Her birth father was Lord Regent and High Priest of the Sun Temple. There was no way he didn’t know what Àlùfáà-Àgbà was doing. No way he hadn’t sent the maiden and his guards after her. He wanted her dead just like everyone else. She shouldn’t even have felt any hurt about the actions of a man she had never even seen before. But her heart was broken, and everything hurt. The father she did know and love had lied to her all her life and her world just didn’t make sense anymore.
L’?r? thought about Mremí. The woman she’d placed ona pedestal her whole life for defying the Holy Order. Baba-Ìtàn had told her stories of how strong, kind and brave her mother was, and she’d lived every moment hoping that her mother was looking down at her, pleased to see her daughter as formidable as she once was. But now, that dream, too, was reduced to nothing more than a faint whisper of what once was. Mremí hadn’t been kind at all. She had been deceptive, cunning, and wicked to those who cared for her.
In the box Ìyá-Idán had given her, she found a scarf with cowries sewn into every corner. The box had two other items: a small journal half-filled with writings and a slick, lightweight dagger. When L’?r? held it in her hands, the dull metal turned bright blue. She’d thrown everything on the floor at the foot of her bed, the sight of it too much for her to bear.
She glared at the darkness until her eyes burned. When she closed her eyes, she saw Alawani somewhere in the distance, too far to reach. The faster she ran towards him, the farther he seemed to be. She heard Ìyá-Idán’s voice repeating her story. Her voice went on like an endless echo in her head. L’?r? held her palms to her temple, begging the voices to die out, crying herself to sleep.
The door to her room opened, and although she didn’t look up, she knew it was Alawani by the familiar way his feet dragged across the floor. He climbed into bed with her and hugged her tightly. Kissing her forehead, he said nothing at all. Just what she needed. She couldn’t face her demons alone.
As dusk rolled in, and the sky turned dark, Ìyá-Idán insisted they eat with her one last time, so they sat silently together around the dining table, eating a meal of móín-móín and ògi – steamed bean cake and fermented corn pudding. L’?r?kept her bag, which now contained her mother’s box, close to her.
After the meal, Ìyá-Idán pulled L’?r? to a corner of the room, out of Alawani’s earshot. ‘Have you decided what you will do? Are you going back or going north?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ L’?r? said, her voice choked with tears.
‘Whatever you decide, you will need this,’ Ìyá-Idán said as she brought out a pouch of herbs and shoved some of it towards L’?r?’s mouth.
L’?r? shirked her outstretched hand.
‘Swallow it!’ Ìyá-Idán said sternly, shoving it in her half-open mouth.
‘What is it?’ L’?r? said, spitting it out.
‘It’ll keep you from getting pregnant!’ Ìyá-Idán said. ‘I know ?niìtàn wouldn’t have told you this, but you must know that when people with agbára oru and agbára òtútù bear a child, the result is a child with no agbára at all. This was one of the reasons for the massacre of your people. I told you to stay away from that boy. You didn’t listen. Now swallow!’
L’?r? took the pouch from her, stunned and confused.
Suddenly, a voice came from the walls of the house. ‘Méje!’ L’?r? looked around the room, but there was no one there. The voice seemed to echo through the flowers that crept along the ceiling – old magic.
The voice called out again, ‘Méje, open the door!’
Ìyá-Idán rushed to the main entrance, and with the swipe of her hand, the door flung open, and a man flew in carrying a woman in his arms. Márùn.
Ìyá-Idán closed the door once they were through the threshold and rushed to the man. Alawani was already helping him lay Márùn on the table. She had bruises and cuts all over her bloodied body. Her scorched clothes revealed burnt skin beneath.
L’?r? gasped at the wounds.
‘Mj?, what is going on?’ Ìyá-Idán said to the man.
By looks alone, L’?r? figured he was about Baba-Ìtàn’s age with streaks of grey snaking through his plaits. The sides of his hair were shaved off, leaving three long braids across his head. His burnt clothes clung to his skin, which was slick with sweat and blood, and his breath came in quick bursts. He coughed, and a smoky scent hung in the air as he tried to speak. Ìyá-Idán fed him a cup of water. She held his face in her palms and sighed. She hugged him, and L’?r? thought she was dreaming again.
Mj?. That name meant the number eight. L’?r? now had four people named after numbers. Márùn and Mfà, her partner back at the farm inn, were Five and Six. This man called Ìyá-Idán Méje – seven. And she called him Mj? – eight. What was going on and who were these people?
Ìyá-Idán pulled out a vial from underneath her clothes, opened it and whispered into it in the old tongue. L’?r? recognized one word – Oba’lúayé. She was summoning the old god of healing and biological manipulation. She fed the vial into Márùn’s mouth and L’?r? could see her skin slowly start to heal almost immediately.
In her usual fashion of being short and abrupt, Ìyá-Idán wordlessly placed the half-filled vial into L’?r?’s hands. L’?r? didn’t say anything at all, she just put it into her pocket. She couldn’t tell when she’d need a vial of healing potion.
‘No,’ Ìyá-Idán said firmly. ‘Put it in your hair. Wrap it into your braids. Keep it safe.’
L’?r? obeyed. She pulled out the blade she had in her hair and replaced it with the vial, ignoring Command’s voice that told her she was better off killing anything that threatened her with the knife than hoping to recover from any wounds.
Mj? looked at L’?r? and Alawani as if noticing them for the first time, then turned to Ìyá-Idán. ‘Méje, what have you done? Why is the prince in your house? The city is on fire. Every house is being searched looking for him. Márùn was nearly killed. Someone said they’d seen them together. If I wasn’t there to save her, she’d be dead!’
L’?r? sucked in a breath of shock. How did anyone know to connect Márùn to them? They had been careful. L’?r? stepped away from the woman, her steps heavy with guilt, crushing her from the inside.
Ìyá-Idán said calmly, ‘There’s a lot to explain, Mj?. Come and sit.’
‘Méje, you can’t open yourself to danger like this,’ Mj? said, still frowning.
