9
Emperor Azizi
“Djola, sit down with us.” Azizi slapped his good friend’s back. “Where did you get that basket—Anawanama, ancestor weave. It’s beautiful.”
“A warning from Chief Nuar.” Djola set the basket in front of Azizi. “He thinks we’ve betrayed the living, the dead, and the unborn.”
“That bad?” Azizi laughed.
Djola bristled. “Did you see the storm this afternoon, raising blisters on elephant skin and choking trees?”
“Chief Nuar’s your half-brother, isn’t he?” Azizi rattled the bones. “Nuar was always so colorful and exaggerated, like a carnival player.” Azizi set the basket at Djola’s plate. “Sit, please, and give calm council.”
Djola dropped into his chair. Calm was difficult. Without Kyrie’s mountain herbs, Azizi’s health could fail. Without her groves and goats, Arkhys City might starve. Her missing stool meant Djola would have to get Books and Bones on his side or his map to tomorrow would go down from four to three. They needed everybody working together to turn back the poison desert. Did Kyrie think of that before mouthing off? Who listened to a shrill old woman? Djola glanced around the table. The moody librarian scowled at him. Arms had a stone face, still mad about following orders. Grain looked furtive, ready to bolt. Water and Money sniggered with identical contempt. Perhaps today wasn’t Djola’s day.
He considered gathering his family and following Kyrie and the elephant to the Mountain Gates. No master or witchdoctor in the Empire could breach Kyrie’s conjure and enter the mountain realm without her permission. Nuar had stormed Djola’s secret hideaway and urged him to take his family to Kyrie’s compound. Samina repeated this grand idea, but why run from Council at the height of his power?
“You’re worrying, Djola—I can feel it.” Azizi nibbled a few berries. “What?” Two rats gobbled goat haunch, muttering rat pleasure. “They eat for their whole troupe. See the pouches in their jowls.” Azizi pointed. “They risk angry cooks and wily jackals to carry a feast home to hungry mouths. Rat solidarity.”
The rat nibbled Azizi’s finger and he laughed. Then all the masters except Djola spoke at once. They lied, whined, and argued. They blamed fickle gods and anybody except themselves for poor tax revenue, thief-lord raids, and dwindling tree-oil harvests. They offered nothing new. Council was at the same standstill as last year, last week, ten minutes ago.
“Fatazz! We’re lizards chasing our tails.” Grain tapped a story on a two-headed talking drum with leather strands connecting the heads that he squeezed to change pitch. Ernold frowned at a Kahoe woman’s instrument, but Grain was not afraid to play:
An Anawanama-hero of old was surrounded by the enemy. A veson, neither man nor woman, vie was the last soldier protecting the land. The enemy held the high ground. The hero refused defeat and rigged branches to beat fifty war drums as the wind blew. Vie strung the shields of fallen comrades across a waterfall so that metal surfaces banged and clattered, then sang in many voices, high, low, and in-between. Echoes across the water sounded like a fearsome horde, an army risen from the dead. The enemy retreated in fear. The hero was the first shadow warrior. Vie turned death into victory.
Arms cheered. He appreciated a good warrior saga, Grain’s sagas especially. Shadow warriors preferred cunning to spilling blood. Money squirmed at an Anawanama tale about a veson. Books and Bones blinked and yawned. He and high priest Ernold pretended to be bored. Water tinkered with a tiny wind-wheel contraption: a circle of reed paddles on a stick. Hot air from a candle made it spin.
“You’re still worrying, Djola.” Azizi rubbed his eyes. “Over Kyrie? You brought her back before, you’ll do it again.”
“Zst!” Djola cursed. “I only masquerade as a master of the impossible.”
Azizi nodded. “Sometimes illusion is a good solution.”
Sky windows above the Council chamber shifted to the blue-violet of Samina’s eyes, the sun a threat of pink at the edges. The endless night had passed. The roast smelled rank. Rats shat in the gravy. Chief cook Lilot shooed the creatures away, laid out a fresh meal, and lingered in the shadows spying for Queen Urzula. She kept Azizi’s wife well-informed. Bleary masters dropped their heads into honey cakes and cream. Not even Arms was hungry. Djola ate for the coming battle. Losing Kyrie need not mean defeat.
Azizi quashed a tremor in his hand. He chewed bark that dulled pain and held fever in check. He was the age his father had been when assassins struck. His father, mother, older brother, and sisters died sweating blood and spewing their guts right in front of him. Djola reached Azizi with an antidote just in time. Djola foiled countless assassination attempts before finally talking ruthless warriors to the peace fire. From a boy of sixteen, Azizi saw every shadow as danger, every kiss as poison. Yet he gathered the best masters from across the Empire and listened to Council before taking action. Azizi never desired power but was proclaimed supreme ruler of the Arkhysian Empire at nineteen.
For twenty years he worked to make one map of many people. He’d been cautious and neither cruel nor foolish. He outlawed slavery and transgressor huts in the capital. Southern barbarians, Green Elders, pirates from the floating cities, and even wild northern tribes were welcomed. Azizi opened the library to the poor, to women too, if they could read. He worked for order and peace, and took every raid, betrayal, and massacre to heart. Each new wasteland or dead water zone had him vomiting in the night. He loved the Empire, its people, fields, and creatures, its forests, rivers, and mountains too.
“Morning. Time is short.” Azizi glared at them. “I need plans to stop poison desert. Why else call Council? I can agonize alone.” He was ready to listen.
Djola scratched the whisper of beard on his cheeks. He shook his bones and stretched achy muscles. “A wild elephant was in the back court last night, at sunset,” he said.
Azizi squinted at him. “I thought the wild ones were long dead.”
“Not yet.” Djola saw hope in an elephant’s waddle into the trees.
“Hezram, Holy City’s high priest, offers Dream Gate secrets to protect us from poison desert. I hear you’re against his blood conjure.” Azizi gripped Djola. “Bleeding the people, even transgressors, is a high price.… Yet you’ve offered nothing else, except elephant tales.”
Djola grinned. “Fighting the enemy, you must avoid becoming one.”
Azizi rubbed bleary eyes. “Give me an answer, not Green Elder jumba jabba.”
“Not enough tree oil or blood for Dream Gate conjure, unless we sacrifice our forests, our people, and our children.”
Azizi licked cracked lips. “You know this witchdoctor spell?”
“Lahesh conjure. I know enough to steer clear.” Djola lied with half-truth.
“The Lahesh, a bold people … Everyone craves their wisdom…” Azizi stroked the arms of his Lahesh waterwheel chair then glanced at Kyrie’s empty place. “Even the Iyalawo fears Dream Gate conjure.” He sighed. “Foul winds blow through our streets. What else do we see?”
Good vision takes many eyes looking every direction. Green Elder words had been plaguing Djola all night, but he didn’t let this slip. He unfurled his scroll of spells.