“This is your fault, charlatan,” she spits after draining the glass. “Had you not poked your nose into my affairs, all would be well with you and your father.”
She snatches up the wine jug again, spilling some on the tablecloth. “I had but one thing left to do,” she hisses. “Do you think I would let you ruin my years of careful planning? Events have been set in motion that cannot be undone.”
She speaks in riddles worse than the tribal elders. Let her keep talking so I can figure out a way to stop her. She snaps her fingers and Oshhe inhales a sharp breath. “Come sit, husband,” Arti tells him, her singsong voice like poison, “and let’s enjoy a nice meal together as a family.”
Oshhe doesn’t hesitate as he climbs to his feet, brushing me aside like a worrisome gnat. My tears choke me. This isn’t my father. Oshhe’s face is slack and gray, his eyes bright with admiration for Arti. My father is strong—he is a son of the Aatiri tribe, his mother not only a great witchdoctor but their chieftain. My father has a warm smile and a big heart. He’s the ever-careful gardener with endless patience. He isn’t afraid to stand up to Arti when she’s wrong. This man is someone else wearing my father’s skin.
“Come, Little Priestess.” He pats the pillow next to him. “I have a story to tell you.”
To anyone else’s ears, there would be no difference in his deep timbre. But his spark is gone. The underlying promise that he’ll always keep me safe is gone too. He sounds like a very talented stage actor performing as my father now, able to convince the masses of his sincerity. But not me. I won’t play this game. I don’t move even when he beckons me.
“Isn’t it enough that you cursed him?” I glare at Arti, my hands balled into fists. “Did you have to make him your puppet too?”
Arti brushes off my words like specks of lint from her kaftan. “In binding his ka, I’ve made it so he will answer only to me. He will not have to suffer the truth,” she explains, as if she’s performed some small mercy. “In his mind, he will only know happiness. Isn’t that enough for you?”
“Enough?” I shudder with disgust. “We should be basking in your mercy. Is that it?”
That gets her attention. She leans forward, her Ka-Priestess’s ring flashing from sapphire to moonstone. Had the ring belonged to Ren Eké before? It’s miserable to think that she’d wear his ring. That just as the first Ka-Priest had taken up root and grown into a tree to escape death, Ren Eké did the same with Arti. Did he carve out a place in her mind to live on? “Come sit, daughter,” she orders.
My body trembles as I resist the pull of her magic. Then my muscles tense and force me to my feet. I grit my teeth as my legs drag me across the room and lower me to the pillow.
“All this time,” she drawls, “we thought you didn’t have any magic.”
I don’t speak. If I had any real magic, I wouldn’t be in this situation. But that isn’t true. My father has plenty of magic and he couldn’t stop Arti either. What chance do I have?
“You shouldn’t be able to resist my magic even the slightest,” she says, her eyes gleaming. “I’m impressed.”
The words are a slap in my face. How many years have I wanted an inkling of my mother’s approval? Any little bit would do—and now this. She’s impressed that I can sass her and struggle against her magic and fail. She’s impressed that I had to crawl on my hands and knees for a charm that didn’t even work. I can’t help but wonder if I’d shown some aptitude for magic long before, if she wouldn’t have become a monster. I know it doesn’t make sense to feel this way, but I still do.
“There may be slack in the magic that binds you to me,” she muses. “But make no mistake: you will not betray me, daughter. Try as you may, you’ll still fail. It’s—unfortunately—the one thing you’re good at.”
Better to fail at magic than to do something so evil with it. I don’t speak my mind. No sense in antagonizing her. I need information about Kofi and the others. “I know what the Ka-Priest did to you . . . it wasn’t right.” I try another approach.
I half expect Arti to hide behind her vacant mask again, but she doesn’t. Her eyes are hungry and dangerous, and I second-guess myself. “He deserved what he got,” I add, and she cocks her head to the side. “But the children . . . why have you taken them? They’re innocent—what harm could they’ve done to you?”
“Do you take me for a fool, girl?” Arti snaps. “I know the children are innocent.”
There’s no mistaking the regret threading through her shaky voice.
She glances down. “I had to take them for that very reason.”
“Why?” I burst out. “Wasn’t killing the Ka-Priest enough? What purpose does taking the children serve?”
Oshhe cuts himself a piece of spiced lamb and herbed cheese. He’s oblivious to our conversation as he eats his meal.
“You think I killed him?” Arti laughs.
“Didn’t you?” I shoot back through gritted teeth.
Arti pours herself another glass of wine, her face flushed. “No,” she answers, almost as an afterthought. “Killing him would have been too kind.”
“Eat, Little Priestess,” Oshhe coaxes me through a mouthful of food. “You don’t look well.”
Tears slide down my cheeks. He sounds so much himself.
“Do as your father says.” Arti’s voice is a low hiss. “Eat.”
Her magic flares underneath my skin again and I eat. The food tastes like ash.
“There’s much no one knows about the former Ka-Priest,” she says. “Suran Omari has done an excellent job of keeping Ren’s legacy intact by spreading lies. He does it to spite me, but also to keep his hands clean. The Ka-Priest suffered an unfortunate illness of the spirit.” She scoops goat cheese onto her finger. “It kept him bedridden during his final years.”
It doesn’t escape my notice that she drops Eké from his name—a show of disrespect in the Litho tradition. Not that someone as vile as him deserves any honor even in death.
“That’s a pity.” Oshhe shrugs. “Had I been around, I could have healed him.”
Arti scowls at him as she flicks the goat cheese away. “It’s peculiar for an Eké not to have any family around, but Ren had none in Tamar and none willing to travel from Tribe Litho. I offered to care for him and take over his duties.” Her words are devoid of emotions, as though she’s recounting some mundane assembly matter. “I sought out girls whose minds he had violated. Most were street girls—the kind so-called men of status used and threw away. Most had perished or were beyond help. Ren never laid one hand on them; that wasn’t his particular vice. What he did was worse.
“He’d reach inside your mind and twist your memories to suit his own perverse pleasures.” Her gaze shifts to the wall behind me. “Then he would replace them with new, defiled memories, and those became the only memories you had. He violated hundreds of women before me, and Suran tidied it all up because Ren did his bidding too. He collected information to put the Kingdom at an advantage over its enemies. And the orishas . . . ,” she spits out, “they knew the entire time and did nothing to stop him.”