Chapter 26
Sayuri is standing at the edge of one of Ilarong’s many peaks when I find her later, her eyes closed as if she’s listening to a song only she can hear. It’s midafternoon now, and an ominous chill has settled over the mountain city—the mist exuded by her deathshrieks. How so many managed to infiltrate the city so stealthily I don’t know, but I see White Hands in it all—my former mentor undoubtedly planned for the fact that the aviax would refuse to become our allies. Both the arrival of the deathshrieks and the opening of the vale are warnings to the bird folk: war is already here, whether you like it or not.
“Deka,” Sayuri murmurs, her eyes slowly opening when I approach. She looks me up and down before musing, “Or should I be calling you the Angoro now?”
“Deka will do,” I reply, my eyes fixed on the deathshrieks who move swiftly across the city, dark shadows compared with the aviax flitting to and fro as they gather supplies to pack their zerizard-pulled chariots.
I can only hope that a few of them have already been diverted to spy on Abeya and the Bloom surrounding it, but White Hands has repeatedly assured me that she has spies carefully watching the area. If so much as one follower of the Idugu steps foot in the mountains near the city of the goddesses, she’ll know and send me and my friends out to apprehend them so we can reach my kelai first.
In the meantime, we will remain here to aid in preparations for our first offensive against the gods.
I return my attention to Sayuri as she nods. “Hmm…,” she says, stepping closer. The movement is so swift and fluid, she’s in front of me before I notice she’s taken a step.
I hastily retreat, unnerved to be so close to the deathshriek. Her claws seem even sharper than they were back at the Warthu Bera, and now they have been edged with gold, as have the spike-like quills on her back that cause her signature rattling sound.
Even more than before, Sayuri seems an intimidating shadow. But that might just be my guilt talking. There’s so much I owe her, so much I have to atone for.
She stares down at me, unblinking, and I stare back, a fly caught in the gaze of a particularly large, particularly deadly spider. That is, until I realize.
Sayuri’s eye contact is direct, unbroken. And she isn’t peering off into thin air like she’s seeing things that aren’t there. I noticed this before, but for some reason, I didn’t understand what it meant until now. “You’re fully lucid,” I conclude.
Could this be because she’s no longer under the influence of blueblossom, the sweet-smelling flower the matrons at the Warthu Bera used to drug her into submission?
A bitter smile slices her lips as she repeats, “Lucid…. Such a fascinating word. So much judgment hidden in so few syllables. Tell me, Angoro, do you believe that you must remain attached to this world to comprehend everything that is around you?”
I blink up at her. “I—I don’t know.” I don’t even understand what she’s asking, truth be told.
Sayuri’s smile spreads wider, now a baring of teeth. She gestures up with arms as long and gaunt as a conid tree’s branches in midwinter. “This world, this physical realm upon which you and I stand now,” she continues. “Do you believe you must remain attached to it, to what you see, what you smell, what you hear, to understand it?”
As if prompted, my mind immediately races back to Myter and what they taught me. The Greater Divinity. Space and matter. All things I still don’t truly understand. But I know they’re there, know that they’re all forces that affect me for better or worse.
The Greater Divinity especially. Even now, I can’t fully connect to it—or rather, don’t want to fully connect to it, given my misgivings. What if there’s some malevolent force behind it, some god that’ll take me over the moment I truly let it in? I’m not certain I still believe that, but I hold off just in case.
“No,” I finally say, sighing. “I don’t believe that. There are a great many things I cannot see that still exist despite my inability to perceive them.”
Sayuri’s smile slices wider. “And you were so blind before.”
Sayuri doesn’t have to explain what she’s referring to. The last time we spoke, right before she disappeared over the burning walls of the Warthu Bera, she hinted to me that the Gilded Ones weren’t what they seemed.
“I wanted to live in a dream,” I say, recalling that time. “A fantasy of what this world could be, rather than what it truly was. So I chose not to see what the mothers were. What they were doing.”
“You still call them the mothers.” There’s no judgment in this, only a statement of fact.
“A slip of the tongue,” I admit ruefully. “It’s only been a few months since I believed—”
“That they loved you. That they cared.”
There’s a sorrowful understanding in Sayuri’s tone. But then, she was one of the first four alaki born to them, a war queen—one of their primary generals. She was one of the chosen. One of the beloved.
Only, the Gilded Ones’ love always comes at a cost. All the gods’ love does. Sayuri and I both know that.
I nod before looking up at her again. “How did you find out about them?” I ask. “Initially, I mean. It must have been difficult.”
I know from our prior conversations that Sayuri discovered what the goddesses were when they were at the height of their power. During that era, their pretense at doting motherhood was exquisitely calibrated, and their ability to erase the memories of anyone who went against them was flawless.
That Sayuri even suspected them then says a great deal about the strength of her mind, no matter how fractured it may seem now.
She shrugs, the movement rattling up and down her quills. “I went mad,” she says simply. “And do you know, madness is illuminating. Because when you no longer think like others, you’re forced to think like yourself. To see things in ways you might not have seen before. To see the truth. And that brings understanding, painful though it may be.”
“So now you’re here.”
“Now I’m here.”
“With White Hands, your eldest sister…. Who you promised to kill the next time you saw her.”
“And I made good on that vow.” Sayuri gives this reply so casually, it’s moments before its meaning sinks in: She made good on her vow to kill White Hands the next time she saw her.
“You did?” I ask, surprised, though I really shouldn’t be.
Alaki in general are a brutal race, and the Firstborn are even more so. Worse, White Hands, Melanis, and Sayuri are the three remaining war queens, the first daughters born to the Gilded Ones. Given how long most of them have lived, things like life and death are trivial matters to them.
“Indeed.” White Hands, who has made her way up the path, Braima and Masaima at her side, answers. She nods to Sayuri in a companionable greeting as she expands: “Gutted me like a fish the first death, then broke my back the second—a most painful death, I assure you. We made peace after the third—a strangling, I believe it was.”
Sayuri barely blinks at this mention of her savagery. “I decided she’d paid enough for her crimes to warrant a truce. For now.”
“For now?” I gape. You’d think three almost-deaths would be enough punishment.
“Fifty years,” says Sayuri. “That’s how long I was caged in the Warthu Bera.”
“A death for every year, quite a fair price for my betrayal.” White Hands nods sagely. “If we win this war—”
“When we win this war,” I manage to correct through my astonishment.
White Hands inclines her head. “When we win this war, Sayuri will take what is her due. Meaning, the other forty-seven deaths,” she explains, when it’s apparent I don’t understand what she’s saying.
I glance between the pair. “You two are the strangest sisters I’ve ever met.”
White Hands humphs. “Have you met Melanis?”
“Recently, as it happens,” I retort. “She was strange too.”
“All Firstborn are like this. Half of us are always wanting to kill the other half,” Sayuri says with a wise nod. She taps her lower lip. “Family: it is a complicated matter, is it not?”
Suddenly, my head is hurting.
“Don’t worry, Quiet One,” Masaima whispers in my ear as his brother nods, “this is how it always is when they’re together.”
I return my attention to White Hands. “So what now? What’s our next move?”
It’s not the Bloom, that much is certain. White Hands would have told me immediately if the spies there had noticed anything.
My old mentor smiles thinly. “Now we plan. The aviax, human, and equus generals, Sayuri, Thandiwe, and I will combine battle strategies so we can disseminate them across Otera. Even if you were to take your kelai back today, we’d still have to deal with all the priests and followers and such for both pantheons.”
“?‘Today?’?” I frown at this strange bit of phrasing. Usually, White Hands would say “in the next day or two,” or something to that effect.
My old mentor continues as if she didn’t hear me. “Peace won’t come just because you end the gods. And we have to prepare for what happens if you fail. Besides, you have something else to do or, rather, somewhere else to go.”
My eyes widen, nervousness rushing through me. “My kelai? Your spies have already located it?”
“Sayuri’s spies have,” White Hands corrects dourly, which of course explains why she didn’t give me the news immediately. She does have her petty moments. “Turns out, they’re even faster than mine, unbelievable as it may seem.” As Sayuri sniffs, offended by this assessment, White Hands nods down to me. “Gather the others. You have to get moving now. I’ll brief you before you leave.”
I nod, a thousand emotions churning inside me as I turn away. Fear, doubt—hope. What if my kelai isn’t where the spies say it is? Worse, what if it is? That would mean today could be the day I leave my friends, my family.
Today could be the day everything changes. No wonder White Hands used that specific word.
But again, what if it isn’t? What if this is some sort of trap? My worries are circling now—round and round they go.
“Deka, enough.” When I turn, White Hands has walked up to me, her head shaking in disapproval. “I can hear your thoughts scurrying.”
“I just…,” I begin. “I know I must do my duty, but…”
White Hands nods. “Peace is never easy, Deka. Especially not for the ones who broker it.”
I nod. Then I still, gathering my courage. “White Hands…,” I begin slowly, finally saying the words I’ve been holding back all this while. The words I didn’t want to say until this very moment, when I have to. “The goddesses have imprisoned Anok. Trapped her in the mountain under Abeya. Okot feared they would consume her, which is why he tried to make a deal with me.”
When I glance up at her, her gaze is as stoic as ever. I frown. “You knew.”
She nods. “Even when she was imprisoned all those centuries, Mother spoke to me. She whispered in my dreams, in the wind…. But now she is silent.”
White Hands’s eyes are troubled. The Gilded Ones may have all contributed to her birth, but it is Anok she considers her mother—a sentiment the goddess shares.
“What do I do?” I ask, a simple question layered with a thousand meanings.
White Hands turns back to me. “The same thing you’ve always intended: take back your divinity and end the gods.”
“Even Anok?” The question creeps out. Doubt.
If the time truly has arrived, I need to at least voice this one doubt.
White Hands’s eyes are filled with pain, but her reply is firm. “Especially Anok,” she insists. “It’s what she wants, and we will honor my divine mother’s wishes, just as we honor your purpose. We will ensure the end of the gods or die trying.
“Oh, and, Deka, one more thing.” When I glance up, confused, she continues: “The place where your kelai is, it’s Gar Fatu.”
“Gar Fatu?” An awful feeling rises in the pit of my stomach.
This will be more difficult than I thought, in many more ways than one.