Chapter 27
Gar Fatu…
The words circle through my mind as I arrive back at the tower, where my friends are already dressed in the leathery black armor we use when we go on raids. Katya’s even covered herself in a dark brown paint, which, I assume, is camouflage. Gar Fatu is one of Otera’s most important strongholds, the last stop at the southern border. It’s also deep in the Gilded Ones’ territory, so stealth and speed are important—especially given that we’re likely to meet the Idugu’s forces on the way. Okot has wasted no time making good on his promise to retrieve my kelai from its hiding place, and he’s sent multiple groups so as to confuse pursuers.
That’s not the only thing, though, that makes this so difficult.
Gar Fatu is Keita’s former summer home, the place where his family was massacred. We’ll be going back to the site of his deepest nightmares, the origin of all his pains and fears.
My eyes flit to him the minute I enter the tower. He’s standing by the door to the balcony, looking grim. My stomach sinks. I’d already suspected it when I saw the others in their armor, and Katya in her camouflage, but his expression confirms it—White Hands must have had Braima and Masaima inform my friends about our new task while I was speaking with her. They already know what we’re about to do, and worse, where we have to go to get it done.
When I approach Keita, Britta nods to the others. “Come on then, you lot, let’s give them their space.”
Like everyone else in the group, she knows Keita’s history—how his family was deceived by Emperor Gezo into moving into an area filled with deathshrieks. How they were all slaughtered one night, leaving him the sole survivor. We still haven’t gotten all the details yet—Keita keeps them close to his chest—but we know enough to understand how that night haunts him, so much so that he began training to become a jatu at the tender age of nine in order to get his revenge on the deathshrieks he believed killed his family.
She quickly herds all my friends out, shutting the door firmly behind them.
And then Keita and I are alone.
I take a step toward him. “Keita, I—”
“It’s ironic, isn’t it,” he says, turning to me, a feverish brightness in his eyes. “All that time we said we’d visit Gar Fatu, pay our respects to my family. We never went, and your kelai was there this whole time.” He laughs, the sound layered with a distinctly hysterical edge. “This whole time, it was there.”
“Might be there,” I correct, swiftly walking over to him. I’ve never seen Keita this way before, so on edge, so brittle. “Okot’s worshippers could have taken it by now.”
Even though I don’t want to admit it, it’s a possibility. The first group that Sayuri’s spies spotted isn’t the only one in the region. Even as we spoke, White Hands got reports of other groups. No matter how fast we move, the Idugu’s minions might be faster. But I can’t think of that now, can’t panic.
White Hands has made contingency plans in case that happens. Created all sorts of backups to ensure that I get my hands on my kelai and sing out the true names of the gods, causing their deaths.
Keita shakes his head. “But we still have to ascertain that’s the case….”
When he looks away, I place one hand on his shoulder, the other across his body. Keita’s muscles are so taut, he’s like a string vibrating with tension. “You don’t have to come with us,” I say comfortingly. “I understand if you wish to remain behind. You can—”
“Stay here?” Keita cuts me off before I can say anything more. “And what if your kelai truly is there? What if today is the day you ascend, and I refused to go? What if you left and I never saw you again?” There’s a plaintive note in his voice now.
I move my hand to his chest. “I’d make sure to visit. I’d never leave without saying goodbye.” Even as a remote and unfathomable god, I’d do that much. I’m certain of it.
Keita takes my hand, kisses it, his lips warm, oh so very warm. His eyes are determined. “You are my heart, Deka. Ever since the Warthu Bera, that’s what you’ve been—my heart. Of course I’m going with you. If we’re going to Gar Fatu, I’m leading the way.”
Which of course he is. That’s what jatu are trained to do. And even if it weren’t, that’s what Keita does—puts himself in the path of danger, even if it means his own pain, his own suffering…
And mine as well.
Because somewhere deep inside me—in a hidden corner of my heart I’m ashamed to acknowledge—I don’t want Keita to go. I don’t want to have to say goodbye if this truly is the end of our journey together.
Keita seems to understand this, because he takes a step closer, wraps me in his arms. “I don’t want to go either,” he whispers, burying his face in my hair. “Not truly.”
I squeeze him with all my might. “It’s not fair. None of it. The gods, this situation, the fact that we might—” I stop halfway, choked by the sob that rises out of me.
“I know.” He squeezes me tighter, plastering little kisses across my face and neck.
“We never got our time together,” I whisper plaintively. “We never got to be alone, just you and me.” I bury my head in his chest, listening to his heartbeat, that familiar sound I know so well. “I never even got to dance with you—truly dance with you.”
“You mean like you Northerners do?” I can almost feel Keita cocking his head above me.
I nod, face still muffled in his chest to hide my embarrassment.
It was one of the things I most looked forward to when I still thought I would one day marry in the Northern way. Unlike Southern dances, the most popular Northern dances are for couples, and husbands and wives hold each other as they dance.
To my surprise, Keita nods. “Then why don’t we dance now?”
I glance up at him in confusion. “But there’s no music.”
“And what would you call the wind whistling around the mountain?”
Keita’s eyes are sparkling as the wildness there is replaced with a sly mischief.
I decide to play along. “And what about the lights?” I pout. “And the other dancers?”
“You mean those dancers?” Keita snaps his fingers, and a host of flames in the shape of tiny humans suddenly dance in the air around us. When I gape at them, astounded, he smiles down at me. “There you are, lights and dancers.” He extends a hand. “Well then, Deka, shall we?”
I look up at him, tears pricking my eyes. I know what it’s taken for him to put aside his own pain and create this festival of lights, but perhaps Keita needs it. And I need it too. So I nod, taking his hand, then I press my body to his and move slowly along to the sound of the wind whistling across the mountain.
The dance isn’t seamless—neither of us truly knows what we’re doing, since this is the first time we’ve ever danced. Still, it’s the best thing I’ve ever felt: Keita’s heated body pressed to mine, both of us moving in a slow, almost instinctual rhythm.
It’s like time has suspended, like we’re both surrounded in a bubble of our own making.
I’m so caught up in the dance, I’m disappointed when, after a few minutes, Keita slowly brings us to a halt, then removes his hands from my waist.
I sigh, glance up at him. “Time to go?”
He nods. Then he looks down at me. “So, how was our first dance?”
“Perfection,” I say. And I truly mean it.
No matter what happens at Gar Fatu, no matter what obstacles or horrors we encounter from now on, we’ll always have this—our one perfect dance.
I walk toward the door, but as I move to open it, a hand stops me. Keita’s. All the mischief has disappeared from his eyes as he says, “Just one thing. We shouldn’t take any of the deathshrieks with us.” When I turn to him fully, he sighs, shaking his head. “I hate to admit it, but I don’t know what I would do if I saw them there again, in that place. I don’t know what I would do….”
What violence I could commit.
The implication hangs in the air, a heavy warning. Keita is a jatu; he’s used to killing deathshrieks, has been doing so since he was nine. He only stopped after we realized that not only were deathshrieks intelligent beings, they were the souls of resurrected alaki.
Now he harms deathshrieks only if they pose a threat to us. He may still be a killer, but he’s not an indiscriminate one.
I nod. “All right. I’ll let White Hands know.”
But when I pull the door fully open, it’s to the sight of Katya and Rian sitting in the chair just outside, Rian curled up in Katya’s lap, since there’s no way she, as a deathshriek, can sit in his. She’s looking straight at us, hurt shining in her eyes.
“Does that include me?” she asks quietly, signing in battle language so Keita can understand her as well. “The no-deathshrieks mandate, I mean.”
His eyes widen. “You? No,” he says, shaking his head vigorously. “Not you. Never you.”
“Why? I thought you said no deathshrieks.”
Keita blinks, as if gathering his thoughts. “You wouldn’t startle me the way the others would,” he finally responds.
“A bright red deathshriek wouldn’t startle you?”
Keita shrugs. “You’re the only bright red deathshriek there is. Besides, you’re brown now?”
“Forest-colored,” Katya corrects. Then she nods. “All right,” she says, still signing in battle language. “Because I fully intend to go with you.” She turns to me. “I won’t let you go to what may be your last day as a…well, whatever it is you are, without saying goodbye.”
“I’ll remain here, thank you,” Rian says, “but if you hurt her, I will stab you,” he warns, signing in battle language as well.
It’s only been a little over a month since he reunited with Katya, and he’s already almost fluent. Determination is a frightening thing, especially in a lover.
A snort sounds from beside him. “With wha knife?” Britta asks.
“I can find one,” Rian mutters, the distinctive white streak in his hair flopping as he nods.
We all just smile. Rian is about as likely to stab someone as he is to grow wings and fly away. In a group full of warriors, he’s the only one who’s never truly held a dagger or a sword, and yet we love him still.
The atmosphere now ever-so-slightly eased, I turn back to Keita. “I will ensure that the other deathshrieks keep their distance,” I promise. “But only if you promise that after we find my kelai, we’ll stop and pay our respects to the resting place of your parents.”
“And then we say a true goodbye.” Keita’s voice is so low when he says this, I almost don’t hear him.
Or perhaps it’s that I don’t want to.
I turn and nod quietly, tears pricking at my eyes again. “And then we say a true goodbye.”
A small group has gathered when my friends and I make our way to the stables some minutes later to receive our last briefing from White Hands and Sayuri. At the front stands Karmoko Thandiwe, who, just a few months ago, explained to us that she was in fact a they. Their lover, Lady Kamanda, is, as always, by their side. Both are opulently dressed in cloaks of iridescent feathers—gifts, no doubt, from the aviax, a pair of whom flitter in the background, chasing two little boys who bear a striking resemblance to Lady Kamanda: her first pair of twins. The noble is what Mother used to call a miracle of fertility. In fact, when I first met her, her heavily pregnant belly preceded her like the bow of a ship. I blink as I continue watching her and my former teacher, who seems to be carrying something under that splendid cloak, something that wriggles.
When I hear a distinctive gurgling coming from it, my eyes widen. “Is that a baby?” I gasp, excitement rising.
I love babies. Not having them, mind you—which was the fate Elder Durkas and all the other elders in Irfut and beyond wanted for me and every other Oteran woman. Playing with them, however, is another matter entirely.
As I rush over, excited, I nearly miss the correction that comes my way. “Babies,” Lord Kamanda—who has been waiting behind his former wife and her lover—says, whirring forward. “Babies, plural.” He nods at Lady Kamanda, who is now triumphantly unwrapping her cloak, presenting her own wriggling bundle, a round little ball of a baby who seems mostly made of big brown eyes and chubby little hands and feet.
It looks identical to the baby under Karmoko Thandiwe’s cloak when they present it as well. “Girls,” they say smugly. “More twins, just like that alaki in the camp said.”
A month ago, an alaki in the war camp outside Hemaira’s walls predicted that Lady Kamanda would bear twin girls. It seems she was very much correct.
A happy warmth suffuses me as the twin in Karmoko Thandiwe’s arms gurgles again. It dissipates some of the panic and fear that’s dogged my every step here. The fear of whether Okot has already taken back my kelai, or whether it was never in Gar Fatu in the first place and we’re just going on a fool’s errand, one that will hurt the group much more than it helps, given Keita’s continuing distress.
To push back these thoughts, I stroke the baby’s soft little hand, glorying when her smile breaks wider. “She’s so beautiful,” I say, glancing up at the karmoko, who has a proud expression on their face, their brown eyes beaming with contentment.
“Isn’t she?” they agree smugly. They may not have birthed the twins, but it’s clear they’re still every bit a parent. My intuition is further confirmed when their face suddenly twists into a worried frown. “Assuming she’s a she, that is. You never know with these things.” An apt observation, given that Karmoko Thandiwe didn’t reveal their identity as a yandau to us until recently.
“No,” I agree. “You don’t.” I glance up at them again, smiling when I see the contentment in their eyes. “It’s good to see you, Karmoko,” I say.
“And you as well, Deka,” they return. “Although I wish we were reuniting under better circumstances.” They glance pointedly behind me, where a group of aviax are just finishing preparing our gryphs for the journey.
I force away the pang in my chest with a smile. “It does seem to be a pattern for us, does it not, always meeting with each other in dire circumstances.”
“Such is life,” they say with a sigh.
They tut down at me. “Becoming a god…You never did make things easy, did you, Deka?”
I shake my head. “My essential nature is complication, as it turns out.”
I must have said these words more bitterly than I intended, because the karmoko’s eyes gentle. “You are who and what you are, Deka, no more, no less. Always remember that.”
I sigh. “I will, although…I imagine a god would be much more. That a god would have to be much more.” I don’t know what I’m saying, or even truly why I’m saying all this. All I know is that I feel a heaviness again, the same heaviness I felt all the way here, as if every step is leading me closer and closer to my doom.
“If you choose it to be.”
When I glance up at them, confused, the karmoko explains: “I don’t know much about gods—in fact, I’d be hard pressed to think of all the times I’ve truly prayed over the years. But what I do know is that gods have choices, just like we mortals. They can choose to become whomever they want.
“So if you’re uncertain about what type of god you will be, perhaps you should take time to contemplate it—preferably before you retrieve your divinity.”
The karmoko looks into my eyes, their gaze unwavering. “You choose who you want to be, Deka. This child will one day,” they say, fondly stroking their daughter’s fluff of hair, “and the only reason they’ll be able to do that is because of all the sacrifices you and your companions have made.
“Why, then, should you, one of the main engineers of our new world, not do the same?”
“But what if I fail?” I whisper, frightened. I glance around to make sure no one else is listening before I add in an even lower voice, “What if I’m unable to stop the gods and the world ends? Or, worse, I do stop them, and I become even more corrupt than they were?”
Karmoko Thandiwe must hear the hysteria in my voice, because they just look at me. Then they sigh, juggle their baby onto one arm, and reach out with the other to pat me on the shoulder. “You won’t fail, Deka,” they say plainly. “It’s not in your nature, and it’s never been. That’s why I’m not worried, despite everything that’s going on. Because I believe in you. And more to the point, I know you. No matter what happens, you’ll make the correct choice. I know you will.”
My eyes are awash with tears now. I look up at the karmoko, humbled beyond measure. That they would say such words, express such faith…
I hold on to the feeling as White Hands finally arrives to brief us, confirming that the jatu are still searching the area around Keita’s summer house, and then as I say my goodbyes and mount Ixa, my determination building all the while: I won’t fail. Not just for my sake, but for these precious baby girls. For every person who’s never had the chance to live their life in the manner in which they desired.
Holding on to this determination, I summon the door. Then I turn to Keita, who’s walking beside me, as the others all are, his eyes still uneasy.
“Ready?” I ask.
“As I’ll ever be.”
I nod, squeeze his hand. Now I turn one last time to the others—to White Hands and the equus twins, to the aviax sovereigns, who have just arrived, to the Kamandas and Karmoko Thandiwe, as well as everyone else who came here to see me off. “Farewell,” I say. “Hopefully, when we meet again, it’ll be with joyous news.”
“I look forward to it,” White Hands replies.
Then I mount Ixa and ride through the door.