Redemptor Read online

  “The ojiji came back,” I croaked. “Dayo and Bunmi saw them, down in the city. Children, just like the one who murdered Thaddace—Redemptors from Enoba’s time. They saved me from the assassin.” My council siblings shuddered as I fed the memory down the Ray bond: dead-eyed children hurling themselves from the high-rise, then rising from the dirt, limbs hanging grotesquely from their bodies as they turned to face me. Ai Ling and Sanjeet tensed in revulsion as I showed them the memory.

  “What I don’t understand,” Dayo mused quietly, “is how those creatures are making it through from the Underworld. Maybe spirits can come and go as they please. But physical bodies? They could only enter our world through an opening.”

  Captain Bunmi stiffened, gripping her spear. “The Oruku Breach.”

  Sanjeet shook his head. “The Breach is guarded every hour of every day. I receive daily reports from Ebujo. Nothing has come through that hole since last month, when the abiku attended the Treaty Renewal. If dozens of undead children were pouring through the Breach, I would know.”

  “Unless they’re coming from somewhere else,” I whispered. “A new opening to the Underworld.”

  We all fell silent.

  “Well,” Ai Ling said after a pause, “wherever they’re coming from, at least they’re on our side. I mean . . . they saved Tar, right? So maybe they like her. Maybe those creatures are grateful that Tar’s saving future children from their own fate.”

  Captain Bunmi sucked her teeth doubtfully. “I very much doubt that ojiji can be grateful,” she said, brooding. “In my home village, wisewomen described ojiji as animate puppets—shell beings, with minds enslaved by the will of the abiku.”

  “Plus, an ojiji murdered Thaddace,” I pointed out. “I don’t want their help. If they don’t care about the people I love, then how can they care about me?”

  Ai Ling shrugged. “Who’s to say? We don’t know why the nobles tried to kill you either. But they did.”

  Sanjeet’s arms around me stiffened. I turned to look at him, then followed his gaze to Umansa’s tapestry of Malaki. He looked suddenly sick.

  “It’s Olojari,” he said. “It has to be. The nobles lost wealth when Tar relinquished the mine. They’re afraid she’ll take more away from them.”

  Dayo frowned doubtfully. “Are the nobles really that greedy? After all, it’s not like they’ll be poor without Kunleo property. Their own estates are massive.”

  “But she’s given the peasants power,” Captain Bunmi observed, sharing an understanding look with Sanjeet. Out of everyone in the room, only Bunmi and Sanjeet had been raised as poor commoners. “With profits from the mine, the Olojari villagers could buy property of their own, instead of leasing land from the gentry. It might take years, decades even, but at the end of the day, peasants outnumber the gentry. Once enough commoners prosper . . . blood status will be all the nobility have left.”

  I nodded slowly. “And so they want me to disappear.”

  Sanjeet growled, and bumps prickled my skin. “I will disappear them first.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” I scolded him. “You’re not a killer, Jeet.”

  “And you are not a sacrifice,” he barked. Immediately he regretted it, and that expressionless wall rose around his features while he struggled for control of his anger. He left the divan and paced, linking his fingers behind his head. Words brewed behind his cold brown eyes.

  The panther cub scrambled off my lap as I rose and went to him, wrapping my arms around his back. “Say it,” I told him.

  He did not move. “Say what?”

  “The thing you can’t sugarcoat.” I spoke into his shirt. Hesighed—a cavernous, shuddering sound—and turned to stare at me. “I think . . .” He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “You should take a step back from court life. Just for a while, until we can be sure the palace is secure. I think—if you relinquish your duties as empress—”

  I stumbled back, blinking up at him. “What?”

  “Just for a while, sunshine girl.” His voice was tortured. Pleading. “You aren’t safe here. You’ve been a target from day one, and—for Am’s sake, Tar! You don’t always have to be the hero.”

  In his eyes, I saw the same wistful longing from Kirah’s face, and Mayazatyl’s, and Kameron’s and all the rest.

  We just want you back.

  “No,” I rasped.

  “Tar. Please.”

  “No!” I snarled. I marched to one of the salon windows and thrust aside the gauzy curtain, pointing down at the moonlit Watching Wall. “You’re giving them what they want,” I breathed. “What all of them want: every emperor and lord and priest who’s ever ruled this palace. They wanted me to turn invisible. To run and hide. But I won’t. Not like the others.” Memories seeped into my body from the floor. The whispers of girls with dark skin and strident, fluting voices. Girls with mirror-black eyes and proud, broad noses; girls who laughed and teased and glowed with a Ray they could not suppress. I had dreamed about them once, as a candidate in the Children’s Palace. Even then, I had loved them, before knowing who they were.

  My ancestors. My Kunleo sisters, reviled and erased.

  Exiled, for daring to shine like the sun.

  “I bear the Ray,” I said quietly. “Whether I live in a palace or a tent in the Bush. That’s what makes me dangerous, Jeet. And until this world changes . . . I will always be a target. Whether you like it or not.”

  Then I walked to a kneeling desk in the corner, rummaged for paper and ink, and knelt to write.

  “Tar,” Dayo ventured, after a few cautious moments. “What are you doing?”

  I finished writing, plunged my seal ring into wax, and stamped the paper. “Being empress,” I snapped, then rose and headed for the exit. As I retreated, I heard them scramble to the desk, sensing their alarm through the Ray as they read my handwritten script:

  BY EDICT OF TARISAI KUNLEO,

  HIGH LADY JUDGE,

  AND OBABIRIN REDEMPTOR OF ARITSAR:

  All natural resources—quarries, hunting grounds, fisheries, and lumber mills

  that have been heretofore claimed by House Kunleo, throughout the twelve

  realms of Aritsar

  shall be relinquished to the commoners of their native province

  and released from the care of gentry

  Effective immediately.

  “This is suicide,” bellowed Sanjeet, coming to stand in my path. “Tar, you can’t do this.”

  “I just did,” I retorted, staring up at him coolly.

  Ai Ling cleared her throat, awkwardly raising her finger. “Actually, Tari dear . . . you can’t. Not right away, at least. It’s imperial protocol. Any edict that primarily affects the gentry must be announced at a gathering where nobles can air their concerns. A Pinnacle—the highest of high courts.”

  The wind deflated from my sails. How could I have forgotten? Pinnacles were one of the oldest law rites in Arit history. I could try to pass the edict anyway, of course . . . but without respecting imperial protocol, I had precious little chance of the nobles obeying, even with the Imperial Guard at my back.

  “Fine,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. Arranging a Pinnacle would take months—every noble clan in Aritsar would have to be invited, then given time to travel. “But it’s still going to happen. Bunmi?”

  The captain stood at wary attention. I snatched the edict from the desk and handed it to her.

  “See that the criers deliver copies to every noble family in court and throughout the empire. Tell them a Pinnacle is imminent.”

  “Those resources are Dayo’s property too,” Sanjeet snapped, after Bunmi bowed and left the chamber. “Did you think of that?”

  I paused guiltily, biting my lip. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask,” I told Dayo. “But this is what Malaki wanted. You were there. You saw my memories; you saw the broken stories of that mine. Well . . . this is how we fix it. I’m sure, Dayo.”

  Dayo fidgeted, glancing between me and Sanjeet. “I�
��m sorry, Jeet,” he mumbled at last, rubbing the back of his neck. “But Tar’s right. I don’t like it any more than you do, but we’ve got to appease the alagbatos somehow. And the faster Tar passes this, the sooner our council siblings can come home.”

  Sanjeet shook his head, but turned to me one more time. “Please,” he rasped. “Don’t do this.”

  In that moment, I realized how fragile I must look to him. I was several heads shorter, and a minute ago I’d been trembling in his arms, bleeding in two places. It would have been so sweet to give in—to drown in those deep, molten eyes. Still, I inhaled slowly, floundering to stay afloat.

  “You’ve seen the prophecies, Jeet,” I told him. “If we don’t appease the alagbatos, natural disasters could kill thousands. What am I supposed to do? Hide here in the suite and let all those people die for me?”

  “People die every day,” he said.

  “Jeet.” My voice was sharp. He had spoken with a clear-eyed calm that made me shiver. “How in Am’s name can you say that?”

  “Because it’s true.” His gaze was wet, unfocused. Faintly, I noticed Dayo and Ai Ling exchange an anxious look, then melt away from the room, sensing a need for privacy.

  We were alone then, Sanjeet and I, suspended in a brewing storm that had loomed ever since I returned from Mount Sagimsan. We had tried to outrun it. Tried to shelter beneath sweet words, and desperate, hungry kisses. But now the clouds had finally caught up to us . . . so we opened the floodgates, and spoke in thunder.

  “People are dying right now,” Sanjeet said, in a voice so calm it felt cruel. “Good people. Innocent. Children you’ll never even know existed, gasping their last breath in ditches all over Aritsar. And you’ll never save them all, Tar. Whether you ride across lodestones, or make the nobles want to kill you, or hurl yourself into the Oruku Breach.”

  The speech hit me like a slap. In his twisted features, I saw the grief of a boy who had learned young that heroes do not win. That you can be the tallest boy on your street, strong like the Prince’s Bear . . . and brothers will still get taken away. Mothers will still fail to escape. And the girl you love will still offer herself as a sacrifice to monsters.

  I understood him. I did . . . but rage bubbled inside me as voices—Sanjeet’s, Mayazatyl’s, Kirah’s, the ojijis’—jarred my ears from a hundred directions, brassy as kettle bells.

  You seem determined to heighten security risks.

  Now that you’re back, all you care about is changing things.

  We just want you back.

  Some of us love Aritsar the way it is.

  Your friends do not see what you see. They are blind, blind, and you are alone.

  “Why doesn’t anyone care?” I blurted. “Why is everyone so at peace with how things have always been? Children are dead, for Am’s sake! Thousands of Redemptors who will never come back. And it isn’t just Songland suffering. It’s our people too; toiling, dying in mills and mines for generations of a greedy few. And we’re just supposed to . . . what? Sit back and—”

  “Let it happen?” Sanjeet finished bluntly. “Yes! Sometimes! Tar . . .” He ran a large square hand through his curls. “Have you ever considered that most people weren’t born to save the world? Most of us are lucky just to find a home, a family to protect, and that’s enough. More than enough, even. Sunshine girl . . . everyone can’t care about everything.”

  “And you think I’m a fool for trying.”

  “I think,” he said heavily, “that your life should not be a means to an end. No human being should be reduced to a function. The day we do that—it’s the beginning of the end.”

  The words jolted me, ringing true like a song. But they jumbled in my head with a dissonant tune, one no less true than the first.

  The only thing more powerful than a wish is a purpose.

  “You’re right,” I said slowly. I looked again at the vast twinkling city, watching my sprites mingle with the star-studded sky. “My life doesn’t have to serve a purpose. But really, Jeet . . . would it be so bad if it did?”

  Night wind whispered through the salon curtains, making them float like the ghosts above my head. He stood there beside me for what felt like an eternity. I shifted my feet. The bells of his mother’s anklet chilled against my skin. I reached for his mind, and felt the grit of hands clenched tight, desperate to keep the ones he loved—mother, brother, Dayo, sunshine girl—from slipping through his fingers. When he spoke again, his voice was low, and resonant as the heart of a griot’s drum.

  “I once promised,” he said, “that I would never ask you to be less than who you are. But if you set yourself on fire to warm a frozen world, I will not stand by and watch you burn.”

  “Then don’t watch.” I traced the stern ridges of his features, clearing a curl from his hooded brow. “Stand with me.”

  He rested his face against mine. I couldn’t tell whose tears fell first. Salt stung our cheeks, prickling, gumming our features together like mortar. He whispered against my lips: “I can’t, sunshine girl.”

  I nodded, smiled, and let my heart grow numb as an empress’s sunstone. Then I stepped from his grasp.

  “Then stand back, Jeet.”

  CHAPTER 13

  He was gone by morning.

  Ai Ling bustled busily around me and Dayo, trying to lift the pallor that had fallen over the suite halls.

  “Sanjeet would have had to leave for Dhyrma anyway,” she said in a pleasant singsong, drawing away the mosquito curtains from where I lay side by side with Dayo. We were propped, uncomfortably, on a grand, fur-draped dais. “Just in case an alagbato makes trouble. And then there’s the new opening to the Underworld to look for. But he’ll come back, Tarisai.” She patted my cheek consolingly. “I’m sure of it. Now remember to look sleepy, Imperial Majesties.”

  Morning light filtered into the high-ceilinged bedchamber, and we could hear the bustle of courtiers waiting outside the door.

  “Maybe you should yawn,” suggested Ai Ling. “Or look a little naked. It’d seem more realistic.”

  I snorted, lobbing a pillow at her. “This is awkward enough as it is,” I said as she giggled, twirling away in her satin dressing gown. “Don’t make it worse.” Secretly though, I was relieved at Ai Ling’s levity: It made the coming morning seem less ominous.

  Once a month, the highest members of court attended the Emperor and Empress’s Rising: a chance to wake, dress, and touch the reigning Raybearers, witnessing us living gods in our vulnerable state. It was a sham, of course. Dayo and I never slept in the formal Imperial Bedchamber. In fact, we had been awake for hours, rising before dawn to bathe in the palace bathhouses, and returning to the suite for breakfast and honeybush tea. Then—as the hour of our official Rising drew close—we had sighed, wriggled back into our night shifts, and climbed onto the dusty imperial bed to be awoken.

  “The Rising should have a big turnout today,” Dayo said, leaning nervously against the dais pillows. “News of your intention to hold a Pinnacle went out at dawn. I’m guessing the nobles will want a word.”

  “Of course,” I muttered. “They’ll want to kill me in the privacy of my bedroom. Why wait until I hold court?”

  “Speaking of court,” chirped Ai Ling, “you won’t be there today. I’ve arranged your first meeting with Princess . . . I mean, Queen Min Ja of Songland.”

  “Chin up, Tar,” said Dayo when I made a face. “It won’t be that bad.”

  “My chin’s fine where it is,” I said sullenly. “Since you promised those strangers I’d share all my memories.”

  “You won’t have to face them alone,” said Ai Ling, patting my arm in sympathy. “I’ll be there as Imperial Ambassador.”

  I gave her a grateful smile but winced internally. I didn’t want my council siblings wading through the mire of my past any more than I wanted strangers there.

  “I still don’t get the appeal of Risings,” Dayo said as he practiced a convincing yawn, rubbing his eyes theatrically. “Noble families scrambl
e for the highest titles at court, and as a reward, we make them . . . rise at the crack of dawn and watch us get dressed?”

  Ai Ling shrugged. “They’d be offended if you didn’t.”

  Outside on the palace walls, the multitoned drums of the Imperial Guard announced the hour.

  Battle stations, everyone, I Ray-spoke . . . and the bedchamber’s double doors burst open.

  Dayo and I sat up and stretched, doing our best to look regally awakened as courtiers trilled in grating, cheerful song.

  Alive? Tell us!

  Aheh, alive and well!

  Thank Am, the oba has awoken!

  Alive? Tell us!

  Yes, we see her with our own eyes!

  Thank Am, the obabirin has awoken!

  The nobles circled the bed, crowing with exaggerated relief at finding Dayo and me alive. Then they dressed us, chanting songs at every interval—a blessing for each layer of wrapper, prayers for painting our faces, incantations for detangling and braiding our hair.

  When at last we were handed our sandals, completing the Rising, a throng of courtiers turned on their eyes on me, bowing and simpering with smiles that set my teeth on edge.

  “We would like to give you a gift, Your Imperial Majesty,” said a girl about my age. I recognized her from a flock of courtiers who smirked and tittered whenever I passed in the hallways. Her glowing, cobalt-black skin, set off by an ashoke wrapper, betrayed her to be a blueblood—one of the oldest and wealthiest families in Oluwan.

  That’s Lady Adebimpe, of House Oyega, Ai Ling told me through the Ray. One of the most influential families at court.

  The lady curtsied, batting a palm-frond fan. “Our gift is long overdue, Lady Empress. You must forgive us for the delay.”

  I smiled at her tightly. “And does your gift include another arrow in the emperor’s back? An arrow meant for me?”

  Adebimpe’s posse of courtiers froze, looking instantly uncomfortable, but the face of the lady herself betrayed nothing.

  “Of course not, Lady Empress,” she gasped, still bowed before me, lifting her eyes to mine with limpid innocence. “I was devastated to hear of what happened. We all were, weren’t we?” Her followers oozed assent. “Your guards should have been more careful.”