Nezi doesn’t blink. I try not to think about the Demon King, let alone say his name. Even now his magic burrows deeper inside me, stretching into my limbs and settling in like an old friend. Magic so dangerous that it destroyed two men with mere soil. I can’t lose myself to it and become like my mother.
“You truly do not understand.” Nezi frowns. “The Demon King is not our enemy.”
“What?” I hiss, not quite shocked that she already knows. Of course she does. She, Ty, and Arti are too close for her to not know. “He eats souls. He almost destroyed the world, and you stand there telling me he’s not our enemy. Can you not see the destruction that releasing his ka will bring? We all know what the holy scripts say!”
“The holy scripts are only stories, Arrah.” Nezi sighs. “By now you should’ve realized that not all is as it seems. The orishas are not what they seem either. I had a daughter once, and she wanted a better life than I could give her, so she volunteered for the Rite of Passage. Like so many others, she never returned home, thanks to your orishas. And Ty . . .” Pain flares in Nezi’s eyes as she lets her sentence trail off.
The demon magic breathes against my neck, and I squeeze my hands into fists. Go away.
“We want the orishas to pay for their crimes,” Nezi tells me, her tone matter-of-fact. “And the crimes that happen under their noses to those who can’t protect themselves.”
We. Here I’d thought that I could talk Nezi and Ty into helping me.
“I don’t pretend that the orishas are wholesome or good.” I grit my teeth—my vision red with anger. “But what my mother’s done to help the Demon King is wrong. There’s nothing you can say to convince me otherwise.”
“You’ll come around.” Nezi turns to leave. “It’s only a matter of time.”
At that, she slips out of the room as quietly as she came. I rush to the door and bolt it shut this time, my hands shaking. She can’t believe that I’ll support what my mother’s doing, that I’ll stand aside and let her. Twenty-gods. Has everyone on this ship lost their good sense?
I storm back to the desk to finish my letter while the curse is still weak. When I unroll the papyrus, my head swims and my heartbeat quickens. This can’t be right. I stare at the grim reality of what I’ve done. On the paper there are circles drawn upon circles upon circles. Circles that bind, circles that connect. The serpent tattoo aches as the demon magic curls tighter around my heart.
Twenty-Three
After ten days of drifting on the river, we leave the ship for Kefu, a free trade territory that borders the north edge of Estheria. Magic flutters across my forearms like velvety moth wings, but I can’t see it. It makes no sense when it feels as thick as in the tribal lands. Even if magic is less visible during the day, usually it looks like flecks of lint on the wind, but here it’s almost imperceptible. The eye of Re’Mec hides behind a cloud that casts the docks in shifting shadows. It’s midday, but it sits too low in the sky.
Arti hires laborers to carry a litter big enough for Oshhe and me, but I refuse to ride with them. My father objects until Arti tells him to leave me be. I walk with the rest of our household, leading the donkeys packed with our things.
Dust coats everything in Kefu, from the people to the squat buildings. Gaunt faces and hollow eyes stare at us as we make our way through the town. Kefu lacks the spark that radiates from the people in Tamar, especially in the East Market. The merchants have no heart as they sell their wares, and the patrons are downtrodden. There’s no boasting on the corners. No gambling in the alleyways. No melody of flutes or djembe drums. Most of all, no song or laughter. There’s something very wrong with this place.
Sweat trickles down my forehead as I shoo away flies. I linger far behind the caravan, until it disappears in a cloud of dust at the edge of town. I’m sick of walking in my mother’s shadow, and it’s nice to have a little space for myself after the tight quarters on the ship. I pull my donkey along, dragging my feet as much as it does.
“Can you spare some bread?” asks a little girl rushing to match our pace.
She blinks at me with sad violet eyes, and skin so ashen it’s hard to believe the sun has ever touched her. Though, she doesn’t have visible veins like the Northerners do, no matter their shade of color. “Can you help me, please?”
The magic in Kefu shifts around the girl, leaving a pocket of air that keeps it away from her. Her own magic feels like being on the edge of a storm. This little girl isn’t who, or what, she appears to be. “You again?”
“Aren’t you happy to see me?” Koré pipes up in a high-pitched version of herself—strange coming from the mouth of a child. In her presence, the curse loosens on my tongue again.
“If you don’t have a way to kill my mother,” I reply, “then no.”
“Are you always so sour?” The little girl Koré pouts.
She sniffs around the saddle on the donkey until she finds the salted fish and bread from the night before. She acts like a real child. Without the touch of her magic, I would’ve been none the wiser. She lifts the sack without asking. “What does food taste like these days?”
Seeing Koré pretend to be a precocious child reminds me of Kofi, and shame tingles in my belly. I couldn’t protect him, and I can’t help but wonder if he’d still be alive had he never met me. My heart sinks.
Little-girl Koré smiles at the contents of the sack. “As much as I would love to sample your delicacies, I’ve come with a purpose, or several for that matter. There are things you need to know.”
My belly clenches in anticipation. Whatever she’s come to tell me can’t be good.
“You must have noticed that Kefu is not what it seems.” She adjusts the straps of an old leather bag across her shoulders. “The city is like the space between time that the tribal people call the void. We . . . my brethren and I . . . travel vast distances in the matter of moments through it. But this place is a different kind of void. It’s where the demons coalesced after the war.”
“Coalesced?” I wrap my arms around my shoulders. “You mean they didn’t die? None of them? But . . .” I inhale sharply, remembering Shezmu’s gaping mouth, his horrible piercing scream, and what Nezi said about the holy scripts in the Temple. Only stories. “You . . .” I can hardly speak. “You lied to everyone.”
“We stretched the truth, yes.” Koré shrugs. “When we destroyed the demon race, they found a way to keep their souls from ascending. We all must return to the Supreme Cataclysm in death. It made orisha, and we made everything else. But the demons found a way to cheat.”
I stare at her in shock as the scribes’ lessons about the orishas—about her—unravel in my mind. “What else did you stretch the truth about?”
Koré glares at me through narrow slits. “The point is . . . we couldn’t force the demons to ascend, so we had to contain their souls to keep them from taking new bodies. This place is a prison, and like the void, time is fickle here. It moves at a whim and cannot be trusted. Sometimes the hours in a day stretch on too long, and sometimes in the blink of an eye years go by.” She glances at a group of patrons who’ve stopped to stare at us. They whisper to each other. “The people who live in the physical space of Kefu are none the wiser, while the demons cling to life by siphoning off bits and pieces of their souls. A rather harmless exchange . . . until your mother arrived.”