Beasts Made of Night Page 23

  “Taj, I—”

  “A Mage is a Mage is a Mage. Whether it’s to Eat someone else’s sins or bring about someone else’s prophecy, we’re all just tools, aren’t we?”

  She takes a step closer. A sin-dragon leaps over the balcony overhead and lands between me and Aliya. It takes one step forward and growls at her. “Taj! It’s me! Aliya!”

  Karima is at my side. She wraps her arms around mine and pulls herself close. “I knew you were different, Taj,” Karima says, as she brings her free hand to my face. “It’s you. You’re the one who will help me change everything.”

  Karima turns to the devastated city. “City of Kos, the face of evil is not something to be found solely in the Word. It is not the inyo that haunt your streets. It is not the guilt of your sins. It is this man. Kolade”—she points to her brother, who kneels at the bottom of the stairs, surrounded by Mages, his clothes rumpled, dirt smudging his brow—“who would carelessly cast the burden of his sins upon others. Who could not be bothered to live with his own guilt. Who would order the destruction of dahia merely to find others upon which he could paint his sins.” She leans down to meet his eyes. “Who would order the murder of his own sister.”

  She turns to me, shining like something sent from the sky. “Taj. Join me. Rule by my side.” She points out over the heads of the crowd at the sin-beasts that hover in the air and stand on rooftops and crowd the streets among the Forum-dwellers. “Look at the army you command. No longer shall the wealthy use the poor to absolve themselves of their guilt. No longer shall people be forced to bear the guilt of others because of where and how they are born. With this army, we can overturn the order. Whether you live in the dahia or on the Palace estates, no one should be immune from bearing the weight of their sin.” She steps toward me. “Let us smash the old Kos until it is unrecognizable. From the ashes, we’ll build a new Kos.”

  She takes my hand in hers, and together, we mount the steps. I feel intoxicated by her, by her vision of this new Kos.

  “Taj!” Aliya calls from the bottom of the steps. “Don’t.” Her voice breaks when she speaks. “Taj, this isn’t you. Already, the power is changing you, Taj. It will corrupt you if you let it. Taj, please, don’t go.” She struggles to speak. “Balance, Taj. In the prophecy. You have a responsibility!”

  Karima urges me forward. “Think of your family,” she whispers in my ear. “You can give them any room in the Palace. They will never want for anything. All the money they could ever need.” She squeezes my hand. “They will forget hunger.”

  “You feel it, Taj.” Aliya doesn’t sound like a rebel commander anymore. She doesn’t sound like a scholar. She sounds like the girl who slid her hand beneath mine and wished peace upon me and my people. “You wonder. With every single thing you do, you wonder if the guilt is yours or theirs. But you can’t keep telling yourself it’s all theirs. Sometimes the remorse you feel is your own. The guilt is your own. You know this, Taj. If you go that way, you will forget this. You’ll think you’re above blame, above guilt. You’ll become just like King Kolade.” She takes two steps. The sin-dragon growls, but she walks past it as if she doesn’t see it.

  “Taj, listen to me. If you walk back into that Palace, you will forget all of this.” When she spreads her arm to indicate Kos, I know what she means. I know she means wandering the Forum and trying not to trip over newsboys scurrying through. Listening to people trade and drink and fight in Zoe’s. I know she means the comatose aki who have Crossed and whose limbs have betrayed them, out in front of temples with bowls for begging. I know she means sleeping in shanties with a family of aki, a family we make for ourselves.

  Suddenly, the dirt and the smell and the stifling heat, all of it makes me close my eyes. When I open them again, everyone is still there, waiting for me.

  “She knows nothing of your world, Taj.” Karima’s voice still soothes tension from my shoulders.

  Distant thunder crackles. Everyone falls silent as it happens again. A booming that rumbles closer and closer. The sky goes red and purple over dahia to the north. I look southward, where the same is happening. It’s getting closer; then a sound so sharp rips through the air, and I fall to my knees, hands over my ears. It sounds as though the very sky is tearing itself apart. I grit my teeth. People all around us begin moaning, writhing on the ground in pain.

  Another boom. This one is so close it shakes the Palace.

  “By the Unnamed,” Aliya whispers.

  We look up, and a hole opens amid the swirling clouds. Black wings that span the entire Palace grounds emerge, dark and shimmering like polished coal in the night. Then come talons and feet and legs as tall as the statue of Malek in the Arbaa dahia. Then finally, a face, bent into a rictus snarl. It feels like the city of Kos is holding its collective breath.

  “An arashi,” Aliya breathes.

  By the Unnamed. They’re real.

  CHAPTER 35

  THE SIN-BEASTS . . . the pieces slam together in my head . . . Izu knew this would happen. He summoned all the sins in Kos. This many sin-beasts all together, it must have drawn the arashi from the sky. The verses are true. The arashi have come to cleanse the city.

  The biggest sin I’ve ever Eaten is no bigger than this thing’s smallest talon.

  The arashi rears its head back, and there is that ear-splitting roar again.

  Forks of lightning snap down in the dahia. One hits the Forum directly, and the ground quakes. Cracks thread through the main street. Storefronts burst into flames. Then, suddenly, it’s chaos. Everyone runs in every different direction. People are praying, shouting orders, crying for their families to stay together. I can’t stop staring at the thing that has come to burn Kos to the ground.

  Karima smiles at my side.

  Seeing her this way breaks me from my trance and returns me to the present. “Princess, we have to leave. The arashi will attack!”

  She turns to me with a haunting expression. Her face has paled, but her eyes are alight. She looks mad. “No, Taj. This is it. This is exactly what is supposed to happen.”

  “What?”

  Her smile widens. “The arashi will raze Kos to the ground, and we will build it anew.” She moves closer, so close I can feel her breath on my cheek. “I knew Izu’s plan all along. The camps. Everything. He had hoped the king would give in easily and that he would live to become the chief kanselo. And I was prepared to kill him. You see, Taj, he was the key. He would unleash enough inisisa to draw the arashi at last. I could not have planned this more perfectly—”

  “How could you!” My head spins, and I clench my hands into fists at my side. She’s the one. Of all the Kayas, she’s the most dangerous, the one who would destroy our homes and not bat an eye. “You’re going to kill us all!”

  “Stay with me and be spared.”

  “TAJ!”

  I turn, and there’s Aliya at the bottom of the stairs. Arzu stands next to her.

  “Run!”

  Fire burns in the north, a red-and-orange line blazing along the horizon. The Kosians shouting and weeping and running through the Forum can barely stand from the wind created by each flap of the arashi’s wings. Towers and homes explode with each crack of lightning.

  “Princess, stop this.” I don’t know how she would, but I need to say it.

  Her face hardens. “Leave, and you will know nothing but pain.”

  “TAJ—” Aliya again, but an earthquaking roar cuts her off.

  I turn to go, and that’s when I see Bo rushing up the stairs. My heart rises. Bo and I—we’ll fight this together.

  “Bo, we have to g—”

  He lunges at me with his daga, and I leap away just in time to keep him from gutting me. “Bo, what are you doing?”

  He flips his daga in his hands and charges at me again.

  I catch his daga with my own. He kicks his leg out, and I fall hard onto the steps. I f
eel something in my back snap and cry out. My arms tremble, trying to keep Bo’s daga out of my eye.

  “Bo,” I plead. “What are you doing?”

  “I can’t let you leave.”

  “What? Why?” Dizziness hits me. The sin-spots on Bo’s arms start to swirl. Another explosion in the sky brings me back to reality, and I flip over onto Bo. “Bo, stop this.”

  “Karima will restore us.” He’s stronger than me, and he pushes me back. Hard.

  I scramble up, and he swipes at my shoulder. Then again at my stomach.

  “Bo, she’s trying to kill us!” I wave my arm to indicate the city falling around us. Aki and inisisa cluster at the bottom of the stairs, watching us.

  Another boom.

  Bo loosens his strap and flings his daga at me. I move just in time to keep it from slashing me, but a cut opens up on my cheek. Bo snaps it back, then flings it loose again.

  “Bo, can’t you see what’s happening?” I try to dodge, but I’m getting slower. This time, he cuts my arm. Pain blossoms. Red starts to leak down my sin-spots. “What are you doing?”

  Bo’s daga returns to him. “We were supposed to do this together.”

  “What?”

  “When the moneychanger purchased my freedom, I was offered a choice. Remain aki forever or change this city. A Mage approached me, and I was granted an audience with the princess. She told me of her intentions. And she told me that you would be joining us. I was ready. I was ready to fight alongside you to repair our city.” He grits his teeth. “No more aki need die. No more aki need hide in the shadows, rejected by the rest of this city. We both have the power, Taj. I too can control the inisisa.”

  The fires spread. More explosions rip through Kos. This is all too much to believe.

  “No more of my people need die in the mines, finding gemstones for the unworthy who live on the hill. Isn’t this what you wanted?”

  “Not like this, Bo. Not like this.”

  “Fine.” He whips his daga out toward me.

  Just as I raise my left arm, it goes numb, and the blade slices through my forearm. The strap wraps around my wrist and cuts through my bracelet. Zainab’s stone falls at my feet.

  With both hands, Bo tugs me forward.

  I stumble but throw my fist out just in time to catch him on his cheek. We both fall so hard his strap breaks.

  The sins I Ate roar in my head. Numbness creeps through my limbs. I can’t go on much longer.

  The Palace shivers with each new explosion.

  I reach my hand up to wipe a gash on my temple, and Zainab’s stone catches my eye. Its glow fades. A shadow darkens the stone, and I have only enough energy to look up and see Bo standing over me. He has his daga in his hand. Blood trickles down the side of his chin.

  “You were supposed to join us.” He raises his daga, and I close my eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  Suddenly, someone tackles him from behind.

  Arzu. She pins him down on the cracked stone steps.

  Palace guards and Mages run in all directions, some trying to bring order to the chaos, some swarming to protect the princess, some trying to save their own lives. I feel steady hands tuck under my arms.

  “Taj,” Aliya says softly in my ear, as she gathers me up in her arms. “Let’s go.”

  “But Arzu,” I murmur, barely able to stand.

  I look back one last time and see Arzu and Bo struggling as Palace guards rush to them.

  More holes open in the sky as giant arashi pour forth. By the morning, there will be nothing left of Kos.

  Aliya takes my arm, and we charge through the crowd. I can feel my legs again. I’m able to run. We dash down the thoroughfare, past aki, past temples and foodsellers’ shops, past jewelers’ stalls, past dimming candlelight glowing in abandoned homes, past shattered dahia, past even the sins painted by Scribes on the Wall. Inyo swim down our throats, choking us.

  My eyes burn at the thought of Arzu and what will happen to her. Fear and anger and guilt clench my heart at the thought of Bo’s betrayal.

  Fire roars throughout the city.

  I don’t stop running until I get to a part of the forest I don’t recognize. Aliya is beside me. Other rebel Mages have gathered. Noor and Ras and others who escaped, they fill the space too. I have no idea how much time and distance separate us from Princess Karima and the city overflowing with inisisa.

  Guilt. So much guilt. I left them behind. All of them.

  And pain. I collapse. This time, it feels real. I’m Crossing. Liar. Thief. Sinner. Adulterer. Thief. Killer. Braggart. Brawler.

  Liar. Thief. Betrayer.

  My head in my hands, I scream. Then it comes. Like a river, the sin gushes out of my mouth.

  Then it stops.

  “Taj?”

  I look up at the sound of Aliya’s voice. An inisisa hovers over me. A massive sin-bull whose horns twirl from out of its head. Somehow, slowly, I find the strength to stand. “My sin,” I whisper. My betrayal. My not choosing Karima. Leaving her behind. Choosing to rebel. Fighting Bo. “Aliya, did you call this from me?” I put my hand to its forehead. Slowly, it’s darkness begins to fade, revealing coarse tawny fur. The beast glows.

  Aliya walks to me, catching her breath. “No, Taj. You called forth this inisisa yourself.”

  “But only Mages can do that. I’m not a Mage. I couldn’t have called forth my own sin.”

  “I always knew you were special, Taj.” I can see her small grin in the darkness. I remember Arzu and her story of the tastahlik, the healers in her homeland who also Eat sin. Could they call forth sins as well as Eat them? Am I one of them?

  But before she can say anything else, we hear something rustle from far away. I almost collapse, but Aliya gets her hands under my arms just in time, struggling to hold me up. I can barely see a thing.

  A small form comes crashing through the brush. The girl pulls down her mask, and it’s Noor. No fear in her eyes. None whatsoever.

  “They’re coming,” she says.

  And that’s when we hear the stampede.

  The arashi’s cry is a memory now, as are the pleadings and prayers of the people of Kos. I pray Mama and Baba are still alive. Omar and Ifeoma and Sade and Tolu and Emeka. So many others. I can’t let myself believe they didn’t make it out of Kos alive. The hooves and feet of sin-beasts draw near. Bo is likely leading them.

  Fireflies flit between tree branches. Otherwise, the only light that illuminates us—Mages, aki, me—is the lightning that ripples beneath the flesh of the bull walking silently like a sentinel among us. This beast made of light. But we hear the stampeding. Hooves thundering not far from here, brush swishing against what can only be the shadowy flanks of inisisa.

  They’ve sent their army after us.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A BOOK GETS written, and that’s hardly the end of it.

  I could not have asked for a more capable team than the folks at Razorbill. From the beginning, Ben, Casey, and my editor, Jess, believed in Taj and his story, and in the necessity of its telling. With the steadiest of hands, they guided me through the exciting and sometimes nerve-wracking process of launching a debut novel. And kept me from getting lost in the chaos of the Forum.

  I’m also grateful to my agent, Noah Ballard, for being as wonderful and capable a companion in this endeavor as I could have asked for. I am a supremely lucky writer to have him at my side.

  My eternal gratitude goes out to every writing teacher whose instruction has ever fallen upon my sometimes stubbornly blocked ears, whether or not your name appears on my transcripts. In particular, I must thank notably John Crowley, Ken Liu, and Elizabeth Bear, who have transformed from mythological beings to colleagues and friends, retaining their heroic qualities all the while.

  Tiffany Liao saw Taj in the very beginning of his journey and saw me in the beginning of mine.
And she believed. Without her, Kos and its wonders would never have made it to the page.

  And, finally, I must thank Mom, who held Nigeria in her bosom while traversing an ocean and brought that place into our household. Mom, whose courage and wisdom have carried me my entire life and whose jollof rice is peerless.

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