“You may appeal my decision, taking up the crime and offered punishment with Umbusi Onai,” Jabari told Tau without taking his eyes off Lekan. “Be warned, she may look less kindly on a Lesser having struck her heir than I have.”
“Jabari…,” Lekan growled, his voice aggressive, predatory, in stark counterpoint to his lowered sword and reluctance to step closer.
“Get on, Tau,” said one of the Ihagu, one of his father’s men. “Get on.”
Tau looked for the speaker, couldn’t find him, and turned back to Jabari and Lekan, hating them both with enough force it had his hands shaking, hating them all.
“Get on…”
A hand touched his shoulder, encouraging him to move, and Tau’s vision began to blur with tears. His father was dead. The tears came faster, and refusing to shame himself further, Tau shook the hand loose and left.
His gait was jerky, almost a stagger, like he’d had too much gaum to drink and couldn’t find his balance. He half expected the Ihagu near him to reach out, steady him. Instead, they moved away, letting him leave, and Lekan, perhaps realizing that demands to stop Tau would go unanswered, held his tongue.
A span or two later, Zuri found him in the home that was no longer his. Tau didn’t have much, but what he had, he was packing. She ran to him and held him.
“Tau,” she said, “I’m sorry. By the Goddess, I’m so sorry.”
Tau couldn’t stand to be touched but couldn’t summon the will to move away.
“We’ll attend the burning tonight and then we’ll go,” she said. “We’ll leave Kerem and all of this behind.”
“I have nothing to give you,” Tau said.
“Give? I want to be with you. I won’t stay in Kerem without you, and I won’t let them take me.” She was breathless, wide-eyed, skittish. “I-I had my test, but it doesn’t matter. Tau, they don’t deserve either of us. We’ll—”
“Test?” Tau found there was enough in him to feel surprise. “You’re… you’re Gifted?”
She didn’t answer, didn’t need to. “If we leave now, if we leave together—”
“Gifted. I knew you were special.”
“We can—”
“No,” Tau said. “We can’t. They’ll hunt to the ends of Xidda to get you back.”
There was no argument against that. It was a truth neither could deny.
“Gifted,” he said again, the word feeling foreign. Tau turned away, closing his eyes. His head was pounding. “I’m going to kill them, Zuri. I’m going to kill the men who did this.”
“Who? The Nobles?”
Tau gathered up the last of his things.
“Tau, if you kill a Noble, they’ll execute your sisters, your mother, your mother’s husband. They’ll find out if you have cousins, aunts, uncles, they’ll kill everyone they can, and once that’s done, they’ll hang you, cut your body open, and leave it in the sun to rot.”
Tau strapped his father’s sword and his sword, the one that had belonged to his grandfather, to his belt. He walked out of the tiny hut, into the twilight.
“You’re letting them take your life too,” Zuri said.
He kept going and she ran up behind him, taking his arm and pulling him so he was facing her.
“Don’t do this,” she said. “Come with me to your father’s burning. You… you don’t have to be with me,” Zuri said, “but don’t lose your life and everything you are to this.”
Tau took Zuri’s hand off his arm. Gifted, he thought. The Nobles weren’t satisfied with wiping out Nkiru’s family or the murder of his father. They’d taken Zuri too.
“Goodbye, Lady Gifted,” he said, using the title that would become hers, the title that placed the woman he loved in an elite caste outranking all but Royal Nobles. Zuri Uba had gone farther from his reach than the stars.
Zuri shook her head. “Tau, please, don’t do this.”
He left her there and took the path to Daba. He would circle back when he was lost to sight. He didn’t want Zuri to know he was going to the keep. He didn’t want her to know that he was about to pay Lekan Onai a visit.
LEKAN ONAI
Lekan was angry. The day had been exhausting and the evening worse. He’d had to explain the events at the testing to his mother and father with Jabari present. Everything he’d said, Jabari had undercut. His mother had been furious and his softhearted father had mourned Aren’s loss, excusing himself to get ready for the burning.
Lekan didn’t believe the Lesser worth the bother. Aren had grown too bold and his end was the natural outcome of an unworthy man caught up in his unnatural pride. If Aren had been more humble, his son would be too, and the boy wouldn’t have tried so hard to show up Kagiso. If both Lessers had better known their place, the morning’s unpleasantness could have been avoided.
As it stood, Lekan had been castigated by his mother. He’d been made to suffer for the mistakes of others. They’d have to find a new inkokeli for the Ihagu, she’d said, and without Jabari in the citadel, the fief was in a difficult enough position. She’d cursed the stupidity of men, claiming the Goddess had forsaken her by sending her sons.
Lekan, knowing his mother’s moods, took it in silence. Jabari had tried to argue. She’d sent him from the room.
When it was just the two of them, she’d given Lekan the one positive thing to come from the day. She wanted him to arrest Tau Tafari at his father’s burning. They’d hang him the next morning for attacking a Noble. That’s what Lekan admired about his mother. She knew when a firm hand was needed.
Later that night, hundreds of women and men came out for the burning, many weeping and sobbing like they’d lost a war hero. Lekan was there with several keep guards, but the Tafari boy did not show his face. Refusing to have another failure on his hands, Lekan sent men to Aren’s hut. The boy wasn’t there either.
Empty-handed and with the evening growing late, Lekan had given the men, the ones who had dealt with the Common whore and her family, the duty of finding Tau. That done, Lekan went to the cellar. He picked a well-aged jug of olu. His mother would lash him with her tongue if the Lesser slipped through his fingers, and that, when added to the rest of his day, had earned him the expensive liquor.
He downed it, and when it didn’t soften the world’s edges or dull the pain around his eye where Tau had struck him, he’d taken a second jug to his chambers along with a bowl of half-ripe avocados from the kitchens.
The second jug helped. He’d also enjoyed cutting up slices of avocado, imagining his dagger digging into Aren’s son’s flesh. Warmed by the olu and stomach full, he’d tumbled into bed, falling asleep with his breeches and tunic on.
Lekan was a deep sleeper, but that night it had begun to rain, an uncommon event in any season and rare during Hoard. On a normal night, the rain wouldn’t bother him. His chambers were on the second floor, where he couldn’t hear it pitter-pattering against the ground, and Lekan’s room had thick shutters. No, Lekan could sleep through a thunderstorm, but he couldn’t sleep through being rained on.
He spluttered awake, slapping at his wet face. It was raining in his chambers, which didn’t make sense. Then he saw the shutters were open. Lekan sat up. He was going to close them, but there was a demon at the foot of his bed.