He slammed out the front, rattling bamboo wind chimes. He cursed willful witch women as he mounted his horse. “Who else?” He shouted at Rano. “If not me, who?”
4
The Griot of Griots
Green Elders in cloud-silk travel robes stood around Father. They were smooth-cheeked, eyes outlined in black kohl, ropes of hair knotted with seeds. Green and red mica glittered on their palms. They gave Father another money bag and strode into Mother’s Smokeland herb garden. Awa shook her head. They’d come from the sweet desert to take her away. Her chest tightened as they played drums, flutes, and hunter’s harps. Were they all vesons, neither man nor woman, playing every instrument, eating little flesh?
Awa’s three brothers gaped at strangers who jingle-jangled as they talked. Her brothers were headed off to apprentice in Holy City at the southernmost border of the Empire. They’d live and work a few weeks’ ride from a thief-lord fortress. With such experience, they’d be important men someday, maybe advisors to the emperor. They looked foolish, smirking and grabbing their crotches. She caught oldest brother Kenu’s eye. The smirk slid off his face.
“Don’t play the fool.” Kenu jabbed his brothers.
“Kenu could build a tower to the stars,” Father shouted. “But you’d rather your sons be beggars or pirates.”
“When have I said that?” Mother shouted too.
“I hear what you don’t say, woman.” Father quieted down.
“Do you?” Mother shook her head. Father only heard himself.
“When barren fields drink our sweat and a blight steals the harvest, I hear you.”
“You sound like a high-nosed Elder.” Mother flicked a finger under the tip of her nose. “All the time talking down to me.”
He ground his teeth. “Awa will learn good conjure.”
“Any conjure can be perverted. Even Green Elder spells.” Mother sneered. “You know this better than I do.” She didn’t want Awa to go.
Father clutched the money bags and tramped away. He’d lived with the Elders, learned poetry, masonry, and metalwork, before inheriting his brother’s farm and his brother’s witch-wife, a woman too wild to love. Kenu said Father hated those years in the enclave—fasting or eating bugs, spouting jumba jabba all day long, and walking on hot coals. Father had ugly purple scars on the bottoms of his feet and a cache of secret scrolls and spells. City chiefs, thief-lords, and priests clamored for his building conjure. He’d even built a gate for Hezram, high priest of Holy City, and earned a sack of sky rocks. Still, Father regularly cursed the Elders for ruining his life. Awa hugged her knees, panicked. A lapsed Elder selling his daughter to an enclave didn’t make sense.
“What’s this face?” Mother pinched Awa’s nose and tried to smile.
“I don’t want to go,” Awa said.
“Green Elders risked their lives to find you.” Mother gathered Awa close. The lightning tang of Smokeland clung to them both. “Elders roam the forests, plains, and mountain cliffs, collecting stories and talking folks out of foolishness.”
Awa scrunched up her face, unimpressed.
“They’re free.” Mother’s usually bright eyes had gone misty. “They have adventures across the Empire. They know a detour around the poison desert and wander to northern lands beyond Mount Eidhou.” She tickled Awa’s sides. “Elders sing songs and tell stories all day long. You’ll love that.”
Awa perked up. “Will I come back a griot storyteller to tell you tales?”
“Perhaps.” Mother’s lips trembled. “Yari, the griot of griots, has chosen you.”
Awa glowered at the Green Elders. She spat out the bee stinger from Smokeland. It burnt her tongue. Yari was a legendary griot, a walking library who knew something about everything. Still, “I don’t want to go.”
“Would you rather be sold to a transgressor hut to get bled for high priest Hezram?”
“Why sell me at all?”
Mother bit her lip and traced the snake birthmark on Awa’s scalp that wiggled to her eyebrow. She smoothed a snarl of hair and whispered, “I’ll poison your father for stealing you from me. On your birthday.” She clenched her jaw, serious. “His favorite bread.”
“Oh.” Awa felt uncertain about poison. Did Mother mean to kill Father?
Mother blinked away tears. “With the Elders, you’ll map all of Smokeland. Think on that.”
Awa loved to draw maps and plan visits to faraway places, but getting sold away from the family wasn’t a story she’d told on herself. She clutched a honeycomb from Smokeland, her only possession, and stared at Kenu. The snake birthmark along his cheek quivered and his nose flared. He wanted to cry.
There’d be nobody who would do everything he dared. Not just freeing the elephants, Awa poured water in Father’s wine so he wouldn’t get so drunk. She stole forbidden scrolls from his bag for Kenu to read in the night. Kenu whispered to Awa about the village girl whose eyes were so deep and dark, he got lost in her gaze.
Why didn’t Kenu protest?
Elders were dragging Awa off to hot coals and worm meals. There’d be nobody for Kenu to share secrets with; nobody to make up funny stories to save him from Father. Two days ago, instead of getting drunk and beating Kenu, Father laughed over Awa’s tale of dogfish men chasing mud maidens and washing away in the rain. Father even blamed the elephant escape on Awa, not Kenu. How could Kenu let Father sell her to his enemies?
Awa clung to Mother. “I’d rather stay with you and brother Kenu.”
Mother’s face ran with tears, but she said nothing.
“Bugs in your hair. You’re a mess.” Kenu tried to laugh. Her younger brothers had no problem chortling. Who would they laugh at tomorrow? Kenu chased them off.
“A bee.” Awa pouted. “They don’t make a mess.”
“I know.” Kenu touched the snake birthmark on his cheek. “Don’t forget me.”
“I won’t.” Awa wiggled the snake on her forehead. “What’ll you do in Holy City without me? Don’t make the high priest mad.”
“I won’t. I promise.” Kenu held her so close, so tight she couldn’t breathe.
The Green Elders were gentle yet firm as they pulled Awa away. The sun was a white disk in gray. Awa kept looking back until Mother and Kenu disappeared in the mist hugging the herb garden. Awa wanted to shriek. What good would that do? She forced herself to remember every Smokeland moment. Drawing a map in her mind was better than burning with rage.
5
Storm
The first week of Council was as unreasonable and frustrating as fighting with Nuar and Samina. In an afternoon break, Djola escaped to a south wall of the emperor’s citadel—a maze of domes, columns, gates, and towers. He was a solitary figure in an Anawanama travel cloak and mesh veil. The third void-storm in a week roared through the capital.
This wasn’t a regular wall of sand blowing in from distant dunes and blotting out the sky. Rogue twisters popped up here and there from nowhere, from static and shimmer. People barricading windows were too late. Whirligigs snaked through the streets, searing cheeks, burning lungs, and desiccating ancient cathedral trees. The library’s onion domes were engulfed in sooty sparks. Stone turrets swayed in a shower of static. Wooden shops and hovels rattled. Thatched roofs lifted up and spun away.