A memory flashes through her right then: her brother Kali warning their father about the Crocodile’s growing ambitions. She balls the trembling hand on her chest into a fist, locking her kingly chains in a tight grip. “This has been his plan all along,” she says, thinking aloud. “He has stoked hatred against us to prepare himself for this.”
“The King’s Sentinels still stand, Your Majesty,” the Arc says. “So long as that remains true, Kola Saai’s hand will be stayed. We have time to find another way out of this.”
Jomo snorts, his eyes red rimmed with misery and anger. “With all due respect, Your Worship, I don’t want my cousin to marry that excretion of a human being, but what help could the Sentinels offer us? They’re whelps as green as their tunics.” He scowls at the warriors standing stiffly nearby. A fire sparks in his eyes when he sees Obe Saai—specifically, when he sees what Obe Saai is holding in one hand. “And what in the pits is he doing here? He’s a Saai, for the Mother’s sake. Kola’s own nephew! He could be spying for his traitor prince!”
Obe seethes visibly but dares not speak.
Jomo hobbles closer to him, squaring his broad shoulders. “Something to say, crocodile filth?” Jomo has always been the most dissolute and academic of the Saire princes, but he has never been accused of lacking a spine. And one of the first things people often learn about him is that he has a quick temper.
“Cousin, this is unseemly.” Isa places a gentle hand on his arm, then bows to the high mystic. “Forgive him, Your Worship. It is a deeply emotional time for all of us. Might I have a word with him in private?”
The old sorcerer gives Jomo a disapproving glare, then nods to Isa. “Of course, Your Majesty. We will not go far.” And then he leads Obe Saai and Dino Sato down the arcade and out of sight. Elsewhere, she might have begun to fear for her safety, but not in this citadel, not with a dozen Jasiri guardians and the temple’s high priest only yards away.
“I know you’re hurting,” she says to Jomo when they’re alone, in as gentle a voice as she can manage. “Believe me, I know, but Obe has proven his loyalty, and he saved my life. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”
Jomo’s round cheeks flush with shame, and then he looks skyward, eyes heavy with unshed tears. “I’m so sorry, Isa. Dear Mother, what has gotten into me?”
“Nothing you don’t have the right to feel.”
He lowers his eyes to study her and sniffs. “How do you do it? You’re so calm and strong when I feel like my head will explode any second now.”
She wonders why no one can see her trembling hands, hear her racing heart. She’s inches away from pulling her hair out with her bare hands, and yet he sees strength when he looks at her. “I feel the same way. I guess . . . I’m just a better liar.”
“No,” Jomo says. “You’re the King of Chains, dear cousin. You’re Mweneugo’s daughter. You’re brave and strong, and you’ll be a great king.”
She smiles, and even though it’s feeble, the emotion behind it comes from the little corner of her heart where hope still shines. “And you will be as great a herald as your mother was.”
He smiles, too, but the gloom soon returns to his face like rain clouds obscuring the suns. “What are we going to do about this, Isa? We’re the only clan without a legion. We didn’t need one with the Shirika on our side, but the Crocodile bought them off somehow, and now he’s taken control of the City Guard. I’ve been out in the city, Isa, and many Saires aren’t leaving their homes out of fear. It’s madness, I tell you.”
Isa walks to stare down into the pond again. The gold and ivory chains woven into her blue robes seem to mock her reflection. She looks like a girl playing dress up, not a king.
“How’s the palace?” she asks.
Jomo lets out a harsh laugh. “The bastard’s turned it into a motherforsaken whorehouse. You should have seen the way he welcomed me like a guest—into my own home! The filth already fancies himself king.”
Just as well, a part of Isa says, the part that never wants to see the palace again, not after what happened there, what she saw there . . .
. . . blood on the floors, blood drenching the tapestries. Her mother slumped by the wall like she was taking a rest, except for her dry, vacant eyes; the grimace; and the congealed blood from the mortal gash on her temple. Kali sprawled on the floor with his head halfway severed, Ayo gutted in his own bed, Zenia floating in a bloody bathing pool, Suye’s little golden shoe upside down by her cot, a shape lying facedown on the crimson-stained sheets. Isa didn’t look; she couldn’t . . .
Isa shuts her eyes. They say that when her father was enthroned, years before her birth, the Mother sent slow, gentle rains to shower the city for an entire week, signifying that his would be a peaceful, prosperous reign. Today a violent storm tore through the sullen skies, rattling the temple’s shutters and threatening to tear them off their hinges.
She has never been one for omens, but Isa needs no omens to know that the mask-crown will kill her. She knew it the moment she saw her father lying dead in his own blood.
“His Worship might be right, you know,” she says. “The Sentinels are a thorn in Kola’s side. He can’t touch our people so long as they stand.”
“What’s to stop him? The Shirika are on his side. The City Guard won’t obey me anymore. He has the Bonobo in his pocket, and together they command the kingdom’s two most powerful legions—and by the way, those legionnaires are all older, far more experienced, and a lot more committed to the cause than our dear Sentinels. What chance do we have?”
“It’s not about strength or numbers, cousin.” She turns to face him. “Yes, if it came to a fight, the Sentinels would perish, and us along with them. But every headman, including Kola himself, has sons and nephews bound to the Sentinels. Heirs, future vassals, young men who’ll command and fill the ranks of their clan legions in the future. He’d be foolish to risk a confrontation that could kill them off. The other headmen would soon turn against him, even those who’ve stayed neutral thus far.”
Jomo sighs. “I understand that, Great Elephant, but you’re operating on the assumption that Kola Saai is a rational man.”
“I know he’s a rational man,” Isa says with enough venom to surprise herself. “Coldly rational. A man who can turn high mystics—gods—to such a bloody cause can’t be anything else.” She takes a deep breath and slowly exhales. She can’t allow herself to lose control. “Kola Saai is chipping away at our power to force my abdication. He has taken the Shirika from us. Now he’ll seek to disband the Sentinels so he can put pressure on our people. It has to be his next move.”
The irony. Isa has always hated the Sentinels, what she’s always seen as hostage taking disguised as military training. Every year hundreds of sixteen-year-old boys are plucked from their homes and brought to the capital, where a curse is cast on them so they can barely even think a traitorous thought without suffering extreme pain. The Sentinels are a stick the Saires have always held over their sister clans: Play nice, because we have the Shirika on our side and death bonds coiled around your young men. Start a war with us, and it’s their blood you’ll be spilling.