Page 89 of The Merciless Ones

A cold nose nuzzles me. Deka?

I look down at Ixa. It’s time to leave this place. Let’s go get the others.

Deka, Ixa agrees, scurrying off.

Britta is carrying Li when I reach her. She seems pale, tired. She must be exhausted from using her gift. “Are you all right?” I ask, but she only has eyes for Li.

“He’s not out of the gilded sleep yet,” she says, panicked. “Why isn’t he out of the gilded sleep, Deka?”

“Let me see.” I stand beside her, then slip back into the combat state as I gaze at Li. My eyebrows immediately rise when I glimpse what’s happening inside his body. His essence is changing, threads of gold wrapping around it, slowly becoming one with it. So this is what I missed when I looked at Keita, the thing I did not see because I didn’t look long enough.

“He will wake soon,” I say to Britta as I glance across the hall, where our other uruni are also in the gilded sleep. They’re transitioning as well, the gold changing them from the inside out.

“Everyone will.”

I can see it now, the combat state allowing me to understand this with a reassuring certainty.

But as I turn back, my vision blinking back to normal, I notice something curious. One of the charred jatu is creeping towards me, his blackened body scraping across the floor. Inside, his soul is dimming from gold to a dull white, but the shape is changing, becoming larger and larger, a very familiar figure. A Forsworn deathshriek.

So this is how it happens.

“They’re turning into deathshrieks,” I call out to my friends, but no one hears me. Everyone is concerned for their partner, Belcalis for Acalan and Adwapa for Kweku. Only Lamin is on the floor by himself, since Asha’s gone back to the mountains.

I turn to Ixa. Take Lamin, I say, calm.

It doesn’t matter if these jatu become deathshrieks; they won’t resurrect here. If what I saw in the kaduth was true, Forsworn deathshrieks are born deep under the earth somewhere – probably in the mountains, since they’re remote enough that no one would see the Forsworn rising from the earth. These deathshrieks won’t be my problem for some time yet, which is just as well: I have one last thing to do.

I walk to the end of the hall, where there’s one last Forsworn who isn’t aflame: Elder Kadiri, his body huddled behind one of the braziers like the coward he is. Keita left him alive just for me, the sweetheart. I’ll have to give him a kiss later to thank him.

By the time Elder Kadiri looks up at me, my atikas are already in hand. He must see the resolve in my eyes, because he frantically shakes his head, his own eyes wide. “Deka,” he pleads, “think about what you’re doing. If you slay me, my armies will never rest. They’re gathering in the N’Oyos even now, and if they don’t hear from me in two days, they’ll—”

My blades flash, and his head falls to the floor in a spray of blood.

I smile viciously. “Revive from that,” I sneer, satisfied. Then I bend down and wrench the breastplate off his chest, wincing when the kaduth gleams evilly on it.

A searing heat fills the air behind me. I turn to find Keita walking over, those flames now curling back into his skin and slowly disappearing.

“Keita!” My atikas and the breastplate clatter to the ground as I run over and embrace him. I don’t care that his body is still scorching hot, don’t care that a symphony of carnage lies around us, burned bodies in cinders on the ground. All I care is that he’s here, that he’s alive.

“Keita! Keita!” I gasp, kissing him until he barely has any breath left. “You’re alive!”

He looks down at his body, bemused. “It seems I am.”

“And you’re a true jatu! More than that, even, you’re immortal now!”

Well, a near-immortal. But it doesn’t matter, he and the other uruni now have the same lifespans as alaki. As to how they gained such a gift, my mind isn’t yet able to accept it. To accept what the Idugu and Elder Kadiri said: that I am the angoro, the very power that the Gilded Ones purportedly sent me here to seek. I don’t even know what to make of the claim. Despite everything, all the marvels I’ve seen, it just feels…odd.

“Another surprise.” Keita seems only mildly unnerved by this. He glances at the carnage. A few of the jatu corpses are stirring, the telltale marks of the gilded sleep appearing across them. The Forsworn, of course, are still. There are no revivals for them, just like regular deathshrieks. “We should leave. It’s well past dawn.”

I nod. “And Elder Kadiri said his armies are near Abeya now.” The thought jolts through me – a reminder: no matter what I may think of the Gilded Ones, I can’t abandon the people of Abeya. People there may be alert for jatu threats, but they’re not prepared for all the armies of the Idugu at once.

I grab Keita’s hand. “Let’s go,” I shout, picking up my atikas and the breastplate and then pulling at him. “He said they’d be there in two days.”

As we run towards the door, I turn back one last time to the statues of the Idugu, their faces immobile under their golden veils. They’ve expended all their energies opening those doors for the jatu and now are fast asleep. If I have my way, they’ll never wake again.

“I’ll be back for you.” I spit on the floor to mark my promise.

And then I stride out of the room.