Rudjek and I exchange a look, not understanding.
Chills creep down my arms. “Why us?”
“You two must kill the serpent.” Barasa threads his fingers together. When he finally meets my gaze, he gives me an apologetic look. “Before she finds the Demon King’s ka.”
I hug my shoulders. “I’ve already tried that. I failed.”
Rudjek rests his palms on the hilts of his shotels. “I’ll do it.”
Same old Rudjek, as brash as always. I bite back a smile.
“If just anyone could do it, boy”—Barasa throws up his hands—“then we wouldn’t be having this conversation. While the orishas keep Efiya busy, they want Arrah to take the Demon King’s dagger. Only someone touched by his magic can wield the blade. You are to help her.”
“What’s so special about a knife?” Essnai leans against Re’Mec’s statue, arms crossed. It’s so large that her head rests against his knee.
“The Demon King used the dagger to trap the souls of his enemies,” Barasa says. “The orishas used a similar magic to trap his ka.”
Koré knew about my curse all along and how she could use it to her advantage. Rudjek steps closer to me, his stance protective. He doesn’t know. Now is a good time to tell him. I keep it short. I can’t admit to him the worst of it. The thing that I haven’t wanted to admit to myself—that the Demon King’s magic burrowed deep inside me. It coiled around my heart and touched my ka. It felt familiar in a way I couldn’t explain. I tell him about Efiya too—about the children she turned into ndzumbi.
When the seer opens his mouth to speak again, Rudjek lifts a hand to shut him up. “Twenty-gods, I can’t believe we’re wasting our time listening to this,” he says, voice shrill. “The orishas and the seers are the ones who cooked up the Rite of Passage. How many families have they destroyed with their little games? This is another game for them. They don’t care what happens to any of us.”
Essnai and Sukar look away from Rudjek’s shattered face. His pain for his brothers swells in his midnight eyes like the first raindrops of an impending flood. No one in Tamar can claim the Rite hasn’t touched them in some way.
“Didn’t Re’Mec send you back, boy?” Barasa demands. “He helped you.”
“He helped me after he got me killed,” Rudjek retorts.
I startle at the coolness in his tone—the resignation. We’ll have to talk about this whole dying and coming back business. At the first opportune moment.
I think of my mother’s hands, curled around the dagger that carved the serpent into my chest. “I’ll do it,” I say, and Rudjek falls silent. “I’m not going to stand by while Efiya destroys the rest of the world. I’ve stood by long enough. I won’t anymore.”
He opens his mouth to argue and I give him a look.
“I agree with Rudjek for once.” Sukar clears his throat. “If Efiya can kill orishas, what chance does anyone have against her? She killed the witchdoctors too, and even with the chieftains’ combined magic it will be near impossible.”
“She has a chance.” Barasa cuts his eyes at me again. “She alone.”
“I’m the only one touched by demon magic,” I mumble to myself.
“I thought the Demon King ate kas?” Rudjek asks, still seething.
“He ate the kas he wanted”—Barasa’s voice is impatient—“but every ka he consumed became a part of him. The rest he imprisoned in the dagger.”
“The orishas used his own trick to trap him,” I whisper, thinking of Koré’s box.
“What’s to stop Efiya from killing Arrah before she’s close enough to use the dagger?” Rudjek asks.
“I can stay alive long enough to do it.” I cross my arms. I almost got to Efiya before, when Merka stepped in my way. I can again.
Essnai pushes off from Re’Mec’s statue and stands up straight. “I don’t like it.”
“Finally, someone else has come to their senses!” Rudjek’s voice peaks again. “It’s a bad plan! It doesn’t account for the fact that Efiya has a demon army. It’s not like we can walk up to her and stab her in the heart.”
As soon as I decided to do it, it became we. Rudjek wouldn’t let me go alone.
“When you say we”—Sukar steps forward—“I hope you’re including us all.”
Rudjek shrugs. “I volunteer myself to help.”
“I volunteer as well,” says Essnai.
If Essnai helps, Kira will be at her ama’s side. Majka will want to help too—if not for me, so that he can pester Rudjek. But I dread my friends anywhere near my sister, knowing what she’s capable of.
I sigh, head and heart heavy. “Where’s the dagger?”
“Hidden in a vault beneath the Temple of Heka,” the seer answers.
“How come the orishas didn’t think of this before, when Efiya wasn’t as strong?” Rudjek asks.
“Arrah had to break the Ka-Priestess’s curse first,” Barasa explains, his tone sharp, “then the chieftains had to die . . .” He meets my eyes again. “As your Grandmother foresaw.”
I’m left speechless as Rudjek tenses at my side. Grandmother knew. Her vision at the last Blood Moon Festival surfaces in my mind. In all her previous visions, she had seen me standing alone in front of the Temple of Heka. In her last vision, she saw the shadows of the five chieftains standing behind me, each with a hand on my shoulder. Dread sinks in my belly, knowing how horrible it had been for her to live with that knowledge.
Sukar narrows his eyes at his uncle. “What aren’t you telling us?”
Barasa’s phantom body twitches as he turns to me again. “Wielding the dagger will kill you, too.”
Thirty-Four
Had the seer not already been dead, Rudjek would have driven his shotels through his heart. Chills scrape down my back as their raised voices echo in my ears. My heartbeat pulses so loud that pain shoots along my temples. I don’t want to die, but the truth is I already have one foot in death. Even the chieftains’ magic won’t bring back the years I’ve traded off my life. The demons in the desert called me walking ndzumbi. I am a walking corpse, and to stop my sister, my life is a small price to pay.
“Enough,” I say, putting an end to their argument. My vision blurs as I rub my forehead. “It’s my choice, and I’ve already made up my mind.”
A shadow falls across Rudjek’s face, but it doesn’t mask his tears. His hands slip from the hilts of his shotels and go slack at his sides. He doesn’t challenge my decision; he knows it’s pointless.
With him quiet, I ask, “Why will the dagger kill me?”
“The orisha who forged the blade made it that way,” the Zu seer spits, disgusted. “She gave him and him alone the ability to trap souls, and the magic only answers to his touch.”
I’ve known Barasa most of my life, and I’ve never seen such darkness, such pure hate, as he regards the Unnamed’s statue. The orishas stripped away her name. They erased her from history. If Koré is any example—a petulant child one moment, a dangerous assassin the next—then the orishas are volatile. The Unnamed must’ve made his dagger. She did side with the Demon King during the war—she betrayed her brethren for him.