Redemptor Page 11

  “Then don’t,” I said. “Why change for some dusty legacy? We didn’t ask to be Raybearers.”

  “But we are, all the same.” He smiled ruefully. “You know what’s funny? I think I’d be good at raising children. Watching a brand-new person grow—what could be better than that? I’d never send them away. Not like Fath—” He inhaled and broke off again, hunching his shoulders.

  I slunk against the wall beside him, letting the stones chill my back. “Dayo, if I birth an heir for the empire . . . I’ll be doing exactly what The Lady did. Having a child, just to fulfill some imperial purpose—one they didn’t even ask for. And that scares me. A lot. What if . . . what if I’m just like her?”

  My palms broke into a cold sweat. I imagined cradling a small, sleeping creature with my coiling dark hair and Sanjeet’s tea-colored eyes. I imagined all the knowledge I would crave to give it. All the power and protection. I would want to polish every detail of its tiny life to a rosy gleam, and love would surge inside me, hot and domineering, curling in my breast until a song dripped from my lips, sharp as crystallized honey:

  Me, mine. You’re me and you are mine.

  No. No. I would hide myself away before it came to that. Make sure I’d never hurt it . . .

  Just like The Lady had hid herself on the other side of Bhekina House.

  Bile rose in my throat. “I can’t do it,” I told Dayo. “I won’t. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry, Tar. It’s fine.” He nodded as if trying to console himself as much as me. “We’ll just . . . figure something out. I know we will.”

  “Keep moving, Imperial Majesties,” said Captain Bunmi, scanning the area. “It’s safer not to linger.” As we walked, Bunmi and her cohort traded signals with other Imperial Guard warriors, stationed at corners and on every rooftop.

  I suppressed the thought of heirs and baby-making as we neared the center of the city. Here, the murals faded into a long, blank wall: space for future Raybearers and their councils.

  “Have you seen it before?” Dayo asked with a nudge.

  “Of course not. I was waiting for tonight. Have you?”

  Dayo bit back a smile and shrugged.

  “You have!”

  “I peeked,” he admitted, laughing and dodging my blows to his arm. “A few days ago. I’m sorry! I couldn’t wait. But it’s better this way—I get to watch you see it instead.”

  The wall curved, so we rounded a corner . . . and there it was.

  “Well?” Dayo breathed. “What do you think?” But tears drowned any sound I could make.

  I noticed the anklet first. How strange, my mind thought, retreating immediately to denial. The cowrie shell anklet on that enormous painted foot looks just like mine.

  “. . . incredible attention to detail,” Dayo was saying, his voice faint in my ears. “The artisans outdid themselves. I could barely believe my . . .”

  My eyes traveled up the wall, up the shapely brown legs, tall as tree trunks, up the towering torso and rainbow-colored wrapper, and stopping, at last, at the distant face. Dark eyes surveyed the city with proud serenity, framed by a billowing black mass of hair.

  “Well?” Dayo repeated.

  “Eep,” I replied.

  He beamed and pulled me close. “That’s what I said too.”

  Dayo’s likeness stood shoulder to shoulder with mine, majestic and clear-eyed, the long, latticed burn scar giving him an air of heroic solemnity. Close around him stood our council siblings, faces wise and unsmiling. The murals were so lifelike, I expected the massive Sanjeet to sigh and run fingers through his curls, and the giant Kirah to wink and fray the ends of her prayer scarf.

  The space behind me was conspicuously empty. The artists had left space for my soon-to-be council—the vassal rulers of Aritsar. I gulped and looked away, concentrating on my siblings.

  Our unlined faces struck me the most. Every other likeness on the wall was hardened and wrinkled with dignity, but ours were smooth and vivid, the youngest rulers ever to grace the Watching Wall. I wondered if, deep down, that bothered Dayo. Our glory had come at the cost of his father’s life.

  “Don’t be too long, Imperial Majesties,” Captain Bunmi said, squinting up at the high-rises. “I’d like to secure the perimeter.”

  “It’s secured,” said one of her warriors, flagging a shadow on one of the rooftops, which slowly gestured back. “Whoever’s posted up there returned the signal.”

  “I know. I just . . .” Bunmi bit her lip, frowning. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

  “How should we end the pilgrimage?” I asked Dayo, giggling with nerves at our giant doppelgangers. “Should we bow to ourselves?”

  Dayo genuflected with a clumsy flourish. I copied him, both of us slightly tipsy from the wine chalice.

  “We pay homage, oh Dayo the Gullible and Tarisai the Maleficent,” he caterwauled, and I shushed him, doubled over with laughter. My sprites danced overhead, as if in on the joke. Dayo grinned at me. “We pay homage, oh shiniest—”

  Then an arrow lodged with a thwack in the Watching Wall, inches from my head.

  Dayo threw himself in front of me, right as another arrow sailed through the air . . . and lodged, firmly, in his back.

  “Cohort, to me!” Bunmi screeched. “Get down. Get down!”

  CHAPTER 12

  The street echoed with pounding feet and the hiss of unsheathing weapons. Bunmi’s cohort surrounded us, lifting their long oval shields above their heads to form a covering. But before they could finish, a second arrow whizzed through a gap in their formation and lodged in Dayo’s shoulder.

  Someone was keening, screeching unintelligible curses. I didn’t realize the person was me until Dayo, still shielding me against the wall, cupped my face with both hands.

  “Tar. Look at me. I’m fine.”

  “You have to get away,” I wailed, hyperventilating. “I won’t let you die; this cannot happen again—”

  “Tar, look.” And as chaos ensued around us, Dayo grimaced, reached around to his back, and pulled out each arrow.

  The bleeding holes in his back clotted before my eyes. His oba mask glowed as new skin crept across each wound, darkening into scars.

  “These arrows aren’t for me. I can’t die,” he whispered, features taut with fear. He nodded at the lioness mask on my chest, its single stripe announcing my vulnerabilities to the world. “They’re for you.”

  Blood from my grazed ear trickled down my neck. Shafts continued to thud, one by one, against the warriors’ shields. A single assassin, then—stationed on top of a nearby high-rise.

  “We’ve been set up,” Bunmi growled, signaling warriors to enter the building. They broke down the door, and the confused cries of high-rise residents spilled onto the street as the warriors scrambled to reach the roof.

  Still the arrows streamed, unnerving in their accuracy. The assassin began to target the legs and feet of the guards surrounding me, their lower halves unprotected by shields. One by one the warriors cried out, breaking the barrier around me and Dayo.

  Bunmi locked eyes with us. “Run,” she rasped.

  Heart in my throat, I seized an abandoned shield and fled the wall. The sound of revelry still floated in the streets, a ghostly anthem.

  Why, you ask? Why?

  The Pelican has spoken.

  Adrenaline burned in my ears. The assassin had picked their hunting ground well—I ran in an open square, flooded with lamplight, with no shelter or alleyways in sight. An arrow grazed my shin. I hollered in pain, my flight reduced to a limp. My sprites spun in the sky, seeming to dim and quail as my own pulse weakened. Had I been thinking clearly, I would have willed them to help me—to dive in a glittering army, swarming my would-be killer. But my mind was a panicked fog, and tutsu sprites—curse them all—did not act without being commanded.

  Dayo caught up with me and slung my arm around his shoulder, helping me hobble across the square. But we weren’t moving fast enough.

  A sun for the morni
ng, a sun for the evening.

  And moons for years to come.

  Another arrow struck the shield, nearly knocking it from my hand. Faintly, I could see the silhouette of a burly figure atop the roof, pausing to replenish its quiver.

  And then the children came.

  I thought they were animals at first. Small, dirt-covered bodies rose from the ground, scaling the walls of the high-rise like beetles. First there were two, then four, then seven human creatures, limbs blurring as they clambered up the walls with chilling precision. Beneath the building, Imperial Guards warriors froze in terror, making the sign of the Pelican to ward off evil.

  By the time the assassin noticed, it was too late. A scream pierced the air as the shadow children set upon the figure, clawing, biting, tearing at the assassin’s limbs like jackals. Barely visible beneath the swarm of small bodies, the figure staggered, teetered . . . then pitched, children and all, over the edge of the eight-story high-rise.

  They landed with a sickening crack. Dayo and I clung to each other, watching the mound of bodies in the pale-lit square. The children were still at first, covering the assassin’s corpse. Then, in slow, disjointed movements, they rose from the ground.

  “Can you see them?” I whispered to Dayo, and he nodded slowly, heart thudding against mine.

  Layers of earth and grime muddled their faces, but closer up, their features varied greatly. Some dark with coiled locs, some pale with matted tresses, others tan and golden. Children from different ends of the continent, and all of them covered in purple Redemptor birthmarks.

  “How?” I croaked. It didn’t make sense. After the reign of Enoba, every Redemptor had been born in Songland, but these children came from all over the empire. If they were truly Redemptors, they must have been born in the original wave, which made each child five hundred years old.

  Then I remembered Emeronya’s warning: They can appear as both spirit and flesh.

  These too were ojiji. My stomach twisted with both horror and pity. These children had once been alive. I had assumed that when Redemptors failed to return from the Underworld, they simply died and passed on to Core. These children had not been so lucky. The abiku had enslaved their souls—perhaps forever. Exactly how many Redemptors had been turned to ojiji?

  “Why are you protecting me?” I asked softly. “What do you want?”

  As one, the pack of children turned their dull, translucent eyes on me—just like the boy who had killed Thaddace. Their voices, a quiet hiss that raised every hair on my neck, echoed across the square.

  “Justice,” they said, and crumbled into dust.

  When Dayo and I returned to the palace, the Guard warriors sequestered us in the Imperial Suite, where Ai Ling and Sanjeet—along with an army of healers, attendants, and courtiers—flocked to greet us in the anteroom. I had barely crossed the threshold before a muscular pair of arms enveloped me, burying my face in a broad, solid chest.

  “I’m all right,” I mumbled into Sanjeet’s bicep. But he barely seemed to hear me. He rasped curses in Dhyrmish, scanning me over and over with his Hallow as he buried his face in my hair.

  “We heard the news,” gushed an advisor, gawking at the blood staining my neck and ankle. “How horrible, Lady Empress. Let us attend you—”

  Then everyone was talking at once. The air grew thin. My chest began to palpitate, and before I knew it, I had stepped out of Sanjeet’s grasp and gestured sharply at the carved anteroom doors.

  “Out,” I rasped. “Everyone, except for the emperor, Anointed Ones, and Captain Bunmi.”

  “You should at least keep the healers,” Dayo objected. “Your ear. And your leg—”

  “Out,” I barked again, and an exodus of servants and courtiers stampeded for the door. Once they were gone, I exhaled . . . and the room swayed beneath my feet.

  Sanjeet picked me up in one efficient movement and stalked wordlessly to the suite common room. Bunmi and my siblings followed close behind. Sanjeet set me down on a low salon chair, rummaged through the cabinets above his war table, and produced salve and linen strips. He attended grimly to my wounds as I stared at Umansa’s dire prophetic tapestries, watching the colorful glyphs and patterns pitch and swirl.

  Bunmi genuflected at my side, offering up her spear with open palms.

  “Your life was endangered on my watch, Your Imperial Majesty,” she grunted. “I assume full responsibility. Please accept my resignation from the Imperial Guard.”

  “Rejected,” I told her. “We both know that was no ordinary assassin.”

  “You should get examined by a traditional healer,” Sanjeet said in a rough voice when he was finished with my ear and ankle. When I shook my head, a vein in his brow ticked. “The arrow could have been tainted, Tar. My Hallow is inefficient at checking for poison. For Am’s sake. You don’t need to be brave right now.”

  “We can’t trust anyone,” I said. “The person who tried to kill me is here, in the palace.”

  My council siblings collectively stiffened, and I looked at Bunmi for confirmation. The captain nodded, grimly. “How did you know, Lady Empress?”

  “Call it a feeling.” The moment I had seen the figure atop that building, my mind had seized at the puzzle, stacking facts and connecting images, like I had during the tests in the Children’s Palace. Someone at An-Ileyoba wanted me dead . . . and they had almost succeeded.

  The assassin had fooled Bunmi by knowing the correct all-clear signals, which suggested help from within the Imperial Guard. But the crown’s forces were famously difficult to corrupt. Warriors who exposed traitors were awarded with cattle fields and a noble title, the latter of which no amount of money could buy.

  Bribes, then, were unlikely to sway a Guard warrior . . . unless they had no need of a title. Unless, I concluded, the traitor was already a noble.

  Dayo’s brow furrowed. “The assassin was a courtier?”

  “No,” Bunmi replied. “But he was certainly hired by one.” She produced a foul-smelling rag from her pocket. Inside it glistened a putrid yellow stone, stained with blood. At the sight of it, a memory ticked in my thoughts—the glittering green gem in Melu’s cuff—the one my mother had used to enslave him.

  Ai Ling recoiled at the sight of it, stroking her chin in the sign of the Pelican. “Is that—is that Pale Arts?”

  Bunmi nodded grimly. “My warriors found this stone embedded in the assassin’s neck. It’s a practice called ibaje. Underworld artifacts bind the user to a task, give resistance to death, and bestow them with certain abilities. That explains, I imagine, why the assassin’s arrows rarely missed. Ibaje objects are often worn—but when inserted directly into the body, they provide stronger, permanent power. They are poison, however, killing the user slowly and cursing them with deformity. Only one guild of assassins is depraved enough to carry them: the Jujoka.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve never heard of them.”

  “I have,” Sanjeet said, gaze haunted and distant. As he knelt by my salon chair, his calloused fingers traced my jaw and hairline, over and over. Memorizing them. Convincing himself I was still here, safe—not skewered with arrows beneath the Watching Wall. When he spoke again, his voice was cold with rage. “The Jujoka are the most exclusive guild of mercenaries in the center realms. They can be contacted exclusively through ancient family liaisons. Even then, only the very, very wealthy can afford them.”

  “Someone within the guard—likely the child of a noble—must have provided the assassin tonight’s passcodes and given him access to the rooftop,” Bunmi agreed. “But we don’t know who.”

  “It’s likely more than one family,” Ai Ling said grimly. “These nobles like to do things in coalitions.”

  “But why would anyone want Tarisai dead?” Dayo asked. “She offered to sacrifice herself to the abiku, for Am’s sake. She’s a hero. Plus—”

  In my head, I added what everyone was thinking, but not saying: Why bother having me killed, when the Underworld would likely kill me by my nineteenth birt
hday?

  Bunmi made a scornful sound. “If those nobles are responsible, they are not only evil, but reckless. If the Empress Redemptor dies before fulfilling her promise to the Underworld, the abiku will wage war on us all. Even if we mobilize the Army of Twelve Realms, thousands will die. Millions.”

  Bumps prickled on my skin. I generally avoided thinking of my journey to the Underworld, letting the new alagbato crisis, as well as the task of anointing my own council, distract me. But after seeing those dirt-covered creatures skittering up the high-rise, stinking of decay . . . my death seemed more imminent than ever before. Why in Am’s name had I thought I was strong enough to brave the Underworld? Had I gone mad?

  I began to shudder violently, unable to stop. Immediately Sanjeet cradled my head to his chest, but I continued to shake. I felt his despair through the Ray as his Hallow searched me.

  “I can’t find anything,” he whispered. “I don’t know what’s wrong, sunshine girl. Tell me—tell me where it hurts.”

  I barely heard him. The glyphs on my arms itched like fire ants as ojiji swarmed on the muraled salon ceiling, jeering through mocking, skeletal smiles.

  Coward! Coward!

  We were younger than you when your empire tossed us into the Oruku Breach.

  You don’t deserve to be afraid. Do more—do more.

  Pay for our lives.

  “Truth and lies,” I breathed as my siblings watched me with growing concern. “Truth and lies. Which is which?”

  “Tea,” prescribed Ai Ling. She dug through Thérèse’s herb basket in the corner, dumped leaves in a water mug, and pressed it under my nose. Fragrant leaves tickled my tongue as I sipped, and slowly, my limbs relaxed. The mocking voices disappeared, though I dared not look at the ceiling, in case those creatures still stared back.

  One of Kameron’s panther cubs mewled in the salon corner, and Dayo fetched it, hoping the furry bundle would soothe me. I stared at its limpid green eyes, and it squeaked, licking my face. Sighing, I held it to my chest, just as Sanjeet held me.