The Gilded Ones

by Namina Forna

  She bursts out laughing. “The Firstborn? No, not at all—my sister and I are only three hundred years old.”

  “Three hundred…,” I echo, stunned. “And what about—”

  “Explanations later,” Adwapa says, abruptly stopping.

  We’re in the entry hall of the temple now, and are staring into the face of the unknown. Dark corridors extend into the darkness, leading infinity knows where. My hands tremble at the thought.

  “The emperor is already somewhere down there,” Adwapa informs me.

  “I know,” I reply. “I saw the zerizards.” I knew why I hadn’t seen the emperor on the battlefield. It was because he was up here, waiting for me.

  “He’s not the only one who’s there, though,” Adwapa says, a worried expression surfacing in her eyes.

  “Keita is inside as well.”

  Everything inside me stills. “Keita?”

  Adwapa nods. “The emperor caught him when he returned from delivering you to the lake. It’s likely bad, Deka. You need to prepare yourself.”

  * * *

  The interior of the temple is musty, quiet. Black columns rise above us, images of the Gilded Ones embedded in them. There they are, the wise Southerner, gentle Northerner, warlike Easterner, and motherly Westerner, all conquering monsters, battling rebels, raising the walls of Hemaira. In each and every carving, they’re much larger than the humans—giants, in fact.

  I wonder if they’re the same in real life. There are so many things I wonder, and perhaps if I wonder long enough, I won’t have to think of Keita at the mercy of the emperor, won’t have to acknowledge the overwhelming terror weighing down my body.

  I continue staring at the carvings, the goddesses sitting on four regal thrones, looking gently down at the much smaller humans. Alaki and jatu surround them, their armor distinct compared with the robes of the regular humans and the priests. Those priests are joined by something I’ve never thought of before—something I’ve never even imagined.

  Priestesses.

  Column after column shows different women doing things—being things—I’ve never dreamed possible: priests, elders, scribes, all the things men are. My anger builds as I realize how thoroughly my mind has been poisoned that I would be shocked to see women in these positions. I breathe out, trying to calm myself. I have to be prepared to meet the emperor.

  He’s just there, at the end of the hall, where dim light spills from a hidden chamber. And Keita is there too.

  A hand touches my arm, and I nearly jump. “You all right?” Adwapa asks.

  I nod.

  “You can’t let down your guard, Deka. Not here.”

  Not with the fate of the goddesses at stake—not to mention Keita’s. I silently finish Adwapa’s sentence. “I won’t,” I say, palming both my atikas. I was given two for the occasion. “I’m prepared.”

  “All you have to do is free the goddesses,” Adwapa reminds me. “Just free them. The others and I will take care of the rest. We’ll protect Keita.”

  I nod again. I know my task.

  Adwapa touches me again. “I believe in you,” she says softly. “I always have, from the moment White Hands sent me to you.”

  Suddenly I remember the first time I met Adwapa in that wagon, all rolling eyes and defiance. Ever since then, she’s been by my side, always ready with a joke, a wry, ironic smile. It doesn’t bother me that she’s White Hands’s spy—she has always been my true friend. I know this as surely as I know my own heart.

  She breathes raggedly. “That’s why I could do all those things, kill all those—”

  “You never killed more than your quota,” I remind her, squeezing her hand to stop her from saying more.

  I can’t imagine how she must have felt, knowing all this time what the deathshrieks were but pretending otherwise, looking on and even joining in as we slaughtered them. Same with White Hands and everyone else who was part of this hidden rebellion. Their guilt is my own, an acid pit in my stomach.

  I remind myself that it was all for a purpose. All those deaths, they were all leading up to this.

  I won’t let Adwapa down. Won’t let anyone else down.

  “I believe in you too,” I return.

  She nods, and together we stride into the temple.

  * * *

  The sight that meets my eyes is much worse than I imagined.

  Not only is Keita here, bound and gagged, but so is Britta. She’s conscious but pale, tied up on the floor. The emperor sits beside them on an ornate bench, a smug smile on his face. Unlike the jatu, he’s wearing very little armor and even has a crown on his head. There’s a crossbow with golden arrows at his side.

  “The Nuru,” he sneers when I walk down the stairs into the chamber.

  My eyes flit to Keita, horror jolting me when I see his face, bruised and bloodied, one of his arms bleeding. I’m sick to my stomach, and I have to clench my hands to keep from running to him. Running to Britta.

  When Keita meets my gaze, his eyes send mine a quick message: Run, Deka.

  I ignore it, return my attention to the emperor, who smirks at me and gloats, “You finally reveal yourself for what you are.” His face is completely different: cold, hateful. He doesn’t look at all like the man I once knew, almost admired.

  “I only just found out what I am,” I say. “But you always knew.”

  “I didn’t know it was you.” He shrugs, rising. “I thought you were just another anomaly—like your friend here.” He puts his boot on Britta’s neck, and she gasps, tears coming to her eyes.

  Everything inside me stills, and I blurt, “Please—”

  “Please what?” the emperor asks. When he looks down at Britta, his eyes are cold—so very cold. They remind me of my father’s eyes—of Ionas’s. “Do you know she almost got free? Weak as she is, she nearly fought off my soldiers. Thankfully, we had some bonds left over from the ones we used to imprison my grandmother.” When my eyebrows gather in confusion, he explains: “The Lady of the Equus. That is what they call her now, is it not? Once upon a time, she was known as Fatu the Relentless.”

  A gasp wrenches from my throat. I remember how White Hands stared so bitterly at the female statue rising from Emeka’s Tears—the statue that I now know was modeled after her.

  The emperor continues, an awful smile twitching at his lips. “Do you know that we dismembered her once—my forefathers, that is. Severed her into four parts and impaled her bits in the palace dungeons when she tried to defend her mothers. My father told me all about it—he heard the story from his own father, who heard it from his own father, and so on.

  “Anyway, my ancestors couldn’t find her final death, sadly, so they just left her there for a few hundred years until she went mad. The Firstborn don’t succumb to the gilded sleep, you see. How she begged them to free her. For hundreds of years, she pleaded and cried, promised she’d serve us, the traitorous bitch. And she did, for centuries—until now.”

  A sob catches in my throat before I realize it. Poor White Hands. I thought I had suffered in Irfut, but what she experienced was a thousand times worse. No wonder she wasn’t fazed by my pain, by that of others. The things she must have experienced over those hellish centuries. My hands tremble at the thought of it, anger churning inside me.

  Emperor Gezo doesn’t notice as he nudges Britta’s neck again. I have to clench my teeth when she gasps in pain. “We used these very same bonds to imprison your friend. They’re made of celestial gold, the gold we harvested from the goddesses before we trapped them here. It’s unbreakable, even by your kind. Even by Fatu.”

  He tsks down at Britta, disgusted. “Alaki should not be so strong, but that is the nature of the anomalies. Then again, that’s why I herded all of you into the Warthu Bera—the strongest, the fastest, the most cunning of the lot. All the anomalies, I sent you there.”

 
“You were watching us,” I say, horrified.

  He nods. “I was searching for the Nuru. My treacherous grandmother tried to convince me that it would come as a deathshriek, but I knew it would be an alaki. I thought it would be one of the strong ones, at first, or at least the swift. I didn’t realize it was you until much later. Grandmother hid details of your ability from me, you see.”

  He takes a step closer, smirking his amusement when the alaki and the deathshrieks gather to protect me. At least his foot is no longer on Britta’s neck. My eyes flicker toward her, making sure she’s all right, then I quickly glance back at the emperor.

  “When did you realize?” I ask, trying to keep him talking. I have to keep his attention on me for as long as I can.

  Anything to keep him from hurting Britta or Keita again.

  “The moment I saw your face in the throne room,” he says. “You could have disguised all you wanted with that human appearance, but I could smell them on you.”

  “Smell who?”

  “The divine bitches!” he hisses, pointing toward the end of the room, where four gigantic golden statues of the goddesses sit on colossal black thrones.

  The Gilded Ones.

  Even without walking over, I know it’s them. I’ve known ever since I walked into the room and felt their power crashing over me like a silent earthquake. My body trembles as I take in their expressions: sadness, resignation, rage. They were entombed alive, trapped as they sat there on their thrones.

  “They thought they could command us,” the emperor seethes. “That because we couldn’t kill them, we’d let them terrorize us forever. We showed them, those demons. We showed them….” He turns to me, his eyes gleaming with hatred. “Do you know what we did to them—my ancestors, that is?”

  I shake my head.

  “We buried them in the blood of their own children,” he says with a gleeful, sinister laugh. “We melted down scores of suits of infernal armor—told the alaki we were creating a tribute to our mothers. Then we lured them here and poured the molten gold all over them. We imprisoned them.”

  “Why?” I ask, stunned. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  “Because they were a plague on this land!” he hisses. “Demons in the flesh, despite their celestial appearances! From time immemorial, we the jatu have vowed to protect Otera, so we imprisoned them and made sure they would never rise again. Never again would women rule Otera—this was the task of every emperor of the house of Gezo.” He looks me directly in the eye. “Never will I allow one of you filthy bitches to sit on the throne again.”

  His words, his hate, strike deep into my heart. Bitches. A word just as ugly as all the others men throw at us. It’s all I can do not to unsheathe my swords, but I ask one last question. “Why didn’t you kill me the moment you knew what I was?”

  The emperor smiles cruelly. “Because you were useful,” he says. “How beautiful it was to use you against the deathshrieks—you, the very instrument the Gilded Ones created to destroy my kind. Instead, I used you to slaughter theirs.”

  Revulsion and guilt flood over me as I think about all the deathshrieks I commanded to their deaths, all the deathshrieks I personally killed, despite all my instincts screaming against it.

  “How many deathshrieks did you help kill, Deka? Five hundred? Six? A thousand?” The emperor titters. “Entire nests of deathshrieks fell to your voice, the divine ability your mothers gifted you to free them.”

  Adwapa moves beside me. “Deka, do not listen to him. Let’s end this now.”

  I shake my head, listening as he continues his rant. “Did you ever feel disgust at what you were doing? Guilt? Remorse? You must have! You must have felt it in your blood! A recognition of all the blood you spilled. Murderer of your own kind. The great betrayer!”

  His words cut me at the knees, but I take a deep breath, calming myself. I will not allow Emperor Gezo to worm his way into my mind. I will not allow him to send me into a killing daze. I will end this on my terms—not just for me, but for every other woman he and his kind have ever brutalized and abused. No matter what he says, I will never forget what he did—what all of them did.

  The memory of Belcalis’s scarred back flashes through my mind.

  Never forget, I promised her.

  I look at Emperor Gezo as I slowly unsheathe my swords. “All that may well be, but I’m here now, same as you.” I point an atika at him. “You know I will free the goddesses. You know I will complete my task. That is what the karmokos trained me to do—what you made them train me to do.”

  “Then we’re at an impasse.” He shrugs.

  “I suppose we are.”

  He nods at the jatu. When they raise their swords, he says one word.

  “Attack.”

  And the battle begins.

  “Deka, go to the goddesses!” Adwapa roars as she and the others smash into the jatu. “We’ll keep them away from you.”

  I nod, turn to Katya. “Protect Britta and Keita!” I shout, waving her over to them.

  Her massive form leaps into the melee, and within seconds, she’s grabbing Britta with one hand and Keita with the other and scurrying up the walls, just as fast now as she was when she was an alaki. The breath I didn’t know I was holding in rushes out of me.

  They’re all safe. Now I can concentrate on my task.

  I run toward the thrones, keeping to the edge of the chamber, well away from the fighting in the middle. It’s deadlocked below me. The deathshrieks and alaki push against the jatu, but the jatu, for some reason, are able to push back.

  How are they so strong?

  A whooshing sound ends this thought. When I look up, the emperor is just before me.

  I gasp, stunned. “How did you—”

  He knocks me into the wall so hard, it crumbles. By the time I look up, dazed, he’s standing above me, a cruel smile on his face.

  “Surprise,” he says as he picks me up by the heel.

  He slams me against the wall. Stars explode in my head. Blackness comes in waves. I can barely think, barely move. What just happened?

  Deka? I hear Ixa’s voice as if from far away.

  When I look up, he’s exploding into the room. The moment he sees me lying there, bleeding, he roars, enraged. DEKA! he shouts, barreling toward the emperor, teeth bared.

  They snap at thin air. The emperor’s body has vanished, as if it were never there. I blink again, shocked. Where did he go?

  “Ah, the shapeshifter,” Emperor Gezo says from somewhere behind Ixa. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  When Ixa whirls, the emperor is standing behind him, his crossbow cocked. He fires dozens of arrows in rapid succession, loading and reloading so fast, I can’t even see them move. All I feel is a tremendous wind blowing past me, and when I look up, Ixa is pinned to the wall by golden arrows. He’s roaring as he struggles against them.

  DEKA! he calls, his anger changing to panic. He gnaws at the arrows, trying to free himself.

  Panic jolts me when I realize they’re made of celestial gold. He won’t be able to move them no matter how hard he tries. All he’ll do is worsen his wounds.

  “Stop, Ixa!” I shout. “You’ll only hurt yourself!”

  “Such touching concern for a mindless animal.” Emperor Gezo’s voice is just next to my ear, and when I look up, his body blinks into the space beside me, the motion so fast, it’s almost invisible. He smirks at my shock. “You really should be more concerned for yourself, Nuru,” he says, grabbing me by the throat and slamming me into the ground.

  The floor cracks under me, and my head rattles against my helmet. Blood begins to pour from my ears and nose.

  Emperor Gezo leans over me again, a smirk on his lips.

  His eyes seem different—darker….Now that I’m looking directly into them, I realize they’re more similar to mine and Whi
te Hands’s than they are to a regular human’s. They’re completely black, just like an elder alaki’s. No wonder he prefers to wear masks.

  “What are you?” I gasp, horrified.

  The emperor slams me against another wall. “Haven’t you guessed?” he gloats, picking me up again. “I’m a jatu, a male descendant of the Gilded Ones.” He slams me against the floor.

  “But the jatu are human,” I say, scrambling backward in horror. “They bleed pure.”

  The emperor grabs my foot, drags me along the floor. The smile on his face is almost serene now. He’s enjoying this—enjoying hurting me.

  How could I have ever thought he was benevolent?

  He keeps slamming me against the wall.

  “Very few of the jatu you’ve met are true jatu.” SLAM. A hit. “We are all mortal—finite.” SLAM. Another hit. “We do bleed red.” SLAM. Yet another hit. “We also die like humans.” SLAM. SLAM. More hits. “But the mark of our kind is strength and speed far greater than even that of the alaki.”

  He slams me against the wall one last time.

  Everything is black now. I can barely open my eyes, I’m in such pain—white-hot splinters like fire shooting across my nerves, body throbbing, bones aching. “So your kind hid….All this time you hid….”

  The emperor crouches before me, amused. “We were always fewer in number than our sisters, so we made the alaki and everyone else believe we had died out, lost our power. Then we gave ordinary human soldiers the name to add to the confusion. All the while, we were hiding in plain sight, waiting for the day when you emerged and we could win this power struggle forever.”

  I glance at the chamber floor, where the jatu are still fighting against the alaki and deathshrieks. “So this is all,” I gurgle past the blood dripping from my mouth. “All that remains of the jatu—the true ones.”

  “For the most part,” the emperor says, that cruel smile slicing his lips again. “There are just enough of us here to stop your kind once and for all.”