Kehinde frowned. The lines around his mouth seemed to furrow and deepen in the ghostly light of the mushrooms. “We can only do what we can do, and that is protecting the sister we have.”
“And yet you do nothing! I am the only one who searches for answers. Percival is in Parliament, Mrs. Rose cares only for my marriage prospects, and you have become nothing but a warden. If I leave London, then Persephone will be lost forever. We will never know what became of her.”
“I can continue searching once you are safe—” Kehinde started.
“I shall believe that when I see it,” Elswyth spat. “You should be out looking for her killer right now, instead of guarding me like some delicate flower. You never cared for me or my sister. You only sought to prove your own innocence.”
“That is not true,” Kehinde said. “I—”
“Do not lie to me, Kehinde. If you had a sliver of the love I have for her, then you would have burned this city to the ground searching.”
“I am not afforded the same freedoms you are. You think I can walk into the palace and ask the prince where your sister went?”
Elswyth frowned. “Then Percival—”
“Percival has work to do, as do I. We are trying to save people from famine. To stop needless wars. Believe it or not, but the world does not begin and end with finding your sister.”
“Fine. You owe her nothing, but what of her uncle? Now he helps others, but forgets his own kin.”
“You think he does not weep at night, thinking about her? You think he does not hate himself for what happened? But what can he do, when there are thousands more in danger? Are their lives worth less than your sister’s?”
Elswyth opened her mouth to speak. Would she sound like a monster, if she said that yes, they were? Only because Persephone was hers?
“Even if you were free to go,” Kehinde said, “if the prince did murder your sister, then justice is out of reach. What would you do then? Would you kill him?”
Elswyth turned away, clutching her arms around her. “Why should it be me? You speak so much of justice, Kehinde. Why doyounot deliver it? I’ve seen you fight. You say you cannot enter the palace, but I think you could get into the royal chambers andmurder anyone you like and leave not a footprint behind you. Or the mighty Percival Devereux could hit the prince with a rifle from a thousand yards and return home in time for tea.”
Kehinde examined her face. Then he moved to the window and looked out at the moon, obscured by tree branches. “It is funny. You know, I had the same thought once. But for a different prince. A different palace.”
Elswyth paused, looking at him. Kehinde so rarely spoke of his past. “What do you mean?”
“A long time ago, I sat where you sit now. A man—a prince of sorts—took something very important from me, and I felt I had no path to justice except to kill him.”
“A prince,” Elswyth asked, confused. “Which prince?”
“My brother.”
Elswyth hesitated. Slowly, the pieces fell into place. Kehinde saw her thinking and inclined his head. “Yes, it is so. My father was the Oba—something like a king—of a small but powerful forest kingdom called Osan. I was the second-born of his twin sons, but our council of elders decided that I would succeed my father, not my brother Taiwo. Before that, we were inseparable. But then he grew jealous. The Royal Niger Company had sent their ‘advisers’ to our kingdom, with gold and gifts, in the hope of opening our city to trade. My father and I resisted them, and so instead they whispered to Taiwo that he should inherit the crown. They armed him and his supporters, and when my father died suddenly—whether by the hand of my brother or the British Empire, I do not know—Taiwo took the city.
“A battle ensued. I was gravely injured, but was able to escape with my life. From there, I was lost. I drank away what little coin I had, and when that was through, I scraped by in the gidigbowrestling pits until the Order of the Iron Grove found me. I gave them all I had left: years of my life and a willingness to bleed. To suffer for the power to return to Osan and defeat my brother. In return they gave me the secrets of the Ebony. These,” he said, tapping his cheek, “are a ritual mark of that order. I earned the scars I now wear forever as a mark of what the Iron Grove made me: an instrument of vengeance. I thought it would be worth it. I thought justice would make things right.”
Kehinde leaned against the windowsill. He ran his hand over the wood, and glowing mushrooms sprouted beneath it, illuminating his reflection in the mirror. “And so I made my way back to Osan. But when I finally entered my brother’s chamber, blade in hand, he lay asleep in his bed with his son. A nephew I had never met. And I found I could not do it. He had killed my father, but how could I kill him, with his own child in his arms?”
Kehinde paused. The light of the mushrooms played across his scars.
It was silent for a moment as Elswyth thought. “Are you saying, then, that I should not seek vengeance on the person who murdered my sister?”
Kehinde shrugged. “Kill him or do not. Either way, there will be consequences. I let my brother live, and now the British Empire brings its missionaries to tear down our gods. Now it brings its tools to rip up the sacred groves and mine for gemstones. Dead, lifeless things. Some of them, I hear, now sit in the very crown of your queen.”
Kehinde stood from the windowsill. He turned away from her, and the light from the mushrooms slowly began to fade.
“I wonder, sometimes, what would have happened if I’d killed Taiwo that night,” he said. “Perhaps I could have taken back thecity. And then, perhaps, his son would have one day cast me down as I did his father, and the cycle would continue over again. Violence is a fire that, once started, only spreads. I chose exile because more bloodshed would not have brought my father back to me. And yet now I must live with that choice for the rest of my life. And wonder, too, if some violence is worth the flame that follows.”
“Kehinde,” Elswyth said, “I… I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. How can you stand it? Living in the heart of the empire that helped exile you from your home?”
He shrugged. “Now your uncle and I work to change that empire from within. Sometimes a palace burns so a more beautiful one can be built in its place,” he said. “Sometimes a tall tree falls so that its seedlings have a chance at the sun. I have lost much. But if that had never happened, I never would have set out on my own adventures. I never would have met your uncle.”
“But still… to be betrayed like that, by someone you love…” Elswyth said. “I don’t think I could ever forget.”
