Page 35 of The Merciless Ones
He gestures to the woman, and she rises and bows to the crowd. Then she holds out her arms. “Beloved followers of Oyomo,” she says, her voice surprisingly strong behind her mask. For all her seeming frailty, her voice carries, just like Elder Kadiri’s. “The Infinite Father blesses you.”
“The Infinite Father blesses us all.”
“I bring you greetings from Idugu.”
“Greetings.” Every mouth in the crowd repeats these words except for mine.
My mouth is silent now, all my words stolen by the horror suddenly creeping over me. I may not have recognized it immediately, but I know that voice – I’ve heard it hundreds of times before. The Lady of the Heart doesn’t have to say one other word; I know exactly who she is.
Elfriede, my old friend from Irfut.
The girl who watched as I was murdered and said nothing.
Less than two years ago, Elfriede could barely speak in the company of others. She kept her face lowered, hiding the mottled red birthmark that stained the left half of her face, and never stood in front of a crowd if she could help it. She couldn’t even speak above a whisper when meeting people she didn’t know. When the deathshrieks came during the Ritual of Purity and I was revealed to be impure, she didn’t say anything, just watched silently, horror in her eyes, as Ionas stabbed me in the gut. When I spent the months after in that cellar, being tortured, being killed over and over, she never raised so much as a protest. Never even asked once to see me. Not that I expected her to. She was only one girl – and not even a member of my family. What power could she possibly wield in a place as punishing as Irfut? The only thing she would have accomplished was getting herself imprisoned too, so I never begrudged her silence, never expected anything more from her.
But now, for reasons I cannot fathom, she’s suddenly here – halfway across the world, commanding an audience of thousands, her voice resonant behind her mask as she says: “Beloved followers of Oyomo, know that Idugu protects and guides you in all things, that He is your shield in this time of darkness and chaos. It is easy to feel hopeless, overwhelmed by the thought of battling the Gilded Ones. They have captured our beloved emperor, placed our capital under siege – murdered our friends, our family, our entire villages. But all is not lost.”
As I watch her, bewilderment rising, she continues: “Powerful though those demons are, we defeated them before, bound them to the prison they now have the audacity to call their temple. And we can do so again. They are weakened at the moment, drained of the power they once had – the power they amassed by luring innocent women to their side, devouring innocent children.”
The crowd gasps, all anger and outrage, but I’m still too stunned, too taken aback, to react. All this time, I assumed Elfriede had been married off or, in the very worst case, forced into the temples as a temple maiden to erase the stain of her association with me, an impure demon. But now she’s here, standing in front of me. And she’s saying things only a select few who live in Abeya know. How did she come by the knowledge? And why is she uttering such awful words now?
The Elfriede I knew never liked speaking in front of strangers, never liked being the centre of attention. She must have been forced to do this – penance, perhaps, for her closeness with me. Yes, that must be what it is. Once upon a time, Elfriede was my dearest friend – my only friend. This must be her punishment for our friendship.
She holds her hands up for quiet. “In their prime, the Gilded Ones were wretched abominations, sucking the lives from children, women – anything pure that crossed their path. That is how they grew powerful enough to proclaim themselves gods, to litter Otera with their impure offspring.”
I clench my knuckles so tightly, the skin feels like it might split. Even if Elfriede was forced to do this by the priests, her words strike to the core of me. That she would spout such horrendous falsehoods about the mothers, about my sisters. I suddenly want to strike something – preferably her masked, emotionless face. Perhaps if I slap her hard enough, I can knock her back to her senses, back to the sweet, happy girl I once knew.
It’s all I can do to force myself to remain still as Elfriede continues: “But now they are isolated in that temple of theirs, far from our precious children, their preferred prey. That does not protect the children of Otera, however. It does not protect all those troubled youths who run to the mountain to partake of the freedoms the Gilded Ones offer, never understanding that those unholy creatures are feeding from them, gorging their souls.
“But thankfully, they haven’t completely filled themselves yet.”
Elfriede looks across the crowd, which is rapt, captivated by her spell. “The Gilded Ones are starved – vulnerable – and we will use that vulnerability to our advantage. We will march upon their temple, and we will do what the warriors of old Otera failed to do: we will slay the demons once and for all!”
The crowd’s roar is so enthusiastic now, that awful malevolence swells the air again. I wince as my blood churns under the onslaught. Once again, it’s as if the presence, the arcane object, whatever it is, is feeding on the crowd’s eagerness, their bloodlust. And I can only clap along, careful to keep up my pretence of glee.
When finally the clapping ends, Keita’s hand reaches for mine, and I grasp it gratefully, not surprised to find it’s sweaty too. His jaw is clenched so tightly now, the muscle twitches there. He can feel the presence as well.
When the crowd finally quiets again, Elfriede looks across the field. “You may ask how I know all these truths about the Gilded Ones. How do I, a lowly girl from an isolated and backward village like Irfut, know all these truths about the demons?” She pauses dramatically, waiting as tension builds. I can almost imagine her green eyes tilting up at the corners, the way they always did when she had something delicious to gossip about.
“Tell us,” someone calls.
“Tell us, Wumi Kaduth!” another person joins in.
The silver accents on Elfriede’s mask gleam under the torches as her voice lowers almost to a whisper. “You see, I was raised in the same village as the spawn of the demons. I was raised alongside the Nuru herself. Alongside Deka…the girl standing right there.”
A thin, bird-like finger points straight at me and just like that, the world goes still.
It’s as if all the air has been momentarily sucked out of my lungs, as if everything is moving like sludge. Then the crowd turns towards me. Towards us. Because while I was staring, still in shock, my friends have been rushing over, aware, as I abruptly am, of the jatu who have been slowly infiltrating the crowd, trapping us while we were distracted by Elfriede. And in the end, that’s all she truly was – a distraction. Not a lure for Oteran women or anything else we theorized, but a trap, plain and simple. Bait so Elder Kadiri could capture us as we had wanted to capture him.
Keita’s eyes widen as he takes stock of the jatu now surrounding us. There are at least a hundred of them, all human, which is why they didn’t alert my senses. The irony of it slowly washes over me. No wonder we didn’t hear about a female priest before coming here – they made sure not to mention it until the very last day they could, when we were here, away from more experienced alaki commanders who, unlike us, could have sniffed out the trap.
The whole time I thought we were outwitting them, they were outwitting us.
“Deka…” Keita says, a silent question shining in his eyes. What do we do?
I turn to my friends, all of them staring at me, waiting for my command. It comes to me in a rush. “We take Elder Kadiri now!”
Change, Ixa! I add silently.