“Or,” Isa says, “you could just leave the Sentinels alone and let them do their job.”
Kola feigns a sad smile. “The Sentinels will be disbanded, Your Majesty, one way or the other. They are a relic of a bygone age; it is time to let them go. Our sons and nephews cannot continue being your hostages.” He glances briefly behind him, where the other headmen are talking in dispersed little groups. “You might have delayed the inevitable tonight, but that little trick you played won’t work at the next Mkutano.” A wicked gleam crosses his eyes. “Unless you choose to attend, of course.”
The next Mkutano will be the first of the New Year and will therefore be held at the Summit, at the foot of the colossus. She would have to leave the temple’s safety to be present. A veiled threat, though not a subtle one.
“You don’t have much choice here, Your Majesty,” Kola says. “I am giving you a way out, a way to save your people. Marry me, and I will ensure no Saire ever suffers ethnic violence. But the Sentinels cannot stand.”
Fury boils in the pit of Isa’s stomach. This man has taken her family. Now he wants to take her Sentinels, her crown, and her body. When she speaks, she makes sure her words are clear as a bell. “I’d sooner marry a devil-sent fiend.”
To this, Kola Saai grins, showing that his teeth aren’t entirely perfect—his canines are a little protuberant. “Observe true power.” He turns to the headmen and shouts: “Your Highnesses. You are all invited to welcome the New Year’s Comet at the Summit next Tensday night. I expect all of you to attend in person.”
The headmen grumble, but none of them dare refuse the command.
Kola Saai turns back to Isa, his grin triumphant. “You are invited, too, of course.”
“Maybe some other time,” Isa says. When you’re dead.
“Very well, then.” He gives a gracious bow. “It was lovely to see you, Your Majesty. Until next time.”
As he walks away, Isa glares at his back, feeling angry at herself and at how impotent she is. She is king, and yet she’s powerless to mete out justice to her family’s murderer. He should not be drawing breath while the ashes of her family litter the earth.
“One day I will kill that man,” she whispers.
“Yeah. He’s an asshole.” Next to her, Dino places a gentle arm on hers. “Come, Your Majesty. Let’s get out of here.”
She reclaims her composure, considering the two warriors next to her. “Will you not speak to your fathers?”
They both shake their heads, Ijiro more forcefully than Dino. “No need,” Ijiro says.
Dino shrugs. “I’ll speak to him when he comes to the city for the New Year’s Feast. Right now we should get you out of here.”
She gives him a smile, grateful and relieved that she can still call him a friend, that she has not lost his respect. She feels like she’s fumbling her way through the dark, but at least she’s not making a mess of everything. It gives her hope.
After a deep breath she wills her mask to obey and whisks the three of them back to the temple.
PART 6
MUSALODI
ILAPARA
KELAFELO
THE MAIDSERVANT
ISA
Void craft—magic of space and time
Harnessing the moon’s essence to exploit the many facets of the metadimension. The most versatile craft, though by far the least practiced. Kinetic barriers, telekinesis, shape-shifting, clairvoyance, teleportation, long-distance telepathy: all are possible through the Void. However, because of the vast differences in how they each use the converted arcane energy, specialization is required.
—excerpt from Kelafelo’s notes
“Aba says I’m wise for my age but too curious for my own good. I think he’s disappointed in me. Maybe we should stop with the lessons.”
“But my child, don’t you see? If you are wise, then you must be curious as well, for wisdom without curiosity is stagnant. It is curiosity that drives the explorer deeper into the abyss, where her wisdom is expanded once she sees what dwells there.”
“What is the abyss, Aago?”
“It is everything we don’t know, and it is larger than we can ever comprehend. But with wisdom and curiosity, we can make it that much smaller.”
34: Musalodi
Lake Zivatuanu
A kiss like fire on his lips. A pair of the brownest eyes. A wicked smile. Strong arms pinning him down and a gentle nibble on his neck, teeth against skin, laughter like a feather tickling his ear. He arches his spine, breathless from the movement and the exquisite pressure, and in his core an electric heat builds. He doesn’t know what it would feel like exactly, but in the quiet hours of dawn, when the possibilities of the day ahead still hang in the balance, Salo allows himself to imagine. Perhaps it would hurt at first, but then it would become . . . then it would feel . . .
Cold. Suffocating. Salo opens his eyes and takes an instinctive breath only for a torrent of water to pour into his mouth. He chokes, because somehow, inexplicably, he is now underwater. He tries to remember how he got here and sees images of an avian ship, of falling asleep on its main deck while he sailed across the longest lake in the world. Was there an accident? Did the ship sink?
Am I going to die here?
He thrashes violently, his lungs drowning in the water. The lake’s cold embrace surrounds him on all sides, and it chokes him until he dies, or at least he thinks he dies, because for some reason his need for breath begins to subside, until he stops needing to breathe at all.
He blinks, ceasing his flailing. The water is cold and impenetrably dark, but a shimmer of dawn light dances on the surface above. He looks up and sees a looming shadow floating somewhere not far away. The ship!
But before he can swim up to his salvation, a presence reaches up from far, far below and coils around his shards. With it comes a great sense of age that presses down on his mind, along with the uneasy feeling that this presence has a message for him, a pivotal message he needs to see before the first sun crests the horizon and seals the day. The presence grows and becomes irresistible, snaking up his spine, begging him for permission to use his shards, to show him something. So he lets it, and he feels like he has touched electricity.
The skies above him ignite with red lightning. He looks up through the shimmer of the surface and sees within the lightning the contours of a great bird with its wings outstretched in flight. They extend from one edge of the sky to the other, dwarfing the world with their astonishing size, and when the bird looks down at him and he sees into its eyes, he immediately knows that what he is looking at is a sliver of the long-forgotten past and yet another affirmation that there are things far greater than he in this world.
The Lightning Bird of Lake Zivatuanu.
He was the Great Impundulu, king of a world whose people feared and worshipped him, and his story unfolds around Salo as brilliant mirages that swim in the water like memories, a story Salo both sees and feels as if he were there.
His essence was hedonism. He feasted on the blood of his enemies and seduced many women and men. His was an age of boundless wealth and hope, of grand cities and immortal empires, and though his domain was vast and splendid, it was but one of a multitude scattered across a milky, starry expanse.