“My family—”
“Will be fine, I’m sure.” Obe comes close enough to pull her into an embrace so tight it squeezes the breath right out of her lungs. Still not tight enough. “Isa, I’m with you. All the way to hell and back. I promise. Now please, get dressed.”
What happens next involves Obe taking Isa’s hand and dragging her out of the chamber. It involves skulking down tapestried hallways with high ceilings and brightly patterned pillars. It involves coming upon a body at the entrance to the domed hall connecting the palace’s private and state wings. They freeze.
A framework of bamboo rises from the floors all around the hall, meeting at the dome’s apex, where an oversize coconut-shaped crystal lamp droops from a cord so thin it’s almost invisible. In front of them a young man, a Sentinel, is lying facedown in a lake of blood with his right hand inches away from a spear.
Obe lets go of Isa’s hand and crouches next to him, his expression unreadable. He makes a gesture with his left hand, running a finger across his heart. “Find peace on the Infinite Path, my brother.”
More bodies await farther in. Another Sentinel in green. A guardsman in blue. A figure in nightclothes slumped awkwardly at the foot of a large bamboo strut, like she was struck from behind while trying to escape. Whatever happened here happened quickly, and then whoever did it probably left to go find something else to kill.
A piercing cry from somewhere out of sight makes Isa shiver, and she hugs herself, battling the urge to vomit. Or curl into a ball and weep. Or pinch herself until she wakes up.
“Come on.” Obe takes her hand again. “We’ve got to keep moving.”
They see more corpses. A cousin of hers was cut down by the entrance to the principal reception room. His green dashiki is blood soaked. His kufi cap must have fallen off during a struggle, because it’s on the tiled floor a few feet away from him. They weren’t particularly close, but Isa’s eyes blur, and she feels a rasping howl rising up her throat.
Obe mutters a curse, the first sign he’s shown that this might be getting to him too. “Dear Mother, it’s a bloodbath.”
He keeps leading her toward the Sentinels’ quarters in the Summit’s south wing, where the Sentinels on palace duty are barracked. The Saire Royal Guard might be the king’s most trusted guards, being Saires themselves, but the Sentinels are bound by ancient sorcery to serve the crown on pain of death; whatever is happening here, they will die before they see the king and his kin harmed.
Isa tries to tell herself that her mother is fine. Her father and brothers too. Zenia. Suye. She says a silent prayer to the moon, willing them all to be safe, because she can’t bear the thought of anything else.
As they approach a foyer with a grand staircase, Obe stops dead so abruptly Isa almost runs into his back. Just as abruptly he turns around and tries to push her back the way they came. “Move!”
Isa remains stuck on her feet long enough to see a guardsman in blue and aerosteel skewering another guardsman with a spear in the thigh, both of their faces twisted with wild rage, but his victim doesn’t fold over as he should. Instead, he somehow finds the strength to raise his sword and slash his foe in the face, cleaving off a lump of flesh from his cheek. They are still at it by the time Obe manages to pull Isa away.
By the Mother, it’s like . . . like they’re possessed.
“Change of plan,” Obe half whispers. “We won’t make it to the south wing. We need to find a place to hole up until whatever the devil this is blows over.”
An idea strikes Isa, and with it comes an unexpected fount of courage. She grips Obe’s hand a little harder and quickens her pace, leading him for a change. “This way.” He doesn’t fight her.
They slink down the halls of the Summit for a full minute without event, silently threading their way through a trail of bodies—palace officials, liveried servants, Faraswa workers. Isa recognizes many of them but keeps going. One step after the next. Survival first, if only to know that her family is safe.
Just as her eyes settle on a body partially hidden behind a thick pillar, a growl and a flash of blue to her right make Obe shout her name. From out of the darkness comes a guardsman with a missing ear and frightful cuts oozing all over his body. He lunges for her, but Obe pushes her out of the way and springs forward with her jeweled dagger, knifing the guardsman in the chest. The guardsman wielded a spear; now the weapon rattles to the ground, and Obe lets him slump onto him like they are embracing, the dagger still lodged where it struck.
Looking over Obe’s shoulders, Isa thinks she sees a glimmer of lucidity enter the guardsman’s eyes, but then it is gone, along with everything he ever was. Obe lays him gently on the ground and pulls out the dagger.
“Obe?”
He releases a shaky breath. “I’m all right. Keep moving.”
Isa numbly obeys, and soon they make it to an inconspicuous door not far from the kitchens.
“A broom closet?” Obe says rather dubiously as she pulls the door open. They have both been here before, during a happier time.
“No one ever comes here,” Isa says. “Come on.”
It is gloomy inside, and an unpleasantly sour stench hangs thickly in the air. The darkness becomes total when Obe shuts the door behind them, making Isa almost regret her decision. But Obe takes her hand again, and that’s a small comfort. She looks where she thinks his face is. “Now what?”
Obe is silent, like he’s thinking. “Now we wait,” he finally says.
“What’s going on, Obe?”
“I don’t know, but it reeks of sorcery.” His voice becomes throaty, like he’s fighting back tears. “My brothers aren’t prepared for this, Isa. We’re not as experienced as the Guard. They’ll be butchered.” He means the Sentinels. Brother is what they call each other, even though they might be from different clans. “I should be out there with them, but your safety must come first.”
He surrounds her with his warmth by pulling her into his arms.
“My family, Obe.”
“I wish I could say what you want to hear. But I can’t. All I can tell you is that I’m here, and I’ll die before I leave.”
Such an earnest expression of devotion should make her feel better, but she can’t stop thinking about all those bodies she saw and wondering if one of them was—
No. She doesn’t let herself complete that thought. She buries her face in Obe’s chest and keeps it there for so long she loses track of time.
“It smells like vomit in here,” Obe says eventually. Shouts are still coming from outside.
Succumbing to a wave of weariness, Isa finally disentangles herself from him and moves to sit down on the floor, only to freeze when her foot brushes against something.
She crouches and feels with her hand. A boot. And it’s attached to a leg wearing brocade pants. “There’s a body in here,” she says distantly, numbly. But then her fingers slide over metal, and her breath stills. Quickly, she brings both hands to trace the contours of the smooth metal contraption, and yes, it’s wrapped around the leg. A leg brace. “Jomo?”
Jomo Saire, the herald’s son and Isa’s rake of a cousin, crippled by the bite of a ninki nanka as a child and the only person she knows who needs a leg brace and a cane to walk about—this leg has to be his.