She used to argue with her brothers about the injustice of the custom, how it only bred further hatred for the Saires and didn’t guarantee continued loyalty once the curse was lifted. And yet here she is, making plans to preserve it. She feels covered in dirt she can’t ever wash off.
“I suspect he’ll petition the Shirika to vote on the matter,” she says. “If and when they agree, he’ll need the support of at least five other headmen for the vote to go his way. We mustn’t let that happen.”
Jomo scratches the bristles on his cheeks and shakes his head slowly. “But he has the support, Isa. They elected him regent, didn’t they?”
“Only because no one else wanted to contest the position.”
“Even so, you know as well as I do that they’ve always hated the Sentinels. How hard do you think it’ll be for Kola to convince them to vote his way?”
“Kola has enemies among the headmen, cousin. We need to capitalize on that. We’ll have to appeal to them. Buy their allegiance if we must. So long as the Sentinels stand, we’ll . . .”
They’ll what? The Crocodile won’t be going away without bloodshed, and if it comes to bloodshed, he has every conceivable advantage on his side.
“We’ll have hope,” Isa finishes, covering the hand on Jomo’s cane with her own. “We’ll have time to find another way, and we will find another way. You and I, we’ll make it out of this; do you understand me?” Isa knows that these words are as good as lies, but they’re what Jomo needs to hear, so she speaks them without compunction.
Jomo blinks away the moisture in his eyes and nods. “I won’t give up so long as you keep fighting, Isa. You’re all I’ve got left.”
Above the towering pylon of the innermost courtyard, peeking over the temple’s bamboo rooftops like a small red sun, the Ruby Paragon begins to strobe brilliantly, signaling the turn of the hour. Isa and Jomo bask in its cold light, hand in hand, until it strobes six times and then falls silent.
“Come.” She forces another smile. “I won’t have us be miserable at my coronation feast. After all, there’ll be no one to tell us we can’t drink the cider.”
His laugh is sad and gravelly, but his shoulders seem lighter as they walk to rejoin Itani Faro and the two Sentinels. Isa counts this as a minor victory, the first of her reign.
PART 4
THE MAIDSERVANT
ILAPARA
MUSALODI
Blood craft—magic of the flesh
Converting the moon’s essence into the energies of life to manipulate flesh and minds, both living and dead. Wielded by healers, hypnotists, beast masters, necromancers, and monster makers.
—excerpt from Kelafelo’s notes
“Aago, why do so many bad things happen in the world?”
“A very difficult question, my child, and the sad truth is that no one really knows. The way I see it, we are creatures who thrive on order and predictability living in an inherently chaotic universe. That leaves us exposed to any forces beyond our ability to control, and in such a universe, there are an infinite number of these.”
“So . . . if we controlled more things, then less bad things would happen?”
“Perhaps. But it would depend on who wields this control, for in the wrong hands, control—power—can be a greater agent of evil than chaos.”
21: The Maidservant
Southeast Umadiland
Agony. Hatred. Whorls of fire dancing across her skin. A door shaking violently until it bursts into a million splinters, revealing a yawning abyss that sucks her in while letting terrible things rush out and take over her body, monsters with gnashing teeth.
You will lose yourself to it.
In a cold sweat the Maidservant emerges from a fitful dream to the sound of an old wooden door creaking in its frame as the wind beats softly against it. A raw stench clings to the air, faint but sickly, like bile and dried blood.
She sits up in her pallet, letting the woolen blanket covering her fall away from her naked body. The soft glow of dawn has leaked in through the gap beneath the door and around the rickety shutters, casting a diffuse light on a starkly appointed room with an earthen floor and walls covered with grass tapestries.
A hut. Somewhere in a remote valley of the southeastern Umadi savannas, if memory serves her right. A body too. Not the warm, hefty one curled up on the pallet next to her, snoring like a veldboar, but the crumpled lifeless form across the hut. That body is the source of the stench.
You will lose yourself to it.
The Maidservant quietly rises from the pallet, suppressing a groan when waves of searing pain lap and purl across her body: her tattoos bidding her a good morning. She doesn’t fight the pain; she lets it wash over her. The agony chases away every vestige of sleep and fills her to bursting with hatred, which she uses to fortify the rattling door in her mind.
Enough of this weakness.
She drifts to the table across the room, draws up a chair for herself, and sits down.
After a glance at the slumbering form on the pallet, she draws magic to reach into her Voidspace and summon two items: a scorpion pendant on a beaded string and a shiny spherical mind stone. She places both gently on the table.
Like a key lying just out of the reach of a caged prisoner, the mind stone has tormented her for years with the things she knows it holds, truths that would break the mental shackles binding her if she could only access them. But no more. Now those truths will be hers, and she will finally be free.
Free to bathe the world in blood until her hatred is sated.
With a thought she awakens the talisman; it responds immediately, curling its tail and setting its crystal sting alight with multihued beams that sweep over the mind stone. An illusion of Mirror craft appears above the crystal a moment later, displaying to the Maidservant an image of the mind stone. In this image a thick layer of protection surrounds the stone, an enchantment that manifests as countless lines of semitransparent neon-green cipher prose, each line swarming around the stone along a different orbital path, like insects around a crystal lamp. Together the ciphers bar access to the information stored within the stone’s lattices.
The Maidservant sits back in her chair, staring intently at the mirage. The secret to her freedom is buried somewhere behind that moving layer of prose. She has tried to break through with her mind, but the prose mends itself so quickly she can’t keep up, not even with spells that slow her perception of time or elixirs that speed up her thoughts.
But now, with this Yerezi talisman and its vastly accelerated logic, she will be able to analyze the prose and chip away at it, widening the cracks until the enchantment collapses. This is only her third session with the talisman, and fractures have already appeared. She focuses on such a place now, unraveling the prose faster than it can self-repair, and several minutes pass in silent productiveness.
Then a hoarse male voice calls to her from the pallet across the room. “Come back to bed, my little fly.”
Everyone else calls him Black River, for he shed a river of blood upon his awakening with spear and magic to prove his allegiance to their warlord. She just calls him River, or the man with whom she sometimes spends the night. A diversion, really. A constant nuisance.