‘Barely,’ L’?r? said.
‘These people don’t have to bring us any business at all. Yet they do.’
‘You’re the best bookbinder in the kingdom. They’ve got no choice but to come. And even then, they don’t come when the sun is in the sky. They come like thieves in the night, too ashamed to let their neighbours know they need you yet not proud enough to pay a decent fee. Other bookbinders charge twenty suns, sometimes thirty! While we starve.’
‘That’s enough, L’?r?,’ Baba-Ìtàn said sternly.
‘Neither does it stop them from trying to burn our house every other blood moon!’
‘I said that’s enough!’
L’?r? ground her teeth to keep herself from talking back. It wasn’t the right time to remind him that their lives would be much easier if they moved to another city. Maybe the third or fourth ring. Somewhere deep in the kingdom where no one would recognize them. But of course, she couldn’t say that. Last time, he made her promise never to ask again.
L’?r? sighed, returned to her papers, and as soon as she lifted them, she saw the black oil marks smeared on them. Curse the sun. She quickly folded the incriminating evidence, tucked it between two books on the shelf, and quietly washed her hands again.
‘You’ve stained the paper, haven’t you?’
She tensed up and her breath caught in her throat.
‘Just don’t throw it away. We’ll use it for something else.’ There was a lightness in his voice, and she thought she heard a chuckle, but still, she didn’t dare look back just in case she was wrong. When he didn’t say anything more, she turned to peep. She was right, there was a smile stretched across his face.
L’?r? smiled and continued the rest of her work in silence. After binding the blank pages from the night before, she still had a tower of papers to stack and bind, but she was running out of time. If she wanted to make it to the capital before sundown to meet Alawani for their tattoos as they’d agreed the night before, she’d need to leave soon. She looked at the time beads on her wrists. Eleven red beads and one gold one – the gold represented the sun and the moon. At noon, the gold bead shone like the sun, and at midnight it turned white. This, of course, worked only for those who had agbára oru, which was everyone except her and Baba-Ìtàn. Bodies without warmth, souls without agbára. Though unlike Baba-Ìtàn, she was born this way; he had traded his agbára for a different kind of power and ultimately lost everything. So though her father could live openly as an outcast, L’?r? – a well-trained fraud – had to use old magic he secretly taught her to create an illusion of the powers that eluded her.
‘Come here,’ Baba-Ìtàn said, startling her out of her thoughts.
L’?r? jumped to her feet, wondering if her father knew what she was planning.
‘Come,’ he repeated, dragging the word. ‘I need some wax; light up the lantern and get the candles.’
L’?r? sighed in relief and walked over to the chest by his desk. She pulled out a heavy lantern made of glass and iron, and a couple of candlesticks. When she was younger, Baba-Ìtàn had taught her the names of all the old gods, and when she called only one answered. ?àngó – the god of fire and thunder.
She took a deep breath and whispered the words that sparked flame when spoken, ‘Mù’ná jáde.’ The lantern blazed with fire, and she lit the candles and handed them over to her father. He nodded in approval at her precision with thespell. She didn’thaveto whisper when she was home – after all, Baba-Ìtàn had been the one to teach her the words she needed to fool everyone. But she’d gotten used to keeping this secret; whispering was now second nature.
Most importantly, she couldn’t risk using spells in outright visible ways. Even when L’?r? used her blades, her hands remained wrapped to hide the fact that they did not glow golden as her steel did. Power without hands that glowed meant old magic, and old magic meant death.
No one could know her secret – not even Alawani – or she’d probably be killed for being the weak link in the kingdom. If one person could be without agbára, then maybe they were at risk of losing their gods’ given gift as well. The only thing L’?r? was sure of was that, if discovered, her father would die with her for concealing the truth.
She spoke to her time beads and the eleventh one lit up. One to noon. Her father was lost in his work with the wax so she quietly walked out of the room and snuck out of the house before he could notice her absence.
As soon as L’?r? crossed into the centre of the capital a few light beads later, heading towards the tattoo salon, a soldier grabbed her arm and shoved her into the growing crowd.
‘Move! Move! You there, olóshì, don’t let me come there! You, move! Move your feet!’ The orders came from a soldier who was using his heated sword to herd people together.
L’?r? pulled the hood of her cloak firmly over her head, still trying to figure out what was happening when her eyes fell on the raised platform in the distance. She’d come to the capital on the worst of days. The crowd turned into a frenzy as more soldiers appeared. A few people carried their children and ran as fast as their legs could go. Some tried hiding, but the soldiers had come in squads, and there was nowhereto hide. Others walked on, allowing the soldiers to lead them towards the raised platform. L’?r? found herself stuck in a sea of heads, suffocated by rancid body odour.
A darkened chopping block sat in the middle of the platform, and on the ground in front of it was a large fire pit already ablaze and roaring. Time passed slowly, and when the people quietened down into low murmurs, two priests of the Holy Order climbed onto the platform, their maidens at their side.
‘The time for judgement is now!’ the first priest shouted to the crowd. He wore white robes with red sashes across the waist and a white Abetí-Ajá – a cap with two flaps on both sides of his head like dog ears.
As the priest began speaking, temple maidens climbed onto the platform wearing long gowns with sleeves reaching their feet, the same shade as the priest’s coral beads. L’?r? wasn’t fooled by how delicate the dresses made them look. The low-cut plunge that showed their bronzed glowing skin and the high slits were a distraction for anyone who didn’t know that beneath all that was a deadly assassin with knives in places they shouldn’t be.
Soldiers led a weeping trio bound in chains onto the platform. L’?r? recognized the black bonds immediately and knew the crime they’d committed. She tried to squeeze out of the packed crowd, but every move seemed to pull the crowd tighter against her body.
‘These people have shamed themselves,’ the priest continued. ‘They claim that because they are from Ìlú-Idán they have the right to use the magic of their ancestors. But I say who are they to use what the gods have claimed as theirs? Do we all not exist to serve the gods? How then can we permit such disregard for their laws? They’ve shamed us all and threatened to bring down the wrath of the gods on our kingdom.’
The low murmurs grew louder as people’s curiosity started to rise above their fears.
L’?r? tried to move even further away from the front, but she was stuck. She was just three lines from the fire pit, and the wind brought the smoke into her eyes. She closed them, partly because of the burn and partly because she remembered the last time she watched the priest give a speech like this. She knew what was going to happen next. The urge to be sick hit her suddenly, overwhelming and intense.
