guilt would make me a better Anointed One than I had been at Ebujo.
Sanjeet unbarred the shed door and ducked inside, lighting palm oil lamps from the garden torches. The medicine shed was long and narrow, lined with shelves of bottles and bundled herbs. I waited on a crumbling stone bench until Sanjeet emerged, armed with bandages and a stoppered vial. I winced as his calloused fingers bathed my wrist in primrose oil.
“Keeps down swelling,” he said. His touch was clinical, precise, sensing the tendons beneath my skin as he bandaged. “You’ve hurt this hand before. You were thirteen, training in spearwork in the palace courtyard.”
“Your Hallow showed you all that?”
He looked sheepish. “No. I just remember when it happened.” He tied the bandage and cut the excess with a knife. “Keep it dry. Kirah can fix you up properly tomorrow.”
“You’re good at this.” I turned my wrist, admiring his handiwork. “Do you ever wish you could be a healer full-time? Instead of training to be High Lord General?”
Sanjeet gripped the edge of the damp stone bench. “Dayo will inherit the Imperial Guard and the entire Army of Twelve Realms. He will need help commanding a force that large.” In the hollow of his chest, sweat glistened from when he had wrestled the shovel from Dayo. “I will be what he needs me to be.”
A moment passed in silence. “Do you think Kirah’s right? That nothing can be done about the Songland Redemptors?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “But we need that Treaty with the Underworld. Without one, Aritsar will never have peace.”
“But we could change the Treaty,” I suggested. The renewal ceremony was in six months. After the continent’s rulers accepted the Treaty’s terms, they would be forced to uphold them for another hundred years. Nothing would change. The Breach would devour thousands more children like Ye Eun. “I don’t know why all Redemptors come from Songland. But if we made a new deal—if we started over—we could make it fairer.”
Sanjeet shook his head. “The Arit rulers would never allow it. Redemptors used to be born in every realm. No one knows why it stopped, but I doubt anyone’s eager to go back to the way things were.”
I chewed my lip, scowling into the darkness. For just a moment, the old heat flashed in my chest, a demon restricting my lungs, roaring to get out. “Why does everyone hate change so much?” I demanded.
“Because things could get worse.”
“Maybe. But do you know what I think?” My chest throbbed. “I think deep down, we’re afraid that things could get better. Afraid to find out that all the evil—all the suffering we ignore—could have been prevented. If only we had cared enough to try.”
“That’s a grim prognosis.”
I shrugged, then crossed my arms over my chest, coaxing the burning to rest.
Sanjeet’s profile was tense in the garden shadows. I remembered the night we had first met. His features had still been boyish then; awkward and round. That was gone now—replaced by an angular, protruding brow, and the shadow of a dense curly beard. His ears were the only whimsical thing about him, sticking out from his head like conch shells. I had always liked those ears.
“If Dayo didn’t need your protection,” I asked, “if he didn’t remind you of Sendhil—would you still have joined the council?”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “I think so. On my campaigns, I’ve seen the scars of what this continent was like before. Back when the abiku did whatever they chose. Burning towns and demanding sacrifices, causing floods and plagues, setting realms against each other. If the Kunleos hadn’t made us work together, united us in a common goal … I don’t think the realms would have survived. Still, I doubt Enoba Kunleo was as perfect or peaceful as the history scrolls say. No one conquers an empire with charisma alone.”
“What about the councils?” I asked. “Do you think they’re perfect?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, his fingers brushed the top of my unbandaged hand, sliding in meditative circles down my wrist. “There she goes again,” he said. “Asking illegal questions. Even when we were small, a word, a small suggestion from Tarisai of Swana … and every candidate in the Children’s Palace would be buzzing about systems they would topple. Rules they would break.” He smiled at me, and my breath shortened. “You’re infectious, sunshine girl.” Then suddenly he withdrew his hand, balling it into a fist.
“What’s wrong?” My skin chilled where his fingers had been. He shook his head, but