CHAPTER ONE
JABARI ONAI
Will he die?”
The voice woke him, returning him to torture. He knew he was in a hospital bed in Citadel City’s Guardian Keep and that his body had been blasted by dragon fire, but Jabari Onai did not know why the Goddess would keep him alive in such misery.
He tried to open his eyes, and pain roared across his face in scorching waves. His eyelids had melted and fused together, leaving him to peer out at a world as if from behind a field of long grass.
He made to speak, to beg Tau or the Sah priestesses and priests to release him from his anguish, but he couldn’t make a sound. His throat was too badly burned to manage it.
“I won’t tell you he’s going to die,” Jabari heard a woman’s voice say, “but I can’t say that he’ll live either.”
The speaker moved toward the foot of his bed, and through the jagged gaps between his burned eyelids, he caught a glimpse of her standing next to Tau. She was a priestess of the Sah medicinal order.
“He’s only survived this long because he’s Noble,” she said. “Their bodies can withstand more and they heal faster than us, but the damage that was done to him . . . it’s a miracle he’s still breathing.”
“He’s a fighter,” Tau said. “He’s always been one, and if you can give him any sort of chance, he’ll take up the fight and do his best to win it.”
“We won’t give up . . . ,” she said.
Jabari heard a chair being pulled across the floor. It creaked when someone sat in it.
“I’m here, Jabari. It’s Tau and I’m here.”
“He can’t hear you,” the priestess said. “The pain . . . we’re giving him herbs to help him rest. It’s too cruel otherwise.”
“Will it disturb him, if I’m here?” Tau asked.
“No,” she said. “We should all be so lucky to have someone with us at the . . . at a time like this.”
Jabari heard footsteps. The priestess was leaving, and when the sound of her shoes tapping against the floor faded, Tau leaned over him to take his hand. He did it gently, but it didn’t matter.
Pain exploded from Jabari’s burned fingers, and unable to make a sound or resist, he stared through the holes in his eyelids at his friend’s scarred and worried face, hoping beyond hope that Tau could see enough of his eyes to recognize the light of consciousness in them. Tau didn’t see—he kept hold of Jabari’s hand—and desperate for any relief, Jabari sought refuge in his other senses. He caught the scent of leather, bronze, and earth from Tau and struggled to pull comfort from the familiar, but his agony made room for nothing but itself.
“I want you to know you did it,” Tau said. “You’re the man you always wanted to be. You don’t need the blood of a Greater Noble to be an Ingonyama, not when you have their spirit, their courage.”
He could hear Tau choking up, and that hurt too.
“Jabari, no matter what comes, I’ll make certain the Omehi remember you for that.”
There was silence for a while, and though his mind was slow, sluggish from the herbs, in his head, Jabari was screaming. The burns demanded it.
“It could have been different, neh? If not for the testing?” Tau said, whispering. “Feels like a thousand lifetimes ago. I just wanted to see you succeed, but when has the world ever cared what a Lesser wanted?”
Jabari would never forget that day. Tau had sparred with that spoiled brat, Kagiso, bloodying the fool in front of Guardian Councillor Abasi Odili. He’d been stupid enough to injure the Petty Noble, and Odili, intent on seeing the Lesser repaid for the insult, tasked Kellan Okar to remind Tau of his place.
Refusing to let his son face the already legendary Indlovu initiate, Aren fought Kellan Okar instead, losing his hand in the bout. It was a tragedy, but Jabari, like everyone else, could see that Kellan was trying to spare Aren’s life, and it could have ended there. It should have ended there, but Tau picked up his father’s fallen sword and aimed it at Kellan’s back.
Stupid. There were Lessers and Drudge everywhere, and they all saw what Tau did. He’d threatened a Noble and Abasi Odili couldn’t overlook that. The guardian councillor had Tau’s father killed and then he called off the Indlovu initiate testing, threatening the stability of Kerem as a fief.
In just a few short breaths, a personal tragedy had become a disaster, and it only got worse. On the march home, Tau attacked Lekan, accusing Jabari’s brother of being responsible for Aren’s death, and twice in one day, Tau forced the hand of his betters. It had broken Jabari’s heart to do it, but the only way he could save Tau from himself was to remove him from Lekan’s reach, and so he banished his lifelong friend from Kerem.
Tau’s voice pulled Jabari from the memory. “They killed my father and I was going to make them pay. I was going to join the military so I could challenge each one of them to a blood duel. I wanted to kill them and it was the only way I could do it without the Nobles coming for my family.”
If Jabari didn’t know how the story ended, he’d have sworn he was listening to the ravings of a madman.
“I thought I could become enough of a fighter to challenge and best an Ingonyama like Dejen Olujimi,” Tau said, and as if the man’s image was etched in his mind, Jabari could still see the soldier who’d killed Tau’s father.
Dejen Olujimi had been more muscle than man. Dejen Olujimi had been one of the Omehi’s best fighters. . . . Had been.
“I was so angry,” Tau said. “I went to see Lekan before leaving the fief.”
That part Jabari had not known, and he felt his breath come faster.
“I went to tell him that when next we met, I’d kill him for his part in my father’s death.”
For the first time since waking, Jabari’s pain pulled back.
“Lekan came at me with a knife. He’s the one who gave me the scar,” Tau said, letting his fingertips brush the mark that ran from his nose to his cheek. “I fought him. I—I defended myself, and . . . he died.”
He died. That was how Tau put it. He died. The words boomed in Jabari’s head like a war drum.
His mother had cried for days when they found the body at the bottom of the stairs. An accidental fall, they’d been told, a slip after too much drink. His mother had cried and cursed and become withdrawn. She’d lost a son and a piece of her soul that day.
“I fled to Kigambe, tested in the Ihashe trials, and made it into Jayyed Ayim’s scale,” Tau continued. “I was lucky, and just like you said, there’s no better umqondisi than Jayyed.”
Jabari prayed for the strength to strangle the Lesser he’d called a friend and treated as an equal. His brother hadn’t been perfect, but no one was. Lekan had just needed a chance to grow into himself and his responsibilities, but that chance was taken away when Tau stole him from the world and from his family.
“I gave my life to training. I was determined to be enough of a fighter to find justice for my father’s death. It was the only thing that mattered before I saw Zuri in Citadel City.”
Jabari’s pain was back and the medicine in his system called to him, offering him oblivion, if he’d take it. He preferred the pain. He wanted to hear everything Tau had to say.