Several yards away, Kirah’s attendants sat with mine, gossiping as they watched the stage far below. The Imperial Theatre Garden was sculpted into the side of Palace Hill. Designed by master architects from Quetzala, the garden was composed of shelves of vine-covered terraces descending steeply to a stone platform. Audiences picnicked on the terraces, and when a performer stood on triangles cut into the stage, their voices echoed throughout the garden.
“The mantra,” Kirah coaxed.
“I have a purpose,” I intoned reluctantly. “There is music deep inside me—”
“A song,” she corrected.
“A song,” I muttered. “I learned the song at birth. I draw it from within … Kirah, is this really helping?”
“Better than nothing. You’ve got to find your bellysong somehow.” She hummed and crossed her legs, touching the pendant on her chest. “And if you never slow down and think, how will you ever know what your greatest good is?”
Greatest good. Best desire. The phrases had plagued me every day since we left Melu’s pool. Hours of meditation had not made the words clearer. What greater good could I possibly have than protecting Dayo? Out of all the things I loved—all the things I had ever cared about—his life was the purest. But if protecting Dayo was my bellysong—my purpose—how could I fulfill it while The Lady still controlled me?
I flopped onto the grass. “Why did Melu think I could do this? He’s the wise immortal one. Why doesn’t he just find his purpose and free us both?”
Kirah laughed and gave up on her meditation. “Maybe alagbato purposes don’t work that way,” she mused. “And alagbatos aren’t immortal, not really. In Blessid Valley, we called our alagbatos juniyas. They all died thousands of years ago, when the rivers dried up and left a desert.”
I squinted up at the cloudless sky, considering this. “Maybe Melu’s purpose is to inhabit Swana,” I murmured. “Swana’s crops were fertile once, and that stopped once The Lady enslaved him. I guess as long as he’s confined to that tiny grassland, he can’t do what he was made for.” I sighed and sat up, hugging Aiyetoro’s drum to my chest. The more I learned about Aiyetoro, the less comfortable I was with leaving the drum unattended. So I had brought the hourglass-shaped gourd to the garden, leaning it against my thigh as we meditated.
Kirah peered at the inscription emblazoned on the instrument. “‘The truth will never die, as long griots keep beating their drums,’” she murmured. “What an odd thing to write. Can’t you take its memories?”
“I’ve tried.” I pulled the heavy instrument onto my lap and ran my fingers across the goatskin tension cords. “Most of the memories are from spiders and beetles, and whatever else crawled across it in storage. I tried to take more of its story, but—” I shook my head. “It’s just so old. Using my Hallow, I’ve never seen further than a few decades. I’d have to go back two hundred years to reach Aiyetoro.” I didn’t mention that sometimes, when I slept with the drum beside me, I dreamed as someone else. My body belonged to a woman with long, slender fingers and a low alto voice, beating the drum as she swayed side to side.
“Maybe it would help if you played it,” Kirah suggested.
I shivered. “Isn’t it bad luck to play another person’s drum? Especially one belonging to a griot?”
Kirah shrugged, biting back what I knew she was thinking. No worse luck than being born half-ehru, destined to murder a prince and forced to sentence your own mother to death. At this point, my luck could only improve.
I slipped the drum’s beating stick from where it had been tucked beneath the tension cords, then squeezed the drum against my rib cage. “Sorry,” I told the gourd, then held my breath and struck.
The sound was surprisingly muted. Talking drums were known for their resonance, and were used to communicate across miles. Why did this one sound flat? Then again, it was two hundred years old. It was a miracle it hadn’t fallen apart after I dragged it across Aritsar. I tapped again, using my Hallow this time, and several dozen spiders scuttled across my consciousness. I shuddered, withdrawing from the drum’s memory.
“Still nothing,” I told Kirah.
“You’ve only played one note,” she pointed out.
“Easy for you to say,” I retorted. “You’re not risking the wrath of a malevolent griot spirit.” I made a face and squeezed the cords for different pitches. Facetiously, I began to beat out the military sequence for retreat,