I step around a broken cart left in the middle of the street. “Where is the City Guard?”
Sukar watches everyone we pass and they do the same to us. “Most fled after the deaths.”
I stop cold. “More children?”
“Children, adults,” he answers, his shoulders tense. “People from every age and status.”
“Whole families,” adds Essnai, shaking.
I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood. Tamar has become a city of death and despair. Soon my sister will lay siege to it with the full weight of her army, but not yet; no, that wouldn’t be any fun. She wants to toy with them first. This is another one of her games.
The witchdoctors’ whispers seep into the edges of my mind, faint this time. When they all speak at once, it’s hard to understand them, but a sense of urgency pulses through me.
“Heka cursed Tamar,” Sukar says, his usual playfulness gone, “as punishment for what the new Almighty One did to my uncle and the other seers.”
He peers west toward the royal palace, a shining beacon above the decaying city. There’s darkness in my friend’s eyes that wasn’t there before—a coldness. “The new Almighty One?”
“Tyrek.” Essnai clasps her staff so hard that her hand trembles. She spits on the cobbles and lets out a slew of Aatiri curses. Sukar has his sickles too. As a Temple attendant, he never used to carry them in the open while in the Kingdom. I didn’t notice earlier that they both had weapons.
Tyrek was a prince, but not the Crown Prince. I last saw him at the coliseum in the skybox with his father and his brother. He’d been watching the political games play out between the Vizier and Arti with keen interest. He wasn’t destined to become king, but now his fortune has changed. This must be another one of Arti’s schemes since Efiya hasn’t found the Demon King’s ka. But to what end? I can’t ignore the sinking feeling in my chest.
“He became the new heir after Crown Prince Darnek died in an accident,” Sukar explains.
A hunting accident, Sukar and Essnai tell me. Tyrek claimed that their guards ignored his brother’s cries for help. Upon hearing this story, the Almighty One ordered the guards be put to death. Not one full moon later, an attendant found the Almighty One murdered in his bathhouse. Tyrek accused his mother and the seers of conspiring to take his crown. He imprisoned his mother and had the seers executed. Now a sixteen-year-old boy runs the Kingdom.
Sukar hides his pain behind a hard face, but anguish shines in his soft brown eyes. My heart breaks too. His uncle is dead. Barasa had always been kind to me, and he and Sukar were close. “His ka is at peace, my friend.” I recite a tribal blessing, knowing that no words will be enough. “May he join with the mother and father, may he become one with the kingdom of souls.”
Sukar nods, glancing away.
“That little runt Tyrek has a price on his head,” Essnai bemoans, as if she’s so much older than him. “He moved gendars to the palace grounds for protection and sent the rest on some secret mission. Rumor is he tasked the shotani with infiltrating rival nations. He says that he will unite the world under one god.”
“He calls this god Efiya,” Sukar spits out my sister’s name. “No one has ever heard of her. Some believe that she is the Unnamed orisha come back to reclaim her name and glory.”
My sister raised a demon army, destroyed the tribes, and left Tamar in ruins in three months? All those times she slipped into the void, I thought she was searching for the Demon King’s ka. And she was—along with killing orishas and seeding chaos in Tamar too.
Efiya will leave nothing of the world when she’s done.
My stomach sinks as I recall the serpents coiled around the Unnamed’s arms. The thought that my sister could be her would be preposterous had I not seen Efiya’s powers. The Unnamed’s anonymity isn’t by accident, I realize, now that I know the truth about the demons.
But as I see my friends’ grief, guilt wrenches my thoughts back to the here and now. They want answers, and I’m the only one who can give them. Now it’s my turn to speak the truth, and I find it difficult to get the words out. I can’t bear my friends’ shock as I tell them who Efiya is—that she is my sister. A demon, not an orisha. I expect a weight to lift from my chest, but the terrible news about the tribes and the Kingdom gnaws at my bones.
Essnai and Sukar stop in their tracks—both speechless as a pair of robed scholars skirt around us. Unable to hold their intense stares, I look away. Shame settles in my limbs.
“She’s your sister?” Essnai hisses, her face twisted in disgust.
I duck my head, heat creeping up my neck.
Sukar laughs. “Talk about plot twist.”
Usually Essnai or I would scorn him for his ill-timed jokes, but right now, it’s good to see my friend’s sense of humor back. As we continue toward the Temple, they ask me endless questions and I answer what I can. We pass a shadowed alley, and the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. The magic warms in my veins. Sukar’s tattoos shift like puzzle pieces sliding into a new configuration. A spiked circle covers most of his forehead; more complex Zu symbols settle on his cheeks.
Catching me staring, he shrugs. “A gift from my uncle before his death.”
We turn our attention to the mouth of the alley, but I already know what’s in there. The sting of demon magic taints the air. Sukar draws his sickles, and Essnai readies her staff. This time we won’t be fighting tribal boys with the barest grasp on their magic; we’ll be fighting demons. The chieftains’ magic gives me confidence, but I’m no fool to rely on that alone, or let it lull me into false security. Yet, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t glad to have it.
When we stalk into the alley, I startle. It’s the old scholar woman who came to my father’s shop to extend her life. She squats over a man slumped against a wall and pries his lips apart. Her mouth opens like a gaping hole—like my father’s the night Shezmu consumed the children’s kas. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. She sucks the man’s ka out of his jerking body. His soul is a gray mist that seeps from his lips. Essnai curses under her breath and Sukar clucks his tongue. The demon swings her head around and smiles.
“What a fortunate day,” she says, her voice as slick as ice.
She wipes her mouth as she rises from the ground, her moves slow and deliberate. There’s nothing left of the scholar in the demon’s eyes, only greed and insatiable hunger. With the powerful witchdoctors’ kas inside me, I have more magic than I could’ve ever imagined. Magic to see across time, to call firestorms, to travel the spirit world, to manipulate kas, to heal. So many gifts that my mind spins as I search for one to strike down the demon. Before I can decide, a curved blade pierces the center of her chest. Someone steps out of the shadows behind the demon, shoving the sword farther through her heart. The demon stares at us, slack-jawed, as the blade shimmers with her blood.
“One more demon on my sword,” Tam sings. “Another one dead and I’m so bored.”
Tam rips the sword from the demon’s back, and she crumples to the ground. Without thinking, I rush across the space between us and shove him hard in the chest. “You told Rudjek I went to the Aloo Valley!” I scream. “You bastard.”