Isa clutches onto the Arc even tighter. “Your Worship, tell me you are wrong.”
The man speaks bluntly. “I’m afraid I cannot, Your Highness. The Royal Guard attacked everyone in sight, and when they could find no one else, they turned on each other.” He pauses, and Isa could swear he’s being hesitant. “I must confess . . . I suspected treachery was afoot, which was why my Jasiri and I were in the vicinity, but evidently I underestimated the scope of the attack. I assumed an external threat and never once considered that the threat would emerge from within the palace. It is a personal failure I will never forgive and a burden I will carry to my grave.”
Isa’s ears ring with this revelation. “What are you saying, Your Worship?”
“It will dismay you to hear this, but the other high mystics of the Shirika have forsaken your clan and withdrawn their protection. I believe the Crocodile has taken this as permission to move for the throne. I, however, am not of one mind with them, and so long as I live, a Saire will be king, and so long as you live, Your Highness, he who orchestrated this treason will have failed.”
“I told you it was him!” In a rage Jomo frees himself of Obe. Another Sentinel has to rush forward to help him stay on his feet. He stabs the air with an accusing finger. “Stay the devil away from me, crocodile filth! Your uncle did this! Your clan did this! I swear I’ll kill every one of you if it’s the last thing I do.”
Obe’s shoulders flex as he fumes, glaring death at Jomo. “My uncle would never. You’re jumping to conclusions.”
“I’m afraid the facts suggest otherwise,” the Arc says. “I do not doubt your devotion to the crown, young man. You are a Sentinel, after all, and I suspect we have you to thank for Her Highness’s survival. But I have received intelligence via mirrorgram; Kola Saai is on his way to the capital as we speak, bringing with him a significant contingent of his legion.”
Isa looks to Obe, who looks back like his world has just been turned onto its side. Isa doesn’t know what to think. She feels angry tears pouring down her face.
“Isa . . .” Obe takes a step closer, then seems to remember that there is an audience. “Your Highness, I had nothing to do with this. You have to believe me.”
She wants to—she does—but her whole family is dead, and his uncle is responsible. How can she ever look at him in the same way again?
“Your Highness,” the high mystic says. “You must take refuge in the Red Temple. Once you are safe inside, I will summon the ancient protections. No one will be able to safely enter the citadel unless I allow it.”
“To what end?” Isa hears herself say. “The Crocodile has already won. If I fled to the temple, what difference would it make?”
“The mask-crown is still in this palace,” the Arc says. “So long as it exists, and so long as there is a Saire of royal blood fit to wear it, the Shirika cannot crown another king. It is the pact that founded this kingdom. Take refuge in the Red Temple; claim the mask-crown. Let us thwart the Crocodile before his hold over this kingdom grows stronger.”
Isa stares at her audience of Sentinels, who stare back expectantly. Without the king, she and Jomo are now the Sentinels’ sole responsibility. The young warriors are bound by death oaths to be absolutely loyal to whichever one of them ends up wearing the mask-crown.
Isa does not want that person to be her. “But I am a woman, Your Worship. My cousin Jomo is a Saire prince. He is the one you must crown.”
“No.” Jomo shakes his head so vigorously he almost brings himself and the Sentinel propping him up crashing to the ground. “I cannot. Please, Isa. I cannot. I will not.”
The Arc does not appear surprised by Jomo’s reaction. “Women have worn the mask-crown when circumstances required departure from tradition,” he says. “This is one of those times. It is what your father would want.”
Isa covers her face and forces herself to take deep breaths. Falling apart in front of so many people would not do. When she has found her composure, she wipes the tears off her cheeks. “I want to see my family before I leave.”
For the second time tonight, the high mystic hesitates. “Your Highness, I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“I have to see my family.” A troubling thought occurs to her. “Who will see to their committals if I’m hiding in the temple?”
“I will see to the arrangements,” the Arc says, “but I’m afraid your presence would incur too much risk. Your enemies will stop at nothing to see you dead; we must not give them another chance.”
“Then I need to see my family. I need to say goodbye.” Isa’s voice cracks in her throat. “Please.”
The Arc considers her silently for a moment, then relents with a nod. “But be prepared, Your Highness. What you’re about to see will stay with you forever.”
A tremor of fear racks Isa’s body and almost proves her a coward, but she weathers it.
And then she goes to see her family.
19: Musalodi
Khaya-Siningwe—Yerezi Plains
As morning comes on the day he is set to leave the kraal, Salo sits cross-legged beneath the pale, leafless branches of the witchwood tree growing in the bonehouse garden. With his back against the trunk, he places his hands on his knees, palms facing upward. Then he ignites his shards.
Essence rushes into them from the environment, transformed therein by arcane logic into the energy of Storm craft. The energy grows denser and denser until the shards crackle with dancing sparks of red static, and only now does he release it, sending it out along the set of predetermined patterns he learned from a spell book.
Nimara kept her promise, and over the last few days Salo has spent hours with his nose buried inside the spell book she procured for him, imprinting its patterns into the pathways of his mind. To the layperson, the little book is no more than a few pages of meaningless angular scripts. But to those who can read ciphers, it is a precise description of how Storm craft can be harnessed as jets of wind. A basic spell compared to what he could find in the library at the Queen’s Kraal if he were ever given the chance, but a far better one than what he attempted to design himself.
At his command the pressure changes in the garden, and the air begins to stir as he tests the boundaries, a slight breeze at first, then a whirlwind that gathers force and whips around the tree, cocooning him in a fast-moving funnel of twigs and leaves.
He smiles. The spell is flirting with the limit of what his single ring can handle, but the conversion of essence in his shards is so effortless he can direct individual microcurrents or the entire swirling mass.
I have always wanted this, says a quiet voice in his mind. He’s always known this, of course, always felt it in his soul. He just couldn’t admit such a thing to himself, for to do so would have been to prove what they all said about him right: that he wanted things meant for women and was therefore questionable as a man. Now, though, with the power of magic flowing through his veins, he feels like he has looked at himself in the mirror for the first time in his life.
This is who I am. My true self.
Still, he’s not certain he likes this reflection, as he feels a tingle of shame for being so much of a deviation from what is expected of a Yerezi man, let alone the firstborn son of a chief.