Chapter 20 #2
The chamber was dark except for the sliver of moonlight through the high window.
It found her husband's face on the bed—slack in sleep and peaceful in his uselessness.
She looked at him for a long moment. At the hands that had held her down.
At the lips that kissed her. At the body that had taken what it wanted without remorse.
She gagged, covered her mouth quickly, and turned away.
The vomit came in the washing chamber, her body rejecting what her mind had already accepted. She gripped the edge of the clay basin and emptied her stomach until there was nothing left but spasms and the taste of bile. Her hands trembled against the clay.
She washed her mouth with water from the pot, then she washed her face. She looked in the small bronze mirror and saw a woman she recognised.
The woman looked back at her with empty eyes.
Chidinma dressed in the dark.
Black cloth, close-fitting – she'd had the same set since she turned sixteen a year ago.
Her father had it custom-made for her so she wouldn't have to use the hand-sewn one she'd made herself.
The viper armband went on last. It was her identifier; that way her head wouldn't roll when Madame Varkesh's girls found her.
The palace wall took her weight easily. The loose stone gave way to a foothold. The other side held darkness and the smell of the city beyond.
She dropped into the alley—black satchel at her waist—and did not look back.
The drinkhouse near the eastern gate blazed with light and noise, laughter spilling through its open doors. Chidinma circled wide, keeping to shadows, until she reached the mouth of the alley where the empty barrels waited.
She did not enter alone.
Three figures detached themselves from the darkness beside her—women in black cloth, their eyes lined with kohl beneath their head dressing. They moved without sound, without hesitation, without the slightest acknowledgement that Chidinma walked amongst them.
Nyraxa's girls.
"He'll come through here," Chidinma explained as they moved. "After he reads the message. He'll need air."
The tallest of the three—the one with a scar cutting through her brow—nodded once.
They positioned themselves among the barrels, and the night swallowed them whole.
The drinkhouse's back door creaked open.
A man stepped out, squinting against the darkness, a folded parchment clutched in his left hand. He was medium height, medium build, and the kind of man who could disappear into any crowd and be forgotten immediately.
He moved away from the door, towards the barrels, lifting the parchment close to his face, squinting at words written in the old man's trembling hand.
"Urgent," he muttered. "For the Iyom." His body tensed, eyes softening.
He never heard them.
One moment he was standing, reading, alone in the alley. The next, a hand clamped over his mouth, an arm locked around his throat, and the darkness itself seemed to come alive with women. They lifted him off his feet and carried him into the deeper dark between the buildings.
The parchment fluttered to the ground.
The arm around his throat tightened, and the world began to sway.
Then darkness took him.
He woke to cold stone beneath his back and torchlight flickering against his closed eyelids.
He didn't open his eyes immediately. He'd survived too long to give away that advantage. Instead, he listened—to the crackle of flames, to the soft rustle of cloth, to breathing—for multiple sets.
He was in trouble.
"I know you're awake."
The voice was young. A woman.
The man opened his eyes.
He lay on the floor of what appeared to be an abandoned storage room—jars in the corners, dust on the shelves, and the remnants of some long-forgotten trade. Torches burned in iron brackets on the walls, and in their light stood four women.
The woman who spoke to him sat on an upturned crate a few feet away.
She was dressed in black cloth that clung to her form. And on her upper arm, catching the torchlight and holding it, a gold armband in the shape of a viper.
His blood ran cold.
He knew that armband.
Everyone in the trade knew that armband.
"The Viper," he whispered. "I'm dead."
The young woman's lips curved slightly. "Not yet."
The three kohl-eyed women did not move, but something in the room shifted nonetheless.
"Eze Udoka," the seated woman said. "My father's most trusted courier, retired Imperial Apothecary."
The words hit him; he looked at her face again. "Chukwuemeka's daughter," he gasped. "What do you think you're doing? Does your father know—"
"It's best if he never finds out." Her voice was flat. "Or your life ends."
"You're the one married to the Okpalaeze," he whispered. "The useful one."
The young woman's smile widened.
"Nneka's granddaughter," he said. "Of course. Of course it's you."
The viper on her arm gleamed.
"Tell me everything," Chidinma said quietly. "About my father's plans. About the Iyom. You delivered the twins; why was only one sent to the Igbele?"
There was no need for torture, Eze Udoka smiled, a stunned laugh escaping him, and soon enough, he began to talk.
In the corner of a room, a black satchel moved, a low hiss coming from the bag.
Borji crouched on the rooftop, his eyes scanning the peaceful city. Silence had settled over Tarsyn; only the occasional cry of a baby carried on the air, and along the city walls, men took turns at their watch over the sprawling forest below.
He heard a weight settle on the roof tiles but didn't look back. His large, scaled tail swung idly behind him. "Are you done?" he asked.
Chidinma came to stand beside him, taking in the city. Not a cloud in the sky—every star visible, every soul yet to exist.
"Yes," she said. "The little snake is too heavy. I'll need help carrying it back."
Borji hummed. "Between you and Azul, I can't tell who's scarier. Your father must've spent a fortune on both of you."
Chidinma scoffed. He looked up and caught her eyes. "Naturally—we are very expensive brides. Somadina paid my father a hundred and thirty-five silver coins for my hand." She turned her nose up. "Most women are only worth ten."
Borji found himself laughing. Then a thought surfaced. "So, what did he say? Before he was eaten."
Her expression shifted. "Obiageli wasn't lying.
They are truly twins. My father took in a pregnant woman he claimed as his lover.
When she went into labour, the delivery was complicated, so he begged for the Dowager's help.
She took the woman in—and of course she died in childbirth.
But she gave birth to twins." Chidinma paused.
"By law, they both must be cast away. But since Obiageli was born with a great gift—according to the late Oracle— they saved her and hid her in the palace, pretending she was the Ugoeze's daughter. "
Borji raised a brow. Chidinma nodded. That confirmed Azul's suspicions—Chukwuemeka's loyalty was never to Somadina.
"And your youngest?" he asked. "Where is she?"
Chidinma stiffened. Her face twisting. She looked away and sat on the roof's edge, legs dangling. "I don't know," she whispered. "Even with everything I have—every contact, every name—I couldn't find anything. I don't know where she is." She exhaled. "I'm scared."
Silence settled between them. Borji found he had nothing useful to say.
Chidinma—according to Azul—was not someone who accepted defeat easily, but she was not too proud to admit fear, nor too foolish to see her own limits. She had laughed at Azul's hesitancy toward Somadina once. She understood it now. Some things you could only learn by living them.
"...Viper?" Borji offered, trying to ease the weight of the moment.
Her lips quirked, though she kept her eyes on the stars. "Only people in my village know my brand. It's useful—when I need to move without my father knowing. Though since coming here, the missions have gotten considerably harder."
"Is that why Azul asked me to send her letters under that name?"
"Azul has always used my name as she liked. I didn't particularly mind. She never did anything interesting with it anyway."
Borji's lips pressed together. "I struggle to understand either of you. Don't you hate her?"
Chidinma threw her head back. "Naturally, how could I not? She's a pompous, bratty airhead. Always smiling like an idiot."
Borji looked around sharply, as if afraid Azul was somehow listening in on their conversation. "So why are you helping her?"
"Because we're sisters." She said it simply, as though it required no further explanation. "If not each other, who?" She turned to him, brows drawing together. "It's stranger that you help her. You're a stranger to us, aren't you?"
Borji opened his mouth, then stopped. Reconsidered. "I shouldn't be."
She stared at him.
"I shouldn't be a stranger to her," he said. "We've met before."
"...In the Igbele?" Chidinma finished, uncertain.
He nodded. "I'm a Djinn. The Igwe was gracious enough not to cast me out, but he had no love for me either.
After my mother's execution for her infidelity, it was just me.
I could leave the palace as I wished so I found respite in the Igbele.
Though terrifying to most people, the Igbele felt like home to me.
The forest was my mother for a long time. "
"So what—you met her and fell in love?" Chidinma's expression curdled.
Borji laughed outright. "No. I hated Azul. Deeply. Genuinely. I hated that an abandoned child with nothing dared look down on me. She treated me the same way everyone else did, and it enraged me." He smiled sheepishly. "I tried to kill her."
Chidinma considered this. "That explains why she was such a savage little thing when my father found her. She was rude and barked out every word like a dog."
"You'd never know it now."
She snorted. "You'd think she was born into royalty. Arguably she was the most valuable of his children. She would've sold well, if not for the situation with the Valthorne."
Borji stilled for just a second. "After Somadina is dealt with—will you go back to your village?"