He must sense Salo’s presence but doesn’t look over his shoulder.
Salo hesitates and stops, frozen by a terrifying thought.
What if he hates me now?
Niko was not among the rangers who tossed the reed at him earlier tonight, but are they still friends? It’s entirely possible that when he turns his face to look at Salo, those kind brown eyes of his will instead be filled with rage and contempt.
Salo realizes right then just how much this would kill him. It would kill him more completely than the crushing void he felt when his brothers disowned him. He would not survive.
“You’re here,” he says, treading forward with the caution of a condemned man to the executioner.
Niko still doesn’t turn away from the lake. “It’s a good place to think,” he says. Then: “Is it time already?”
“Almost.”
His shoulders rise as he draws in a deep breath. “You’re really doing this, huh?”
“I guess,” Salo says after a pause.
“Think you’ll make it?”
“I hope so.”
“You sound calm.”
“Honestly, there hasn’t been enough time for me to worry.”
“I guess not.” Finally Niko gets up, dusting himself off. “Come on, then. I’ll row you there.”
A wave of relief washes over Salo. It is short lived. Niko won’t meet his eyes when he undoes the moorings attached to one of the boats or when they sit facing each other and he begins to row toward the island in strong, regular motions. The silence thickens and stretches in the space between them, until Salo begins to feel that Niko is pulling further away from him by the second.
“My brothers threw the reed at me,” he says.
Niko keeps his eyes on the floor separating their feet. “I know.”
“I noticed you weren’t there.”
He pulls hard on the oars, and they creak in their oarlocks. He still won’t look at Salo. “It was stupid, what they did. I get why they’re angry, I really do, but they didn’t have to take it that far.”
Salo doesn’t miss the emphasis on how much he gets their anger. “Are you angry with me?”
“I don’t know what I feel.”
“What do you want to feel?”
“Not confused.”
“About whether to be angry with me?”
“About everything, Salo! About you. You confuse me. A lot. I know you can’t help it, but sometimes I wish you were just . . . normal. Life would be easier for everyone.”
He looks away, and they say nothing more after that, the air between them much too charged for words.
I’m not normal, Salo thinks. Have I always been like this, or was there a point where I went from normal to not normal?
Eventually they arrive at the island on its west-facing bank. Salo holds his sandals as he carefully steps out into the shallows, where the cold water bites into his legs.
“Thanks for rowing me,” he says, and Niko acknowledges his gratitude with a simple nod. He’s gone back to not looking at him.
“I assume you have to go back,” Salo says, peering at the lakefront from whence they came. A procession of rowboats and oil lamps is already gliding toward them.
“There’ll be others who don’t have boats,” Niko says. “You’ll be fine here, right?”
“I think so.”
For a moment Niko looks like he wants to say something. But then he starts turning the boat around with his oars. “Good luck,” he says. “Stand strong and fearless.”
Strong and fearless are the last things Salo will be today, or any other day for that matter, but he thanks Niko anyway and wades to shore, holding his sandals in one hand.
The altar at the island’s center is a raised slab of granite whose sides are engraved with esoteric figures that glow a furious red, as if an inferno of moonfire were raging within the rock’s interior.
Memories of the last time he was here inundate Salo’s mind as he approaches it: his ama, a striking woman in scarlet and copper, plunging a witchwood knife into a hapless ewe over the altar as the New Year’s Comet burned like a blue streak of fire across the heavens. He didn’t know it back then, but people were terrified of her.
She was secretive. Her smiles were cold, enigmatic. She was frosty with most people, though she lavished him with uncritical affection. He wonders what she would think seeing him here now, about to face his awakening.
Remember.
A cold shiver makes him turn from the altar and sit on a patch of grass while he waits for everyone else to arrive.
The boats form a floating crescent in the shallows around the island’s western bank. None of the clanspeople come ashore—as with all awakenings, they will watch from their boats. About sixty or more boats are present by the time a string of darkness shoots up from the kraal on the plateau in the distance. Ravens.
Everyone watches them cut across the starlit skies at great speed, only to descend upon the island and swirl down in front of the altar. Salo rises to his feet as the queen emerges from the black maelstrom like a ghostly puzzle coming together, feathers becoming flesh and copper, honor guards flanking her.
With four disciplines of Red magic at her command and a well of power as boundless as the skies, the queen is the most fearsome mystic any Yerezi will ever encounter and the only metamorph in the Plains. Witnessing her sorcery with one’s own eyes is something of a privilege.
Her discerning gaze quickly finds Salo standing nearby. He bows to her in deference. “Irediti Ariishe.”
“It is the full moon tonight,” she says. “An auspicious time to awaken. There can be no turning back once we begin.”
He briefly wonders if she’s actually giving him a way out, and if so, if it wouldn’t be wise to take her up on her offer. These thoughts must be playing out on his face, because the brawny Ajaha on her left curls a lip in muted disgust. The Asazi’s expression remains impenetrable.
“I am ready, Your Majesty.” He’d never redeem himself if he gave up now.
“Then come closer and face your clanspeople. One way or another, tonight you will make history.”
He stands with the queen and her honor guards, the four facing the clan with their backs to the altar. His stomach does a flip when he notices the earthen bowl of clear, oily liquid in the Asazi’s hand. She catches him staring, and her eyes gleam at him with something unreadable.
Averting his gaze, he lets his eyes roam the sixty-odd rowboats floating in the shallows. He catches VaSiningwe’s looming silhouette, backlit against an oil lamp burning somewhere behind him. And if that’s VaSiningwe, then Aba D must be the man in the boat with him. Jio and Sibu aren’t with them, though, which they would be if they’d come at all. Nimara probably couldn’t leave the bonehouse, and Niko might not have returned after their exchange on the boat.
Salo is annoyed with himself when his eyes begin to sting. He slams them shut until the wave of emotions ebbs away.
“Behold Musalodi, your clansman!” The queen juts a finger toward Salo, and all eyes follow it. “He has gazed upon Ama Vaziishe and coveted her embrace, and against all tradition, he has asked us to let him reach for it. There are good reasons, Yerezi-kin, to condemn him for this aberration. After all, our people have thrived for centuries by knowing their allotted places in society, and it would seem that Musalodi does not know his.