Griots claimed life in Holy City transgressor huts was worse than death. Awa tried to tell her own story. She let her mind go blank rather than take in horror. Survive. One day had blurred into another for several months, and she’d managed to forget blood and stench and pain. But she was also forgetting the touch of grace in Isra’s loom and the call to truth in Yari’s talking drum. She even found herself doubting Bal’s tricky harmonies. Could anybody have that many voices in them? Griot tales for children.
Awa did remember Mother promising to poison Father—yet for a moment, she thought she saw him, squatting in the temple, then her vision clouded. Acolytes sliced Awa on the stone floor. The pain was sharp at the slice but faded to a dull ache as blood oozed from her good arm into a metal bowl. Acolytes rarely cut her burnt arm for fear of tainted blood. Crows flew in the high windows.
“Probably hoping for dead meat.” An acolyte chortled.
Awa knew these crows. She fed them berries to spite priests whose flimsy bows and bad aims were no match for crafty birds. “No berries here,” she said.
“She’s delirious.” The acolytes laughed.
An inept or cruel acolyte jabbed Awa’s leg. Blood spurted on his stub nose. She fought to stay conscious. Father’s voice jolted her mind clear. Droopy-eyed, sallow, and paunchy, he haggled with Hezram, high priest of Ice Mountain and witchdoctor of dreams. It was Father. Here. Real. Awa swallowed an urge to yell, Save me, take me home.
A conjure woman had gotten her lover out of a transgressor hut. She taught Hezram a gate-spell, and he released the lover, a veson. Father hated Green Elders, but their spells were his treasure. He’d never part with a spell to rescue Awa. She closed her eyes on his haggard face. Fury would take too much energy. Calm helped her survive.
The acolytes dumped icy temple water on her head. “No sleeping.”
Transgressors had to know their pain to earn redemption. Awa’s thin shift clung to damp skin. She pressed ice on her burbling leg wound. The acolytes smacked her nipples and poked fingers in her navel. She let the ice drop. Bleeding out in the temple would be easy. “Death is a doorway,” she muttered in Lahesh.
“Jumba jabba.” The acolytes chortled at Green Elder nonsense.
“Nobody cheats me,” Father roared and startled Awa and her tormenters. “Not even you. I’m a good Empire citizen.”
“I know what you are.” Hezram shook his silky brown beard and mane of hair. He was muscular and handsome, in his prime. Awa wanted to curse him to a slow death.
“You stingy barbarian, I deserve more than a few sky rocks.” Father shook a bag of turquoise. “To build gates around the capital city will take more than a year. You must pay three times this much.”
Father built stone bridges and cathedral-tree towers for priests and barbarian thief-lords. He hewed transgressor huts from mountain rock. He’d learned in an enclave to build anything with stone, metal, or wood. Perhaps he’d made the hovel Awa lived in. She wanted to curse him along with Hezram. Resisting the urge made her flame hot. The acolytes let her go and shook burning hands.
Father thrust the bag in Hezram’s face, distracting the acolytes again. “You need me.” He was foolhardy to challenge Hezram, who cheated everybody and locked up or tortured those who protested. Maybe Father had lost his wits. Mother could be using a slow poison, a few mushrooms in the bread each day.
“If you didn’t need me, I’d already be dead.” His eyes were bleary, his words slurred, maybe he was drunk. “I knew you when you were a common witchdoctor peddling tricks at carnivals.”
The acolytes smirked and jabbed each other, hoping for torture. They dragged Awa to the caldrons. They meant to take her in a cave on the other side of the Gates while Hezram dispensed with Father. Tembe, Iyalawo of Ice Mountain, found a mutilated dead girl yesterday in the temple—she was stripped naked with a head wrap stuffed in her mouth.
Priests claimed transgressors had done this. Awa knew better. Acolytes liked to cut souvenirs, brag about their exploits, and leave transgressors to bleed out. Awa wasn’t dying like that. She cackled alarm at crows roosting in the crisscross of high beams. They cackled back. Swooping low, several shat on bald acolyte heads.
Awa observed the scrambling and shrieking placidly until she recognized snub-nosed Jod, grown muscular and bearded. Jod’s lion eyes glowed in the dark as he punched the shock on her face—yet he didn’t remember her from Sprite days. Awa wasn’t Bal.
“Enough.” Hezram hauled her away from them. “Tembe says you lot go too far. In the temple!”
“Just a bit of fun,” Jod said.
“No more fun like that,” Hezram replied.
Jod stood eye to eye with him. “You have Tembe to cushion your bed.”
“Iyalawos marry their mountains.” Hezram circled him.
“A stout-hearted woman could love a mountain and a man, if…” Jod took a breath. The other acolytes cringed. “If the man is worth the risk.”
Hezram smiled. “Do you think you’re worthy of mountain love?” Jod shrugged. Hezram sniggered. “I like your grit, but you’ve got blood and bird shit on your robe. Clean yourselves. Leave her be.”
Awa clicked thanks at the crows. The young men grumbled and filled basins with water then removed outer robes. Hezram dumped Awa near the cauldrons. Pots bubbled day and night, filling the temple and Rainbow Square with a nauseating smell. Spirit slaves had to be fed constantly to maintain Hezram’s Dream Gates, Nightmare Gates, really.
“No one will do what I do,” Father said. Hezram held up another bag. Father snatched it. Sky rocks spilled out. Whatever he did was worth a fortune. “Why the same dance every time?”
Collecting turquoise nuggets from the ground, Father caught sight of Awa. Blood drained from his face; his lower lip trembled. Did he recognize her? Awa wasn’t a plump child anymore. Still, the snake birthmark was hard to miss. Brother Kenu had one on his cheek. Where was Kenu now? Perhaps he also built transgressor huts and Nightmare Gates.
Rage ambushed Awa and she spit anger at Father. Sentinel bees from the temple hive swarmed him. He took off with his bag of sky rocks, barging through half-naked acolytes. Awa crawled in a recess behind a blood cauldron and hugged her knees. She tried to calm herself and friend bees. Nobody should lose a stinger over Father. He and the acolytes scrambled outside trailing a trickle of angry sentinels.
Hezram dropped down beside Awa. Shrieks faded. Hezram peeked around the cauldrons, chuckling. Bees returned to their hive in a cathedral trunk tower. Hezram stood up and mixed tree oil with Awa’s blood before pouring it in a cauldron. “Why are you still sitting there?” Hezram looked ready to drag her into shadows.
Awa coughed and cackled distress. A crow with a few white feathers in its blue-black wings flew in his face, scratching and pecking. “Zst!” He cursed and flailed. “I’m not dead meat yet.” The piebald crow flew to the window that looked out on a glacier. The cold gray eye of god glared down on priest, citizen, and transgressor alike. Hezram sighed. “The gods must love crows.”
Awa bit her tongue. Ice Mountain gods loved only themselves.
“They’re a plague.” Blood from a claw- or beak-wound trickled into Hezram’s eyes. “Afraid of a few bees and crows?”