own candidates against me. I showed mercy, allowing her to escape, but her continued disregard for the law has forced my hand.”
Lies, my heart pounded. Lies, lies, lies.
“No one at court has seen The Lady since she was a child,” Olugbade continued. “Few, if any, have made the connection between the woman I have in custody and the child traitor of thirty years ago. For your protection, I would prefer to keep it that way. The court gossips know only that I have imprisoned your mother, a raving Swana woman, for crimes against the empire.”
He wasn’t trying to protect me. He was afraid that someone at court would recognize The Lady, and revive rumors of a second Raybearer. “If my mother is a traitor,” I asked, doing my best not to snap, “then why did you allow Dayo to anoint me?”
“Because it was time to rewrite the past.”
We stared at each other. I understood, then, the true reason I had survived as a child in Olugbade’s palace. He had not killed me, because doing so admitted the possibility that I was a Raybearer. Killing me admitted that The Lady had been right all along.
Olugbade had watched me grow beside his son, watched my subservience, my submission in my gilded cage—and he had enjoyed a peace of mind that my death could not have brought him. My First Ruling would be his ultimate victory. The final proof that only one Ray ruled in Aritsar. Mbali had known this all along, and her message in the hall had been clear: survive.
“No one is above the law, Your Imperial Majesty,” I repeated, and curtsied serenely. “I look forward to my First Ruling.”
When I emerged at last from Olugbade’s chambers, my attendants flocked around me in the corridor. “Was it terrifying, Anointed Honor?” Bimbola fretted. “Am’s Story! Such trembling hands. Your fingers, they’re cold as rocks—”
“Take me to see her. Now.” My voice was hoarse. “I want to see The Lady.”
SHE TOO LIVED IN A TOWER NOW. BUT UNLIKE me, The Lady had not chosen hers. The open-air prison of An-Ileyoba was located on a roof overlooking the north courtyard, and most children learned of it from a nursery rhyme:
Thieves will rot in hell below, hell below, hell below
But Heaven is where traitors go, traitors go, traitors go.
Ordinary convicts were kept in the palace dungeons. But Heaven—as courtiers had nicknamed the turret obscured by clouds, with no walls and a sheer, ten-story drop—was reserved for the emperor’s most personal enemies. The design was effective: No guard could watch a prisoner better than a crowd of gawking courtiers. Day and night, visitors squinted from the courtyard to observe a distant, sunburnt figure sleep and eat. The giggling audience dodged out of the way when the prisoner vomited, or emptied his or her bladder over the edge.
As a child at An-Ileyoba, I had never let myself believe that the prisoners in Heaven were real. They were shadows against the sky, and their anguished cries were so faint, I could pretend to hear the call of birds instead, or the wail of wind between the turrets.
A staircase inside the tower led to a landing, from which a single door led out to Heaven. I smelled the roof long before my attendants reached it: the sickly sweet stench of feces and urine. The door was made of iron bars, and a hatch opened at the bottom. Two buckets lay on the other side: one with water, and one encrusted with filth and flies. An impassive pair of guards manned the landing, which was lit dimly by a lamp on the floor. On the roof, a stiff bundle, pressed against the landing door, attempting to shelter itself from the night wind.
Mother.
My lips felt frozen, but I must have said the word out loud. The bundle shifted, and cracked hands gripped the bars. Then a slow, elegant voice.
“My darling girl.”
Three words, and sixteen years of abandonment evaporated. I was no longer Anointed Honor Tarisai, the High Judge Apparent. She was no longer The Lady, a puppet master who had forced me to attempt murder.
I was a little girl in a cold study, and she was my warmth: the only one who touched me, who loved me, who wasn’t afraid.
I let the guards search me for lockpicks and weapons, then I bribed them to stand out of earshot. When I knelt at the door, The Lady reached through the bars, touching my loose hair. “This must be recent,” she observed. “My