“Champion, we must hurry,” the Gifted said.
“Abasi Odili won’t escape what he’s done,” Tau told him. “Keep fighting, and I swear that before it consumes us, we’ll burn our pain to ash in the fires of vengeance.”
UNDENIABLE
Where are we going?” Tau asked the Gifted who’d called him from Jabari’s infirmary bed.
She hurried him along and back to his rooms, telling him that the queen was preparing to attend a meeting with several Nobles and that Nyah wanted him there too. The answer was not comforting. It was late, and though Tau’s experience with midnight meetings was limited, he couldn’t imagine they were a good thing.
Once in his rooms, the Gifted woman urged him to don the dragon-scale swords and champion’s armor that the queen had given him. The black blades, mounted onto his father’s and grandfather’s sword hilts, felt natural at his sides, but the armor, black-and-red leather in the Ingonyama style, made him uncomfortable.
It wasn’t the armor’s fit or quality. The queen’s latest offering was a marvel that gave Tau greater freedom of movement and far more protection than his old gambeson. The form of the thing wasn’t what worried him; it was its function.
Wearing it named him the queen’s champion. It told all Omehi that he was one of the best of them, and Tau had no illusions about what the Nobles would think of that.
“Champion . . . ,” the Gifted said with a shiver as she looked him up and down. “Champion Solarin.” She raised her chin. “I’m Gifted Thandi, but . . . I was a High Common before,” she said with pride, though Tau couldn’t be sure if it was due to her current station or some strange valuing of the one from which she’d escaped.
He still had trouble reconciling the idea of Gifted as ever having been Lessers. The woman in front of him looked strong, wellfed, and the robes she wore were pristine. The very essence of her seemed something other than Lesser, given the grace and confidence with which she moved, her smooth, unweathered skin, and the ease with which she let her beauty show.
Lessers didn’t do that. They buried the fullness of what they were inside themselves because drawing attention to yourself around Nobles was a quick way to be reminded of where you actually stood.
“They’ll think I have no right to wear it,” he said, his thoughts spilling out before better sense could hold them back.
“They’ll be wrong.”
“How can you say that?”
“I say it because if there was any way to deny you, they’d have done it,” she said. “The only way to get as far as you have, considering what they think of us, is to become undeniable.” She waved him on. “Follow me.”
Moving fast, they walked the halls, passing a few guards, who all saluted Tau, their military instincts overriding any reservations they might have about the man wearing the armor of an Ingonyama. Thandi led him to an unfamiliar and empty part of the Guardian Keep, where the walls were unadorned by tapestry or painting and the floors were bare, echoing the tip-tap of their footfalls. Leading him to the end of the undressed corridor, she stopped in front of a locked door that was little taller than Tau and reinforced by a bronze frame.
“I’m sorry for your friend, the Petty Noble who was burned,” she said, revealing the key hidden in the bauble on her necklace and opening the door. “I heard he saved many lives.”
“He did,” Tau said.
Beyond the door were narrow stairs leading down to darkness, and Gifted Thandi led them on.
“A moment, Lady Gifted,” Tau said, trying to keep the fear from his voice as he eyed the way ahead. “The stairs . . . you want me to go into the tunnels beneath the Keep?”
The robed woman looked over her shoulder at him. “Come, Champion,” she said. “The vizier is waiting.”
Tau took a step back. “I think I need to know more about what we’re doing and why, or she may be waiting awhile.”
Thandi tilted her head and blinked at him. She wasn’t like the other Gifted he’d met. Most of them were ascetic in appearance and stern, but Thandi’s face was round, and she had large eyes and a mouth that slipped easily into a smile. She looked young, honest, hopeful.
“The tunnels are the best way to move through the keep unseen,” she said.
“Why do we need to move unseen? Are we in danger?”
She slipped into that easy smile, but it didn’t extend beyond her lips. “Yes.”
He was fine for the first two turns in the torchlit tunnels, but after that, with the exit far behind them, Tau’s limbs began to shake and his mouth went dry. He hid his discomfort from the Gifted, unwilling to appear weak, but the nausea made him misstep and he fell against the nearest wall.
“Champion?”
“I’m well,” he said over a tongue thick as porridge. “I don’t . . . I don’t like small places.”
“Can I help?” she asked.
He waved her off and squinted his eyes. “I’ll be fine,” he said, imagining himself in the open air of Kerem’s mountains. “I can do this . . . ,” he muttered, pushing off the wall as a peal of thunder cracked loud enough to send bits of raw adobe raining down from the tunnel’s makeshift ceiling.
Tau dropped to the ground and scurried to the wall, jamming his back against it while his heart leapt in his chest like a stick-poked frog.
“It’s just the storm,” the Gifted said, kneeling beside him and offering him a hand. “The tunnels are rough cut, but they won’t collapse. I promise.”
Tau stared at her but didn’t see Gifted Thandi. He was remembering the last time someone had tried to comfort him in these tunnels. He was remembering Zuri and noting that the storm had raged since the night he’d lost her. He’d never seen one last so long and wondered if even the heavens mourned with him.
“Let me help,” the Gifted said.
Like Zuri’s, her eyes were brown, but that was the only feature they shared.
“I don’t need it,” he said, and though Thandi looked like she doubted that, she didn’t get the chance to respond.
Nyah, looking like she hadn’t slept in days, walked around the far corner of the tunnel.
“Gifted Thandi, you’re late,” the older woman said, spotting them both, and then, behaving as if it was perfectly normal to find Tau on his ass in the Guardian Keep’s tunnels, she greeted him. “Evening, Champion.”
“Vizier.” Tau said, locking his eyes on her face so he didn’t have to see the floor sliding back and forth.
“You look awful,” she said.
“There’s the sun chiding the cook fire for the hut’s swelter,” he said.
Gifted Thandi chuckled, Nyah turned to her, and Thandi pretended she’d been clearing her throat.
“Does this happen every time?” Nyah asked, swinging back to him. “Are you always unmanned by enclosed spaces?”
“It’s uncomfortable but could be worse,” he shot back. “I could be the youngling.”
It was hot in the tunnels, but the temperature seemed to drop with the look Nyah gave him.
“Do you know why the youngling’s presence and purpose are revealed to so few, Champion?” she asked.