Beasts Made of Night Page 18

  She frowns. “I’m serious. Nobody takes the Paroles of the Seventh Prophet seriously! It’s so frustrating.” She leaps off the trunk and gestures at the script under the falcon’s talons. “All of it is important. And that’s why people should get the spelling right! This message doesn’t even make sense!” She throws the papers she’d been carrying up into the air, and the parchment flutters to the ground all around her while she huffs.

  After a moment watching her tantrum, I hop off the tree branch and start collecting her sheaves.

  “I’m sorry,” she mutters, stooping to help. “Thanks, Taj, and could you also place them in order? I’ve numbered each page. But there are also chapter headings in the upper right corner.”

  She assembles her collected sheets in a stack. “Thanks.” Then she comes and collects mine. She gives them a look. “Uhlah, you could’ve at least pretended to arrange them like I asked.”

  She’s halfway to the forest barrier separating this space by the Wall from the camps when she stops. She hands me a bundle of parchment from the bottom of her stack. “Arrange these for me, please.”

  “Why? Do it yourself.”

  She thrusts the papers out at me. “Arrange them.” Her voice is no different from before, no louder, no softer, but I take the parchment.

  I throw occasional glances her way as I shuffle them, trying to follow the numbers at the bottom of the page and looking for similarities in the script in the upper right corner. She sees me getting rougher with the parchment until I’m ready to tear it up. That’s when she puts her hand on mine.

  “You can’t read.”

  For a moment, I’m so angry I want to throw all the papers on the ground again and have her stoop to pick them up. It never bothered me before, maybe because most aki don’t know how to read anyway. But for some reason, when she says it, it makes me feel like less than nothing.

  She sits down next to me, and, by the Unnamed, if I had two million ramzi, I would pay her all of it to leave me alone.

  “Taj, I’m sorry.” She looks at the papers in her lap. “I forget sometimes. You know me. I understand most books better than people. But I’m learning.” She pauses. “I’m sorry about Zainab.”

  “Is it true that we poison the ground we’re buried in?”

  “What?” She looks like I’ve just stabbed her in the chest with my daga.

  “You’re practically a kanselo. You know things. You’re a scholar. Is it true?”

  For a long time, she says nothing. Then she cranes her neck and looks at the morning sky.

  “Centuries ago, the algebraist Ka Chike would spend entire days at the temple in his village in the south, writing down mathematical equations and rolling them into books he would put to his eyes and manually twist and untwist. He recited the Word, he interpreted dreams of those in the village. Even as a child, he was gifted. But when he began to speak of the Unnamed, he frightened people away. He spoke of the Unnamed not as a single deity overseeing Infinity but as Infinity itself, embodying everything and its opposite. Every atom in all the world. And the spaces in between as well.”

  I’m watching her eyes glass over, and suddenly, my anger’s gone. I feel at peace watching her like this, talking about a thing she so clearly loves.

  “An immaterial being who resided in the boar and the bear and the griffin and the cantaloupe and the living grass beneath us and the air we breathe.” Her gaze returns to her parchment. It’s a jumble of numbers and letters. “Ka Chike wrote that if you divided by zero, you yielded a number as infinite as the Unnamed. And here’s what I think.” She turns to me, and her eyes are all lit up like stars. “I think that when you multiply by zero, you yield all numbers simultaneously.” Her eyes widen. “You reach Infinity, the Unnamed in its totality. The Unnamed takes infinite forms. The Unnamed fills our lungs with air when we are born. And it pushes that final breath from our lungs when we die. The Unnamed is written in the world all around us.” She smiles, and the warmth in my chest grows. “It’s written on you, Taj. All of you. Wherever aki are buried, there the Unnamed is also.”

  I let out a soft snort, but I’m only pretending to brush this off. “Whatever happened to Ka Chike?”

  “He became the Seventh Prophet.”

  “Oh?”

  “Then he became mad and died alone and was branded a heretic for the next five hundred years.”

  “Oh.”

  The more time I spend in the camps, the more time I need by myself. I’m constantly wandering away after training sessions, skipping meals with the younger aki. Half the time I can’t stand being around them, because all I can think about is the future that awaits them as aki. But I’ve found a familiar spot by some fallen trees. No one will disturb me here.

  Sparks pop up from the stone I have in my hands every time I flick my daga blade against a shelf of smooth surface. Late-season leaves crunch under someone’s feet. I don’t bother looking up. I’m too comfortable at the base of this tree, its near-naked branches hovering overhead. It’s late enough in the day that the sun’s heat no longer feels like punishment. A small breeze has come to the rescue. And I don’t feel guilty about Aliya coming here and finding me like this, because I have wooden blocks on the ground in front of me with letters she made me carve into them earlier. She can tell that even though I’m sharpening my daga, I’m studying my alphabet.

  She lands hard next to me, leans against the tree trunk, puts her hand to her belly. A look of actual distress washes over her face. Sweat on her forehead, strands of hair clinging to her cheeks. Her mouth is a single straight line. Lips all pursed.

  “You OK?”

  She waves me away. “I’m fine, I’m fine.” With a sigh, she rests her head against the tree trunk. “Just fasting.” Her chest heaves with another breath, then she lets it out, like someone has squeezed all the air out of her. “For the first few days, it’s nothing. But by the end?” She shakes her head. “You’re not fasting, are you? It must be very difficult for you aki who are training all the time.”

  “No.” I pause in my daga-sharpening, then get back to it. “Mama and Baba did. But I was too young to fast.” Suddenly, I’m back home. In this memory, there are tables with bowls full of dates. From the kitchen, the smell of beautiful, juicy meat. Saliva’s practically dripping down my chin, I’m so hungry. Smoke hisses from the stove outside, where so much of the cooking happens. Over a fire pit, a roasting goat, its skin nearly black by the time night falls. Bread is baking somewhere close—by the smell of it, almost done. Someone has cleared away the flowers; I can’t smell them anymore. My nose only has enough room for the food. Everyone is moving, busy, caught in a secret rhythm, bringing dishes out of the kitchen, bringing bowls into the kitchen, sweeping the stairs, calling out orders to the people in the yard cooking the goat. So much activity, and my stomach grumbles in anticipation.

  “You’re thinking of food, aren’t you?”

  Aliya’s voice snaps me out of it. I realize I’m still holding my daga and the stone. “No. Just family.”

  “All the time, whenever the Festival of Reunification approaches and the period of fasting begins, everybody has the exact same questions. Every time!” She turns to face me fully. “And especially as a woman! ‘Oh, so you don’t eat the whole time? Oh, wow, you must lose a lot of weight!’ Every time I tell someone how long I have to go on with fasting, they look at me with their mouth wide open like they’re trying to catch flies and they just stare! And then the very next question, ‘Oh, but what about water?’ ‘No,’ I tell them. Every. Time. ‘Not even water.’ Can’t chew gum, have to be careful of what music I listen to. Then those last few minutes before evening breakfast . . .” She moans, hand to stomach, and looks to the sky like it has the answer to a question she’s too hungry to ask.

  “And then you eat so much during breakfast that you can’t anymore, but you’re looking at that one last piece of puff puff a
nd you know if you don’t eat it, you’ll regret it.”

  “Exactly!” She grabs my sleeve. “And it’s always the best food. Jollof, and cassava, fufu, chin-chin, egusi soup, moi-moi!” She writhes in pain.

  I chuckle, then return to my blocks. “You’re making it worse for yourself. I hope you understand that.”

  She slumps. “I know,” she says, pouting.

  “Baba always used to lose his sandals in the pile outside the prayer room at the masjid when he and the other men would do their extra prayers.”

  When we laugh like this, it feels natural. It’s easy for me to forget she’s a Mage. Especially because of the way she’s sitting, I can’t see the Fist of Malek embroidered on her robe. Instead, she’s a girl who likes to study the Word, who wants to be a scholar, who teaches children the verses when they’re not learning how to Eat, who complains about being asked the same questions over and over and over again during the fasting season.

  She looks over at the blocks by my feet, squints. “I see what letters you have. Let’s see how far along you’ve gotten.”

  “It hasn’t even been a quarter-Moon yet!”

  Out of the seven blocks, she takes two and places them next to each other. “Well?”

  I feel embarrassed about how long it takes me to see it, but when I do, it’s like light flashing behind my eyes. “Apple!”

  She grins, then adds a third to the row, right on the very end.

  “Ap . . . ricot. Apricot!”

  She switches the first two around, takes one of them out, and switches it for two more from the original pile. It’s a mess in front of me now. She sees my confusion and says, “Sound it out. Take each one at a time.”

  “U . . . u . . . uni . . . university.” I’m practically out of breath with the effort that took. I can’t imagine all the little aki doing this for however long in the morning, then coming to me to learn how to Eat sins.

  But she’s at it again, exchanging some blocks for others and rearranging them in patterns I can barely follow.

  But I know this one. “Sparrow!”

  Another rearrangement.

  “Butterfly.”

  Another.

  “S . . . save!”

  More switching.

  “The?”

  Again.

  “Princess.”

  Her expression has changed. There’s none of the mirth in it that was there just a few minutes ago. She’s frowning at me. Staring in silence. She arranges another message:

  You.

  Are.

  Not.

  Safe.

  “Aliya, what are you—”

  She puts a finger to her lips, staring down at the blocks. When she looks back up her eyes are bright again.

  “Better go, Taj. Imagine if the children were all gathered for their lessons,” she says breathlessly, “and their teacher was late!”

  CHAPTER 26

  THE LITTLE AKI and the older aki are starting to see less and less of me. I trust Ras enough to leave him in charge of training, but I wonder what they’re starting to think of me. Maybe they just think I’m getting bored and I’m wandering the forests looking for adventure, or whatever it is the Sky-Fist is supposed to be doing. Maybe they think I’m being responsible and discussing changes to their schedule with the Mages. Of course, by now, they’ve seen the new bathing quarters that I had set up, so maybe they think I’m out there fighting on their behalf. Maybe they’ve seen me with Aliya. Maybe they think I’ve made her my heart-mate. I bet they look to see if we’ve swapped heart-stones. I smile at the thought until I can’t feel my left hand anymore. Zainab’s stone slips down my wrist as my whole arm falls to my side, dead, and I leap off the fallen tree branch trying to shake it alive again. I squeeze my eyes shut. Panic shudders through me. Please don’t let this spread. Not this time.

  By the time Aliya shows up at our spot by the Wall, I can flex my fingers into a fist again. And that’s how she finds me: staring at my hand like a madman and curling my wrist over and over. I can tell feeling has returned because Zainab’s stone chills the dimple in my wrist.

  “Are you OK?” she asks me.

  I flex a few more times, just to be sure. The growing darkness outside takes my sin-spots and makes it look like my arm is invisible. “Yes. Oya, I’m fine.”

  I was worried I’d shown up at the wrong time. She’d written the numbers in the dirt with a twig, and I’m nowhere near as good with numbers as I’ve gotten with letters. But she’s here, so I must have been at least close to right.

  She sidles up next to me, and we both stand there, facing the sins written on the Wall. “Mages once lived in the Forum,” she says at last. There’s an edge in her voice I’ve never heard before. It’s almost as though she’s a different person. “They used to shop in the marketplace. They used to go from stall to stall in the souk and buy jewelry—”

  “What’s going on?” The attack of numbness in my arm has made me edgy.

  She’s quiet for a long time. I have no idea what she’s thinking, but then she looks up and I know she’s looking past the Wall. “What I’m trying to say is that the Mages weren’t always this powerful.” She lets out a sigh. “We used to read poetry. And preach, if we attained the necessary training. Whenever a Baptism is announced, it’s not King Kolade who makes that decision. Not Princess Karima. Not Prince Haris. No one in the royal family decides what dahia will be Baptized and when. Izu makes that decision. Izu chooses who will lead the call to prayer. Izu himself decides if and where new temples will be built.” She turns, first to me, then facing the direction of the camps. “Izu is behind all of this.”

  “I know this already. I’m here so he doesn’t Baptize another dahia.” I absently flex my left hand. “This isn’t news.”

  “But you don’t know, Taj.”

  Which, for some reason, stops me.

  “For some time, there has been talk of liberalization, of changing the way things are done. Making things different. But Izu stands in the way.”

  I remember Princess Karima’s words. The way she looked at me and held my arm and wished things were different. The way she spoke about me. Is Princess Karima serious about changing things? Is this what Aliya is talking about? Then the night terror. The snake and the lion. It all means something. At the center of it is Princess Karima.

  “Taj? Taj.”

  I realize where I am. “Why did Izu all of a sudden decide to send me out here? What is he trying to do?” Thinking about Karima again has me all worked up. For so long, I’d been able to forget about her and about the way her fingers would glide along the ridges of my sin-spots and the way she would breathe kindness into my ear. The time she held my arm as we walked down the corridors in front of kanselo and other royals like I was one of them.

  “Taj, calm down.” She waits for me to catch my breath. “What I’m going to tell you is very important. If it is repeated anywhere, here or in Kos, we will both be hanged.” She takes a breath. “The kanselo must be destroyed.”

  My head is on fire with questions. I can’t get any of them to sit still. “I don’t understand.” I put my hands to my head, hoping I can squeeze some sense into it. “Why am I here?”

  “Izu knows what you can do.” She takes a step closer to me. “He knows what you did to that sin-dragon. He sent you out here to Eat sins. To Eat—”

  “Until I couldn’t anymore.” This doesn’t make things any clearer. “But why me? Why not just throw me in jail or make something up to have me hanged?”

  “Because you are training his army.”

  “The aki.” It’s coming together. Whatever Izu has planned, it involves all of the aki I’ve been training. Is he trying to take over Kos? What have I done? I remember what Zainab said to me about using the aki to destroy Kos. “How do we stop this?”

  “Don’t worry.” She’s smiling now.
The call to prayer sounds, faint in the distance on the other side of the Wall that separates us from the city where I was born and raised—the city that will soon be overrun by an army of aki I’ve been training. And here she is telling me not to worry.

  “I need to leave. The Mages are expecting me for evening breakfast.” She darts off toward the forest.

  “Aliya, you have to tell me.”

  She turns, and even though she doesn’t raise her voice, I can hear her. “You’re not training his army. You’re training ours.

  “The Wall,” she goes on. “Tomorrow night. Watch the Wall.” Then she’s gone.

  What is she talking about?

  By now, it’s getting so dark I can barely see the colors of the inisisa painted on the Wall. Falcons, sparrows, griffins, bears, dragons, snakes. I look a little closer and see the writing underneath each animal, the Kosian script that I now know how to read. Zainab. I scramble closer and smush my face up to the Wall, and that’s when I see it. The names of the sins . . . someone changed their lettering. They’re different words now.

  My eyes widen in shock. This is it. This is why she’s been teaching the aki to read. This is why she was teaching me how to read. By the Unnamed . . .

  These are directions.

  CHAPTER 27

  SINCE ZAINAB’S GONE, there’s no more Catcher.

  None of the Mages have given any official word on who the next Catcher is supposed to be, but I figure it’s what I’m here for if Aliya is right about Izu. This was what Zainab tried to warn me about. I wonder if there were others before Zainab, and how many. These camps must have been here for some time, but most of the aki I know learned how to do it on their own, or they got sent to me and Bo and some of the others by Auntie Nawal and Auntie Sania. We were supposed to be their older brothers. But to think that there has been this whole arrangement this entire time, my fists tremble at my sides. How many aki are buried underneath our feet right now? The more I think about it, the stronger my resolve to stop Izu. I look out onto this circle of aki now, and I see kids who will hopefully end up saving Kos. From what, I don’t even know. When Aliya first cornered me and Bo at Zoe’s, she spoke of Balance, of how necessary aki were. And so did Princess Karima. They knew something. And it’s something Mages like Izu don’t want us to hear. They want us to keep thinking we’re disposable, like when there’s no more room to write on a piece of parchment so you set it aside and grab another sheet. Or you throw that old one in the rubbish bin. But no. We matter.