he dismembers me, I’ll go into the gilded sleep instead of the final death, and everyone will know him for a traitor. They’ll kill him, and unlike me, he won’t come back.

  He’ll never come back.

  The thought sends my body jerking back to life. “No!” I shriek, the sound muffled by my gag. “NO, KEITA!”

  Keita ignores me, turns to the emperor. “Your Majesty?”

  The emperor nods. “Proceed.”

  Keita walks over to me. “You shouldn’t have done it, Deka,” he says. “You shouldn’t have told me how to kill you.” There’s hope, determination, in his voice. I struggle, try to shout so he can hear me, but he lifts his sword. “I’m sorry,” he says, bringing it down.

  When my head separates from my body, my eyes catch his. They’re filled with tears. Keita’s eyes are filled with tears. He’s crying as he kills me.

  He’s crying as he dooms himself.

  * * *

  It’s night when I wake again, it’s night, and an itchy darkness surrounds me. Some sort of cloth is binding me in place. I try to turn my head to get away from it, and that’s when I stop, bewildered. I can’t turn my head. I can’t even turn my neck. There’s a searing pain somewhere between the two—a pain that splinters across my body in a strange, abrupt way, as if there are gaps. I try to lift my hands to feel my neck, but they won’t move. I can’t even feel them, actually. The only thing I feel is that pain, and an unnerving slithering feeling, as if parts of my body are…reaching for each other.

  My body isn’t connected. Alarm jolts me as I understand. The fibers are growing back into each other, the way they did back in the cellar in Irfut. Is this part of the emperor’s punishment? Have they already killed Keita? Please say Keita is all right. A low, keening wail builds in my throat.

  “Deka?” Something rummages in the cloth surrounding me, and light pierces into its darkness. “Deka, you can’t possibly be awake!”

  I’m pulled up into the air, and the first thing I see is Keita’s face. Shock and bewilderment battle in his eyes. “Deka, how can you be awake?” he rasps. “You’re still healing!”

  “Keita,” I sob, relieved tears running down my cheeks. “You’re alive, you’re alive!”

  “Of course I’m alive,” he says, frowning. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “But everyone saw you give me an almost-death, not a final one. They know you’re a traitor.”

  Keita shakes his head. “No, they saw you bleed the blue of the final death. They thought you were dead.”

  “Blue?” I ask, frowning. “How could I bleed blue if it wasn’t my final death?”

  “It was Britta’s idea,” he answers. “She knew something like this would happen sooner or later, so she had Belcalis make a solution from some plants in the Warthu Bera. Apparently, she has experience with apothecaries?”

  “Her uncle was an apothecary,” I say, remembering what she told me about that evil man. At least she learned one thing from him that turned out to be helpful.

  “Britta gave some of it to me and Adwapa as a precaution. I sprinkled it on you as I—as I…”

  He swallows, unable to finish.

  “There was just enough of it to convince everyone that it worked. And then the deathshrieks burst through the ranks and everyone got busy fighting. No one noticed us gathering up your body parts or taking them to Ixa in the confusion.”

  “Ixa?” I ask.

  Keita helps me angle my head down, and I see what I didn’t before: we’re riding on Ixa, securely on his back, as he races across the desert sands.

  “Ixa!” I gasp, relieved. “You’re all right!”

  De…ka, Ixa replies happily.

  “He came back for you once he delivered that deathshriek to safety.” Keita helps me angle my head back up, wincing again when I grimace. The pain is the strangest I’ve ever felt—fleeting and unconnected. “Sorry,” he whispers. “I didn’t know you could wake in such a state.”

  Neither did I, I want to reply, but I remain quiet, smile down at Ixa. That’s my Ixa, I praise him silently.

  Deka, Ixa says, pleased.

  I glance back at Keita. “Why did you do it?” I ask. “You and Adwapa, why did you take the solution from Britta?”

  He shrugs. “Because we know you, Deka. When you use your abilities, you change—your voice sounds different and you look…inhuman. No matter how careful you were, we knew it was only a matter of time before you were discovered, accused of being some sort of deathshriek or witch, and executed. Of course we didn’t anticipate that it would happen the very next day.”

  My eyes widen. “You knew all along—about the leathering, I mean?”

  Keita nods. “Yes. I saw it once, in the moonlight, during a raid. And it doesn’t frighten me, if that’s what you’re thinking. I know you were afraid it would, but nothing will change how I feel about you, Deka….I know you’re not a monster.”

  Warmth spreads through me, tears pricking at my eyes. Keita accepts me as I am—loves me. He doesn’t have to say the words, but I feel them. I feel them in the way he cradles my severed head so gently, even though the very act of holding it should horrify him. I feel them in the actions he took—the actions that he knew could well have ended his life. He defied the emperor for me, risked death for me—the only one he has.

  Against all odds, he loves me.

  Keita loves me.

  How could I ever have thought he would betray me?

  By now, so much warmth flows through me, I don’t even feel my wounds anymore. Then I have a sudden thought. “Wait—why didn’t you just stop when you took my head? You didn’t have to dismember me completely, you know.”

  “Well, I know that now.” He sighs. “But I had to give you a death no one could believe you’d survive.”

  “You had to make a spectacle for them,” I say, understanding now.

  Keita nods, then looks away, his body trembling slightly. I’m not the only one the dismemberment hurt, I can see that now. I can only imagine how he felt, cutting into me. I suddenly wish I had the use of my arms so I could embrace him and tell him it was all right.

  “So what now?” I ask, trying to distract him.

  “I’ve found a place for you to heal properly,” Keita says, turning me forward as Ixa pads to a stop in front of our destination: a small cave mouth at the very edge of the mountains, hidden by mou
nds of glasslike black rocks covered in salt. He takes me into a massive cavern, and my eyes sting as we pass wall after wall of that black rock, trails of salt running down the sides. The deeper we go, the more the salt takes over, until soon we reach the depths of the cave, which are just white rock salt interspersed by the black rocks.

  “Look up.” Keita helps tilt my face up so I can see the large hole in the center of the ceiling, the moon and the stars twinkling in the distance.

  “How did you find this place?” I ask, gaping in awe.

  “This was one of our salt mines,” he replies. “I used to play here when I was little, with my family.”

  I want to nod, but that’s impossible, since my neck isn’t fully attached. I can’t imagine what Keita feels like being here, at the site of his family’s massacre. I wish I could hold him, wish I could at least squeeze his hand.

  He continues on to his destination, the lake in the center of the cave. “The waters here are supposed to have healing properties,” he says. As he carries me over, I catch a glimpse of my reflection, my body shimmering golden under the thin white cloth he’s wrapped around it.

  “My body is still in the gilded sleep?” I ask, amazed.

  Keita nods. “Precisely why all this is so unnerving to me,” he says. “You should still be asleep. All alaki sleep during this period. That’s what your kind does.”

  “I don’t think I’m my kind,” I whisper. “I don’t think I’m an alaki.”

  Keita looks down at me. “Then what are you?” he asks, no hint of judgment in his gaze. No hint of revulsion.

  “I used to think that perhaps I was a creature White Hands made, some deathshriek half-breed she created for the emperor,” I reply. “But after what I experienced on the battlefield, I’m no longer sure….”

  When he glances at me, a questioning look in his eyes, I confess: “I brought Britta back. She was on the edge of her final death and I pulled her back.”

  Keita nods as he wades into the shallows, and carefully slips my body down into the soothing cold. There’s so much salt, my body floats. Sparks shoot through my muscles as they begin connecting more tightly. To my relief, it’s not painful, as it was when I first woke, merely uncomfortable—an itch that won’t go away.