Children of Blood and Bone - Tomi Adeyemi Page 0,9

all of it off, but even without my white hair, my maji heritage would damn our family all the same. We are the people who fill the king’s prisons, the people our kingdom turns into laborers. The people Orïshans try to chase out of their features, outlawing our lineage as if white hair and dead magic were a societal stain.

Mama used to say that in the beginning, white hair was a sign of the powers of heaven and earth. It held beauty and virtue and love, it meant we were blessed by the gods above. But when everything changed, magic became a thing to loathe. Our heritage transformed into a thing to hate.

It’s a cruelty I’ve had to accept, but whenever I see that pain inflicted on Tzain or Baba, it cuts to new depths. Baba’s still coughing up salt water, and already we’re forced to think about making ends meet.

“What about the sailfish?” Tzain asks. “We can pay them with that.”

I walk to the back of the hut and open our small iron icebox. In a bath of chilled seawater lies the red-tailed sailfish we wrangled yesterday, its glistening scales promising a delicious taste. A rare find in the Warri Sea, it’s much too valuable for us to eat. But if the guards would take it—

“They refused to be paid in fish,” Baba grumbles. “I needed bronze. Silver.” He massages his temple like he could make the whole world disappear. “They told me to get the coin or they’d force Zélie into the stocks.”

My blood runs cold. I whip around, unable to hide my fear. Run by the king’s army, the stocks act as our kingdom’s labor force, spreading throughout all of Orïsha. Whenever someone can’t afford the taxes, he’s required to work off the debt for our king. Those stuck in the stocks toil endlessly, erecting palaces, building roads, mining coal, and everything in between.

It’s a system that served Orïsha well once, but since the Raid it’s no more than a state-sanctioned death sentence. An excuse to round up my people, as if the monarchy ever needed one. With all the divîners left orphaned from the Raid, we are the ones who can’t afford the monarchy’s high taxes. We are the true targets of every tax raise.

Dammit. I fight to keep my terror inside. If I’m forced into the stocks, I’ll never get out. No one who enters escapes. The labor is only supposed to last until the original debt is worked off, but when the taxes keep rising, so does the debt. Starved, beaten, and worse, the divîners are transported like cattle. Forced to work until our bodies break.

I push my hands into the chilled seawater to calm my nerves. I can’t let Baba and Tzain know how frightened I truly am. It’ll only make it worse for all of us. But as my fingers start to shake, I don’t know if it’s from the cold or my terror. How is this happening? When did things get this bad?

“No,” I whisper to myself.

Wrong question.

I shouldn’t be asking when things got this bad. I should ask why I ever thought things had gotten better.

I look to the single black calla lily woven into the netted window of our hut, the only living connection to Mama I have left. When we lived in Ibadan, she would place calla lilies in the window of our old home to honor her mother, a tribute maji pay to their dead.

Usually when I look at the flower, I remember the wide smile that came to Mama’s lips when she would inhale its cinnamon scent. Today all I see in its wilted leaves is the black majacite chain that took the place of the gold amulet she always wore around her neck.

Though the memory is eleven years old, it’s clearer to me now than my own vision.

That was the night things got bad. The night King Saran hung my people for the world to see, declaring war against the maji of today and tomorrow. The night magic died.

The night we lost everything.

Baba shudders and I run to his side, placing a hand on his back to keep him upright. His eyes hold no anger, only defeat. As he clings to the worn blanket, I wish I could see the warrior I knew when I was a child. Before the Raid, he could fight off three armed men with nothing but a skinning knife in hand. But after the beating he got that night, it