Chapter 23 Ìlú-Opọ, Third Ring, Kingdom of Oru #2
L’?r? looked at Alawani, eyes wide with panic. She whispered, ‘What in the cursed names just happened?’
Alawani helped her to her feet. ‘Let’s go up.’
The storm raged on, so they had no choice but to stay in the room they’d paid for.
In moments, they were up the stairs and in the room. Once in, they barricaded the door with the single bed.
‘Curse the sun, Alawani. Why did you let that man pick a fight with you?’ L’?r? said. ‘You might as well tell the Holy Order where we are.’
‘You heard what he said about my father.’
‘It doesn’t matter what he said. Staying alive is all that matters,’ L’?r? spat back.
Alawani turned away from her, and she sighed, frustrated.
After a few moments, she slumped onto the mat and took off her shoes.
The room was small and stuffy, and a hint of animal dung floated around in the air.
Apart from the bed against the door, the furniture consisted of one chair on the opposite side of the room and a mat in the middle of the floor.
Still, anything was better than the wet desert night soaking all corners of her body.
‘That man would’ve killed us all. He burned that man’s tongue!’ she said in hushed tones.
Alawani shrugged and sat opposite her. ‘Good thing whoever that woman was stopped him.’
‘Why did he say Gbk committed treason?’ L’?r? asked. ‘Were they not all cheering for Máywá, may his soul find the city of light.’
‘May his soul find the city of light,’ Alawani repeated the death call and said, ‘Lucky all Mfà took was his tongue. In the capital, that man would have lost his head for what he said.’
‘What did he say?’ L’?r? frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘He said that Máywá was going to survive the Red Stone and become the High Priest. That’s treason,’ Alawani said, his voice low as though he worried that the walls would echo his words.
‘What? Why?’ L’?r? asked, realizing how little she knew about the workings of her own kingdom.
Alawani leaned in closer. ‘The crown heir will inherit the throne on the next day of the First Sun. So there’s no need for another High Priest for as long as he’s alive. To speak of choosing a new High Priest now is like wishing the crown heir dead. And that’s treason.’
‘Wait, you were risking your life just to be a random priest of the Holy Order?’ L’?r?’s frown deepened and she let out a bitter laugh.
‘So you didn’t even leave for crown or glory, you left to be what exactly?
Is the Holy Order just hoarding survivors of their bloody trials until they need one of them to pluck out in … what? A hundred first suns?’
Alawani lowered his gaze. ‘No one from this stripping ceremony was ever eligible to be High Priest. We all knew that. Only the survivors of the last stripping ceremony before the crown heir’s death can be considered for the role of High Priest.’
L’?r? screamed into her hands, ‘This was all for nothing!’
She stroked the healing scar across her palm where she’d cut her oath. ‘I wish I could reverse this. I wish I knew how.’
‘Blood oaths can’t be undone,’ Alawani said.
L’?r? laughed dryly. ‘Oh, so you know that. You know that, and you broke it anyway. You walked into that temple knowing that breaking a blood oath is bringing a curse upon us both, and you did it anyway. And – And at Máywá’s house, you had the nerve to tell me that all this is my fault?’
Alawani placed his hand on hers. ‘I didn’t mean that it was your fault …
I … Doesn’t matter. Our oath stands. I shouldn’t have said those things back at the farm.
I know none of this is your fault, I just meant,’ he sighed and placed his hand across his chest, ‘seeing you standing there in the temple ruins, my heart dropped. I knew I had to get you out. You’d broken the cardinal rule – nothing else mattered but saving you.
And I just wish you hadn’t been so reckless. ’
‘Reckless? Reckless?’ L’?r? could hardly hold back her anger.
‘What else was I supposed to do, Alawani? I was fighting for our lives. For your life! Your world has everyone and everything you’ll ever need.
My world had three people: you, Command and my father.
And in one fell swoop, you took half my world.
’ L’?r? paused, choking on her words as she fought back the tears.
‘You broke my world in half and gave it to the godsdamned Holy Order! Yes, I was reckless, and I’d do it again and again and again.
Because I chose you, and you chose death! ’
Alawani shifted closer to her and placed her trembling hand on his chest. ‘Tèmi, you aren’t just a part of my world. You are the entirety of it. I’m here with you now. The oath stands. I’m not leaving you. We’re getting out of this kingdom together.’
L’?r?’s breathing was heavy and she tried to calm her shaking hands, but now even her lips trembled.
Before her was the boy she’d loved for as long as she could remember.
At that moment, as his brown eyes pierced her soul, she hoped with all her heart that he was still the boy she knew and loved.
That she hadn’t made a mistake in risking everything for him.
Alawani moved in even closer, ‘You have no agbára oru, and I didn’t know. I’ve spent most days in the past – I don’t know how many first suns with you – and I never realized this secret you kept from me. And I’m not angry about that or anything –’
‘What’s there to be angry about? I was protecting myself.’
‘From me?’ Alawani asked, his hand across his chest. ‘You think I’d have turned you in?’
L’?r? sighed, ‘I don’t know,’ and his hand slowly pulled away from hers. She cast her gaze to her feet. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. Maybe part of me wanted you to notice?’
The silence returned, stretching between them until Alawani spoke first. ‘I’d never have turned you in. You know that, right?’
Her treacherous heart fluttered, and she smiled despite herself. ‘So you say.’
The knock on the door broke the moment. She blinked, restarting her brain from the fixed glare she had on Alawani’s face.
Alawani pulled back the bed from the door, and when he opened up, she heard the inn owner’s angry voice pour into the room, ‘You can’t stay here. I don’t want any trouble.’
‘Ahan Oga, we bring no trouble. I promise you won’t see us again tonight and we’ll leave at first crow,’ Alawani said in a calm baritone.
He emptied his pouch of sun coins into the man’s hands.
‘For your inconvenience.’ L’?r? could hear the smile in his voice.
Baba-ìtàn always said that the prince could charm an ant into giving him its last piece of sugar cane.
After a few moments of coin clashing against coin, Alawani returned from the door with a large gourd of palm wine.
Alawani passed the gourd to her, and she took a large gulp. The milky liquid tasted sweet before settling into a more sour and yeasty aftertaste. She chugged down a few more gulps and burped, giggling. ‘Baba-ìtàn would be so angry if he saw this.’
Saying her father’s name made her chest tighten with guilt, and she had to fight between thinking of him and moving forward on this journey he had set her on.
If she let her thoughts linger, she would return home by dawn.
It helped to remember that the kingdom would never kill an àlùfáà. It helped to hope that they wouldn’t.
Alawani did the same, smiling. ‘What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him.’
L’?r? smiled. She was tired of being angry. But she’d held on so tightly to anger because it kept fear at bay.
‘How do you do it?’ Alawani asked.
‘Do what?’
‘Not break the head of everyone who calls you a coward’s daughter?’
L’?r? frowned instinctively, her body reacting to the name before taking a deep breath. ‘It’s hard but you get used to it.’
‘I don’t think I could stand one more person calling me the oath-breaker’s son,’ he said quietly. ‘I mean, I know they have a right to. At his coronation, he made oaths to all six rings and broke every one. To the priests, he promised official political positions in the kingdom.
‘The second ring was supposed to get funding for public schools for children without families, the third ring asked for a fraction of the food they produce for the kingdom, the fourth ring had asked for the ban on old magic to be removed, which he never made a royal decree, leaving them unprotected. The fifth ring asked for reduced hard labour for the prisoners there, and the sixth ring wanted to make it mandatory for royal children to join the army.’
L’?r? frowned, the image of the last execution she witnessed still fresh in her mind. ‘I can’t imagine giving the Holy Order any more power.’
‘Granted, some of these oaths did not deserve to be fulfilled,’ Alawani said, ‘but some, like this ring, just wanted to survive. Three-quarters of every harvest is the price they pay for being located here in the third ring, and within the magical barrier that protects the inner rings from hail storms and everything else that ravages the rest of the continent. They begged and begged for generations for fairer terms. My father was the first king to say yes.’ Alawani sighed and took a big gulp from the gourd.
‘The more I learn about my father the more I realize he was never going to do it. Not this, nor keep any of the other promises he made to the kingdom. There wasn’t an oath he made that he kept his word on.