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“You needn’t belittle us, Your Majesty,” says the Siningwe general. “It’s not bravery we lack. We simply don’t understand the direction you’re taking us. All this activity on foreign soil is unorthodox. We are not, nor have we ever aspired to be, an empire.” Another chorus of agreement accompanied by enthusiastic head nods.
“How could you so thoroughly miss the point?” she mutters. “This isn’t about empire. This is about ensuring our continued existence.” The queen turns back around, her face remaining in shadow, but the sunlight continues to incandesce the translucent fabric of her gown.
The queen starts walking again, looping around the table and pacing back the other way. “That is the power I hold in my hands, and you should all be grateful to Ama I was wise enough to reach for it, because someone else would have, and then where would we be? Yonte Saire now has an emperor who could raze villages with the wave of a hand, yet he would not dare pit his forces against mine because I have a power to match his. Our future, my generals, our autonomy is assured, because of my actions.”
There, a reaction: the general gives the faintest of smiles. “Divergence is not necessarily evil, Your Majesty. After all, was it not my late nephew’s divergence from tradition that has made us the most powerful tribe in the south? You said so yourself.”
What are you waiting for? Alinata asks herself. You know what you need to do. “Are you going to kill them too?” asks the mystic. “Just like you killed Musalodi?” Alinata stops. “I didn’t kill Musalodi.” “You might as well have.” The mystic scoffs, her tone bitter. “You knew what was planned for him, and you helped make it happen.” Kill her now. “I was acting for the good of the tribe. Salo’s sacrifice has made us stronger than we’ve ever been.”
A leafless witchwood tree stands sentinel in the compound outside. Looking at it, Alinata contemplates something the queen said to her recently, about how a person’s life can sometimes be defined by a single choice they make at a critical moment where the outcome cannot be divined. Alinata thought that her moment had come and gone. Now she realizes she was wrong. Her moment is now. Right this instant. “The moon preserve you, AmaSiningwe. Be careful what you eat and drink in the coming days. As for me, I have an appointment with fate.”
“So now what?” Sevan says, breaking the silence. “Now?” Salim thinks about it. “I honestly don’t know.” They’re all startled when Sevan starts laughing. “Is this what freedom feels like?” she says and leans against the handrail with both elbows as she becomes pensive. “We could do anything. We could sail the skies forever. We could become traders or wanderers or even pirates. We . . . we’re free.” She says the last word like she can’t quite believe it.
“I have no desire for revenge,” Balam says calmly. “And even if I did, I have violence-inhibiting restraints. And so do you, Sevan. You can walk around with that typhon on your hip, but you’ll never be able to use it.” Sevan’s eyes go shiny with emotion, her breathing rapid, her folded arms nearly trembling. She looks around the table, then at Salim. “Salim can break our restraints. Can’t you?” It hits Salim right then that these people are now his responsibility, and he suffers a wave of fear that he’ll fail them somehow. He clears his throat, looking fixedly at the table. “I could, I
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“You mean the king,” Salim says, watching Vigilance closely. “She has taken the goddess’s throne. But you knew that already.” Vigilance dips his head in a quiet nod. “The gods were due a reckoning, I suppose. Our hubris created the very monster you must now confront.” “And that’s the truth about heaven,” Arante once said to Salim. “It devours universes to feed the greed of its gods. Stars, worlds, everything turned to ash. But why? Why, when that power could be harnessed to fix this universe and make it better? All those people you saw in that lake. All that sorrow. The gates of heaven hold
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With apparent ease he casts another spell, turning the dome into a serpent, then guides it out through a window. It explodes out of the throne room with a whoosh, leaving only a blackened circle on the floor. Salo swiftly turns to his armored guards. “What use are you if assassins can just walk in here and make an attempt on my life?” he demands. “Were they even searched?”
She remembers the day when they watched from a nearby mountain as a warlord’s disciple burned down a wagon of Faraswa slaves he’d just rescued—while the slaves were still inside. Though difficult to watch, the scene was nothing new to Ilapara; gruesome acts of cruelty are an inescapable reality of life in any Umadi stopover town, and the wise know to look away. It was the abject horror she saw on Salo’s face that finally broke through to her and made her recognize how desensitized she’d become in her quest for independence. His innocence made her confront the loss of her own, to ask herself
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In a way, what follows shocks Ilapara more than witnessing the destruction of Apos, where millions of people died. Here she saw children fleeing into the houses, some young enough that they needed to be carried inside, and now she has a clear view of those same houses crumbling beneath a fusillade of sunfire shot from the freely rotating artillery weapons mounted onto the vessel’s keel. Some of the villagers are fast enough to escape the rain of destruction, but a redhawk swoops down from out of nowhere, cutting off their escape. Ilapara doesn’t look away when it pins a man to the ground and
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“After everything we’ve been through,” says the pretender, and he has the gall to look betrayed, “you would stab me in the back?” “You are not Salo,” she spits at him. “He would have died a thousand deaths before he did what you’ve done here.” “The man you knew was weak. Indecisive. I’m doing what’s necessary for the greater good.” “The greater good?” Ilapara says. “Does this sound like our friend to you?” she asks, turning to Tuk. How could he betray her like this?
Inside the narrow gully, Alinata slows to a stop and drops out of the Void. So does Ilapara, whose eyes immediately widen. “You!” “Yes. Me,” Alinata says. “I know. You probably have a lot you want to say to me, but for Ama’s sake, hold it in until we escape the giant bird trying to kill us.” “You—” Ilapara’s nostrils flare as she inhales a calming breath. “Fine. But when this is over, you and I are going to—”
Alinata can hardly believe this is the same young woman she lived with in Yonte Saire. The nose piercing is still there, and so is the kohl and black lip paint, but she’s not hiding her crimson dreadlocks beneath a veil anymore, and gone are the billowing Umadi robes and the breastplate that was practically glued to her chest. She’s actually showing skin now—her top looks like it’s a length of crimson silk wrapped creatively around her chest. Something else that hasn’t changed, Alinata notes with an inward smile. Ilapara always did love the color red.
“I’m saying you’ve never trusted someone so implicitly as to believe everything they tell you. I believed in the queen and her vision for our tribe’s future. She told me Salo was dangerous and that it was ultimately better to sacrifice him and use what he’d built for the tribe, and I believed her, because why wouldn’t I? I had no reason to question her.” “But you lived with Salo long enough to form your own opinion of him,” Ilapara argues. “Yes, and I witnessed with my own eyes just how dangerous he was despite his mild temperament. And I had no way of predicting how he’d change with even more
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Ilapara gives a humorless grunt. “It’s a long story.” “We have time.” “I suppose we do.” It is, in fact, a long story. It is also completely deranged. Each new detail has Alinata nearly losing her footing in shock, and she begins to wonder if Ilapara didn’t bump her head too hard back in the gully and somehow lose her wits.
“Stop, you idiots!” Jomo shouts. “It’s him! It’s Salo!” Jomo’s comrades stop firing, taking a second look. Their eyes widen in recognition. “Peace, my friends,” Salim says. “I’m not your enemy.” They lower their typhons, bewildered. “By the Mother,” Odari mutters. “It is you. But . . . how are you here?” Salim can’t say he remembers Odari or the other two youths. Perhaps they were among the Sentinels he met in the Red Temple. Thinking that perhaps his apparition is too solid, he weakens its intensity so that he is semitransparent and more obviously an illusion.
Enveloped in flame, the Ataraxis leaps forward with sudden and tremendous urgency, and only through the action of the strengthened internal stabilizers does the vessel not tear itself apart under the force. The floor rumbles beneath Salim. On his way to the stairs, heart pumping with the fury of a beating drum, he pauses in the halo of angry white-red light pouring in through a starboard porthole. The new kinetic shield is a deltoid shape that more closely hugs the vessel’s avian structure, curving so close to the hull the flames appear just inches away from the porthole. The thunder of the
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Sevan answers that with a delirious laugh. “You’re all about to see exactly where we are. Ending acceleration burn in three . . . two . . . one . . .” At the turn of a switch, the network of nodes generating the ship’s cloak of moonfire goes dormant, and the flames around the shield die out. And so does the noise.
Legionnaires in red tunics fly off their feet, some slamming into tree trunks. Snakes, spiders, and burrowing insects are flung into the air or crushed against the ground. One man cries out as a disturbed viper sinks its fangs into his ankle. Another runs blindly into a tree when a scorpion lands on his face and stings his eye.
“You lovely bastard. Come here so I can hug you to death.” He embraces Salim, and there are tears shining in his eyes when he lets go. “Mother damn it, Salo. I was certain I was going to die.” “We all were,” says the arcanist in the black robes, coming to embrace Salim too. “Thank you,” she says with emotion. Salim is slightly embarrassed by the attention as the rest of the group comes to shake his hand, all plainly relieved to still be alive.
He’s still wondering if he acted dishonorably by listening to the Jasiri and fleeing the city with everyone else. And now that Addi is cured, is the honorable thing to stay here and join Ayana’s struggle, or should he head back home and beg the queen’s forgiveness?
She snarls, fingernails biting into her palms. “You. You shouldn’t have failed to kill me, you son of a bitch.” He flinches back in surprise, but she’s already halfway there, ready to end his wretched existence once and for all, except someone else she recognizes hurries forward, leg brace squeaking with each step.
Jomo huffs. “You’re terrible at this, Salo. Ilapara, look . . . I assume you left the Enclave with a guy who looks and talks exactly like Salo?” “Yes,” Ilapara says, glaring at the pretender. “But he’s not Salo. He’s a thing. A mistake. An abomination.”
He takes off his spectacles, revealing synthetic irises like faceted little prisms with many points of shifting color. He squints, blinks, like it’s troubling him to keep the eyes open. Looking into them, Ilapara sees the friend she thought had come back to her, but she’s been fooled once. Who’s to say this isn’t another trick? “I watched the city burn. Nothing could have survived.”
As they leave the bay, she lets Jomo put an arm around her waist. “You’re back,” he says to her. “I am.” “Nothing else matters now.” There are things they need to discuss, decisions she’s made that he probably won’t like, but for now she rests her head against him and lets herself enjoy being in the present.
“I thought it was him,” he cries. “I thought all he needed was time. But we failed, didn’t we. He’s really gone.” “About that.” Ilapara breaks the embrace, holding Tuk by the arms. “Tuk, I need you to listen to me. I know why your sister was so determined to bring Salo back. Why she forced Ayzel to help us even before we’d arrived.”
She keeps moving, haunting the corridors of the ship, seeing, touching, but never lingering, trying to distract herself from a world that doesn’t make sense anymore and the knot of emotions she didn’t even know she could feel all at once. Relief. Shock. Guilt. They were right to be suspicious of her in Yonte Saire, for there was not a single important word they spoke in her presence that didn’t reach the queen’s ears. A small miracle they haven’t already kicked her off the ship, and even Tuk winked at her when they made eye contact shortly after he came onboard. She expected he’d be furious.
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“And I recognize you might not know where you fit in right now,” Ilapara says, coming a step closer. “I won’t speak for anyone else. You’ll have to find the courage to speak to them yourself. All I’ll say is that whatever happened in the past, I consider you a friend, Alinata. Don’t be afraid to talk to me, and don’t be too mysterious. I know you’re an Asazi, so maybe it comes with the territory, but you don’t have to keep to yourself. Not anymore. You’re one of us now.”
“Forgive me if I’m confused, Apprentice Alinata. I heard a rumor that you’d disgraced yourself and fallen out with the queen. And now you come out of nowhere to demand that I follow you out of the camp to meet someone unspecified. Am I a fool? Why should I trust you?” Alinata pauses, considering her strategy. A smart tongue is not what’s needed here. Clearly the truth is her best recourse, but too much of it too soon and she’ll lose him. Start with what he already knows. “General, surely you know by now that the queen played a part in your nephew’s death.”
“I watched my nephew burn,” the general says in a near whisper, “his soul committed to the Infinite Path. This thing, whatever it is, is not him.” “I told you this would not be easy to believe. I had my doubts, too, but please, listen to what he has to say. The future of our home depends on it.” The general’s nostrils flare, but he doesn’t attack. “Speak, demon,” he barks at Salo. “Before I end your existence.”
They part ways, Tuk and Salo walking off in one direction, Alinata, Mukuni, and the general riding off back to the camp. All the way there, Alinata suffers the uneasy feeling that this will be the last time she’ll ever see those two boys.
The response is an immediate rush of signals flowing to the keel of the ship. “They’re charging up their artillery,” Sevan warns. “We are not your enemies,” Salim continues in a tone of calm confidence. “If the Imperial lords Claud, Julian, and Luka are among you, tell them Salim would like to speak to them.”
As the ship slowly descends, they all face the large door at the rear of the bay, waiting. “Why do you let them keep calling you Salim?” Ilapara inquires. “Your reflection might have stolen your appearance, but he doesn’t have to steal your name too.” A question he’s been dreading, because the truth is, Salo doesn’t feel like his real name either. It’s a weight he’s not yet ready to carry, and if it wouldn’t upset everyone, he’d ask them to stop using it and call him Salim instead.
“No, it’s not all right!” he shouts, loud enough for everyone to hear him. “A cog is a mindless thing, a tool with no feeling. We are people, as much as anyone else here, and we will be respected as people.” “And who are you to threaten me in my stronghold?” the admiral demands. “I am a servant of Vigilance.” Tuk reaches into his shirt to pull out his Fireblue pendant, which he proudly displays.
It is called the Book of Lies, but he now thinks a better name for it might be the Book of Omissions, for it achieves its lies not by spinning falsehoods but by omitting greater and greater truths from each successive layer built around the tome.
The admiral straightens, folding her arms across her armored chest. “Salim, right? We have a Red mystic in the camp. She looked into the book with the Spectral Star and saw the same thing you told the Imperials, including a final layer of obscured information. She said it was impenetrable.” “Not to a mystic who’s walked the Bloodway like the Hegemons of old.” There is a crackle in the tent as Salim engages his cosmic shards, surrounding his arms in dancing sparks of scarlet lightning. The Imperials recoil in shock, but the admiral’s eyes reflect an enkindled interest, a war tactician who’s
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It’s around noon, shortly after their second break, when a blaze of light briefly consumes the skies behind them, casting shadows even in the daylight. They turn to look just as the blaze condenses to a pillar of pure-white light shooting up into the heavens from a point just over the horizon. Niko knows of nothing that could explain that pillar of light, but Inaya, Kirabo, and Aksil watch it with the quiet fatalism of people who’ve just found out that something they dreaded has happened.
His worries ease as the night progresses, and he even lets himself doze off for a few hours while the guardsman takes the watch. But the pull of Salo’s ghost is stronger and more insistent than ever, and the battle to deny it is so ferocious it gives him terrible nightmares. He wakes up with a start, drawing a glance from the guardsman. Unwilling to risk those dreams again, he decides to take the rest of the watch and let the guardsman sleep. The three awoken are still exactly as they were when he dozed off, but the sphinx has lifted off its base, now engulfed in a red aura. Flakes of
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The weak light of dawn is just beginning to wash in through the single porthole in her private compartment. Dressed only in underpants and seated on the bottom bunk of the bed they spent the night on, Jomo stares up at her like he’s just watched her head explode. She’s just told him the Thing. He moves his lips, but she shushes him with a pointed finger, her eyes slit dangerously. “And if you ask me who the father is, Jomo, I swear I’ll strangle you and wear your teeth for a necklace.”
“You think this is funny?” “Actually, I think it’s good. Right?” He pushes himself up from the bed to stand in front of her. “Me. A father. It’s absolutely insane. But the good kind of insane,” he rushes to say. “I’m not upset about it. Maybe I’m having a little panic attack—just a small one. But . . . Ilapara, this will bring us closer, won’t it?” He puts his hands on her shoulders. “We’ll be parents! To a child. Us. Together.”
He’s such a fool. Such a damned fool. This was supposed to be straightforward. Now he’s made it all muddy and messy again. Ilapara drops her face into her hands. “Jomo, I can’t . . .”
“Our one hope to defeat my reflection and his master lies with these artifacts.” As Salo speaks, the four structures surrounding the pyramid grow larger on the mirage. Ilapara eyes the circle of obelisks to the north, convinced she’s seen them before. “The Book of Lies refers to them as the Cosmic Tetrad. Each artifact represents one of the four arcane powers that exist in the world: the moon, the suns, the Blue Comet, and the Primeval Spirits. The artifacts were built in secret along cardinal points equidistant from the pyramid and were designed to slowly amass power from their respective
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“She can do that?” Ilapara asks, balking at the thought. Salo dips his head in a nod. “Among the privileges of the Hegemon is some measure of control over the ancestral talents. I assume her fragment has given her a limited form of this power, but I don’t imagine she can exercise it without cost to herself. The crown was never meant to be used that way.” “The crown is a blight on the world,” Jomo gripes. “Nothing good can come from anyone having that power.”
“Ilapara, I tried to reach out to Aneniko last night, but he shut me out. He’s actually at the artifact you’re headed to.” Salo doesn’t say more, but his request is plain to see on his face. “I’ll look out for him,” she says.
An impulse comes over Ilapara, and she embraces him. She says nothing as she lets go, because this will not be a goodbye. Then, armed with foreign weapons, with Jomo and the Sentinels by her side, she sets off to defy a devil.
A second later his bracer tool buzzes. “I’ve been tracking a squad of rangers from your tribe, Salim,” Balam says. “It looks like they’re heading for the sphinx. Come take a look. I’m on the bridge.” “On my way.” Salim heads back into the Ataraxis, and he hasn’t even reached the stairs to the upper decks when his tool vibrates again.
“The queen might have sent them. Aneniko is—was—an honor guard. She can probably still track him.” “Should we expect trouble?” A pause. “I’m afraid so, yes.”
“Oh, we’re definitely stopping whatever vile demonic witchery you’ve got going on back there.” Tumani curls a lip in disgust as he glances at the glowing statue, then glares back at Niko. “But if you willingly hand over the pauldron, I’ll make your death quick and painless, and your ama can weep over a good-looking corpse. Or you can hang on to it, and I’ll just remove it after I take off your head. Your choice.” So the queen has sent you to kill me, Niko thinks. Which means the queen and her allies have somehow divined Ayana’s plan and probably sent people to the other artifacts. Despair
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