reproachfully at me, but nodded, and left me alone with my mother.
“Hello,” I managed eventually.
The Lady ignored me, turning to pace the chamber. Again I fought a manic urge to laugh. Some things never changed.
“The last time I was in this room,” she murmured, running her ghostly fingers over the baskets and centerpieces, “my brother flipped over the tables. That was the night he banished me. When I showed the world who I was.”
“What happened to you after Woo In took me away?” I asked. “What was it like when …?”
“When I died?” Her voice was calm, and she faced me at last. Her serene expression shifted, as if recalling a deeply repressed memory. “Your friends … They bought me time. Yes. The Blessid girl sang to slow my heart, while that Dhyrmish lover of yours carried me to the palace infirmary. The Kunleo boy ordered the healers to give me an antidote. It was too late, of course.” She paused. “I … did not anticipate that Ekundayo would try to save me. I tried to kill him, after all. But he ordered healers to my bedside. Simply because he knew you would mourn me. Olugbade was not so noble. But sometimes, I have learned, the fruit is unlike the tree.”
It was the closest she would ever come to apologizing for hurting Dayo. I sighed and asked, “Are you in pain? The stories about the Underworld—Egungun’s Parade, and the paradise at the earth’s Core … are they true?”
And for the first time in my life, my mother looked afraid.
“Yes,” she whispered at last. “To reach my eternal rest, I will join the parade of all dead souls. And for every step I take, I will feel any pain that I caused out of malice or neglect while I lived. But I was able to wait. I wanted to see you first.”
“Why?” I demanded. “Because you still want me to overthrow Dayo? Because you want me to betray Songland to the abiku, like you were planning to?”
The Lady flinched, and then set her jaw. “You are my daughter,” she said. “I wanted to say goodbye.”
I examined her, expecting to see flickers of cunning: a hint that she was bending my emotions to her will again. But all I saw was a proud, lonely woman, frail from poison, searching my face for traces of the dream she had lost.
“It was a game, you know,” she murmured. “I played it the only way I knew how. Aritsar would not have crowned me without an army, and so I made promises to gain Songland’s support. But if I had let the abiku take Arit children instead of Songlanders … even an army would not have saved me. Woo In doesn’t understand. I couldn’t free the Redemptor children, but I would have been good to him. I would have …” She trailed off, her expression growing vacant. Suddenly, she looked very old and very young at the same time. “That boy must be suffering, all alone again on Sagimsan. I will send Kathleen to nurse him. He was helpless when I found him. I crossed realms to form my council, saved outcasts, prodigies that the world ignored. I gave them communities. I made them useful.”
I smiled ruefully, remembering Melu’s description of a young bandit queen.
“There are so many still out there: geniuses waiting to be seen and recognized. My council can continue my work. You will be confined to this lofty palace, ruling Aritsar from above. But my people will be on the streets below, helping you rule from within.”
I shook my head. “I don’t need your—”
“My enemies think I have lost,” she interrupted. “But they are wrong. I said I would put an empress on the throne of Aritsar, and I have.” She pressed her lips together. “Through you, my legacy lives.”
You didn’t make me empress, I wanted to snap. You didn’t make me who I am. I am not the sequel of your story. You did not give me my name.
Instead, I leaned up and kissed her smooth cheek. It was cold as stone. I slipped her a memory of a cooing baby in Bhekina House: a little girl who wanted for nothing, content in The Lady’s embrace.
“Goodbye, Mother,” I said.
“Goodbye, Made-of-Me.” Water glistened in her brilliant black eyes, but she didn’t follow me as I let her go and walked to the door. As I stepped out into the corridor, I closed off the past, embracing that murky horizon, my shore of