I wanted to join the faces of heroes on the Watching Wall. I longed to deserve the way that Dayo looked at me each morning.
But I was half-ehru. And as far as I could tell, there was no rewriting that cursed story.
Crack. The blunt end of Kirah’s practice spear connected with my gut, and I gasped, doubling over.
“You’re distracted,” she observed. Sweat beaded on her brow beneath her prayer scarf, trickling down her face as she dimpled.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, brandishing my practice spear to try the defense again.
“Let me guess.” Kirah gestured with her head across the courtyard. “You’ve developed a sudden … appetite for wrestling?”
I glanced past her, and my heart gave an involuntary spasm. Kirah nudged my shoulder and I shoved her back, grinning sheepishly.
“Are you going to finish the set or not?” I demanded, knocking my spear into hers. But my gaze still drifted to the other side of the courtyard.
Sanjeet was assisting the drill masters, training candidates in a lethal grappling maneuver. Impossibly, he had grown even taller in four years. Stubble shadowed his jaw, and he stood erect now, no longer hunched with shame. Dust caked the hollow of his back, earth the same rich copper as his skin. He hooked ankles with a stocky candidate, forcing both of them to the ground. Sanjeet let his opponent scramble on top of him, and then thrust a club-like thigh over the boy’s shoulder. Before the boy could escape, Sanjeet had seized his own ankle, trapping the boy’s neck and arm in a chokehold. It was over in seconds: His opponent gasped, tapping Sanjeet’s forearm, and Sanjeet released him.
“That wasn’t fair,” puffed the burly candidate, who was also from Dhyrma. “His Hallow exposed my weak spots. He should have told me where they were. Evened the odds.”
The muscles in Sanjeet’s back rippled as he stood, staring down at his opponent with passive, tea-colored eyes. “If you don’t know your own weaknesses,” he said, “it will take less than a Hallow to kill you in battle.”
The candidate snorted. “What do you know of battle? Back home, you were only a slum brat. I’m the son of a lord.”
“When an assassin comes at you in the night,” Sanjeet retorted, “will you be calling your parents?”
The candidate bristled.
“I don’t know anything about battle either,” Dayo said, stepping into the ring to break the tension. “You’d better throw me too, Jeet. I have more to learn than Kamal.” He smiled at the Dhyrmish candidate, who bowed sullenly and left the ring. Dayo spread his narrow feet, hunching into an awkward fighting stance. “Ready when you are, Bear.”
The corners of Sanjeet’s mouth lifted. “Your worst weakness, little brother,” he said, sweeping the prince’s leg and depositing him firmly on the ground, “is seeing the good in everyone.” He smiled, helping the prince up. “And I’d rather have your weakness than my Hallow.”
As he dusted himself off and left the ring, Sanjeet’s gaze locked on mine. I looked away, flushing to the tips of my sandals.
Most of the candidates still feared the Prince’s Bear. He rarely talked to anyone except Dayo, whom he shadowed like a grim archangel. But when the others had gone to sleep, I would hear the gender partition screen shift aside. Footsteps padded to my sleeping mat, and a pair of pleading eyes would burn down on mine.
“Please,” Sanjeet rasped. “Take them. Make the memories disappear.”
Every night since the first, we had stolen away to the old playroom, ghosts of colorful carved animals looming around us in the dark. I touched his face, feeling his pulse race as I pressed each temple. Gruesome images barraged us both.
Ribs cracking. Limbs bruising, bones shattering beneath Sanjeet’s bare hands as betting crowds egged him on to fight. His father’s voice was always the loudest of them all. “Is this hell? I’ll teach you hell. I’ll teach you what I taught your mother if you don’t get back in the pit, boy.”
With practice, I could make Sanjeet’s memories disappear for an hour, sometimes a day. But the violent images always returned by nightfall, seeping into Sanjeet’s sunless thoughts.
Sometimes, brighter memories stole through. I saw visions of a young, happier Sanjeet: dancing in time with the bells on his amah’s feet. Balancing with his amah on the back of an elephant as it lumbered through the dusty Dhyrmish streets. His amah taking him to visit the lame in the slums, bandaging sores and resetting bones, encouraging Sanjeet to use his Hallow to diagnose their