“They’re demons?” asked Tau.
“Don’t we believe they were created by Ananthi?”
“I… I also believed they helped us willingly and not because we held one of their children captive.”
Zuri grimaced, unable to argue the point. “An Entreater can enter Isihogo and mimic the cry of a Guardian youngling. All Entreaters are taught this. When the Guardians hear the cry they come looking for their missing child. Once the dragons are close, we entreat them and they, being caught, latch onto us in turn.”
“Us?”
“We cannot allow our most powerful to die every time we need the Guardians. Entreaters work with five other Gifted and together they are called a Hex. Each member of the Hex is powerful enough to be an Entreater in their own right, and when a Guardian is called, they entreat one another.”
“They link souls?”
“In a way. It’s done so that, when the Guardian pierces the shroud of the actual Gifted entreating it, the rest of the Hex can step in.”
“To fight?”
“No. Guardians, like demons, cannot be defeated in Isihogo. The Hex steps in to save the Entreater and the Guardian takes one of the five remaining members of the Hex instead. We call it a backlash.”
“And the Gifted, the one being backlashed? If she’s entreating the other members of the Hex, she’ll be holding energy from Isihogo.”
“She will.”
“Then, when she’s killed in Isihogo…,” Tau said.
Zuri nodded.
“That’s why… That’s why the Gifted in Daba died in blood? It was a demon-death.”
Zuri nodded.
“How does the dragon decide which member of the Hex to hold in Isihogo? Why doesn’t it kill you all?”
“The five remaining members of the Hex are linked. They look like a single soul to the Guardian and they fight among themselves, twisting energy from Isihogo, using it against each other until someone’s shroud collapses. When the first shroud fails, the other Gifted force all the energy they hold into the failure’s soul.”
“You make the defeated Gifted brighter.”
“As bright as the sun.”
“And the demons attack.”
“Every time a dragon is called, someone dies.”
“Goddess wept,” Tau said, his voice little more than a whisper. “And we hold one of their young to compel them to come when called?”
“We do.”
“That means we’ve held their child captive for near on two hundred cycles?”
“We have.”
“This is a horror story.”
“This is the story of our survival,” Zuri said. “Tau, the Gifted Citadel sits half-empty. We cannot replace the women we lose to the never-ending fighting and the backlashes. Every cycle we find fewer Gifted at the testings, and every cycle the hedeni attack more frequently and in greater force. These days, even raids can require a Guardian defense.”
“Tell me you can’t…”
“I’m powerful.”
“Tell me—”
“I’m slated to become an Entreater when my education is complete. My training for it has already begun.”
“No.”
“My first military assignment will be as an Enrager. It is difficult to master entreating. I have time. ”
“Until what? Until they bind you to a Hex? So you can fight the women you trained with to feed a dragon’s wrath?”
“I’m powerful.”
“How powerful are the rest?”
Zuri’s melancholy smile was her only answer. They sat for a while. They held each other. In time, Zuri slept. Tau did not.
He was awake to see the sun, its shadows creeping across the room’s carpeted floor like skulking demons. His sword brothers would be in the practice yards. They would wonder where he was. He needed to leave and wanted nothing less. He kissed Zuri.
“Already?” she said.
“Already.”
“We leave for Kerem after breaking our fast,” she told him, “but I’ll be in the Crags for the melee, along with the rest of the Gifted initiates and preceptors. Be safe. Find me in the city after.”
“I will,” he promised. He kissed her, readied himself to leave, and at the door to the bedroom, he tried to bind her image to his mind. She was so much more than he deserved. He walked through the door.
“Tau.” The worry in her voice stopped him. “Be careful. Something’s coming, a reckoning for the things we’ve done.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
COUNSEL
Zuri had been gone for days, but her look, her feel, the smell of her skin, they stayed with Tau. He was walking with his sword brothers to the mess hall after the morning’s training and she kept coming to mind, distracting him, making it difficult to pay attention.
Hadith was talking over strategies for the Queen’s Melee. He was worrying over their chances, trying to determine the optimal tactics for a contest whose rules were as different from standard skirmishes as those skirmishes were from actual war.
The melee was the ultimate test for the Omehi’s best fighting men and, as a consequence, Gifted did not participate. That should have tilted the competition in favor of the Lessers, but it was not the only significant rule change.
Every qualifying team began the melee with a full scale. Tau and his sword brothers would face no Gifted, but they would fight fifty-four Lessers against fifty-four Nobles. The last time Lessers had participated in the melee was twenty-three cycles ago. Jayyed had been that scale’s inkokeli and they’d been crushed. Seven of Jayyed’s men died and thirteen were injured badly enough that they did not serve a single day of active military duty. They placed sixteenth out of sixteen.
Tau had no idea how his scale would perform. He did not know if men would die, though he imagined some would, and it would be ridiculous to expect them to rank, coming at least third out of sixteen. What Tau did know was that he would keep Scale Jayyed in the melee until he had the opportunity to meet Kellan Okar in battle. After he’d taken care of Kellan, after the Queen’s Melee, the initiates of Scale Jayyed would be confirmed as men of the Omehi military. That was when Tau would challenge Abasi Odili. He was ready.
These were Tau’s thoughts as he walked past the central courtyard in the Southern Ihashe Isikolo. These were his thoughts when the academy’s primary gates opened and in marched eighteen full-blooded Indlovu, led by Dejen Olujimi, protector and escort for the man he accompanied, protector and escort for chairman of the Guardian Council, Abasi Odili.
Odili was as Tau remembered, handsome, regal, a man with the discipline to control himself and his surroundings. He had not changed at all. He was perfectly preserved, a golden idol of Noble malevolence.
Tau saw him and wanted nothing more than to kill him. His hands slipped to the hilts of his practice blades.
“Tau!” Uduak’s voice sounded distant.
“What’s he doing?” he heard Hadith say.
A thick hand grabbed his wrist. Tau turned, barely able to register that it was Uduak beside him.
Uduak’s face changed when he saw the look in Tau’s eyes. “No,” he said, his grip tightening.