figures connected at tail and spear, so that the woman and monster blended together. Even when my eyes crossed from gazing, I could not tell which would devour the other.
“YOU’RE SQUIRMING,” KIRAH YELLED AT ME over the music, elbowing my arm. “You should join in.”
“I don’t dance,” I said uncomfortably. “Leave me alone.”
My council had arrived at Yorua Village in a parade of palanquins, guards, and liveried servants. The villagers had welcomed us with drums and palm leaves, flinging the branches across our path as they sang that ancient folk rhyme:
Eleven danced around the throne,
Eleven moons in glory shone,
They shone around the sun.
In return, we had brought food enough to feed the village for a week. We held the festival in an oceanside valley, beneath the glittering black quilt of the Oluwan night sky. The air smelled of cayenne and thrummed with talking drums. Spilled goat’s milk and honeywine ran ruts in the red earth. Rice and pepper stew rose in savory mountains on each table, and children’s faces glowed with grease and cream. My council watched the revelry from cushions on a narrow dais, piled high with the villagers’ gifts of herbs and good-luck carvings. Thaddace and Mbali had their own dais, and after Mbali blessed the Nu’ina festival, acolytes from the temples of Clay, Well, Ember, and Wing began their holy dances.
All four religious sects in Aritsar worshipped the Storyteller, and believed in the basic catechism of creation. But People of the Clay revered Queen Earth above all else. Many lived in rural realms like Swana, Mewe, and Moreyao, and they refused to eat meat and opposed the clearing of jungles and development of cities. In contrast, People of the Well criticized Earth for her fabled infidelity to Water. Many of these believers lived in coastal realms, like Sparti, Nontes, and Djbanti, seafaring people who discovered islands and continents beyond Aritsar. But the most devoted inhabited the rainforests of Quetzala, praying at lakes and underground rivers. People of the Ember—the most popular religious sect in both Oluwan and Dhyrma—credited Warlord Fire with Earth’s wealth, and showed their gratitude by mining jewels and precious metals, and forging tools and weaponry. Finally, fastidious realms like Biraslov and Blessid Valley appealed to People of the Wing, who worshipped only the Pelican Storyteller. They covered their heads, spurned other gods as distractions, and embraced a life of simplicity, piety, and sacrifice.
The festival drumming tripled in speed, and the acolytes united to dance the irubo: a pantomime of the sacred Pelican flying down to save Queen Earth, piercing its own breast to nurse her. The dancers’ bodies rippled with sweat, chests glistening with crimson paint as they pulsed to the music. They leapt and spun, stretching mantles of feathers across their backs as wings.
Kirah nudged me again. She looked stunning in the tunic and billowing trousers of her home realm. A gauzy green prayer scarf nestled around her face, and belts of silver coins dangled at her waist and brow. “I’m going to learn it,” she said. “The irubo.”
I groaned. “Why do you always have to memorize everything?”
Kirah’s features were round and bright. I suspected that she’d had too much honeywine, though her hazel eyes were hard and clear. “Because I’m tired of limits on what I’m supposed to know.”
I was quiet for several moments, letting the downbeat of strings, talking drums, and shaker gourds braid themselves together in my ears. Faintly, I had a vision of standing at a window, watching children as they sang beneath me on a rolling grassland.
But traitors rise and empires fall,
And Sun-Ray-Sun will rule them all,
When all is said-o, all is said
And done-heh, done-heh, done.
“Wherever I came from,” I told Kirah as irubo dancers whirled around us, “I think music was forbidden. Whenever I hear a song, it feels like I’m stealing something.”
In the center of the festival, a vast pit gleamed with ominous red light. From within, firebrands and white coals made heat ripples in the crisp night air. Villages dug the pit to represent Am’s journey to the Underworld. If a reveler found an unlucky token in their honeywine, they were considered cursed until the next Nu’ina festival … unless a champion crossed the pit on their behalf. A single wooden slab lay across the pit’s mouth, making a laughably narrow bridge. It was only for show. Most festivalgoers would sooner brave a year of bad luck than have a friend cross that deadly oven.
My palms sweated every time a dancer whirled too close to