"Speak, boy!"
"Your Majesty."His voice was barely audible over the Iyom's weeping."There has been a great disaster!"
Chapter 22
Thegongbeganatdusk.Its first note rolled across the palace like thunder, and it did not stop.The bronze vibrated with each successive strike, the sound building into a continuous roar that buried all other noise beneath it.
The alarm for invasion.The call that had not been sounded in three generations.
Nkiru's heart seized in her chest.She dropped the washing she had been folding and ran, heedless of the rain.
The shrine courtyard was dark when she reached it, the last light of the dying sun painting the stones blood red.The gong continued its relentless toll, shaking the very air, and still Nkiru ran, her sandals slapping against the wet path, her skin freezing from the relentless rain.
"Akwaugo!Akwaugo, the gong—"
She burst through the archway and stopped.
Azul stood in the centre of the main hall, before the weathered pillar that held the inscriptions to Ukhel.Her back was to the door, her head tilted up toward the carved words she could not possibly read in this darkness.One hand pressed flat against the stone.The other against the floor.
She was laughing.
It was not loud or aggressive; it was a soft laugh coming from somewhere deep in her chest, spilling out despite her best efforts to contain it.Her shoulders shook with it.Her head fell forward, forehead pressing against the pillar; it scared Nkiru more than she could admit.
"Akwaugo?"she called out.
Lightning split the sky beyond the open walls, and in that instant, Azul turned.
Her eyes caught the flash, becoming a blaze of gold in the darkness, luminous and inhuman, the eyes of death.Her lips were set in a smile that stretched too wide.
"Nkiru."Her voice was warm."Come here."
Nkiru's feet moved before her mind could object.
Azul reached out and caressed her face with one hand.
"Listen," she said.
Nkiru listened.
The gong still rang in the background.
"The army on our border," Azul said, "is not the enemy."
Nkiru blinked."Akwaugo?"
"The enemy is in here."Azul's thumb traced her cheekbone, feather-light."Has been all along.And now they've shown their hand."
Lightning flashed again.In its light, Azul's smile was enchanting."I wonder who will fall first, the walls or the royal family."
"Akwaugo?"Nkiru whispered."What are you praying for?"
Azul's eyes met hers.For a moment, something flickered in their depths.
The council chamber had transformed in the space of an hour.
Where before they had been ordered by rank and faction, now there was chaos—nobles shouting over each other, generals pointing at maps.The Igwe sat on his throne, chin on his knuckles, watching the storm explode in his court.
The Iyom’s father had been dragged away and imprisoned, his sentence pending, while the Iyom was sent back, as a war council was no place for women.
