₦airaland Forum

@cassbeat and I knew that you knew thanks for reading

@tunjilomo thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it

@GeoSilYe That's a good question. She does have a noble in Isan that's in charge, but more on what happens when she's gone is explained later

@doctorexcel Thank you for reading the plentidaful update

@dawno2008 thank you for the kind words! I really appreciate it!!

@monalicious thank you! I'm so happy you could feel that, it's nice to hear that the emotions are coming out the way I want them to

Fazemood:
This house still as lively as ever, miss this place (Nairaland). I hope we are all doing well?

Hello Obehid, how do you do?

I'm doing well thank you. And you?

10

Mede and I had been together long enough to perfect the awkward silence that followed one of us going too far. That silence hung heavy between us as we meandered around the nobles engaged in their idle late-night respite about the palace courtyard. It lasted the duration of our sojourn through the palace walkways, past one white arched door, which was quickly followed by another in the exact same shade of white and having the exact same design. In most ways the Bono palace was a tedious study in monotony.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted out, after we’d walked past white arched door number…I’d lost count about ten of them ago.

“Why do you dislike my mother so much?” I did not turn to face her.

“I see her differently.”

“And what exactly do you see?”

“Please don’t force me to answer that, revered, it will vex you. I think I’ve already pushed you as far as I dare for one night.”

I let the silence fall back into place. It was less awkward now that an effort to breach it had been made. We climbed up a staircase and walked past five more white arched doors before I probed the silence.

“I am not blind to mother’s faults.” I said, honestly, “but is her infidelity really such a terrible vice? Yes she can be more circumspect about it, but I suppose if she is here, then things between her husband and the Ooni must not be as dire as I thought.”

Mede sighed. “Your mother is not the paragon of virtue you believe her to be.”

Now that was a joke. “Paragon of virtue? My mother?” Two phrases that had no business being in such close proximity. “I would not go as far as to call her that.”

“You think that lewdness is her only vice. It is not revered.”

I stopped walking and frowned at that. “If you have something to say, say it, if you do not, then perhaps silence is our best recourse this night.”

She bowed to me. “I am sorry, revered, I did not mean to annoy you.”

I let my eyes roll coolly over her prone form. I flicked my fingers impatiently and she straightened. “Lewdness is not a vice,” I cracked a smile, “at least not in my dictionary. If you think lewdness is a vice, you have not been properly engaged in licentious acts. Would you like me to show you how it is done right?”

She grinned and fixed me with a look of cool censure. “One of these days I will take you up on your offer and what will you do then?”

“The masquerade be praised.” I rolled my eyes to the heavens and threw up my hands in exaggerated thanksgiving. She chuckled. “When you take me up on my offer, you’ll find out why my lovers always come begging for more.”

“Yes, revered.”

My eyes widened, “yes, you’re taking me up on my offer?”

“You wish. Yes, when that day comes, I will indeed find something out.”

I scoffed. “Tease.” Then I turned around and we continued walking. The silence that fell on us now was comfortable, like an old cloak. Still, as we continued walking, I could not help but wonder what it was that Mede and Tiwo found so distasteful in our mother. With Tiwo I always chucked it up to mild jealousy. Mother doted on him, but she’d always fawned over me. Tiwo had the normal mother-child relationship and he hated it. I got the mother-oba relationship with lavish praise and unasked for gifts. Our father had always tamped down the difference. I wondered if I would ever stop missing him.

“We’ve arrived, revered,” Mede stopped in front of a surprising sight. This white arched door had a spot of cream on the handle. My eyebrows vaulted up at the door’s nerve. I cheekily decided to aid in its coup, by keeping its secret.

Two palace guards stood in front. They bowed to me and pushed the door open. I walked in to find the Ooni seated in a small parlor. It was the kind of room I would expect for private meetings. It had two sofas placed on either side of a white table. He stood, leaning heavily on his cane. It was the first time that I’d had cause to think that cane had any purpose other than decorative.

“Your highness,” I bowed stiffly to the older man, “please, don’t rise on my account.”

Of course, he stubbornly chose to push himself to his feet. The doors closed behind us.

“Tanose,” he was heaving a little when he finally managed to stand upright, “I am upset with you.”

His eyes were narrowed on me and his wrinkled face was red with the exertion of his rise.

I held my left wrist in my right hand behind my back and began pacing around the small, intimate, space. “Your highness, you seem to be of the mistaken impression that I am somehow less than you. Perhaps it is my younger age, but I suspect that it is more likely a result of my gender…”

“Now, see here…”

“I am not finished,” I snapped, cutting him off. His eyes rounded and he inhaled so loudly I feared he was going into cardiac arrest. I sincerely hoped he wasn’t, because having to run to his aid would diminish the severity of the scolding I planned to give him. I continued as if I hadn’t been interrupted. “I am the Oba of Isan. I am the ruler of a nation that surpasses yours in military and economic might, so, I cannot imagine what would lead you to the erroneous conclusion that you could talk down to me in public, as if I was an errant child, and then have the gall to instruct your guards to keep me and my entourage locked in the palace. The fact that your gates are not now littered with Bono corpses is a testament to the esteem that my late and dear father held you in. You have dealt me an insult today, your highness, and I demand an apology.” Now finished, I stopped in my pacing and turned to face the Ooni with my legs spread and my eyebrows lifted in expectation.

The Ooni’s mouth hung open. He observed me, his eyes scouring over mine with the keen interest of a first glance. I refused to blink first, not even when I felt the burning sensation and the start of mistiness in my eyes. It was the Ooni who blinked first, the Ooni who looked away first. I was surprised to see a grudging smile grace his lips. He walked back to his sofa and sat. Then he lifted his cane and pointed at the sofa opposite him. “You’ve made your point Tanose, now sit down.”

The nerve of the man. “If the next word out of your mouth is not an apology, then I am riding out of here, and I don’t care how many people I slaughter to do it.”

He gaped at me. “You cannot really be this stubborn.”

I glared at him. “Wrong words,” then I turned my back on him and walked out of the room.

“Stop her!” He ordered.

The guards reached for me. Mede slammed the butt of her spear into one’s stomach, and on her return swing, slapped the shaft against the other. I elbowed the first one in the belly when he reached for Mede and swept my leg out, tripping him. Mede had the other one on his back already, with the sharp point of her spear poised above his neck.

“That’s enough! Eh Tanose, that’s enough!” The Ooni screamed. “You can see I am not strong this night, are you really going to force me to make my way over there?”

“You know what to do,” I said.

“You have my apology. Now release my guards and come back in here.”

Mede did not draw back until I gave her permission. Then she stretched out her hand to help the guard she’d felled up. As far as apologies went, the Ooni’s sucked. But in deference to the relationship he’d had with my father,I walked back into the room and shut the door behind me. “I suppose I have my mother to blame for your inability to accord me the respect I am due.”

He sighed. “Did no one ever tell you that if you go through life spoiling for a fight, you’ll spend your entire life fighting?”

Interesting words of wisdom from a king always at the precipice of war with another.

“Tell me now that if it was the Eze of Nuri standing in front of you, you would talk to him as you do me.” I used the Eze of Nuri because I had been thinking of Nuri and Bono always at the brink of war, so the Eze was the first male ruler on my mind.

The Ooni’s lips tightened and his gaze chilled. “Do not mention the Eze of Nuri to me. If the Eze of Nuri was standing where you stand he would be dead.” His words were spoken with such intense hatred that I could not help but be puzzled by it. Of course, I hated the Eze of Nuri on principle, because of my idea of the typical Nuri man, and the tales I’d heard about him. But the Ooni’s hatred seemed to be much more personal. I could tell how honest his earlier words were. He wanted the Eze of Nuri dead.

I spoke up, unwilling to lose ground. “Perhaps not the Eze then, but some other male ruler. I am the Oba of Isan, and it would be an honor if I decided to get betrothed to a son of Bono. But that is not how you treat me, and I cannot help but wonder why.”

The anger at my mention of the Eze had cleared from his features. “I treat you as a daughter, because that is how I see you.”

I bristled. “I am not your daughter.”

He scoffed at me. “Let me finish. It is not because you are a girl, it is because you are Netite’s girl. It is rare for two rulers to share the sort of filial love that your father and I had. He was the one person alive that I knew I could trust implicitly, and I imagined I was the same for him. We saw each other as family and it was our dream to make that a reality.” He sighed and leaned back into his sofa. He released his hold on his cane and massaged his temple. It wasn’t till that moment that I realized how much pain he was in. I found myself moving towards him and replacing his fingers on his temple with my own. I kneaded the flesh underneath my fingers, inching upwards to his forehead. Then I let my hands go back down. I massaged the back of his neck and then I kneaded the cords of muscles on his neck. Healing was a part of tumbler training. I’d done massages like this many times for my father.

The Ooni groaned. “You have magical hands, my daughter, just like your mother.”

I stopped at the mention of mother, then I reminded myself that he was an old man, a friend of my father’s, in pain, and I forced myself to continue. “Giving the sort of relationship you share with my mother, I sincerely hope that you do not see her when you look at me.”

He froze underneath my hands and his eyes fixed on my face. Then he burst out laughing. His laugh like his voice was a natural bellow. “Naughty girl.”

The words rubbed at me. “Please, don’t call me that.”

He held my gaze, frowning disapprovingly. “What made you so prickly that you can’t be teased?”

“I can be teased, just not like that.”

He regarded me for a while, and then he jerked his head in a curt nod.

“Speaking of your close, brotherly, love for my father, what are you doing sleeping with his widow?”

He shirked my hands off his body, leaning away from my touch. I shrugged, I wouldn’t force him to feel better. I walked around his sofa and sat on the one facing his.

“Bello!” he yelled. The door opened and a guard poked his head in. He bowed. “Bring a bottle of ogogoro and two glasses.” The guard bowed and retreated. The Ooni eyed me. I sat with my legs crossed, my back resting against the sofa, waiting for him to speak.

“You know,” he began conversationally, “I tried to stop your father from naming you heir.” A quirked eyebrow was the only response he got from me. “I thought he was insane. Who names the younger child heir? I told him that his decision would lead to civil war, that your brother would raise an army to wrest the nation from you. Netite laughed at me,” he chuckled, “he laughed as if I had suddenly become a comedian. As if it was ludicrous. I can tell you now, that if I named Debisi my heir, Taiso would burn this entire nation to the ground before he let his brother sit on my throne.”

“I think that has more to do with how they were raised than anything else.” I remarked.

His eyebrows rose. “I cannot insult you, but you can insult me in my own home?”

I shook my head. “I am truly sorry if you took that as an insult, your highness, it was only an observation.”

His eyes narrowed on me then relaxed. He nodded his acceptance. “They were close once, you know, when Lola was still alive. She was like the glue that held them together. She held us all together.” He stopped speaking and his eyes took on a faraway look. I could read the grief on his features, just like Debisi’s grief when he’d talked about his sister. The Ooni was so distracted by his grief that he did not notice the guard walk in with a white tray bearing the liquor he’d requested and the glass cups. He placed that tray on the table. I uncapped the bottle, poured some of the alcohol into the cups and walked over to sit by him.

That was when he snapped out of it.

I held a cup to him and he took it from me with a shaky hand. He threw down the considerable amount of alcohol I’d poured into the glass in a single gulp.

“Your mother came to me after she’d had a bad fight with her husband.”

I stiffened. “He hit her?”

“No,” he shook his head, “nothing like that. Just words, but words can do equal damage. I took her in. At the start we were just friends, she was the widow of the brother I lost. Then my night pains became more severe and your mother would massage me. It was nothing more than a healing touch, healing, it’s your mother’s calling.” I nodded, unnecessarily. “She’s old, she doesn’t look it, your mother, but her joints get stiff. We went from massages to healing tonics. We would go outside and talk and she would mix together her herbs, and we would talk about Netite. She was the only one who understood my grief. We’d both lost spouses we loved. Hers died, mine became a shadow of herself after we lost our daughter. Your mother, she understands, I don’t…” he trailed off. “I wonder sometimes what Netite would say if he could see us. Would he hate me?”

I shook my head. “No, as long as you made each other happy, he would give his blessing.”

He nodded. “I thought so too.” He cleared his throat. “And you? Do you hate me?”

“No, your highness, you make her happy.”

He exhaled. “I should not have pushed for proof of your virginity as I did. It was foolish. You are Isan, your ways are not ours. And if you had not been a virgin? It would have been my loss.” He turned to face me and held my hands in his. “Stay with us for a while.”

I prepared to refuse.

“Just think about it, spend one week, maybe two. Visit with your mother, get to know Debisi. I really believe that the two of you would make a good match. Debisi is so much like Lola, he has her light, but I worry about how much longer he can keep it. Protect my son, Tanose, show him a world where the love between royal siblings can transcend power struggles. Give him a chance.”

There was something wrong with his impassioned plea. He sounded like a man who was already aware that he’d lost his fight. But he was still alive, he was still Ooni. Why couldn’t he protect his son? “Debisi is stronger than you think,” I said, “certainly strong enough to protect himself.”

His smile was pained. “I know he can survive. He’s smart. But a person can lose themselves and still survive. Debisi’s only weakness is his integrity. My son is Bono, raised in this court, if it came down to a choice between integrity and his life, he will not choose the former.” He released my hand and turned away from me. “Netite laughed,” he said, “I told him that his children would fight for his throne and he laughed. I named my eldest heir and my children still fight. He named his youngest heir and her brother bows to her. Perhaps you Isans are the only ones who got it right. Maybe calling is the most important of the five tenets.” Then he leaned forward and poured himself another drink.

I thought it was time for me to go. I cleared my throat. “If you would excuse me your highness,” I began to rise.

He turned to face me. “Are you in a hurry?” he asked. “I was hoping that you could massage me. The massage was always better than the tonics and you are the only one since your mother who’s known how to do it well.”

I nodded. “Of course, your highness,” I sat back down.

He smiled. “So easily? I was expecting a fight. I thought you would accuse me of belittling you again.”

I chuckled. “I understand you better now, your highness.”

“Can you really not call me uncle?”

“How many more concessions do you plan to wring from me this one night?” I asked, purely to be contrary.

He laughed. “Netite’s girl. Your father made the right decision when he ignored my advice, he was always smarter than I was.” He took a gulp of his ogogoro. “Netite’s girl,” he mused.

His hair was in disarray again. I ran my fingers through his curls and smiled at how uncomfortable my touch made him. He didn’t move, but he got red. He cleared his throat. “Would you prefer it if I called you ‘revered’?” He looked away.

I pulled my fingers out of his hair. “Why do you think it wasn’t the Alake of Ikeja who put the merchants up to their speech on my rectitude?” I hadn’t answered his question and we were both aware of it.

“Well,” he fidgeted with his glasses, a clear sign that he was still unsettled by my touch, “why would he care about your virginity?”

“Perhaps he wanted to embarrass me as a punishment for my mother deserting him?”

Debisi shook his head. I could tell that solving puzzles calmed him. He’d stopped fidgeting and the red that colored his skin was gone. “No, that sort of intrigue is too petty for the Alake. I honestly thought it was Taiso, he owns the sugar merchants in Bono.”

“Your brother appeared just as surprised, and displeased, by their words as you were.”

“Taiso is a brilliant actor,” Debisi stated without inflection.

“What would he have to gain by embarrassing me?”

“You.”

“What?”

“My brother wants you, he is attracted to you. He likes that you come with a powerful nation, and he loathes that I could be king if I married you. I’m a virgin, if it came out that you were not, our union would not meet with much approval. In such a scenario, he could make a play for your hand in marriage. It would be an easy thing to divorce his wife and marry you, theirs was no binding love match.”

I chuckled. Perhaps it was not funny, but I could not help but laugh at how ludicrous it all sounded. I would not sleep with Taiso if he was the only male in the world, and I told Debisi that. His face lit up. “You must think that I’m pretty powerless if you imagine any man could just claim my hand in marriage.”

“No,” he replied, shaking his head, “and now that he’s met you, my brother knows that too. Besides, the merchants would not have sent their daughter to appease him if they were acting on his wishes. It was not Taiso.”

“That troubles you?”

He nodded. His worried frown was so cute I ran my fingers over the furrows in his forehead. They went away instantly, and he reddened. He cleared his throat a few times and started rearranging the position of his glasses on his face. “I do not like not knowing who the players are.”

“Is it all a game to you?”

“Not to me, to them. I’m just trying to stay afloat.”

My hand went down from his face to cup his cheek. “You poor boy.”

He held my gaze, and even though his face was red, he looked nothing like a boy. “I’m happy that you are still a virgin.”

I pulled my hand away. “Don’t be. Having a hymen doesn’t make me a virgin.”

I turned my back on him and realized that we had become the focus of the entire courtyard. They all stood around, Bono people dressed in white, Isans in red, staring at us. I met a few of their gazes and their eyes dropped away. The previously quiet courtyard filled with the nervous flurry of forced conversation. I began walking.

“Why does it annoy you that you are still a virgin? I am a virgin too.” Debisi followed me.

“You are Bono, I am Isan. And really, you can’t prove your virginity.”

“There is a test for men just as there is for women.”

“No test can prove a man’s virginity.” I knew the test he was talking about. They stroked them with warm cloths and saw how quickly they came. As far as I was concerned it was a test that existed just to say that a test existed.

“If it displeases you so much, then why? I would not have held a lack of vir…hymen against you.”

I smirked at the way he’d changed the word. “For my father,” I said, “because he wanted a true Bono wedding.” Because he’d had Mede watch me whenever I played with a male pleasure slave. It had always rubbed me raw. In battle there was no difference between male and female, in his eyes, in leadership, no difference, but in sex there had been.

I’d railed at him the first time Mede had stopped me. He’d just sat on his throne looking superior. He’d known at the end that I would bow to his will. Anal was my solution. Mede never told him. My father’s Bono heritage came out in that. He found nothing wrong with men having sex but a woman having anal sex was repugnant to him. After he died I could have stopped trying to please him, but he was my father, and a Bono wedding had been his wish.

“I suppose in following our father’s wishes we are the same.”

I looked at him and quirked a brow. So he’d stayed ‘fresh’ because his father asked it of him too. “And here I was thinking you remained a virgin because of lack of interest.” He could not prove his virginity, but I believed him.

His chest puffed out. “I am a handsome prince, interest has never been a problem.”

“Handsome? Aren’t we a little full of ourselves.”

He laughed and his dimples made their first appearance that night. “I did not expect to like you.”

“Why is that?”

“Ferocious warrior queen with a pleasure chamber as large as an Alake’s mansion?” He teased and I smiled. “Looking back, I can say now that I was kept well informed to ensure that I would not like you.”

I knew he was talking about his brother. I changed the subject to one that had stoked my curiosity the moment I’d heard the merchants’ family speak of it. “Why would anyone think that the mention of an Alake’s name could frighten an Alaafin?”

Debisi stopped walking. He stared at me for a while, as if he was contemplating something, then he slipped his hand in mine and led us on a dizzying dance around court nobles that ended with us in the most secluded alcove in the entire courtyard. The entry to the alcove was shielded by a white marble sculpture of a neck with a string of pearls around it. The sculpture blocked all but a few rays of light from seeping through. If it was anyone else, I would have suspected ulterior motives for this clandestine venue. With Debisi I was simply curious.

“He has something on my brother,” Debisi whispered.

I frowned. “The Alake of Ikeja? My mother’s husband?”

He nodded. “Something huge. Taiso has dirt on all of our nobles, including the Alake, but whatever it is the Alake has on Taiso, it’s big enough to make Taiso give up profitable business ventures, and bands of mercenaries, the second the Alake asks for it. Tiaso isn’t even that accommodating with our father.”

Bono court scheming held very little interest for me, but I could see how much it meant to Debisi. “You’re trying to find out what it is, aren’t you?”

He nodded. His face was dark in the alcove, just an outline in the sculpture’s shadow.

“Any clues?”

He was silent for so long that I thought he wouldn’t respond. “The Alake had a son, an heir. He was our sister’s best friend, before she died. He was also the first Bono noble that the Nuri stole and branded. When they sent him back to his father with a brand on his neck, the Alake sent him back to the Nuri. That was when they started meeting together in secret, my brother and the Alake, and that was when the Alake pried the first concession from Taiso. Whatever the Alake has on Taiso, it dates back to that time. I’m sure of it.”

My mind spun. I remembered the princess, she’d been between Taiso and Debisi in age. I had some vague recollection of her death only because our father had left for Bono with a large contingent of troops right after she’d died. He’d left mother in charge and mother had let me make all the decisions. It was the first time that it had really sunk in on me that I would rule a nation. Then father had returned with a crate of ogogoro and we’d gotten drunk together, the four of us, mother, father, Tiwo and me. He hadn’t told us anything about the trip, and we hadn’t asked.

My free hand found his face in the dark. He hadn’t let go off the hand he’d held to pull me in. I stroked his face. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Lola was the light of my world. I followed her around like a lost puppy.” I imagined a young Debisi clinging to his elder sister’s hand, as he held mine, and running around the courtyard with her. I could hear the tears he choked back in his voice.

I wanted to comfort him, to ease his pain. I moved closer towards him, drawing close enough that my breasts rubbed against his chest, and I kissed him. My lips formed around his. They were wet and salty, evidence that he’d been crying. I pulled my other hand out of his grasp and placed it on the other side of his wet cheek.

He moaned into my mouth.

I took advantage and slipped my tongue into his mouth. His tongue reached out tentatively for mine and then he tasted me, and retreated, then he came forward again, licked me a little longer and retreated. It was as if he was fighting against his own desires. I pulled my tongue out and nibbled softly on his bottom lip before pulling away, not unaware of the erection pressing against me.

We were both breathing heavily.

“Thank you,” he said into the silence.

“I don’t want you to call me revered. Call me Tan,” I replied, finally answering his earlier question.

“I want to kiss you again,” his voice was so soft I could barely hear him.

“Will you beg?” I matched his tone. I wasn’t quite sure why I said it. He isn’t your slave, Tan!

He didn’t reply.

The sound of a throat being cleared outside our alcove tore my attention from the face so hooded in shadows that I could not see its expressions.

“Revered,” Mede’s voice came through to the silent space Debisi and I shared, “the Ooni is requesting your presence.”

I walked the few steps between where I stood and the entrance to the alcove.

“Yes, Tan, if it’s what you want, I will.” Debisi’s softly spoken words followed me out.

9

The courtyard was beautiful, it was one of the few places in the Bono palace that had color. Lush beds of green grass sprouted on the roofless area. In the middle there was a fountain completely encased in green and white flowers. A few minutes ago there’d been a show with white metal faucets extending from the body of the fountain so far out that the single fountain was able to water the entire grass bed. Now the water was back to gushing out only over the region surrounding the fountain.

I walked over the open white marbled grounds amidst bowed heads and bent knees. Women in the Bono court curtsied while men bowed. In Isan men and women bowed. The Bono nobles looked at me differently since I’d subjected myself to their Eyo masquerade’s test of verdure. As if having an intact hymen made me pure, one of them.

“I am surprised that you’ve taking the Ooni’s mandate so quietly,” Mede remarked. She walked beside me, my only guard in that moment. It was odd how one simple test could make things change so drastically. Now the Bono palace guards treated me as if I was theirs to guard, as if I was already part of their royal family.

“Are you really?” I studied a grass sculpture of a rose in bloom. The sculpture was positioned in front of an alcove, artfully shielding the people behind it from full view. The light bulbs on the roof of the walkway were formed into patterns of flowers. They lit our way, but were far enough from the alcoves to only partially light it. The combination of the flowers and the lights gave the alcoves a sense of privacy usually absent in such a public forum.

“Revered,” Bono and Isan nobles, mixed together, bowed and curtsied as I walked by, making a path for me in their midst. I nodded in greeting without stopping.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be,” Mede said.

I turned slightly so that my eyes could roam over her beautiful face. She was smirking. “And why is that?”

“Oh, nothing,” she shrugged, “I just couldn’t help but notice how fond you’ve become of the Bono prince.”

I flicked my gaze over her face and then I turned away from her. She was wrong about that. I was seething, boiling with rage at the insult of the Ooni’s mandate, but I hadn’t yet been poked to the point of snapping at others because of it. The Ooni, in his ‘wisdom’, had given the order to bar my exit. Which meant I’d have to fight his palace guards if I wanted to leave. It was only the thought of the unavoidable loss of life that would ensue from such a scuffle that had kept me from slaughtering my way out. The Ooni and I were not enemies, at least not yet.

There were benefits to being forced to spend the day here. Debisi of course was on the top of that list. We hadn’t spoken since he’d walked out after his father that morning, but we’d been in each other’s proximity throughout the day and our gazes had locked a few times. He’d appeared upset with me. I found it amusing. Then there was my mother, who though she stubbornly refused to talk to me about her husband and her relationship with the Ooni, had been quite pleasant company. She’d even managed a grudging chuckle from Tiwo. My poor brother had retired to his room early, it had been an emotionally taxing day for him.

“You are fond of him, aren’t you?”

“He’s adorable.”

Mede scuffed. “Be careful with him, revered, he’s not one of your slaves.”

I smiled at that. “Do you like him?”

Her face took on a cute scrunched up look, with lines forming on her forehead and her lips tightening. “I think the two of you make a good match,” she said carefully.

“Why are you being so diplomatic?”

She relaxed her features and giggled. “I don’t know, revered, I think you like him.”

“And do you like him?”

“He’s submissive, which should please you.”

I shook my head. “Debisi isn’t a sexual submissive, I would know, I tend to hunt for that sort of thing in others. Do you want to know what I found when I scouted for it in you?”

Mede shook her head. “You’re changing the topic.”

“Am I? I thought the topic was people I am sexually attracted to and seeing as you are one of those people…” I let the words trail.

“Give it up, revered,” she sighed.

I laughed. “Answer my question, do you like him?”

She settled a serious pair of eyes on me. “I don’t know him, but from what little I’ve seen, I think that he hides a lot about himself. As does his brother. The only truly open person in their family is their father.” She smiled when she talked of the Ooni. I was astonished, she usually didn’t like men, especially the arrogant sort.

“You like the Ooni?” my voice came out dry, which wasn’t surprising, giving my current thoughts on the man in question.

“He reminds me of your father.” The smile faded and her gaze hardened. “They certainly seem to have the same questionable taste in women.”

I probably would have struck any other subject who’d said that to me in that scornful tone with that look of distaste on their face. To Mede, I said, in a wry tone “now that was just too bad of you.”

She froze. “Forgive me, revered.”

“Leave me,” I jerked my head to the side.

She swallowed. “I’m sorry, revered, I did not mean…”

I rose my hand up cutting her off. “Go.”

She bowed and walked away.

Mother.

She wasn’t in the courtyard this evening, she was probably back with her lover. She was happy, happier than she’d been the last time she’d come visiting with her husband. I did not really care that she was being unfaithful to him, sex in all its bountiful proportions was the Isan way, and to be honest, I’d never really liked the Alake. There was just something about him that rubbed me the wrong way. What bothered me was the man she’d chosen to be unfaithful with.

I kept walking, letting the chuckles, the snatched up pieces of whispered gossip, and the slightly subdued humming of the palace musicians, distract my thoughts. Then I saw the merchants and their eldest daughter walk into an alcove, hidden behind a grass sculpture of two lambs frolicking.

I found myself drifting towards that alcove without putting much conscious thought into it. I didn’t realize, until that moment, how upset I was with them. It was the merchants who’d started it all with the man’s comment on Isan pleasure slaves and my ‘rectitude’. Because of them I’d had to lie with my legs spread on an altar while an oracle of the Eyo masquerade poked between my legs. Not that I’d minded that much. Oracles in Bono swore to lifelong celibacy. Let’s just say I’d done my best to make the woman uncomfortable. I thought of her stunned reaction to the way I’d gyrated underneath her touch, and had to stifle the urge to laugh. No, the test had not bothered me at all. It was the way the merchants had set it up that got to me. I marched to that alcove determined to get to the bottom of it.

Then I heard a young voice drift out of the alcove and stopped in my tracks, only then realizing how close I’d gotten. It was the daughter speaking. “It’s done,” she said. I began to step back, refusing to do something as dishonorable as eavesdrop. “I slept with the Alaafin, I think my virginity is enough to stave off his ire.”

What?

“You foolish man,” the voice that snapped was feminine, but older, the mother.

“How was I supposed to know that it was not his wish?” he sounded like someone who was scared and struggling not to show it. “Do you think he likes you? Maybe he will make you his mistress, it’s no secret how he feels about his wife.”

“No,” the daughter, “he slept with me as if it was a chore, but we are Bono, he knows the price we place on virginity.”

“A chore?” the man sounded panicked. “What will we do?”

The older woman’s voice was calm, “you told him what I told you, right?”

“Yes,” the daughter said, “I told him that we’d paid homage to the Alake of Ikeja. He was not happy.”

“Displeased or not, he won’t do anything, not while he thinks we have the Alake’s protection. We should leave before he has time to find out we don’t.” The older woman’s confidence did not waver.

“Tan?”

I swiveled and found Debisi standing behind me. He was dressed in his evening casual galabia.

“Revered, your highness,” the merchants family bowed to us. They were obviously unaware of the fact that they’d been overhead. They scurried away. I frowned in their direction.

“I would have thought that someone who found peeping as distasteful as you did, would be equally repulsed at the idea of eavesdropping.” He said the words with calm solemnity, then his visage cracked, and he smiled. “Not that I’m judging.”

“I am,” I said honestly, “but I found myself unable to walk away. I knew that you Bono were hypocrites, but until this moment I didn’t realize just how much.”

Debisi’s eyebrow lifted. “I don’t think the Bono own exclusive rights to hypocrisy.”

I ignored his retort, too baffled by what I’d just overheard. “Someone put them up to what they did.”

To his credit, he didn’t pretend to not know what I was talking about. “Yes,” he said, “they wouldn’t have dared cast aspersions on your purity if someone powerful hadn’t convinced them to do it.”

“The Alake of Ikeja?” I asked.

Debisi appeared taken aback. “Why would you think that? Because they said they paid him homage? If you recall, they also said they were lying about that. Which makes me give them more credit. I can count on one hand the number of people that know of my brother’s acquiescence to the Alake’s wishes.”

I was startled. “You were eavesdropping on them too.”

“Yes, and unlike you, it was actually my intention to do so.”

My chest tightened. I was disappointed in him, and the strength of my reaction surprised me. “So, you peep, and you eavesdrop.”

He fidgeted with his glasses, shifting it around on his face. “I don’t peep on naked women, I swear it, that was…you were…my first.” His neck reddened. He looked away from my face. “But I spy on conversations, knowledge is important here, and my position is…tenuous.” There was a pleading note in his voice, “please believe me Tan, I would not lie to you.”

“Tan?” my tone chilled, “I did not know we were so close.” Any of my slaves would have started offering up apologies at this point.

Debisi smiled. His fidgeting stopped and he looked me squarely in the eye, “I hoped we were.”

@cassbeat we'll see about that

@dawno2008 hmmm, interesting thought, very very interesting

@Bluehaven lol!

@ogyunging happy you like, encore coming

@Folex34 thanks for reading

The man’s eyes widened. He bowed to the Ooni. “Of course, your highness, forgive me, I did not mean to insult a member of your family. It is just…” he trailed off.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Debisi draw forward. His frown mirrored mine. A sixth sense told me that I would not like where this was going. I opened my mouth to speak up, to say something, anything, but the Ooni bellowed before I could speak.

“Well, speak plain my friend.”

“Yes, your highness, yes, I just do not wish to displease you.”

The Alaafin drew forward and he frowned. His pose matched his brother’s. But the merchant’s wife was calm, relaxed, as if she knew where this was going. Our gazes met and she sneered at me. Her expression seemed to confirm my earlier thoughts that I would not like where this conversation ended.

The merchant’s voice trembled a little when he spoke. “It is not the way of the Bono to speak of such things, but it occurs to me that, given what we all know about the Isan nation and their pleasure slaves, I am not sure how much credence to give to the queen of such a court. But if you say she is your daughter, one with enough rectitude to marry into the Bono royal family, I would of course trust her every word implicitly.”

My frown deepened. There was a change in the mood of the Bono nobles, an undercurrent that I could not decipher. I’d heard the man’s words but I had not found anything mystifying in them. They’d been insulting, and if he was my subject I would have punished him for the insult he dealt my court, but as a Bono, I understood his disregard for the Isan attitude towards sex and pleasure, just as I had nothing but disregard for the Bono ‘verdure’. But he was as entitled to his feelings as I was to mine. So why the serious look on the Ooni’s face?

“Then you must trust her every word implicitly,” Debisi commanded. His voice was firm, but it did nothing to turn the looks away from the Ooni.

“I agree with my brother,” the Alaafin drawled, “the Oba of Isan is a monarch with the honor to come to Bono and deliver the corpse of one who’d been nothing more than a slave to her. A slave who’d dared to assault her brother. If that is not proof of her rectitude, I don’t know what is.”

I couldn’t tell who was more shocked at the Alaafin’s eagerness to run to my defense, me or Debisi. Debisi gaped at his brother as if he’d never seen him before. I frowned at the Alaafin. We were not friends, in fact, I was very confident in our mutual dislike of each other. Why was he speaking up for me? Perhaps he was just a good statesman, one who wanted to keep Isan and Bono as friends after he ascended to his father’s throne. I did not know, and not knowing irked me.

The Alaafin’s words had the impact that Debisi’s didn’t. The merchants swiveled, husband and wife, and stared with open shock at the Alaafin. The Alaafin for his part, trained a censorious look on them that had them both paling.

“Of course,” the merchant sputtered, turning back to bob his head down, “I did not mean to insult you, revered, not at all.” He kept bowing to me. “Not at all. I take your word, and your brother’s and I am grateful and deeply honored that you brought my son back to me. Your presence here is more than enough reparation.” Now I was the target of his sickly-sweet tone of voice. “I humbly apologize for my earlier words.”

I could not believe it. Something about this whole encounter was wrong. I looked at the merchants and they both kept their heads bowed to me. The Alaafin was looking at his father. The only person who was not acting strangely was the Neka the Alaafin’s wife. Her face was pinched with displeasure and she was back to glaring her hatred at me.

“I believe the issue is settled father,” Debisi pushed.

I turned back to the Ooni who regarded me with narrowed eyes.

“Yes, baba,” my mother put her hand on his arm, “it is settled.”

There was something more going on and I hated that I did not know what it was. The merchant’s words had caused something and now Debisi, my mother and the Alaafin were all trying to take it back. But, for the life of me, I could not say what that thing was. I did not enjoy not knowing what was going on around me. It was starting to make me quite angry.

The Ooni pulled his arm away from my mother. “The merchant insinuates that you have not kept yourself pure for my son as he has done for you,” he announced.

Debisi groaned. My mother’s panicked eyes turned to me. The Alaafin’s jaw clenched. I could not help but be amused by this.

“And if I haven’t?” I asked.

The Ooni’s eyes narrowed on me. He’d gone in an instant from looking like a doting father to a displeased king. “Then you would have insulted my nation, my family, and most importantly, me.”

“And what are you going to do about it?”

“Tanose.” My mother scolded.

“You are making it worse,” Debisi whispered to me. “Just tell him you have, it doesn’t matter if you’re lying, he won’t call you on it, not unless you push him further.”

The Ooni waited in silence. I waited with him, my wry expression growing more and more amused the more aggravated he became. His face turned red and a vein in his forehead ticked.

“Stop this Tan,” Debisi begged, “just tell him what he wants to hear. Please.” He sounded desperate.

The entire hall was tense. I thought it was ridiculous. Yes, the Bono believed in purity, but I was Isan, not Bono. I thought their expectation of virginity made as much sense as me expecting Debisi to be as well versed in the acts of pleasure as an Isan man his age would be.

“If we cannot trust your word,” the Ooni said, “then how can we trust your brother’s? How can we trust that he did not maliciously murder a son of Bono? And if he maliciously killed a son of Bono then he must make reparations with his life.”

Tiwo turned ashen. He fell to his knees in front of the Ooni. “I did not, I swear.”

“Get up,” I snapped at my brother. Tiwo rose and stood with his head hung, like one waiting to be sentenced. My tumblers were now standing close to me, but their proximity to me, and the Ooni meant that the palace guards had drawn closer to. There were ten of my tumblers in the room and thirty palace guards. If it came to a fight, the palace guards would die without any casualties on my side.

“Is this how you treat your friends?” I asked, silkily.

“You are not my friend, I thought you were my daughter, my family, a child who cared as much for her father’s word as my son, Debisi, cares for mine.” That vein in his head just kept throbbing as he spoke.

“Baba calm down,” my mother stroked his back, “think about your health.”

“Your daughter, huh?” I eyed my mother, “I suppose I can see how fucking my mother would make you think that you had the right to belittle me.”

Debisi grabbed onto my arm and shook me. “What are you doing?” he demanded once his shaking tore my attention to him. His eyes were wide with terror. “Please, stop. Please.” I pulled my arm out of his grasp and turned back to face his father.

The Ooni rose his cane and slammed it against the white marble ground with enough force to shatter inferior wood. That was a quality walking stick.

“You will submit yourself to the oracle’s test,” he declared.

My mother tried to get his attention but he ignored her. Debisi pleaded with his father to relent. The Ooni stared at me. He had a long torso and so when we sat his face was almost at the same level as mine.

“And if I refuse?” I asked.

“Then your brother will pay for the Bono life he took with his own!” the Ooni yelled at me. The Ooni’s yell was an impressive thing, especially given that the normal tone of his voice was a bellow.

“You think that I will just sit here and let that happen?”

“You insult me!” the Ooni yelled. He pushed himself to his feet and peered down at me from the height advantage that standing gave him. “You come into my home, enjoy my hospitality and you insult me. You are a child, and yet you insult me?! I called your father ‘brother’ and for that I will give you the next five minutes to contemplate your choice. If at the end of that time you have not submitted to the test, your brother will be arrested.” The Ooni turned his back and stormed out of the room.

Some of the guards left with him, triple the number that left came in after he walked out. My tumblers drew closer to me, spears pointing out, the nobles seemed at a loss for what to do.

“Why did you do that?” I turned to face him. Debisi shook his head but he kept his gaze away from me. He was waiting for a response I wouldn’t give. As if the Ooni was in the right. He was the one who’d insulted me. “I’ll go and talk to my father.” He stood up and walked away.

“It’s a waste of time,” the Alaafin deposited himself beside me, taking his father’s place, amidst the tense standoff. “The Ooni has issued a challenge, he will look weak if he rescinds it.”

“Why are you so stubborn?” My mother’s soft voice prodded. “Would it kill you to be humble?” Then our eyes met and she laughed. “I suppose it would.” She shook her head. Then she turned to the Alaafin and said, “she feels she’s failed her father if her spirit isn’t the strongest in the room. She will not bend.” I did not like the way she spoke to the Alaafin and the way he smiled at her. “I will go with Debisi and talk to him.” She stood up and left.

Tiwo’s scared gaze met mine and I knew what I had to do. Maybe my mother was right, maybe there was a part of me that was still trying to prove to my father that he’d made the right choice in naming me heir. But I knew, I knew that if I was a man, the Ooni would not have spoken to me the way he did, younger age or not. Sometimes it felt as if I had to fight against the world to prove my right to lead. But there were a few people who’d never questioned it. My father was one of them. Tiwo was another. And there was nothing I wouldn’t do to secure his peace of mind. My irritation at the Ooni would just have to take a back seat. For now.

“Take me to the palace shrine,” I said to the Alaafin.

Tiwo tried to hide his relief but he was nervous, and when he was nervous his smart tongue and schooled expressions fell away. I smiled at him.

“What was the point of that?” the Alaafin asked. He sounded curious as he led the way out of the room. “You must have known that all you needed to do was make a teasing remark to my father. He would have laughed the whole thing off. Why would you try to battle wills with him?”

I eyed him. “Why did you speak up for me?”

He shrugged. “You intrigue me.”

“Tell me, Alaafin, if I was a man, would your father have acted the way he did?”

He regarded me coolly. Then he grinned. “No, but you’re not a man. And there’s nothing you can do to change that.”

I scoffed. “Change?” What an arrogant presumption. “No,” I said, “I don’t want to change my gender, I want to change yours.” The Alaafin chuckled in response. As far as I was concerned the world could do with more women…a world with only women, now that was a pleasant thought. My thoughts trailed to Mede, then my sweet Ayisha. For some reason, flashes of Debisi spotted my mind. I pictured his cock last night, how it had come to life under my expert touch. Perhaps there were a few men that could stay as men. I smiled.

“Don’t worry about the oracle,” the Alaafin said, “it’s easy enough to pay them to lie.”

I frowned. “Why would I want to pay them?”

He stopped in his tracks and gaped at me. “You don’t really mean that you’re a virgin?”

I’d been a child when my father had first talked to me about his dreams to unite our family with the Ooni’s. A true Bono wedding had been his wish. My eyes roamed dismissively over the Alaafin’s face. “Only in the way that matters to your people.”

He seemed shocked. Then he fell into a laughing fit so exuberant that tears came out of his eyes.

8

We stood underneath the white tarp roof of the Ooni’s tent, looking out across the white stone grounds, to the white fence that led into the palace. I could hear Tiwo’s nervous shuffling behind me. The last time I’d looked back he’d been fidgeting with the coral beads around his neck, and the time before that he was twiddling his thumbs. Debisi stood to my right, calmly poised in his short virgin iro. There were no traces of last night on the face that stared coolly at the opening gates. Unfortunately, Ayisha and the Iyo contingent had already made their leave earlier in the morning. My sweet girl was on her way to Ikeja, the Bono village that bordered Nuri. The Ooni stood beside me and beside him, my pregnant mother. We still hadn’t spoken. I was beginning to think that she was avoiding me. I was worried for her, I didn’t think it was smart of her to get in the middle of her husband and the Ooni’s feud, but she hadn’t yet granted me an audience to say this. Mother could be quite adamant when she wished to be. I just hoped she knew what she was doing. The Ooni’s olori did not join us. Which left the Alaafin and his olori standing beside my mother.

Every time our eyes met that morning, I was reminded of the fact that he’d led his brother to spy on me and Ayisha in my bathroom and he hadn’t joined his brother in apologizing. Perhaps I was giving Debisi too much credit, but I couldn’t fight the feeling that he wasn’t the type to go around peeping. I was almost completely certain that he hadn’t known of the loose tile in my bathroom before that night. His brother had pointed it out to him.

My gaze drifted to the Alaafin’s wife. She’d been pleasantly deferential to me all morning. There were no more hateful glares being sent my way. Whenever our eyes met, she bowed her head. Something about her change in moods made my hackles rise. Her behavior yesterday was what I would expect. Considering what the purpose of this meeting was, I would have expected her to sit it out. I could not see how my paying reparations for the dead slave in person wouldn’t chafe at her when I hadn’t been willing to do the same for her father.

But then, there were many things I was starting to find odd about the Bono court. The Alaafin’s wife, the Ooni’s heir, even the princes’ reaction to my mother was curious. From what I’d seen in the Ooni’s treatment of my mother, it looked as if he’d demoted his own wife and exalted mother to that position in all but name. But neither Debisi nor the Alaafin seemed to be bothered by this. If another woman had moved in with my father while my mother was pushed to the background, I would not have let the matter lie until my father sent the woman away, pregnant or not. Why did no one seem to care about my mother’s presence here?

A set of four strapping Bono horses pulled an elegant white carriage into the palace. It was a large carriage, the type that I would expect only a wealthy Alake to own. White lace drapes covered the windows, blocking the view of the carriage’s inhabitants. The driver, an albino man in a white trouser and shirt set, pulled at the horses’ reins. They came to a stop a few feet away from the white table and the closed coffin that rested on it.

Two male servants sat up front with the driver. They climbed down and wound their way around to open the doors to the carriage and let down the steps. The inhabitants emerged. If their coloring wasn’t enough to give away their identity, the black they wore did. It was strange to see Bono’s with colored skin.

They were a family of five. The father, a man who appeared to be in his late forties, came down one side, holding the hand of a young, teenaged girl. An older woman, also in her late forties, came out the other side and a boy, who appeared to be around eighteen, followed after her, and behind him came a woman, who looked to be of an age with me. They were all dressed in white, it would have been an insult to visit the Ooni’s palace dressed in anything other than that, but the gele wrappers the men tied around their neck and the women on their heads, were black. It was a show of their mourning.

This was the slave’s family.

Their wealth was evident in the quality of their clothes, in their bearing, in the grandeur of the carriage they’d rolled in on, and in the servants they’d brought with them. Four of them marched stolidly towards us. While their clothes showed their mourning, their faces did not. The youngest girl, on the other hand, had shimmering eyes and a hand over her mouth. She stopped beside the coffin and then broke down into tears. Her father tried to pull her forward but she would not budge, then she broke away from her father’s hold and ran back to the carriage. A servant accompanied her.

“What do you think the chances are that her display of grief was a performance put on for our benefit?” Tiwo whispered the question to me.

Debisi heard. He turned around and fixed a look of such calm disapproval on my brother that Tiwo actually apologized.

“Ignore my brother,” I whispered to Debisi, “he gets inappropriate when he’s nervous, and right now, he’s very nervous.”

Debisi turned to stare at me. It was the first time since last night that he’d met my gaze. He’d been doing a lot of looking just a fraction to the left or right of my eyes. He nodded and I couldn’t help but feel a little proud at the fact that he didn’t blush. He was getting over his uneasiness around me. He turned back to face my brother. “It will be alright,” he said, in a firm voice.

“Do you really think so?” Tiwo asked. He’d refused the assurance from me, but he seemed a little too eager to take it from Debisi. Not that I could blame him, there was something reassuring about Debisi’s confidence on this issue. At the end of the day, he was Bono and he knew his people and their customs better than I did.

Debisi nodded calmly. “They will not dare do or say anything that could upset my father. It will be a matter of ceremony, they will accept moneys in reparation and thank Tanose for honoring them by delivering the corpse in person.”

Tanose? I eyed him. When had we gotten to a first name basis? But Tiwo exhaled and for the first time that morning he stopped his nervous twitching, and so I let the prince’s slip go.

“Thank you, your highness,” Tiwo muttered.

Debisi flushed. “Just Debisi, please.”

The grieving family drew to a stop in front of the tent. “Your highness,” they greeted as they went down on their knees in front of the Ooni.

“Rise,” the Ooni commanded.

They did. It was the man who spoke. His wife stood beside him and their two children behind them. “Thank you, your highness, you’ve honored us by welcoming us in person. It is an honor we do not deserve.”

“We are here to welcome you at our daughter, the Oba of Isan’s, request.”

Now that the Ooni mentioned me, the family turned to face me. The man’s gaze chilled when it fell on me. I looked into his cold eyes and knew that Debisi’s words were more than a little optimistic. This man would not be thanking me.

“Revered,” he bowed to me, “you honor us.” It sounded as if he’d pushed the words out grudgingly through clenched teeth.

“It is we who are honored,” I stated aloud, reverting to the ceremonial plural.

The man’s hateful glare turned to one of contempt as he bowed to Debisi. I noticed that and stiffened in outrage on Debisi’s behalf. Debisi, for his part, remained as cool and unaffected as he’d appeared before.

“Let us go inside and discuss these matters,” the Ooni said, in that natural bellow of his.

I couldn’t help but note that while the sugar merchant had been contemptuous in his assessment of Debisi, he tripped over himself to appear deferential to the Alaafin. They walked behind us, and so I could hear the sweetness in his voice. It was saccharine, just as his son’s had been on the night of the feast, after he’d scorned my brother’s advances. I suppose it made sense, the Alaafin was heir, he would be Ooni after his father, he was the right one to suck up to.

We made our way back to the Ooni’s white parlor and sat at the head of the room. Again, the Ooni demanded that I sit beside him and Debisi beside me. My gaze was on the sugar merchant when the Ooni made this request, and the sugar merchant stood bowed beside the Alaafin, and so I was in the perfect position to watch the tightening of the Alaafin’s features. Then he noticed I was watching him, and the anger faded, he smirked at me and bowed.

“I’m afraid yours isn’t the only brother who acts inappropriately when he’s…nervous,” Debisi whispered into my ear as I watched the Alaafin sit.

I turned to face him. “What does your brother have to be nervous about?”

He held my gaze for a while. I don’t know how long we stared at each other, or why I let the silent exchange go on as long as it did, but I found myself unwilling to look away until he did. His eyes flicked downwards. “It is an honor for a prince to be seated beside the Ooni during a formal engagement.”

Ah, a little sibling rivalry. Moments like this made me so grateful for the family I’d been born into and raised in. Our father had never let politics or ambitions come between Tiwo and I. He’d chosen an heir and taught us both in different ways what service to our nation demanded of us. “You are not seated beside the Ooni,” I pointed out, “I am, and you are seated beside me.”

I was not unaware of how condescending the words came out. I suppose there was a part of me that wanted to see his reaction. He smiled. “Yes, revered, an equal honor.”

I chuckled at that, then I turned and found that Debisi and I had become the focus of the entire room. They were silently watching our exchange, probably because the Ooni was doing it, with a smug grin on his face. I noticed again the tightening of the Alaafin’s features and the clutch of his fists, I supposed now he was upset that the attention had turned to Debisi instead of him. What a petty little bugger. I wanted to take Debisi away and shield him from this Bono court and his jealous brother. Really, what did Taiso have to be jealous of? He was the heir. But Debisi was doing just fine, he sat still with his face expressionless, staring into the room and the seats that were now filled with Isan and Bono nobles.

“What did I say?” the Ooni belted out, very satisfied with himself, “a perfect match.” I wanted to punch him in his smiling face, but then he sobered, and a sheen of tears filled his eyes. “Netite should have lived to see this.”

I did not even know that I was doing it, until my hands held his wrinkled one in mine. Something in my heart broke at the way he’d mentioned my father’s name with the shroud of grief over his features. The tears in his eyes. He’d loved my father. Perhaps there was more to his relationship with my mother, more to him. He patted my hands with his, smiling down at me and that look, combined with his smell, was all too familiar. It reminded me of my father. I released his hand and looked away.

The Ooni cleared his throat and turned his attention back to the merchant’s family. The parents sat between the Alaafin and his wife, and their children sat on the sofa beside theirs with young Bono nobles I didn’t know. My brother sat on another sofa beside ours, with Isan nobles. My tumblers stood at several positions throughout the room, spaced between Bono palace guards. The Ooni was in a rush to get the matter over. There was something candid about the way he plowed ahead. I wasn’t sure that if I was the mother of a grieving child I would appreciate the way he belted out his desire to get the ‘unfortunate matter’ settled, but you could always tell from the Ooni’s open features that he did not mean ill. He reminded me so much of my father that I could almost like him, if he wasn’t having an open affair with my mother.

Tiwo rose. He turned to face the grieving family and explained to them what happened to lead to their son’s demise. Tiwo wasn’t good under pressure. He’d had a speech memorized, and he recited that, the fight, the struggle, his push, the slave falling, bashing his head, and bleeding to death. But the boy’s family pushed for more. They wanted to know where it happened, and when Tiwo answered, they wanted to know what their son was doing alone with Tiwo in his room. As soon as Tiwo confessed to his sexual relationship with the slave, the merchants pulled back. They flung denunciations at my brother, accusing him of coercing the slave.

“There are witnesses,” I stated calmly.

They looked even more disgusted. “Witnesses to the act?” the mother sounded appalled.

I nodded simply.

“Who are these witnesses?” the father demanded.

I tipped my head back towards Eghe and Mede. “Our tumblers, our personal guard. We set them to watch our brother because it had been an unnerving night for him.”

The man hissed. “They would lie if you asked them to. My son would never kneel to anyone. He would never play the role of slave.”

“There are Isan nobles here who saw us with your son. They saw him play the role of slave. And before you say that he was coerced, remember that we ran into a clearing and killed a man who tried to coerce your son. Your son knew how to use the Isan slave’s prerogative. If he was being coerced by us, would he not have used the slave’s prerogative when he served us?”

“Am I supposed to trust your word?” the man spat the words at me as if they were filled with vitriol.

“You will trust her word! She is my daughter and you will not insult her in my presence!” The Ooni boomed, surprising me by rushing to my defense.

@tunjilomo lol I won't say a word either. Million elbow bumps received and shared

@dawno2008 thank you thank you, you're making me blush

@cassbeat it's coming

kelsmic:
Cant wait...alright flying over to get a prime time!

Great! Let me know what you think

7

“Revered.”

I spread out my arms and let the Bono servants dress me in my evening robe. The material was light and airy in the clammy heat. One of them walked over to stand in front of me and tied the sash of the robe in a pretty knot. The other reached from behind and rearranged the black material until it fully covered my body. The servants were young women, about as old as I was. Virgins, from their dresses, and both with bleached skin.

“Is it always this hot here?”

“Yes, revered,” the one in front replied, keeping her head bowed, “but we can stay and fan you to sleep.”

I smiled at that. “No, that won’t be necessary, just leave the windows open.”

The door to my room opened, and a girl with her hair sheared off, walked in, dressed in a white robe, and a bead collar. She kept her head bent while she fiddled with the belt in her robe. Then she pulled it open and let the sheer material drop to the ground, revealing that she was pleasantly naked underneath it.

The Bono servants gasped. They stepped back from me and made a sign in front of themselves, as if to ward off evil mami wata spirits.

“Leave us,” I ordered. They could not obey my order fast enough. These servants had obviously been trained in the Isan customs. Through out the time they attended me, in my room and the adjoining bathroom, they kept their bodies facing me. Now, as they scurried away, they did it without once turning their backs. Not all the servants, and even nobles, in the Bono court adhered to our Isan customs as these ones did.

I waited till they were gone, then I walked toward the kneeling girl. I ran my hand over her smoothly shaved scalp. “I don’t think your future husband will appreciate this.”

She tipped her head up, levelling those mystifying eyes on me. “He will not mind mistress.”

I’d met with the Sehzade and I approved of him. He was dominant without being domineering, which meant that my sweetly submissive Ayisha would find pleasure in their bed.

I let the corners of my lips tip downwards. “I did not send for you,” I scolded.

Her lips parted. She closed her mouth and swallowed. “You said that I would get my reward.”

I eyed her, flicking my gaze like a lash, from her breasts to her slightly parted thighs, then back to her face. I let the furrows form on my forehead and the corners of my lips dropped even further. I made sure there was no compassion in my gaze. She shivered. “And you decided it was your place to presume upon me?”

Ayisha shook her head. “Forgive me, mistress, I know better.”

“Yes, you do,” I snapped, “or at the very least you should.”

Her bottom lip shook. “We are leaving tomorrow for Nuri. We’ll be married as soon as we reach the Nuri nation. I don’t know when next I’ll see you.”

“And that excuses your appalling behavior?”

She shook her head frantically. “No, mistress.”

I turned my back on her. I waited until I was certain she couldn’t see my face before I let the smile out. Then I forced it back down. “I’m going to have to punish you.”

Her sharp inhale was loud enough to hear. “Yes, please, mistress,” there was a slight tremor in her voice.

I turned back around to face her, mindful of the eyes she had fixed on my face, watching, waiting. “Tell me what you want, my love.”

“Pleasure, mistress,” she blurted out. I quirked an eyebrow. “And pain,” she added, hastily.

“Go into the bathroom and wait for me.”

She rose and walked in the direction I pointed her to with the slight gesturing of my head. The bathroom wasn’t perfect for this, but it would do. I almost wished I was back in Isan. While Isan had a pleasure chamber with rooms built to my specifications, it did not have Ayisha. I walked towards my red trunk and dug through it for the essentials. It wasn’t as if I’d been planning on staying in Bono long enough to play, but on the off chance that I had the opportunity to visit one of the Bono dens of iniquity, I’d come prepared. I reached for the purse with the clamps and chains and pulled out a short leather whip.

“Mede.”

The door opened again, and this time Mede walked in. She glanced at the items in my hand and blinked. “Yes, revered,” her voice sounded a little unsteady…or perhaps it was just wishful thinking on my part.

“No one comes in. We wouldn’t want anyone interrupting my time with the princess.”

She bowed, “as you wish, revered.” Her eyes dropped to the whip, then she looked away.

“Eghe can stand guard alone if you want to join,” I tried to convey the promise of carnal pleasure in a sultry tone.

She scoffed. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

I shrugged. “Suit yourself,” I said, walking out of the room. Faint sounds of her chuckling followed me until I shut the door to the bathroom. I slammed it shut for the pleasure of seeing Ayisha jump.

The bathroom was quite ordinary for a royal adjunction. It had a small pool of water, about twelve feet in radius, and several small, leather beds. There was a wooden stove to the side, with an empty censer, for burning mild sedatives. Some of those sedatives were wonderful aphrodisiacs. There were several pillars throughout the room. The only thing odd about this bathroom was that everything in it was white. Which, I suppose, for the Bono wasn’t odd at all.

My girl knelt between two pillars. She turned as soon as she heard the door slam, and now she watched my approach with quiet anticipation. I took my time. By the time I reached her, her chest was quite visibly rising and falling. I placed the purse and the whip on a leather bed.

“Rise.”

She did.

“Arms up.” I walked over to her and stretched her arms out till her palms were spread out flat against the stone. “I don’t have restraints, but I don’t need them, do I?”

She shook her head. “No mistress,” her voice came out breathy and more than a little unsteady.

“No,” I agreed, “because if you bring your hands down, I will be very disappointed.” I placed my hand on her belly and smirked at her quick inhale. I walked behind her, drawing my flesh against hers as I moved. My hand trailed up her stomach to cup her breast. Her nipple was already pebbled before I rolled it between my thumb and forefinger. I put my foot between hers and pushed slightly on the right. “Wider, my love,” I whispered into her ear.

She closed her eyes and spread her legs.

Then I heard something. Not my sweet girl’s pants of arousal, but a foreign sound, one that didn’t belong in that room with us. It was the sound of solid objects scraping against each other, like wood sliding along wood. Like the opening of a door. Had Mede decided to take me up on my offer? That would be a first. I turned, but the door to the room remained closed. I looked around the bathroom. There was no one else there.

I took my attention back to Ayisha. My hand trailed back down her body, to the curls on her pubis. I slipped my finger through her wet folds and chuckled. “Already wet for me.”

“Yes, mistress,” she panted.

I pinched her inner lips sharply. She knew better than to respond to a comment. Only direct questions. Then I pushed my particularly long middle finger into her. She was tight. I kept going deeper and she froze when the tip of my finger met with an obstruction.

“Is your husband expecting a virgin?” I teased, pushing lightly on that flesh.

She let out a strangled cry of protest, but she clamped around my finger, holding it in. Such a contrary girl.

“Answer me.”

“Yes, mistress,” she replied.

I pushed again, exerting just a little bit of pressure on her hymen. We’d played this game many times before, and every time her fear made her wetter. “We’d better not disappoint him,” I said, pulling my finger out. Then I walked back in front of her so that she could watch me lick my finger clean. She tilted slightly towards me.

I heard another sound. It was part gasp, part groan. There were two things interesting about that sound. The first was that it came from two different voices. The second was that none of those voices belonged to Ayisha. I knew then that we were being watched.

I swore underneath my breath and swiveled. I turned in the direction of the voices and immediately caught what my previous cursory glance had overlooked. There was a small slot in the wall, created from a loose tile. Two distinct eyes held my gaze.

“A moment, my love,” I whispered to Ayisha. I was enough of a Viewer to not judge the instinct in others, but I always asked for the courtesy of obtaining my permission first.

I turned away from her.

I took a step toward the hole in the wall and the eyes pulled back. “Cowards,” I called out, once I saw the tile sliding back into place. “Why don’t you stay there and face me?” The sound of hastily retreating footsteps was the only response I got. I walked over to the tile and pushed it out. The hole revealed a dimly lit corridor. The watchers had already fled too far away for me to see them, but from the look of the walkway, it appeared to be a hidden passage, the kind designed for the court to flee in case of an emergency. I placed the tile back.

“We were being spied on,” I said to Ayisha. I stroked her face while I said it, so that she could stay at least partially, in the sexual fog I’d managed to create before. “Would you like me to stop?”

Her eyes took on a pleading despair. “No, mistress, please.”

I ran my knuckles down her cheek. The hole had been behind her, so our peepers wouldn’t know her identity, it was only my identity that had been exposed.

“Please, mistress, I need this one night.”

I leaned forward and allowed myself a taste of her lips. No tongue, not yet, just a slight brush of my lips on hers. She groaned and her lips pulled apart, giving me access. I pulled back. “Okay, my love.” I let my fingers move from her face, down her neck, to the hard nipples, begging for my attention. Then I bent and sucked one of those nipples into my mouth. I laved the nip with my tongue.

A knock on the bathroom door pulled my attention away before I could do any more.

I stepped back, letting the nipple fall from my mouth. Ayisha whined at the loss.

“What is it?” I asked, irritated.

“I’m sorry for the interruption, revered, his royal highness, the Alake of Ibadan, requests your presence. He says it is urgent.” Mede’s tentative voice came through the door.

What did Debisi want? “Tell him I will come to him when I am free.”

I heard an exchange of whispered words and then Mede’s, “he says he is not a coward, that he is here to face you.”

For some reason it took some time for the meaning of those words to register with me. I realized then, that in the day I had spent with him, I had come to think of Debisi as honorable. So, it was not easy to associate Debisi with the dishonorable peeping I had witnessed. I frowned and a million punishments came to my mind. Then I had to remind myself that he was not my slave, he wasn’t mine to punish.

“I’m sorry to do this,” I spoke softly to Ayisha, “but I have to go and see him. I will be back.”

She nodded, then her lips slowly bent into a grin, “I’ll just have to think of a way to occupy myself while I wait.”

“Feel free to ‘occupy’ yourself. As long as you do it without taking your hands off those pillars.”

“Yes, mistress.”

I kissed her then I left.

Mede stood beside the bathroom door, and a red-necked Debisi stood in front of her. He looked different without his glasses. With the glasses and the ruffled hair, he’d looked like a scholar. Without the glasses he looked a little too much like a fallen angel.

“You know,” I remarked, “I would have let you watch if you’d simply asked. You didn’t need to spy on me.”

He looked mortified. He was dressed in a white galabia with a slit down the top that showed a sprinkling of creamy-white chest hair. He fumbled in his pocket and then pulled out a pair of glasses that he hastily cleaned.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I did not mean to spy…” he paused and swallowed, “I mean, Tai…I, thought,” Tai, his little slip provided a clue to his spying partner. He shook his head. “It does not matter what we…I thought, I was wrong.”

At least he had the courage to come in here and apologize. I turned to Mede and nodded. She bowed and retreated from the room. Then I walked closer to the prince and ran my finger down his exposed chest. He lurched, his wide eyes snapping up to me. The red crept up from his neck.

“Is this what you do to keep yourself fresh,” I asked, “you jerk off watching others doing what you’ve sworn to never do?”

He frowned. “Jerk off?”

So, he was going to play coy. The smile I gave him wasn’t exactly pleasant. He tried to take a step back, but I wrapped my hand around his cock before he could. Then he froze.

“What are you doing?” he sounded terrified.

I stroked him through the thin fabric of his galabia. My grip on him ran from the head to the base, hit his balls, and went back up. “I’m demonstrating what it means to jerk off.”

“Please stop.”

“Why? You obviously like it.” I’d never seen a man as old as Debisi get hard that quickly. If I didn’t slow down, he’d come, after just three strokes. Maybe he really was a virgin. “Isn’t this what you were doing while you watched.”

“No! Please, stop. This is ungodly.”

“But it is not ungodly to watch.”

“I’ve said I’m sorry. Now, please, stop.”

I released my hold on him and he withdrew. He didn’t stop retreating until his back hit the door. He closed his eyes and muttered. My gaze travelled down to his erection and then up to his face. He was all red. He cleared his throat and fiddled with his glasses. “Why did you do that?” his gaze rested a few inches to the left of where I stood.

“Didn’t you like it?” I teased.

He frowned. It was cute. His eyebrows drew together as if he was in deep thought while his cock stood at full mast.

“Our tenet of verdure forbids carnal pleasure of any kind before marriage. I have kept myself fresh for y…” he cleared his throat, cutting himself off, but it wasn’t too hard to complete his sentence.

“So why were you spying on me?”

He fiddled with his glasses. “If we are to be married, I think that I should know what interests you.” The coloring in his cheek darkened. “I did not believe what I had been told…that is, when I was told that an Isan slave was seen coming to your room, and a female,” he spat the word, ‘female’ out as if it had a bad taste, “I wanted to see for myself.”

I turned my back on him, suddenly irritated with him, his brother, his family, and his entire nation of ‘verdure’, for all the ways they sought to curtail my pleasure. “Feel free to tell your father to call off whatever betrothal plans he’s made.” I could never marry someone who would seek to make me feel ashamed for being myself.

I walked away.

“Stop, please, I did not mean to offend you. You are Isan, your ways are different from ours.” He rushed through the words then mumbled, “I do not want to call off the betrothal.”

We were not betrothed, but since I was the one who’d used the word first, I wouldn’t haggle over it now. Besides, I’d had enough of the prince. There was a sweet girl waiting patiently for me. She did not look on what we had with scorn. She found pleasure in the service she gave to me. For this one night, she deserved all I planned to give her. The pain and the pleasure, the fear and the arousal, and the ecstasy when I finally let her come. All of it.

“Can I stay?” A quiet, uncertain, voice called out from behind me. Then the voice firmed. “I want to stay. I want to watch.” The confidence in his voice faded and he finished in a small voice, “you said you’d let me if I asked.”

“Why?” I didn’t turn around.

“I want to know you.” It was the pleading in his voice that made me consider his request. He was lucky my girl was an exhibitionist, and that I was suddenly in the mood to play with two toys. I wouldn’t touch him again, far be it for me to violate his tenet of verdure, but I could enjoy watching a pure Bono prince’s reaction to my play.

I turned around. “Okay,” I bent my head towards the bathroom, “Come.”

This time the hostility she showed me almost matched that which she’d directed at her husband. “The Oza you killed,” she snapped.

Tiwo groaned. He opened his mouth and I knew he was going to do something stupid, like confess.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted out before he could speak.

“You’re sorry you killed an unarmed man after welcoming him into your nation with assurances of safety?”

“He tried to rape a slave. We fought and I had to defend myself.”

“I’ve heard of the legendary fighting prowess of the Oba of Isan, trained as a tumbler, hailed in war. You could not disarm an old man without killing him?” her words dripped with scorn.

I felt completely unprepared for this. It was one thing to tell my story to old Nuri men, it was another entirely to lie to a dead man’s daughter. I found myself aping my earlier words, “he tried to rape a slave. He desecrated our calling.”

Her face tightened with rage and she spat her words at me with the venom of a viper. “My father would never…”

“That’s enough,” the Alaafin cut her off. “You are being rude to our royal guest. Your father deserved his fate, he insulted the Egbabonelimwin masquerade by attempting to defile a slave. You Nuri think that you can do whatever you please, defiling the flesh, insulting the masquerades, well this time you were stopped. Now apologize to the Oba and remove yourself from here.”

She dropped to her knees in front of me and bent her forehead to the floor as a Nuri slave would. For some reason, the obeisance she made reminded me of the way the Bono slave had bowed to beg forgiveness. It was a chilling comparison.

“Forgive me, revered, your actions were justified,” there was a tremor in her voice.

I shook my head. It was wrong. The whole thing was wrong. She was a daughter grieving her father, she had every right to face her father’s killer. She was entitled to her anger, and to her grief. If I’d known that the Oza had a daughter in Bono court, I would have come here ready to make reparations. No matter how justified the killing, she was entitled to some sort of explanation.

I stood up and rushed forward, bending to lift her up. Before I could touch her, the Alaafin snapped, “now get out!” She crawled backwards, a good distance away, then she stood up and ran out of the hall.

I remained standing, staring in the direction she’d fled in. Then my irate gaze turned on the Alaafin. His hatred of the Nuri was obvious in the way he’d spoken. But she was his wife, how could he talk to her like that? He, more than anyone, should understand her rights to reparation. He should have sent word to me to let me know that she was here. I should have been prepared. I opened my mouth, prepared to rain down my anger on him, but then he stood up.

“I apologize,” he said, “I am poor company now.” Then he left before I could vent my rage.

The whole exchange left a bitter taste in my mouth.

I sat down, but it wasn’t enough, I needed to vent my anger, and the only one left I could pour it out on was Debisi. I turned on him. His eyes widened and he drew back, away from me. “Why wasn’t I told that the Oza’s daughter was here?”

Debisi blinked at me as if he was having trouble understanding what I’d said. Then he seemed to force himself to sit upright. He took his glasses off his face and averted his gaze as he wiped the lenses with his shirt. “This is the first time that I have heard Neka speak that way about her father’s death. When I offered her condolences, she told me that her father had shamed himself and that his death was justified. I am sure she told my father the same thing. We did not think that she blamed you, as such, there was no need for reparations.”

I frowned at him. When he put his glasses back on, I could see the effort he exerted in forcing himself to hold my gaze. I sighed. “I’m sorry, I should not have snapped at you.”

His mouth popped open. He cleared his throat. “You’re…” he frowned, “apologizing?”

There was just something about his nervousness that I found unbelievably cute. I smiled wryly, “yes, I tend to do that when I’m wrong.”

“Oh,” he said. The frown remained on his face, and a red flush crept up his neck. “What do I say?”

“You accept my apology.”

He nodded, then he smiled, and I realized it was the first time he’d done that. He had a dimple. I was a sucker for dimples. “Apology accepted.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry if I appeared…” he paused, as if at a loss for words.

“Flummoxed?” I helpfully provided.

He nodded and his dimple got deeper. “Yes, uhm,” he cleared his throat, “I am not used to royals apologizing to me.”

Giving what I’d just observed of his brother, that wasn’t surprising. “You’re a royal,” I pointed out.

He shrugged. “Only a small one.”

I chuckled.

“You have a beautiful smile,” he said, then the red travelled from his neck to his cheeks. He looked away.

I decided to take pity on him and turn my attention away. I turned to face Tiwo who was rolling his eyes, shaking his head, and smiling like a goof. Ayisha smiled too, but not anywhere as annoyingly as my brother.

“I was thinking,” Debisi spoke up, “I mean, about your dilemma, your majesty…”

“Just call me Ayisha,” she interrupted, “I’m not good with all the formality.”

He nodded and I couldn’t help but notice that he did not appear unsettled by her. He did not blush when she smiled at him or appear even the slightest bit frazzled. So it was only me he found unnerving. Interesting.

“Well, Ayisha, is there anyone else you could marry?” His gaze turned to me and the blush returned, “I mean any man, you could marry?” He forced his gaze back to Ayisha. “One that your father wouldn’t disapprove of?”

“Well,” Ayisha’s brows pulled together, “there is a Sehzade, the only son of the Sultan of Sokoto. He is part of my escort to Nuri. Sokoto is the largest city-state in the Iyo empire, so my father would not disapprove of the match. The Sehzade is a childhood friend of mine. He says he loves me.”

“But you do not return his feelings?”

She shook her head and her gaze turned to me. “I like him, I like him more than most men, but I have only ever loved once.”

I smiled at her. “Unfortunately, your father won’t approve of me.”

Her face lit up. “But he would. He likes you Tan...”

“As a friend for his princess perhaps…”

“And a match with the Isan nation is much better than one with Nuri.” She forged ahead.

“Wait a minute!” Debisi’s voice was the strongest I had ever heard it. He frowned at Ayisha and there was a real sense of wrath in the icy look he gave her. For the first time since we met, I saw a glimpse of steel behind his outward appearance. “Are you trying to steal my intended?”

I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing. The laughter just fizzled out of nowhere and it poured out of me. I laughed so hard my stomach hurt.

“My sister loves you Ayisha,” Tiwo said, speaking over my guffaws, “but she needs an heir.”

“You could always provide the heir,” Ayisha stated, reasonably.

Tiwo was stunned. “And who says I want to get married? I am not Oba. Thankfully, the job of providing heirs does not fall to me.”

The conversation seemed to be getting more and more ridiculous. I decided to help it along in that direction. “Mede?” I tipped my head upwards, turning my gaze on the tumblers who were trying very hard to appear as though they could not hear every word of our conversation. “Would you provide heirs so that I can marry Ayisha?”

Mede chuckled. “Unfortunately, I do not have any royal blood.”

“Not even a drop?”

“Not even that.”

I groaned. “Well then,” I turned a lascivious gaze on Eghe that started on his painted face and ended in his penis. Then I retraced directions and waggled my eyebrows at him. “Looks like it’s all up to you Eghe.”

“Sorry, revered, as much as it pains me to fail you, I must confess to the same lack of royal blood as Mede.”

It was the straightness of his face while he spoke that sent us all over the edge. This time we all laughed. Mede managed to do it only shaking her shoulders and Eghe’s shoulders didn’t shake but his lips trembled. Tiwo threw his head over the back of his couch and belted out his guffaws. Ayisha chuckled and nervous Debisi laughed so hard he had to wipe the tears from his eyes.

“Fine,” Ayisha said, once the laughter subsided, “it will have to be the Sehzade.”

“Well,” Debisi said, “if you’re sure, then you can continue along on your journey to Nuri. Once you get there, go to the shrine of the Ijele masquerade and swear a love match. In the Nulin nations, a love match is irrefutable. The Eze will have no choice but to send you back to your father with his congratulations and wedding gifts, since you consummated your love in his nation.”

I regarded Debisi in a new light. The plan was genius. He was right, if there was one thing the five masquerades were united on, it was a true love bond. No person in the Nulin nation would insult or do anything to defile a love match. The Eze might be a monster, but the fact that he was yet to go to war with Bono, at least showed that he was a rational one. He would not insult the masquerades by even appearing to be affronted by the match, especially not if it was sworn to in a shrine of the masquerade of his nation.

“There’s only one problem,” I said, “you don’t love him.”

Ayisha shrugged. “He’s a very nice man, and I do like him. If I have to marry a man, then I cannot think of a better one. As long as I can still visit you every once in a while?”

“Oh, love, I would insist upon it.”

“Then what more could I ask for?” she grinned at me. Then she turned her attention to Debisi who was now staring warily at her. She smiled at him. “I’m not trying to steal her anymore. Can we be friends again?”

He regarded her for a while, then he nodded with the solemnity of a monarch bestowing imperial favor.

“Thank you!” She climbed over me and kissed him on his cheek. Now, that made him blush.

It was good to see the worry eased off her. But I would have to meet this Sehzade and make sure that she wasn’t going from the frying pan to the fire. My gaze drifted towards Debisi.

His eyes were narrowed studiously on me.

I turned to face him and stroked his face without even thinking about it.

He jumped, then he relaxed, but red colored his skin.

“What is it?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “Nothing,” he rearranged his glasses as he seemed to do whenever he grew nervous. Then he returned my assessing gaze. “You are not what I was told, I mean,” he cleared his throat, “you are not what I expected.”

I found myself laughing unrestrainedly for the third time that afternoon.

6

“Mistress.”

The soft voice, whispered into my ear, dulled the sound of static vibrating through my head. The acrid dryness receded from my mouth and I felt like for the first time since I’d discovered the news of my mother’s royal affair, I could breathe. How had she gotten so careless as to have a baby with a man who wasn’t her husband? And not just any man, but the Ooni, her husband’s biggest enemy. I thought back to the way that the Ooni had greeted me, the way he’d wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into a bear hug, the way he’d called me ‘daughter’. Had he done all of those things thinking that I knew of the relationship he shared with my mother? He’d been so casual about calling her ‘iyawo’, he wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t think I knew. I gritted my teeth. Mother…

“Mistress?”

I let the prodding of that sweet voice pull me away from my mother and thoughts of her mental state.

Ahead of me, male and female dancers, properly dressed in the short iros of virgins, danced to traditional Bono tunes. A group of servants approached us. They placed white stools in front of us and then filled those stools with glass cups and a large platter of spicy meats.

I turned my head, the advent of a smile already coloring my face, as my eyes locked on the beauty that had whispered into my ear. There was only one person who called me mistress.

“Ayisha,” the words drifted from my mouth like a prayer.

“Mistress,” she bit her bottom lip and then dropped to her knees, holding my gaze as she knelt. She kept her hair cut short, a tribute to me and the year she’d spent in my nation as my slave. Her short hair was a point of contention in her family, but she was surprisingly obstinate in refusing to give in to her parents’ demands. My eyes trailed over her chocolate skin, darker than the honey brown of the Nuri, but not as dark as the Isan. I gazed at her long, curled eyelashes, then my eyes travelled down the slope of her flat nose, to her full brown lips. She still wore the white coral bead collar I’d gifted her. I would never forget the night I put it around her neck. She’d sworn she’d never take it off. I smiled at the long cream boubou dress she had on. How very traditional of her.

I tipped my chin up slightly and she rose.

“Your majesty, I didn’t see you there,” Debisi stuttered. He rushed to his feet and bowed to Ayisha. “Please, come, sit down.”

Ayisha curtsied. “Thank you, your highness.” She rose and made her way around the couch. As she sauntered over, her tiny hips swaying beneath the baggy outline of the boubou, I watched my ‘intended’. He was ridiculously easy to fluster. While he was standing, and making his obeisance to Ayisha, his brother sat still and stared up expressionlessly at the display. The Alaafin’s gaze turned to me and his eyes scoured my face, then he smirked and turned his gaze back to Ayisha.

“Not there,” I said, when Ayisha bent to sit beside me, at Debisi’s position. She stood up immediately and turned her gaze to me, waiting. She was perfect. If only she wasn’t a Princess. If she’d been born Isan instead of Iyo. I sighed. Then I tilted my head to the other side and turned to face the Alaafin as Ayisha obediently walked to my other side, and waited for the man to move.

He frowned. “Excuse me?”

“You don’t mind, do you?” I asked, sweetly, “I believe it was your father’s intention for me to sit close to my intended.”

He stared at me. His eyes narrowed and he tilted his head to the side, observing me as if I was a puzzle he struggled to decipher. Then his white-bleached eyebrow lifted, and the corner of his lip tipped upward. He made a mocking bow to me. “Of course not, revered.” He moved further away and Ayisha sat.

I leaned close to her and whispered, “hello, my love,” then I kissed her underneath her ear.

She giggled.

I pulled back and found my gaze travelling to the prince seated beside me. He adjusted his glasses, bearing a frown which was disconcertingly similar to his brother’s. Then his eyes met mine and he looked away, like a guilty child who’d been caught pilfering meat from a pot of soup. I smiled to myself.

“Ayisha!” Tiwo exclaimed. He’d been so focused on the dancers that he’d missed her approach. “What a pleasant surprise.” He beamed at her. There were few people that Tiwo genuinely liked. Ayisha was one of them.

She smiled back at him. “It’s very good to see you again Tiwo.”

The Alaafin’s gaze travelled from me to Ayisha and then back. “How do you two know each other?”

It was none of his business, but I couldn’t miss an opportunity to see my girl flustered. “Ayisha and I spent a pleasant year together in Isan.”

Tiwo scoffed and rolled his eyes. Ayisha’s gaze lowered and then turned to me. She smiled, completely unflustered. It was Debisi who choked on his drink. I helpfully tapped him on his back to make the drink pass easier. He pulled away from me, denying my aid. Oh well, I shrugged, but I was intrigued. What meaning did he read into what I’d said? It had been a perfectly harmless statement to anyone who didn’t know the details of Ayisha and I’s relationship.

“I see,” the Alaafin eyed me. Every time he looked at me, I felt as if he was sizing me up, but for the life of me I couldn’t understand why. Not that I cared.

Tiwo cleared his throat and then gave me a warning look. I could tell that he thought I was going too far. Homosexuality was an affront to the pure people of the Bono nation. I turned my attention to the platter of food, and speared a toothpick into a particularly good looking peppered snail. I picked it up and then offered the toothpick to Ayisha, fully expecting her to take it from my fingers and feed herself. Of course, she bent and picked the snail off the pick with her mouth, her gaze locked with mine as she did it, forcing me to feed her.

Debisi gasped.

I ignored him.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Ayisha. As soon as the words left my lips, the teasing smile fell away from her face and the joy that had lit her eyes faded, as if it’d been extinguished. I frowned. I did not like to see her sad. “What’s wrong?”

“I am on my way to Nuri. My father sent me there to get married.” There was a note of despair in her voice, and her lovely eyes, filled with tears.

I couldn’t blame her. I would rather die than marry a Nuri man. Just the thought alone…thankfully I was Oba, decider of my fate, no one could make me marry anyone.

“Marry who?” Tiwo asked.

Her lips turned down. Even frowning she was sexy. “The Eze.”

If I was drinking, I would have spat the liquid out. “What?”

She nodded morosely. Her gaze turned down to the hands she held together in her lap. “He is terrible, Tan, despicable. The things I’ve heard about him.” She shivered.

Ayisha’s father was the emperor of Iyo. The Iyo empire was a vast conglomerate of over twenty city-states, each with their own monarch, who swore fealty to the emperor. I did not want to think of politics when Ayisha was so clearly suffering, but the idea of the Eze of Nuri bound by marriage to the Iyo empire, was a thought even less appealing than being married to a Nuri. The power that the Eze would wield.

Tiwo’s eyes met and held mine.

The Eze was too powerless now to seek revenge for what happened to the Oza, but if he had the military might of the Iyo empire behind him, I shuddered to think of the havoc he could cause.

“I wonder, revered,” the Alaafin drawled, “if you’ve heard what the Eze did to the delegates that you sent back with his uncle’s corpse.”

I held his gaze. “What did he do?”

He shook his head. “He beheaded them and left one of their heads on a spike in front of his palace.” The Alaafin bent, seemingly unaware of the wide-eyed look Ayisha fixed on him. He picked up a piece of peppered kpomo and tossed it into his mouth. He chewed slowly, taking his time to lean back against the back of the couch, before delivering his conclusion, “he beheaded them with his own cutlass. Did it right there in the middle of his throne room. A few of the old men wet themselves waiting for their turn.”

Ayisha gasped. She turned to me and grasped my hands in hers. “You have to help me, Tan, please, I can’t marry him, he’s a monster.” She’d always looked at me like that, believing that I could do anything.

“Oh, you have no idea. Iyawo mi, tell her,” the Alaafin instructed.

I’d forgotten about the Alaafin’s wife. She’d glared at me from the moment I was introduced to her, but now she cast her hateful look on her husband. The animosity in her gaze far outweighed that which she’d sent my way. She clenched her hand and the toothpick she was holding snapped. Then the Alaafin rose his gaze to hers and the hatred faded as if it had simply been wiped away. She looked subservient and even ducked her head shyly. He cleared his throat with the arrogance of one who hated to repeat himself, and the words poured forth from his wife’s mouth.

“He is a monster,” she said. The words sounded rehearsed, but feeling was injected to it the more she spoke. “He is an abusive rapist. Nothing makes him happier than to hear a woman’s cries of pain. It arouses him to make them bleed. To hear them begging him for mercy.” By the end of her speech, I could hear the tremor of fear in her voice, and I felt sorry for her.

Tiwo frowned. “How would you know this?”

She rose her head and stared, surprisingly, at me. “The Eze of Nuri is my cousin.”

A panicked sob escaped from Ayisha’s lips. I looked at the misery in her gaze and I knew what she was thinking. Her hands clenched tighter around mine and then she released my hand and receded into herself. She forced the emotions away from her face. “He is my lot.” She said, resigned. I shook my head.

Ayisha was a masochist. It was a part of herself that she’d been struggling with when we met. I’d tried to teach her that it was okay for her to need what she did, and in the end, I really did believe that she’d learnt. But now I could see the familiar patterns forming again. She thought that she deserved a monster like the Eze Neka described. Even after all this time, there was still a part of her that hated the pain she craved and believed she deserved to be punished for it. I could tell that she thought the Eze was her punishment.

Now she’d zoned out.

I leaned back and turned my head so that I could whisper to her. “Come back to me, my love.” That didn’t get to her. We’d been apart for too long, once upon a time it would have. “You are beautiful, an angel,” I whispered the cajolements I would have used on her in the past, “you were made this way, and who you are is perfect. We are sublime in our own spectrum, aren’t we?” She craned her head slightly towards me, the first sign that anything I’d said had registered with her. “Answer me girl,” I added a touch of steel to my tone and she nodded. “You were made special for someone like me, and I praise the masquerade everyday that you exist. You are my gift and the only thing you deserve is a reward.”

“A reward,” the words drifted out underneath her breath.

“Yes, my love, a reward. That is all you deserve.”

“I don’t deserve a monster,” she said.

“No, my love.”

“I don’t deserve him,” her back straightened. “I won’t marry him.” She said, and then louder, “I won’t marry him.”

I smiled at her. “That’s my girl, and you’ll get your reward.”

She turned to me and her lips parted. She nodded. My smile deepened. Now, I just had to figure out how to keep her from getting married to a monster.

I kept my thoughts to myself as she collected herself.

“That was…” the soft voice came from my other side. I turned to Debisi. He couldn’t possibly have heard anything I said, none of them could have, unless they were mami watas. His tongue darted out of his mouth to pull his bottom lip into his mouth. He focused on me and adjusted his glasses, then he shook his head and looked away.

Tiwo cleared his throat. My brother always knew how to diffuse the tension I created. The Alaafin was staring at me again, as if I was a dilemma he was toiling to solve. His wife had gone back to glaring at me, but this time there was something in her eyes. It looked like pain, not exactly pain, but grief. I recognized that look, it still came upon me when I thought of my father.

“The Eze of Nuri is my cousin.”

My god. I gaped at her. “Your father was the Oza.”

I have a longer update today. Hope everyone enjoys

@movmentish yay, I'm glad you like it!

@dawno2008 Thank you, I'm happy you think so That's exactly what I'm aiming for in terms of the Nigerian heritage and using that

@GeoSilYe I'm sorry, I can only post once a week for now, but I'm really happy you're enjoying it so far

Chapter 5

Mother was fifty-six. Women her age had already had their menopause. Not our mother though, she looked like she was fifty-six going on thirty. Her brown face was inexplicably devoid of wrinkles. She’d started greying years ago, but her Isan hair was still full, and the grey did nothing to make her look younger. Instead it just added a tinge of mystery to her looks. Our father had been three years her senior, but he’d aged so poorly that he’d looked almost thirty years older. I smiled thinking of how he’d teasingly call her a mami wata, a servant of the Ekpe masquerade, who was known to give youth, beauty, and special supernatural powers, to any willing to sell their soul in the bargain.

While father only joked, Tiwo truly believed that she was.

Several young Bono men came forward, carrying short white steps, seemingly to aid us in dismounting. I jumped down before they arrived. Tiwo would wait, but the rest of us on horses had tumbler training. Mounting and dismounting was a game we played.

The Bono welcoming party spread out beside the Ooni’s tent. I glanced around and saw several faces devoid of the classical Bono pigmentation. They stood out. Just as mother stood out as the only person with a dark skin underneath the white tent.

“Welcome, my daughter,” the Ooni called out. He stepped off his dais and approached me, his arms spread out and a deeply jovial smile on his face. The Ooni was a classical Bono. He was an albino dressed in the traditional Bono iro, which for males was a white shirt worn over a white wrapper with a white gele wrapper tied around their necks, and for females was a white buba tucked into a white wrapper, with a white gele tied on their heads. And, as if the white clothing wasn’t enough, he also carried a white walking stick with a jeweled knob.

“Your highness,” I greeted with a nod.

The old man threw his arms around me and pulled me in for a hug. “Uncle,” he chided. He was a few inches shorter than I was, so I had to turn my head so that my chin wasn’t sitting on his white-cream hair. He smelled faintly of sweet spices. I grew misty eyed inhaling it. My father had smelled the same way. My gaze turned to my mother and my mouth tightened. She stood serenely underneath the tent, cradling her belly, and smiling down at me as if there was nothing wrong with her presence here. And why hadn’t she told me she was pregnant?

The Ooni released me.

I remembered that he’d been a close friend to my father, close enough to take my mother in because she was having troubles with her husband? He started walking forward, and I was so distracted by thoughts of my mother that I didn’t realize he was holding onto my wrist until I found myself dragged forward in his wake.

He led me up the dais, passed the bowed heads of Bono nobles, passed my mother’s serenely smiling figure, passed his wife, to the man standing right beside her. He appeared to be in his thirties. He had the white skin and hair of someone who bleached, not an albino. He was a bit taller than the Ooni, which still put him about an inch shorter than me. He stood tall, his back ramrod straight, and his poise that of one who was used to being obeyed. His features showed little emotion. Beside him, stood a woman, with bleached skin and hostile features. She seemed to loathe me, which was interesting, coming from a woman I had never seen before.

“This is my eldest son, Taiso, the Alaafin of Bono,” the Ooni boomed. The natural cadence of his voice seemed to be a bellow. The Alaafin regarded me coolly, moments passed in which we did nothing but stare at each other. His eyes narrowed on me.

I waited.

He bowed. “You are welcome revered.” I inched my head down by the barest fraction. “Allow me to present Neka, my Olori.” He gestured to the woman standing beside him, the one who glared hatred at me. Her reaction to me was needling. It was not my experience to be loathed on sight. It usually took me opening my mouth to elicit this kind of reaction. I learned something interesting about the woman then. As soon as her husband and the Ooni turned to her, her face became a mask of humble pleasure. She averted her gaze from me as though she was shy.

“You are welcome, revered,” she bowed and curtsied.

The Ooni pulled me along. He had a large grin on his face, as if he couldn’t wait to make the next introduction.

It was to the man standing beside the Alaafin’s wife. He appeared to be a man in his mid-twenties. An albino, like the Ooni. He was dressed in the iro of a young man, who by Bono tenet was still ‘intact’, which meant he was supposed to be a virgin, not yet married. The Bono virgins had wrappers that only reached their knees, unlike the married whose wrappers swept the floor. The Bono tenet of verdure renounced all forms of intercourse until marriage, and even during marriage, the only form of intercourse acceptable was vaginal. There was a reason why I’d held off so long on formalizing my betrothal to the Ooni’s youngest son.

“This is Debisi, my youngest, the Alake of Ibadan,” the Ooni announced with a grin.

He bowed to me. “Welcome, revered.”

I stared at him. I’d met him before, once ten years ago, he looked different. He was the same height as his brother, only an inch shorter than me, which for some reason I found oddly pleasing. When he rose his head, I could tell how uncomfortable he was. He wore glasses, and his hair, though cut short, was in an interesting state of disarray. He certainly didn’t have the natural confidence of his brother. I could see this man kneeling to me, worshiping me as my slaves did. That thought made me smile.

“Well,” the Ooni said, “this is my youngest son.” He released my hand and turned to stare at me. “You’re intended.” The emphasis he put on the word explained the gleam of excitement in his eyes. While I was aware that my father and the Ooni had discussed the union of our families, I was not aware that those talks had risen to the point of ‘intension’. I was just about to voice my thoughts when I saw the adorable flush on Debisi’s neck.

I smiled and walked over to him. The red on his neck deepened the closer I got. When I bent to kiss him on his cheek, right beside his lips, his face filled with color. I’d never played with someone who could blush before. I usually stayed with my people, and our dark skin made blushing impossible to see. I could have a lot of fun with him.

“Hello,” I whispered into his ear. The red crept up his cheeks to his ears. He cleared his throat and opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

The Ooni laughed.

“You see, I told you they would get along well!” He declared to everyone.

I stepped back, aware of the watchful eyes of my ‘intended’ crawling over my skin.

“Didn’t I say it?” He turned to his right and the direction of his gaze pointed towards his wife. I found it interesting that he’d introduced me to his children before his wife. He walked back in that direction and I followed, fully expecting to be introduced to his Olori. “Didn’t I say it?” he asked, again, but I frowned when I realized the question was directed at my mother, not his wife.

“Yes, Baba, you said it,” she smiled at him.

His laughter was so loud I wouldn’t have been surprised if the tent shook. “I don’t need to introduce you two,” he said.

My mother smiled at me. “No,” she shook her head, “but perhaps you should introduce your wife…”

The Ooni’s eyes widened and his lips rounded into an O. Then he threw his head back and laughed. He walked back to stand beside his wife and he placed his hand behind her waist. “I forgot,” he said candidly. I frowned at the man. I didn’t know what to make of him. It was one thing to forget to introduce your wife, it was another entirely to confess to that fact. “My Olori,” he said.

The woman was small. She was short, with a thin frame. An albino.

“Your highness,” I greeted her.

“Welcome, my daughter,” her voice was so small, I could barely hear what she said. But she smiled kindly at me. I smiled back.

“My dear,” my mother’s voice in contrast was loud and rich. She cupped my face in her hands. “It is good to see you Tanose.” She kissed me on my cheek. “Tiwosa,” she smiled at my brother, who was standing on the ground, “my beautiful twins.” Tiwo did not smile back.

There were many things I wanted to discuss with my mother. Like why she hadn’t told me she was pregnant. But the Ooni, in his booming voice, declared other plans.

“Come,” the Ooni said, “let us eat and drink as a family reunited.”

A family reunited? There was politics involved in this. There was always politics, and now I found myself digging through my brain to find it. I longed for Isan and the beautiful neutrality of my nation. I did not know why the Nuri and the Bono always seemed to be close to war, but whenever they fought, we inadvertently got dragged into it. Once upon a time all three of our nations had been one, one Nulin nation, with five masquerades. Now we were divided, and the fighting never stopped.

The Ooni led the way down the dais. Mother wrapped her arm around Tiwo when we walked by and Tiwo stood stiffly in her embrace. I wanted to go to them, but I could not, not when the Ooni seemed determined to occupy me with talk of the feast he’d had prepared and the entertainment. He mentioned dancers and my mind went to the Nuri dancing girls. I knew that the Bono would not provide similar entertainment. Their tenet of verdure would forbid such an unclean spectacle. I chuckled to myself.

We made our way through white metal doors, to a white-tiled corridor, and into a large white parlor. The room was like my great hall in the Isan court, except there was no dais, just a circular room, with a long white couch in the front, and many more couches facing that one. There was space between the couches to walk around, and a space in the middle for what I assumed would be the entertainment.

The Ooni led me to the couch in the front of the room, then he sat in the middle of it, gesturing for me to sit beside him. “Debisi, sit by your intended,” he bellowed.

The poor boy’s face turned red as he rushed to obey his father. Taiso and his wife sat on a couch facing us. I was surprised to see my mother sit beside the Ooni. There were no signs of his wife. Slowly, the people trickled in. Several of my tumblers stood at positions around the room, their spears in hand. Only Eghe and Mede stood behind me. Tiwo looked very uncomfortable, sharing a couch with Taiso and his wife, who’d gone back to affecting the look of harmless amiability.

“Bring the food!” The Ooni declared. Then he started coughing. I frowned when my mother stroked his back, saying, “calm down, you know you need to be careful of your health.”

The Ooni coughed. Worried gazes locked on the old man’s shaking frame. He’d seemed so animated, I found it hard to believe that he was anything less than in perfect health. But the scared glances showed otherwise.

“Maybe you should go and rest,” Taiso suggested.

The Ooni flicked his hand at him. “It’s just cough,” he sounded irritated. He heaved when the coughing stopped.

“I think Taiso is right, Baba.” The soft, pleading, tone of my mother’s voice made my frown deepen. I’d only heard her speak that way once before, to my father. Her eyebrows were pulled together in concern.

The Ooni chuckled. “You see how your mother spoils me,” he said. “Okay, iyawo, let’s go.”

I reeled. My confused gaze stopped on Tiwo. He looked disgusted, but not surprised.

I found myself turning to Debisi, simply because he was the only one close enough to ask. “Did he just call my mother Iyawo?”

Debisi nodded.

“Why?”

He looked at me as if I was stupid, and then he covered up the expression. “She is his mistress.”

“The child?”

“Is my father’s.”

I felt like I was going to be sick.

But the party went on. The Ooni left, supported by my mother, and trailed by guards. Taiso stood, walked over, and took his father’s place by my side, with the ease of one who’d grown accustomed to doing so. His wife glared her hatred of me. Servants came in carrying trays of food and behind them came the dancers, dressed in white iro and musicians in white tunics.

Chapter 4

We arrived in the capital village of the Bono nation like a splash of color on a plain canvas. A troop of fifty warriors, all dressed in red velvet wrappers, marched to our sides, and behind the procession. I rode in front, and was surrounded by my personal guard, fifteen Isan tumblers in their red girdles, white shoes, and black and red painted faces. It was our custom, on formal occasions, for the tumblers to paint their faces to resemble that of our Egbabonelimwin masquerade, with red and black vertical lines. Tiwo, dressed in his formal embroidered velvet wrapper, rode beside me. Behind us, in horse-drawn carriages, were the court nobles who’d chosen to accompany me. The Bono slave’s preserved corpse rode in a place of honor between the nobles.

It had been five years since I’d last visited this nation, but everything seemed to be as it was back then. The roads were still pure white, the houses pure white, the people, dressed in white. There was just something about Bono that made me feel like I had to tiptoe around the place, so that I didn’t stain anything. If you ask me, they took their tenet of verdure to a wholly unnecessary level.

We’d been in the Bono nation for two days now, but I already missed Isan. My nation was colorful. Our roads were the natural red of the clay soil we were blessed with. There were no color mandates to stop our Isan people from designing their houses in whichever way they pleased. I was sure somewhere, in some back village in this nation, there had to be a cream-colored house.

The white houses fell away as we drew closer to the palace. We were still half an hour’s march away, but I could already see the pointed spikes at the top of the gate. Finally, the scenery changed, and greens emerged. There was no grass, just trees sprouting from bleached white sand beds. I saw pawpaw trees, coconut trees, palm trees, the stems had been painted white, but the fronds were left in their natural state of lush green.

“I hate this place,” Tiwo said. He spoke loud enough that the tumblers riding closest to us would have no difficulty hearing.

I glanced at him. He held his reins in such a tight grip that the veins in his hands stood out.

“Didn’t I say that nothing bad will happen to you?”

Our eyes met, then he snapped his head away, his braids whipping through the air, before settling down against his neck. “If you remember, I hated this place the last time we were here, and that was before my sister decided to make me a serf.”

I clenched my jaw and chose to ignore him. I could reassure him, but nothing I said would change his mood. He didn’t like things he couldn’t control. He would fret about this visit until the confrontation with the slave’s parents was done.

“Mede, did you find the slave’s family?”

She turned to me and drew her horse closer to mine. We all rode Bono horses in deference to their tenet. The Bono only rode on white horses.

“Yes, revered. At the Ooni’s invitation, they will come to the palace tomorrow.”

I nodded. That meant I only had one full day to put up with my brother’s shitty mood. Lucky me. “And our mother?”

“Will be waiting to greet you at the palace.”

“Did you tell her to come to the palace? We would have gone to her husband’s village to visit with her there.”

It was hard to read Mede’s face underneath all of that paint. She paused, then, “your mother has been living at the palace for the last year,” she said.

I pulled back in shock, drawing the horse’s reins with me. The animal’s head reared up and it neighed in complaint. I relaxed my fingers on the silver leather and ran my hand through the horse’s mane. It quieted.

“Did you know this Tiwo?”

Tiwo grunted. “Did you think that a single village would be enough to contain our mother? I’m sure she ran out of men to Bleep and so she went for bigger prey.”

“That’s enough!” I snapped at him. I could count on one hand the number of times that I’d raised my voice to my brother. I wasn’t surprised when painted faces turned to gape at me.

“What do you want from me?” he snapped back at me. He didn’t yell, so only Mede and I could hear him. “I’m here, I’m riding at your command, I’m preparing myself for years of service to a sugar merchant, when all I did was try to protect you. What more do you want?”

I closed my eyes, forcing myself to breathe in slowly and then exhale at the same speed. Then I opened my eyes and turned my back on Tiwo.

The tumblers shaved all hair from their face before they painted it. I could not see Mede’s eyebrows, but I’d been with her long enough to know that she was frowning.

“You should not let him speak to you like that,” she scolded. She kept her voice low, just as my brother had kept his low when he snapped at me.

I smiled. “Have I mentioned how good you look today? Not even paint can hide your beauty.”

“You’re impossible,” she responded with a smile of her own.

“I try.”

She chuckled.

“Why is my mother living at the palace?” We’d been educated in Bono from an early age. Tiwo and I had learned the language from our father’s lips, and it had been his milk tongue, the language his mother had spoken to him. Our father had made sure to teach us our Bono lineage, a lineage that extended to the Alake of Ikeja, the man our mother married, less than a month after our father died. The Alake was first cousins with the Ooni of Bono. The Alake had been set to inherit when the late Ooni’s marriage had no issue. Then the current Ooni had been born, a miracle baby. In Isan the Alake and Ooni would have been raised as brothers, but then, the Isan court did not have the kind of political scheming that infested Bono. It’s that scheming that turned the Alake and the Ooni into rivals for the throne. Now, they smiled at each other in public, but deep down, I didn’t know two men who loathed each other more. Why would the Alake move his family to the palace?

“You’ll have to ask her that,” Mede replied, “but, as much as it pains me to agree with your brother, I think the reason he gave is not far off the mark.”

Mede was basically echoing Tiwo’s sentiments that our mother slept around. A lot. I did not like it when people insulted my mother. I knew that she had her shortcomings, and her failures, but she was still my mother. Besides, I found it highly hypocritical for anyone to judge her for taking the same pleasures that the men she married did. I loved my father, but he hadn’t exactly been faithful. And from what I remembered of the Alake, and his wandering eyes, I doubted he was a one-woman man. If he enjoyed women outside his marital bed, my mother had the right to claim the same.

“Still, it would be an insult to the Alake for her to leave his home for the palace. Say whatever you want about my mother, she would not slight the man she chose to marry.”

“The man she chose to marry not even a month after our Oba died,” Mede’s voice was bitter. For a woman who didn’t like men, she’d adored my father. Perhaps that was why I liked her so much.

“Well, I suppose we’ll find out her reason soon enough.” I said.

We kept up our pace, moving the horses slowly enough that the warriors marching with us had no difficulty keeping up. It was a sign of respect and trust that the Ooni allowed a contingent of Isan soldiers to march into Bono, as I allowed the same of the Bono when their royals came visiting. It was not a relationship that I shared with the Nuri.

As soon as my thoughts drifted to the Nuri, I remembered the tenseness that had followed our last encounter. The men’s lips pinched together and their eyes glaring hatred of me. I’d sent them with a handwritten letter to the Eze and with enough money to buy a small Iyo city-state. They had been offended when they loaded the chests into their wagons, and offended as they stood still, watching me leave, and offended as they departed on their journey.

“What are you thinking about?” Tiwo’s voice broke into my thoughts.

I turned to my annoying brother and quirked an eyebrow. Now he wanted to talk?

He sighed. “I’m nervous, okay, I’m sorry for speaking to you like that.”

“I told you that nothing bad will happen to you. Why can’t you just believe me?”

He looked me squarely in the face. “I hate this place,” he said, “and you are not quite as powerful as you think.”

I shook my head, but I couldn’t help smiling at that. He smiled back and the tension between us eased. “I’m powerful enough to have you beaten to death.”

He laughed. “You’ll beat me to death, but you won’t let a slave’s death pass without making reparations in person. Have you stopped to think of how the Eze of Nuri will react to this?”

I smiled, I actually had stopped to think of it. While it wasn’t my intention to insult the Nuri, I couldn’t help but feel a little frisson of joy at the fact that it had happened anyway. I could see how the Eze could see this as an affront, the fact that I had chosen to take the corpse of a slave back to his family in person, while I sent his uncle’s corpse back with money. What the Nuri didn’t understand was that as Oba, I took the callings very seriously. I hadn’t liked the slave very much, but he’d answered Egbabonelimwin’s calling to serve, and his service brought him to me.

“There is a world of difference between the death of a slave who’d answered his calling, and an Oza who’d insulted our callings by trying to rape a slave.”

“I know, I just don’t think the Eze will see it the same way.”

I shrugged. “What can he do about it?”

Tiwo’s seriousness chased some of my apathy away. A gem on his braid caught a ray of light from the sun and reflected it at my face. I had to look away.

“Do you know how old the Eze is?” Tiwo asked.

“Seven years older than we are. Why?”

“The men were scared.”

“What?”

“The men in the delegation, they were scared. I know you thought they acted the way they did because they’re Nuri and all Nuri act badly towards women leaders, but I think they were scared.”

“Scared of what?”

I looked back at my brother when the blinding beam moved. He’d shifted his head. My gaze met his dark, intent, one. “That’s a good question.”

I scoffed. “You can’t honestly expect me to believe that those arrogant men, who were all well passed forty, by the way, were afraid of their twenty something year old king.”

“I’m thirty years old and I’m afraid of you.”

I smirked at Mede. “That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling.

I shifted closer towards her. “You know,” I began, Tiwo chuckled, he knew me too well, “there are a lot of things we can do with your fear. I mean, it’s not that big of a distance between fear and arousal.”

She groaned. “Please stop.”

I laughed. Horns blared and bells chimed, breaking the relative silence of the day. We’d reached the large white gates of the Ooni’s palace. Palace guards in white long-sleeved shirts and trousers, wielding white painted cutlasses, pulled the gates open. The majority of the Bono were albinos, but the ones that weren’t bleached their hair and skin white. That’s why it had been so strange to hear the slave boy, with the dark Isan complexion, say that he hailed from this nation.

My warriors fell into their lines in front of the gates. They would not be entering the palace with me. My tumblers would be my only guards in there.

“Seriously, revered,” Mede said as the gates creaked open, “I don’t think I would be able to face you if you left your brother in my care and I brought him back to you dead.”

I turned to face her. “What are you saying Mede?”

“You see the world in a certain way, but you have to understand that your views are not shared by the Nuri. Your brother is right, they will see this is an insult.”

I gritted my teeth. Did I have blinders on when it came to the Nuri? It was no secret that I did not like them. They branded their slaves. They made a mockery of service. They took, by force, what should only be freely given. And that wasn’t even considering how they treated their women.

“I will not go to Nuri.” I said, “but if the Eze is displeased, perhaps we can meet in an Iyo city-state and discuss.”

“It will not be enough,” Tiwo warned as the gates drew fully open.

A roadway of white stone led to a large white building that spread out at least ten kilometers. In front of that building, there was a tent with white pillars and a white tarp roof. Several people stood underneath the tent. The Ooni stood in front, and to his left, his wife and to his right…

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tiwo sounded appalled.

What was our mother doing standing so close to the Ooni? And where was her husband, the Alake?

Tiwo’s eyes bulged as we drew closer. He swore. “She’s pregnant,” he said, unnecessarily. I could see the rotund stomach she cradled in her hands. I groaned. What was mother up to now?

Ann2012:
Thanks for the update

Thanks for reading

@Dathypebruv thank you!

@MhisTahrah Yes, this is an edited version of the first story I posted on NL

@cassbeat thanks for answering it lol

@dominique Thank you! I hope you enjoy it, please let me know what you think when you're done. I honestly don't think that I'm going to finish the servia book (at least not any time soon) but I'm posting something else on NL that has some similar themes. Here's a link to it: https://www.nairaland.com/5989377/masquerades-nulin-nations-18

I've put an excerpt of White Sight: The Awakening up on NL. I tried to tag everyone from the last two pages of this thread, but in case I missed anyone, here's the link:

https://www.nairaland.com/6008951/marked-white-sight-awakening

Link to the full excerpt (free)

https://okadabooks.com/book/about/white_sight_the_awakening_free_excerpt/35519



Link to the full book (N 400)

https://okadabooks.com/book/about/white_sight_the_awakening/35520

Osezele found it impossible to read Lami’s face. She couldn’t tell if Lami was looking for an excuse to punish her, or if she wanted to help her. After a while, she gave up on trying to figure it out. “Yes ma.” She said.

Lami nodded. She walked away from Osezele then, moving towards the front of the class where the four girls they’d walked in with stood, staring at them. There was an awkward silence as Osezele stood in the same spot, not sure if she was expected to leave the class now that Lami was done with her, or if she should walk forward and join the rest of them. At moments like this, the class mute returned. She was not exactly friends with Lami. Lami and Tolani shared a corner – a living space –, the same way that she shared a corner with Ngozi. But Lami’s friendship with Tolani did not extend to her.

“So, Lami, who are these two little rats?” Tolani asked, breaking the silence. Everyone’s attention went to Tolani, and then moved to Lami. The ‘two little rats’ in question giggled. Tolani stealthily waved Osezele over, as if she’d sensed Osezele’s struggle with where to go. Osezele turned her back on the door and walked towards the group. She smiled when she reached them. With Tolani there, she felt as if she belonged.

Lami introduced the JSS1 girls. Osezele learnt that the skinny one with the huge ears was going to be her new bunkmate, the girl who slept on the top bunk of her bunkbed. Her name was Seyi. The chubby one’s name was Moji. In addition to being Tolani’s new bunkmate, Moji was also Lami’s baby sister. Osezele couldn’t even imagine what it would feel like to come into St. Luke’s as the sister of the most popular student. Moji was going to have a great first year in St. Luke’s.

Lami stopped short in the process of teasing her sister about her bright pink watch. “It is six forty-five!” she exclaimed. “What are the both of you still doing standing here.” Her gaze was fixed on Osezele and Tolani in a way that made it clear who she referred to by ‘the both of you’. Osezele stared at Tolani, glad to see the lack of comprehension she felt mirrored on her friend’s face. They both turned confused looks on Lami.

“Why are they staring at me like mumus?” Lami snapped. “It is six forty-five, time for food. Timekeeper,” she turned to Tolani, “I never hear bell. Food prefect,” her gaze darted to Osezele, “food don ready? Abi una won start this fine new term with punishment?”

Understanding dawning, Osezele and Tolani walked hurriedly out of the classroom. They both rushed to the duties that being school prefects obligated them to perform.

The Community, Benin City

Odion was starving. Her stomach grumbled. She rolled over on the mattress, frowning as the bedsheet clung to her sweat-slicked body. She opened her eyes. Akhere shared her mattress with her. She could barely make out the outline of her sister’s face from the flickering light provided by the kerosene lantern. Her stomach continued to grumble. She sat up from her bed and turned in the direction of her parent’s mattress. It was empty. Her brothers shared the mattress to her right. Eroms lay facing her, while Idemudia was turned away.

Odion heard voices. She pushed herself off the mattress and walked quietly across the single room of the one-bedroom apartment. The front door was padlocked, but the back door stood slightly ajar. Odion pushed the door open and walked out. It was the dead of night. Odion made to walk out of the house, then stopped when she saw her parents sitting opposite each other on short three-legged wooden stools. There was an empty firewood stove between them.

“What do you mean no?” Odion heard her mother ask. She was whispering, but her voice was loud enough to be heard in the quiet night. “Ejemhen we can’t go on like this, our children haven’t eaten in days.”

Her father dropped his head into his hands. “I’m trying Itohan, it’s harder than I thought. Every good job requires a blood test, and I can’t let them take my blood.”

Odion knew that she shouldn’t be listening, but she stayed rooted to the spot. “Let us go back to the Community.” Her mother said, “please Ejemhen, let’s go back. They won’t kill us, they don’t want to waste our powers. We can do whatever they want. Please, our children don’t have to die for this.”

“We can do whatever they want? After they killed our families, after they hunted and slayed them like animals? Does my mother’s death mean nothing to you?”

“Not when my children are starving!” she snapped. “As far as I’m concerned, your mother killed herself.”

Odion felt anger grow in her. She’d never been more betrayed in her entire life. She ran out of the house, oblivious to the pain of the rocks digging into her bare feet. She didn’t stop running until she was standing in front of her mother.

“How can you say that about mamin?” she yelled. “You should be ashamed!”

Her parents turned to stare at her.

“Oni…” her mother began.

“Ashamed!” Odion yelled
.
Her father got up from his stool. He was frowning as he bore down on her. When he reached her, he knelt. With him kneeling, his face was only a little bit higher than hers.

“You don’t talk to your mother like that.” He scolded.

Tears of rage spilled down Odion’s face. She wanted to hit something, to fight, to make someone bleed. “She said that mamin killed herself!”

“I don’t care, you never speak to your mother like that. Oni you know…”

Whatever he was about to say was cut off when a high-pitched scream came from within the house. Her father stood, and picked her up, carrying her back into the house. Odion was still furious as she glared at her traitorous mother walking in their wake.

Odion heard her father gasp, right before he placed her on her feet in the house. She turned around to find Idemudia, hurdled in a corner of the room, with Akhere standing in the other. There was a golden jackal in the middle of the room, its snout pointed at Akhere. As soon as Odion saw Akhere shivering, tears running down her cheeks, she pulled her arm free of her father’s hold and ran towards her sister. The jackal ran after her.

It pounced on her.

Despite the fact that she knew she had nothing to fear from him, she found herself shaking. “Please Eroms,” she whispered, “remember I’m your sister. Remember me!” she yelled.


“Remember me!” Odion yelled to an empty room.

Her eyes drew open. She woke from the strangest dream she’d ever had, drenched in sweat. Her heart raced, pounding belligerently against her ribcage. Had that been a vision? No, she shook her head. She was too well trained in augury to not recognize a vision when she had one. A dream then? But to what end? She focused on her memory, trying to remember what she’d seen. Augurs never forgot their dreams, it was part of their mark. Odion dwelled on that dream now. She remembered lying next to Akhere. But Akhere had been young. She’d looked about eight or nine, which meant that Odion had to have been that age too.

A memory from when she was eight? Odion had never been more excited to dig through a dream. If the dream was indeed a memory, then it was the first glimpse of her family that she’d ever had. It was the first thing she knew about her origins. She remembered a small room, and two boys. Odion frowned, digging deeper. Brothers! Their names? Again, she had to dig. The memory of visions came clearer, more precisely. Was one a werejackal? She remembered a jackal pouncing on her, and she’d called him Eroms. Idemudia, the second name came easier. And her parents? Ejemhen and Itohan.

Tears filled Odion’s eyes. She had parents. She had brothers. She had a family. Had she been loved? Odion dug deep into her subconscious trying to associate feelings from the dream. The first feeling that came was anger, she’d been angry at her mother, so angry she’d wanted to attack her.

Odion frowned.

A creaking sound pulled her out of her own head. Odion sat silently, listening. She heard footsteps. Was there someone in her apartment?

She jumped out of her bed and ran to the light switch. She flipped the switch, bathing her room with white light. Then she looked frantically around her. There was no one there. She was alone. Odion stepped out of her room and walked into the living room. She turned on the light to this room too and scoured it with her frightened gaze. She saw nothing, no one. Odion walked over to the door. She frowned when she saw that the chain lock was undone. Had she left it this way? She reached for the doorknob, twisted, and breathed a sigh of relief when it didn’t give. It was locked.

Determined to cover her bases, Odion unlocked the door and stepped out of her apartment. She stared down an empty hallway.

“Odion? Is everything okay?”

Odion’s head swiveled. It was the spotter, Oare, the one who’d just moved into her apartment building, the one she’d told her niece about. Her lips parted preparing to frame a response, when her eyes noticed the direction of his gaze. He was not staring at her face.

Odion looked down on herself. She gasped, mortified by her appearance. Odion always slept in a large shirt, and nothing else. The shirt was just long enough to cover her butt, and maybe half an inch of skin below that. Her dream had left her so drenched in sweat that her shirt was soaked, it clung to her body like a plastic wrap. He could see every contour of her body if he wanted to, and it appeared that he wanted to, because he was not looking away.

A dimple appeared on his cheek as he smiled. Of course, he was fully dressed in black trousers and a light blue shirt. Did he have to look like a model out of a catalogue, when she looked like…this?

“Goodnight.” Odion said. She ducked back into her room, shrinking at the sound of his throaty laughter.

Chapter Two
---------------------

St. Luke’s, Port Harcourt

The closer they drew towards the trio, the less Osezele liked the prospect of approaching them. What did she know about Binta Gambari? She racked her brain trying to remember tidbits of information that Tolani had dropped. She remembered that Binta was marked, an augur to be specific. Binta was the most famous marked teenager in the country. Tolani had mentioned something about Binta being marked despite the fact that both of her parents were unmarked. Binta’s parents had obeyed the law, handing her over to the Community for the required 3-year training. During that time, Binta started a blog through which she narrated her experiences in the Community. Osezele only knew of the blog from Tolani’s previous mentions of it. Tolani had read every post Binta made, many times over. Binta was something of an icon to her best friend. As they stopped by the bench, Osezele uttered a short prayer that Binta lived up to the pedestal Tolani placed her on.

“Hello Binta,” Tolani said, stretching out her hand for a handshake. “My name is Tolani, I’m a huge fan! I dream of being as successful as you when I’m older.”

Osezele was stunned by the star-struck look on Tolani’s face. Tolani’s outstretched hand quivered while she waited for Binta to respond. Osezele could say that she had never seen Tolani this flustered at the prospect of meeting someone new.

Her gaze went from Tolani’s hand to Binta’s face. Binta Gambari. Yes, staring at the girl, Osezele could easily see how this was someone who’d starred in several blockbusters, earning a number of International awards for the parts she’d played. Osezele had never wondered what a celebrity would look like in person, but Binta seemed to fit the stereotype of being unrealistically beautiful and degradingly arrogant.

As if to confirm Osezele’s thoughts, Binta chuckled. She stared haughtily at Tolani’s hand. “I’m as old as you are, and you want to be me when you grow up? Doesn’t that make you ashamed?”

Fatima and Oluchi burst out laughing. Osezele turned to Tolani in time to see her friend lower her hand. Tolani’s jaw clenched, and her hands balled into fists by her side. She stood taller, tipping her chin up, as if unaffected by Binta’s words, but Osezele knew better. She felt Tolani’s pain and anger. The emotions wafted out of Tolani like heat from a flame. With each guffaw from Fatima and Oluchi, Tolani’s emotions heightened.

Osezele fought against them. She tried to resist the urge to absorb Tolani’s negative emotions, but as she heard the laughter, she felt her own anger grow. Once she got angry, and had that emotion in common with Tolani, she found the compulsion to absorb Tolani’s emotions too strong to withstand. She had no control of it. Osezele sucked in Tolani’s emotions, adding them to the ones she already felt.

A red haze filled Osezele’s vision. She just barely had time to close her eyes before she felt the sclera shift begin. Her eyes were turning the crimson of a commune in her mark. They stood on the open field, exposed to so many unmarked eyes. Osezele knew that she couldn’t lose control, she couldn’t let the sclera shift complete.

As a commune, she had the ability to hurt others. Her powers came from absorbing negative emotions and using that as a fuel to do many dangerous things, one of which was invoking negative emotions in others. Communes could kill, it was a fact that Osezele was very well aware of. The last time she’d lost control of her mark, she’d almost killed Lami. Now she hated her commune mark because of the damage it could do, and she fought against ever having to go into it.

She knew from her uncle’s teachings that one way to push the emotions back was to focus on something else. If she dwelled on the anger she felt, and the pain she’d absorbed, the sclera shift would complete, and she would lose control of herself. So, she tried to dwell on something different. There was a mantra she recited at moments like this, one that she liked, one that kept her focus on forcing herself to remember it.

‘I am the sea,’ she began to chant in her head, ‘I am the storm, I am the fire, the flame that burns.’ As she focused on completing this task, she felt the emotions begin to subside. ‘The fire is free and so…’ Before she could complete her mantra, Osezele felt a sharp pain on the back of her head, as if she’d been slapped. That physical pain somehow managed to snap her back from the edge of her mark, faster than the mantra she’d been reciting.

Osezele opened her eyes.

Her vision was normal, there was no red haze from her commune mark. Osezele breathed easy. She turned around, curious to see who’d slapped her, and maybe thank the person for intervening. Although, she wasn’t sure if she should be thanking someone for slapping her. She smiled, a half smile filled with indecision, as she turned to face the person.

The smile fell away from her face. Osezele gulped nervously. Lami stood in front of her, subjecting her to such a direct gaze that Osezele found herself looking away.

“Come,” Lami ordered. She didn’t even wait to see if Osezele would obey before she started walking away. Osezele’s corner mate, Ngozi, walked with Lami. Osezele took solace from the sympathetic look on Ngozi’s face. Her gaze locked on two JSS1 girls who glanced uncertainly at her. Those girls walked behind Lami and Ngozi.

Osezele turned back. Fatima and Oluchi were no longer laughing, all hints of gaiety had faded from their faces. Binta managed to look both condescending and bored. Oluchi and Fatima bore looks of such profound jealousy that Osezele almost wished she could trade places with one of them. She knew that they’d seen Lami slapping her on the back of her head, as some sort of ‘friendship’ gesture, and that they thought Lami had summoned her to gist. Lami was the quintessential fair beauty. It was a fact which made her very popular. That combined with her head girl status, made her the most influential girl in the school. Back in the days when Osezele was still the class mute, she’d only ever been able to dream of someone like Lami knowing her name. Now Lami knew her name, and much more than that.

“Senior,” one of the JSS1 girls who’d been trailing behind Lami was now standing by her side. Osezele turned to the girl. “Lami said that you should not make her wait.”

Osezele nodded. She watched the girl jog back in the direction Lami walked in. Osezele faced Tolani. “Will you come with me?” she asked, her voice low and unsteady.

“You don’t even have to ask.” Tolani replied.

Osezele smiled in gratitude. She took a deep breath and turned to follow Lami, wondering as she walked, just how much trouble she was in. To the unmarked, Lami was just the head girl, one of the two most senior prefects in the school. To the warlocks in the hidden society of St. Luke’s marked, Lami was much more than that, she was their grand warlock, in charge of all witches, communes and augurs. If Lami had sensed that Osezele had been close to losing control of her mark, Osezele wasn’t sure what Lami would do to her.

Tolani held Osezele’s hand and squeezed lightly, offering a silent support which Osezele greatly appreciated. They walked quickly, trying to catch up with Lami, who’d already gotten as far as the goal post in the middle of the Sports Field. The Sports Field was a large area of green surrounded by the Slab on the left, the Appian Way on the right, the boys’ hostel behind and the School Block in front. The direction of Lami’s walk made it clear she was headed for one of the classes in the School Block. Osezele knew that it was in her best interest to catch up with Lami before the senior girl reached her destination, so she quickened her pace.

As she walked, Osezele found her thoughts going back to the first time she’d spoken to Lami. It was the day that her powers had been revealed. In celebration of the ‘secret for a secret’ which she’d shared with Tolani, they’d both decided to go and check out the secret room for the marked students, which was located in the senior lab building. Nosa had showed her the room and given her a key to it. After telling Tolani about her mark, she’d shared the secret of the key and the room. They’d both been curious, and had walked into the room at the absolute worst time.

That had been the first time that she’d seen Nosa as a jackal. She could still remember the way his golden irises had turned to stare at her. Emeka, the pack alpha at the time, had been furious with her for bringing an unmarked to the room. The marked seniors had decided that, to keep their secret, Lami had to take away Tolani’s memory. Lami was a memoir witch, a type of witch with the power to manipulate memories. As soon as Lami had touched Tolani though, Tolani had began screaming. Her pain got to Osezele and Osezele found herself going into her commune mark for the first time. When she got out of the mark, Lami was lying on the floor, bleeding and unconscious.

Osezele pulled her focus out from her thoughts.

They’d caught up with Lami, just in time to climb with her from the level grass of the Field to the stone grounds of the School Block. They walked in silence, past the Junior classrooms, along the footpath beside the Library, until they reached the half of the School Block reserved for the senior classrooms. When Osezele had been a junior student, she’d felt an almost unnatural level of fear at the prospect of walking by senior classrooms. It was as if she’d thought that the senior students would punish her simply for daring to walk by them. Lami stopped when she reached her classroom, SS3A, as the wooden block above the door declared it to be. Osezele’s classroom, SS1B, was on the second floor.

Lami stepped aside, and then gestured with a curt incline of her head, for the JSS1 girls to precede her. They both looked very nervous. It wasn’t till that moment that Osezele thought about how strange it was that there were JSS1 girls walking with the head girl. Who were these girls? This was the first semester of the new class year, so they were new to the school. This would be their first day. One of them seemed to swim in her pink pleated dress. Her hair was scraped, cut so low that her bare scalp showed. Osezele felt sorry for her. The girl had large, pointy, ears, which just looked funny against her small face. The other JSS1 girl was chubby. Her pink uniform had been sewn to fit her perfectly, and she’d cut her hair, as they were all required to, but not too low. Osezele surmised by how smartly she appeared, that the chubby girl knew an older student in the school.

“Please excuse me!” the chubby girl screamed at the top of her voice before walking into the classroom. All younger students were required to excuse themselves before entering a senior class. Osezele knew this, but she found it silly that they had to perform this ritual when the class was empty. Of course, with Lami standing behind her, she was sure to yell out the required ‘please excuse me’, when it was her turn to walk in.

Lami brought up the rear. “Osezele,” she called, standing in the back of the classroom. Osezele who’d walked towards the front with Tolani, released Tolani’s hand, and retraced her steps.

She stood in front of her grand warlock, head bent low as she waited for her sentencing.

“Are you okay?”

Osezele’s head snapped up. She repeated the words in her head, trying to determine if Lami had asked the question with the inflection which would mean she was concerned, or the inflection which would mean ‘are you mad?’. She couldn’t decide which it was, so she simply replied with, “I’m fine.”

Lami appeared skeptical. “So, you weren’t struggling to control your mark when I saw you under the mango tree?”

Osezele thought about lying. She wouldn’t be a survivalist if she didn’t at least contemplate it. As a junior student she’d learnt to give seniors the answers they wanted. Now she was technically a senior student, but Lami was two years more senior. “I had it under control.” Osezele replied, adding an ‘eventually’ in her head. She’d been doing fine with the mantra.

“Are you sure?” Lami probed.

Nosa shook his head absentmindedly. He turned back to stare at the spot Osezele had stood in and frowned when he saw that she was gone. “Go on without me,” he said distractedly, breaking off from his friends, to run towards the location he’d last seen her in. Hopefully Tolani would be able to point him in her direction. He had a number of questions for his Princess, the foremost of which was why she’d suddenly stopped picking his calls over the break.

As Nosa made his way towards Tolani, another question popped into his mind. Why couldn’t he smell her? He frowned at that. Osezele’s smell was too spellbinding to miss. Since the first time he’d caught her scent that day in the Refectory, he’d been able to smell her whenever she was close. So why hadn’t he smelled her when he’d been walking only a few feet away? If she hadn’t whispered his name, he would have walked right by her. That wasn’t possible. He could identify every marked he’d ever smelled. His sense of smell was so acute that he could differentiate the other jackals in his pack, even though they mostly all smelled like wet dog. That made two questions for his Princess then.

“Tolani.” Nosa called out, once he reached her. She was standing on the grass by the Slab, only a few feet away from the rounded corner of the fence around the boys’ hostels. “Wasn’t Osezele here just now?”

Nosa’s gaze settled on Tolani’s face in time to see the stun fade from it. The corners of her lips tipped up in a slight knowing smile. Nosa got the feeling that Tolani had just solved some puzzle, but what it was, he could not say. In all honesty, Nosa wasn’t a huge fan of Tolani’s. He thought she was a little too rude for an SS1 girl. He acknowledged that she was smart, inarguably the smartest in her class, but he didn’t understand what it was about her that made so many seniors like her so much. She was decent looking. She had an average brown skin, not too dark, not too light, with regular features, but nothing that really stood out. Nothing to make her get away with half the stuff she did.

“Yes, she was here, then she pulled a disappearing act on me. I wonder why that is?” Tolani mused. She grinned, turning a conspiratorial look on Nosa, which he wasn’t sure he liked.

Nosa turned his focus from her, to examining his own thoughts. Disappearing? Could she do that? Nosa knew that Osezele was a bi-marked Warlock, a witch and a commune. He didn’t know much about Warlock marks, but he did know that communes could teleport. No, he shook his head, Osezele was not yet that good of a commune to use magic like that. And even if she was, she wouldn’t dare do magic where anyone could see. That was the fastest way to get caught and thrown into the Community.

Nosa suppressed a shiver. He couldn’t think of a worst fate than that. Getting caught as marked outside the Community was every unknown’s worst nightmare. He knew that it wouldn’t be too bad for him, as the Community didn’t throw anyone under 18 in prison, they’d just separate him from his friends and family and force him to live in the Community. The real horror would be his parents’, who’d be imprisoned for hiding his mark. It would be a life sentence. The Community wouldn’t stop there either, they’d come to St. Luke’s and interrogate everyone. If they found out about their secret marked society, they’d burn the school to the ground and imprison every parent of every unknown in the school, and any family or friends who had the slightest suspicion about the hidden mark.

“Oh my god!” Tolani screamed.

Her cry pulled Nosa out of his gruesome thoughts. He frowned at her, wondering what was responsible for the sudden outburst. When he noticed her gaping at something, he turned in the direction of her stare and found himself looking longer than he should have.

There were three girls walking along the grass. They appeared to have come from the direction of the Bell Lane. Nosa somewhat recognized the girls standing on the outside. They all wore pink skirts and shirts, the SS1 girls’ uniform. He found himself staring after the one in the middle. There was something very familiar about her. Nosa could objectively state that she was gorgeous. She looked like a model or something. And he wasn’t the only guy who noticed, or the only one staring. He realized he was staring and shook himself. She was beautiful, but nowhere near as mesmerizing as his Princess. He was about to look away, when the girl turned to face him. She smiled, rose her hand in the air, and wiggled her fingers in a cute wave. He nodded in greeting, but only because it would have been rude to just ignore her. Then he looked away.

When he turned back to face Tolani, the SS1 girl was staring daggers at him. “Have you finished looking?” she asked.

Nosa almost lashed out at her. For an SS1 girl to talk to him like that…but he stopped himself, repeating the fact that she was Osezele’s best friend in his head. That was the only thing saving her. “She looked familiar.” He spat the words out through clenched teeth.

“I hear you.” She muttered underneath her breath.

Maybe she hadn’t meant for him to hear that. If he wasn’t a werejackal he probably wouldn’t have. But he was a werejackal, and she was very aware of the fact. No, Nosa shook his head, he’d had enough. “What did you just say?”

Nosa glared at her, watching as the defiance slowly faded from her face. He had to remind himself how much he liked Osezele. That was the only way he could keep his temper in check.

“Nothing,” she replied, looking away, “nothing. I was just saying that it’s Binta Gambari you were staring at.”

Binta Gambari, no wonder the girl looked so familiar. He remembered watching one of her movies. He smiled thinking about how he’d watched it with Osezele over the phone. He’d commented about how the actress was pretty and Osezele had gotten jealous. That was the moment he’d known she liked him too. So why had she stopped answering his calls?

Nosa sighed, he glared at Tolani, choosing to ignore her rudeness this one time. The things he did for love, he thought, a smile teasing the corners of his lips. Nosa walked away, shaking his head at his own silliness.

* * *

Osezele stayed hidden behind the mango tree until she was sure that Nosa was gone. She waited, watching as he made his way all the way down to the junction where the Slab met the Bell Lane, and then he turned onto the Bell Lane, and was concealed by the fence around the boys’ hostels. That was when she came out from behind the mango tree and walked towards Tolani.

As she walked, Osezele’s gaze locked on two of the last people she ever expected to see together, Fatima and Oluchi. They were walking on either side of a girl that looked somewhat familiar. Osezele wasn’t sure where’d she’d seen the girl in the middle, but she could clearly remember the last time she’d seen the girls she walked with.

Before Osezele and Tolani met and became best friends, Tolani had been best friends with Oluchi and Osezele with Fatima. Although, to Osezele, Fatima had been a best friend in name only. Fatima was most known for her sharp tongue. She delivered caustic insults with the accuracy of a ninja, and, sometimes, had almost as painful results. For that reason, Osezele had never felt comfortable around her, and she’d never trusted her enough to tell her secrets. But they’d been best friends because Fatima had been her only friend. That was during the period when Osezele’s ‘Class mute’ designation was in its prime. Everything changed when Nosa caught her scent and identified her as marked. He’d brought her into the secret St. Luke’s Marked society. Fatima had sensed something going on between Osezele and Nosa and had gotten angry when Osezele refused to tell her what it was. She’d yelled at Osezele. That yell had ended their friendship and drawn Tolani to Osezele. As soon as Tolani heard Fatima’s yell, she’d walked over to Osezele and demanded to be her friend.

Osezele still could not believe it really happened. While she’d been the class mute at the time, Tolani had been the class prefect, easily one of the most popular girls in her class. It had taken some convincing to make Osezele believe that Tolani was not playing a cruel joke on her. She could still remember the words Tolani had said to convince her.

‘Everyone deserves a friend. A real friend. One that you can talk to, and I mean really talk to. One that’s always there for you no matter what. Everyone has the right to at least one person like that. Just one. You can wait for that person to come find you, or you can take a chance with me. I’m just as lonely as you are.’

Osezele had been baffled that anyone as popular as Tolani was could understand the loneliness she felt. But she’d taken a chance with Tolani and their friendship had blossomed. Sealed with the exchange of “a secret for a secret”, Tolani had told Osezele about her marked father, and Osezele in turn shared her hidden mark. They’d been inseparable ever since. After that, Osezele had stopped speaking to Fatima and Tolani to Oluchi. Though Tolani told Osezele that her friendship with Oluchi had ended years before.

“Osezele!” Tolani screamed. “You just left me here looking like a fool.”

Tolani’s words pulled Osezele back to the present. She smiled an apology at her friend. How could she explain the urge she’d felt to run away? How could she describe the way that Nosa made her feel? She couldn’t come up with any words to express herself clearly, so she said, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t talk to him. You know how much I like him now.”

Osezele received an open-mouthed stare from Tolani.

“That doesn’t even make any sense,” Tolani replied, sounding exasperated. “When you like someone, you’re supposed to talk to them. That’s how like develops into something more.”

Osezele shook her head, but she didn’t say anything.

Tolani sighed. “Did you see that?” She asked, tipping her chin in the direction of the mango tree Osezele had been hiding behind. There was a stone bench built around the stem of the mango tree. Fatima, Oluchi, and the familiar girl sat on it.

Osezele nodded. “Looks like our ex-best friends are now best friends.”

Tolani let out a long loud hiss. “Who’s talking about them? It’s Binta Gambari, I’m pointing at.”

Binta Gambari, why did the name sound so familiar? It took some time, but Osezele finally linked the name with the familiar face of the girl sitting with Fatima and Oluchi. Binta Gambari was the marked actress Tolani loved so much. What was she doing in St. Luke’s, wearing a St. Luke’s uniform?

“Let’s go and say hi.” Tolani said.

Osezele didn’t move. There was just something about this Binta girl that she didn’t like. What was an actress doing in their school? And of all the people for Binta to befriend, she chose the two people who didn’t like them.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea.” Osezele replied.

Tolani was already walking towards them before Osezele could finish putting her two cents in. The last time she’d spoken to Fatima things had not gone well. Fatima had turned her famous caustic tongue on Osezele. As much as she wanted to avoid them, Osezele couldn’t let Tolani face them alone. So, she took a deep breath, and steeled herself for the worst, before following in Tolani’s wake.

Chapter One
--------------------

St. Luke’s Mixed Boarding School, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria

Osezele walked along the patch of grass beside the Slab, idly gazing at rows of parked cars, and the students that came out of them. The area was packed with people. Students walked around the cars, bidding farewell to their parents and hello to the friends they’d missed over the break. They walked in groups along the Slab, edging to the side to give way for moving cars. It was the usual commotion associated with Resumption day, with throngs of people milling about. Osezele found her gaze fixing on a woman wearing a large gele, who was just stepping out of an old Honda Accord. The woman’s hands casually dropped to rearrange the knot of her wrapper, before she proceeded to open the rear door of the car she’d just come out of. Two young children, a boy and a girl, climbed out. Something about the way the woman wrapped those children in a bear hug made Osezele smile. Half an hour ago, she’d been in those children’s place, receiving a huge hug from her mum. The woman maneuvered the children to the back of the car, and then fiddled with the latch until the trunk popped open. She wrestled their large bags out of the trunk all by herself.

Again, Osezele thought of how her mother had insisted on bringing her bags down. The taxi-driver, who’d driven them from the bus stop to the school, had offered to help, but her mum refused. If it wasn’t against the school rules, her mother would have carried the bags all the way to her hostel. Osezele giggled to herself, thinking of how much her mother would love to live in St. Luke’s with her, if she could. It had always been just the two of them. That was why the betrayal of her mother not telling her about her mark had hit her so hard. They’d reconciled though, Osezele had that to be happy about.

The woman pulled out a handkerchief from her handbag and seized the young girl by the chin. She rubbed forcefully at the girl’s cheek. Then, she turned her attention to the boy, and fussed over him until he began to fidget. Osezele could tell from the uniform he wore, a purple shirt and knickers combo, that he was in JSS3, older than the girl, whose red pleated dress showed her to be in JSS2. She turned her attention from the set just arriving, to another about to leave. An old man in a white agbada waived goodbye to an SS2 girl, climbed into a black Jeep, and drove out of the parking spot he’d taken by the Chapel. He navigated around the other cars parked on the grass between the Auditorium and the Chapel, until he was in a position to drive onto the Slab and then out of the school. The girl he’d waived to stood rooted to the spot, simply watching the Jeep as it drove away. There was a sense of finality in the car’s exit, and an odd, almost ritualistic, farewell in the girl’s watchful gaze. Whoever he was to her, she would not see him till the next time parents were allowed back in the school, which was during Visiting day, weeks away.

“Osezele!” A familiar voice called from behind her. She barely had time to turn around before Tolani came flying into her arms. Osezele wrapped her arms around her best friend, holding tightly onto her as they jumped around, laughing. They were so happy to see each other that they were mindless of the scene they created. It had been a long vacation and Osezele had spent every minute of it looking forward to seeing Tolani.

Osezele extricated herself from the hug. “How are you?” She asked. “How was your holiday?” As she asked the questions, her eyes darted around, and she noted that there were many people watching them. A part of her felt horrified at the scene she’d created, but there was a tiny part that felt pride. Once, not too long ago, she’d been so much of a loner that she’d been nicknamed ‘Class mute’. Now she had a friend she could be rowdy with.

“It was terrible!” Tolani responded, her arms falling dejectedly to her side.

Osezele’s full attention returned to Tolani. “Why?” she began to ask, and then stopped when she was interrupted by a group of her seniors in SS3. The girls walked a few feet away, along the edge of the Slab.

“Osezele!” One of them called out, waving as she continued to walk by. “How far na?”

Osezele, now used to such things, was unperturbed by the fact that the girl talking to her walked along with her friends without particularly waiting for a response. “I’m fine,” Osezele responded, giving her a reply on the off chance that the student was expecting one. Being in SS1, Osezele couldn't risk insulting any senior students, even the ones she didn't know. It still came as a shock to her that there were SS3 students she didn’t know, who knew her. It was one of the benefits of being a school prefect. She was popular now.

“Who was that?” Tolani asked.

Osezele turned back to her friend and shrugged her ignorance.

Mirth bubbled in Tolani’s eyes. Osezele stared at those eyes and just knew that Tolani was about to say or do something quirky. “As in, you’re now ‘miss popularity’!” Tolani said, right on cue. “Even SS3 girls are just shouting your name left and right. Osezele, please wave at me. Oh Osezele, validate my existence,” she teased, theatrically waving her hands and making faces as she spoke.

Osezele couldn’t help the laughter that burst out of her. She poked Tolani in the side, desperate to get her friend to stop mimicking the senior girls who’d waved at her. Tolani was fearless. It was one of the many things Osezele admired about her, but right at that moment, Osezele worried that Tolani’s expressions would get them in trouble. The easiest way to get punished by senior students was to tease them. Thankfully, Tolani stopped.

“It’s not like that joh, Ngozi forced me to go to a party with her over the holiday. I met a lot of SS3 girls there.” Osezele explained.

Tolani sighed wistfully. “And while you were partying, I was grounded.”

“Grounded? As punishment?” Osezele asked, bemused.

Tolani nodded with a pout. “Yes.” She sucked air in through her teeth. “My dad caught me sneaking through his journals while I was looking for the grimoire Lami asked me to bring. Just like that, he grounded me for the rest of the holiday.”

Osezele’s ears perked up at the sound of a witch’s grimoire, a book of spells and incantations for the different types of witches. She hadn’t really had much practice with her witch mark. She was just starting to get excited when she remembered that Tolani mentioned she brought it for Lami. Since Osezele had almost accidentally killed Lami the first time she’d used her commune powers, she didn’t think the SS3 head girl was going to want to share the grimoire with her. Osezele didn’t let her disappointment get in the way of a prime opportunity to tease Tolani though. She barely managed to keep a straight face as she said, “Tolani, are you sure that in your family you people aren’t oyinbo? Maybe you just paint your faces black to deceive the rest of us. I’ve never heard of Naija parents grounding their kids. Is that one even punishment sef?”

Tolani rolled her eyes and hissed. “Trust me, grounding is a punishment, and we have the lives my father spent in the Community to thank for his expert use of it.”

Tolani’s casual mention of her father’s lives in the Community reminded Osezele that she was not just talking to any ordinary unmarked person, but to the daughter of the most renowned African Sage. Tolani’s father was a type of Sage known as a recall, a remembered memory recall to be specific, though Osezele much preferred the colloquial ‘reincarnate’ or the shortened ‘remem’, all three of which referred to the same mark. Tolani’s father was infamous as the longest reincarnate chain in Africa. He’d come back more times than any other African remem, totaling a whopping twenty-seven lives.

A casual glance around them froze Osezele’s words in her throat, before she could reply to Tolani’s comment. She’d been about to disclose the trip she’d made to the Community to visit her aunty, when her eyes darted to a group of boys strolling casually along the Slab. Her heart skipped a beat.

She froze. It was as if every cell in her body forgot how to function.

Nosa was walking along the Slab with two of his friends. He had his elbow casually propped on the shoulder of the boy walking to his left as he leaned slightly towards the boy walking to his right. Osezele just barely recognized the boys he walked with as Victor and Elliot, two of his closest friends. Elliot must have said something funny, because Nosa laughed.

It was such a beautiful sound. His head tipped backwards, giving Osezele the perfect opportunity to admire his new haircut. He’d gotten a buzz cut with the edges of his hair carved to frame his face. Osezele’s eyes travelled along that face. He had a long face with a slightly big forehead which would have looked ugly on anyone else. Somehow, Nosa managed to make it work. His irises were a dark brown, so dark they were barely distinguishable from his pupils. His nose and lips were big, but they fit in just right with the rest of his features. Osezele’s eyes travelled downwards, across his tall, lean, body, to the brown sandals on his feet. He wore red trousers and a red uniform shirt with a sleeve that stopped midway down his upper arms. The first time she’d seen him, was after he’d just transferred into St. Luke’s as a JSS 2 boy. She’d had a crush on him since then.

“Nosa.” Osezele just barely said the words. Her voice was so low that she doubted Tolani, who was standing next to her could hear. But Nosa heard. Of course he did. Why was it so easy to forget he was a spotter? His werejackal hearing picked up her barely uttered words.

He turned to face her, and their eyes locked.

Nosa stopped moving.

He smiled at her, and her heart raced. She could tell from the way his smile deepened that he could hear her pounding heart. She was suddenly filled with an irrational urge to flee. Nosa turned away for a moment and Osezele ran and hid behind the tallest tree she could find.

* * *

They’d been arguing about the Slab when he saw her. Elliot believed that the Slab, like all the other concrete walkways in the school, should have a more unique name. The Appian Way, for example, was just another concrete walkway which connected the Refectory to the School Block, and the Bell Lane was yet another ‘slab’ which separated the boys’ hostels from the girls. So why did the slab they walked on get the unimaginative name ‘the Slab’. It was Victor’s opinion that the name came from the Main Slab, as the Slab was the main driveway into the school. It connected the school gate to the Administrative building, with offshoots leading to the Chapel and Auditorium, along the way. Nosa agreed with Elliot, but before he could say this, he’d heard her call his name.

Osezele.

His Princess.

His lips twitched as he thought of that special nickname. He’d given it to her the first time they’d met. He could still remember that meeting as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. She’d been under punishment, made to wash the entire school’s plates because she’d been daydreaming during her JSS3 Computer Class. That had happened only a term ago. Now she was in SS1 and he in SS2, but he was still as crazy about her as he’d been that day.

He remembered the scent that drew him to her. He was a spotter, so sniffing out other marked was his curse, which turned out to be a blessing in her case. Her scent was the most fragrant thing he’d ever smelled. He could not describe it any better now than he’d been able to at the time. She’d smelled like sea water, bottled up, and set on fire in spicy-scented flames. The smell had led him to her, where she stood, bent over, elbow deep in washing water. He’d had to fight off the urge to sniff her like a curious dog. But when she’d turned around and he’d seen her, he’d forgotten how to breathe.

The first thing he noticed about her was her skin. Her skin was a very dark shade of brown, it was one of the darkest he’d ever seen. It was so dark that it made every other feature on her face stand out. From her curly black hair, to the extreme white of her sclera and the light caramel brown of her irises. A boy could get lost staring into those eyes, he surely had.

When he’d asked her why she was washing plates and she’d answered saying that she’d chosen the punishment over a flogging, because she’d never been flogged before, he’d declared that she’d been “receiving royal treatment.” The ‘princess’ nickname had been the logical extension of his statement. Since the first time he’d called her that, he’d decided that he never wanted to call her anything else.

“Ah ah, Nosa, where’s your mind na?” Elliot prompted, jabbing Nosa in the side as he spoke.

Nosa reluctantly turned away from his Princess. “What?” he asked.

“Silver was just asking you if you’ve heard from Emeka. No one in the pack has heard from him since he graduated.” Elliot stated, referring to Victor by the ‘Silver’ nickname he was most known for.

Odion closed her eyes and went into her mark. The thought of linking with her niece reminded her of her first Auspice in Augurism class where she’d learnt that the function of an augur was to see visions. All the other gifts augurs had, were in service to that main function. Augurs could see visions either on their own, or in a bonded chain. But the bonded chain’s visions were preferred, as they were much clearer and more farseeing than that which a single augur could have. She’d learnt during that lecture that an augur’s gift of identifying other marked was a consequence of attempting to form a bonded chain. To form this chain augurs had to link. Linking was the first connection that augurs formed between themselves, when they saw each other in their augur mark, or their mind’s eyes, as some augurs liked to refer to it. Bonding was the next stage. It was only after the augurs bonded that they could form a chain.

Odion used her augury to begin the process of creating a bonded chain with her niece. When her inner eyes opened, she was alone in a dark room, ready to link with Osezele. As soon as Odion saw the empty room, the first thing she felt was relieved, Osezele was not marked. If Osezele was marked, then Odion would see her, she’d see Osezele and know her mark, it was as simple as that.

Odion was just about to come out of her mark when she felt something. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was, just a feeling, and so she stalked. She pictured Osezele in her mind and put every bit of her power into forcing Osezele to open her inner eyes and look. She hunted her niece. She became the predator in her augur mind, and Osezele the prey.

Osezele didn’t open her inner eyes, but that didn’t stop Odion from stalking her. If she was another augur, one who hadn’t had a vision of Osezele’s mark, she would have stopped at this point. But she’d seen that vision, she’d sensed Osezele’s beacon as a child and so she stalked with even more force, using her mark with the skill and viciousness that had put her at the top of her Auspice in Augurism class. Odion knew from her experience against well-trained augurs that she could not be denied. Her stalking gaze had the ability to make an augur feel extreme fear, as if their life was in imminent danger and the only way to save themselves was to open their inner eyes and see. Odion could sense the strength of Osezele’s mark by how long she was able to resist. But eventually, like every other augur Odion had come up against, Osezele gave in. She opened her inner eyes and looked.

As soon as Osezele revealed herself, all that she was became clear to Odion. Odion released Osezele’s hand and recoiled, stunned by the revelation she’d just made.

Her niece was not just an augur, but a witch and a commune too. She was a tri-marked warlock. Before that moment, Odion had not even known that such a thing was possible. Bi-marked warlocks were rare, but a tri-marked warlock was unheard of. How was her niece the one to break the mold?

“Do you know what you are?” Odion’s voice was barely above a whisper.

Osezele nodded, the corners of her lips tipped downward in a forlorn frown. “I’m a tri-marked warlock,” she said, her tone stating that she somehow understood the dangers associated with her marks.

But she didn’t though, not really. How could she? A pang of pain filled Odion’s chest as she stared at her niece. Did Osezele even know the future in store for her? Odion didn’t need her sight to know that Osezele was destined to share the same fate she had, she would be taken from her mother, Akhere, the same way that Odion had been the day of Osezele’s birth. It was inevitable. All powerful marked people were found and brought here, and Odion didn’t know of any mark as powerful as a tri-marked warlock. Osezele was the first of her kind. She would eventually be discovered, hunted down, and brought here to live out her days. Odion knew it, but she could not quite bring herself to say it.

“How did you get in here without anyone seeing your mark?” Odion asked instead.

She noted the downcast look on Osezele’s face and knew that she’d put a pall on their visit. At that moment though, she didn’t care. She fully intended to scold Osezele for her recklessness and impress on her the need for a visit like this to never be repeated.

Osezele fingered the bracelet on her hand without responding.

Odion’s eyes followed Osezele’s movements. She found herself stunned for the second time. “Is that a quintise binding?” she asked. Surely, Osezele could not have gotten a quintise to make her a binding which could hide her mark. For all but the augurs, a quintise binding was all that was needed to make it impossible for anyone to see their mark. The binding hid the scent of their mark from spotters, and the sight of their mark from augurs. The augurs were the exception to this, because they had inner eyes which could look, which meant their mark could be seen if they allowed themselves to link with another augur by looking at them with their inner eyes. It meant that even with a quintise binding, augurs had to do more to hide their mark. Which made it all the more impressive that Osezele had managed to evade the notice of highly trained augurs. Odion found herself smiling a little. “Please answer me.” Odion prompted.

Osezele’s eyes darted nervously to Odion’s face. “I don’t know what a quintise is,” she replied, “I made the binding myself. My uncle taught me how to make it.”

There were so many things in that statement that puzzled Odion. Uncle? What uncle? Osezele didn’t have any uncles, she only had a mother and an aunty, that was as far as their family tree extended. And she’d made a quintise binding herself? A quintise was a group formed from a combination of Warlock marks. Now that she thought of it, it made perfect sense that Osezele could make it, she was after all a tri-marked Warlock, which meant that she had all the marks in the Warlock class. Odion was just about to ask about this mysterious uncle when Osezele’s hands clenched tightly around hers and rushed words gushed out of Osezele’s mouth.

“Aunty I’m so sorry, please don’t be angry with me. I just wanted to visit you. You’re the only family I have other than mummy, and mummy lied to me for my entire life. Aunty she hid my mark without telling me, and she didn’t even tell me when I was old enough to handle it. Please, don’t be angry, I just wanted to meet family that wouldn’t lie to me.”

Odion felt as if her heart was breaking. She pulled Osezele in for another hug, cooing softly at her when she began to cry. She’d told Akhere to tell Osezele of her mark. She’d told Akhere to do it a year ago, before Osezele’s mark was revealed by the powers she developed. Akhere hadn’t listened, she’d wanted to protect her daughter.

“It’s okay, I’m not angry.” Odion said, cajolingly, “I’m just worried about you. I’m very happy to see you, but visiting me is not worth the risk of being caught and locked here.” Odion stroked Osezele’s back as she spoke.

“It’s worth it to me, aunty.” Osezele argued.

“Don’t argue with me, if not we’ll really start to quarrel.” Odion warned only a little jokingly.

Osezele laughed. Thankfully, she’d stopped crying. She pulled back. Odion gave Osezele time to compose herself before she attacked again. “So, you risked your freedom because you’re angry at your mother and you needed to vent to someone? Does that sound smart to you? Don’t you have friends you want to see? Or you don’t know that if you get locked in the Community, you’ll never see them again? Maybe you don’t have friends, that’s why you’re acting so careless.”

Osezele’s shoulders slumped. She stared down at her hands as she mumbled barely audible words. “Aunty no, I have friends. I have a best friend Tolani and Nosa, my boy…my friend.”

“Eh!” Odion exclaimed teasingly. “So, you have a boyfriend?”

Osezele smiled, shaking her head. “Nooo.”

“But you want him to be your boyfriend?” Odion prodded.

Osezele ducked her head shyly.

“Mmhmm. If you like don’t be careful with your mark, until they lock you inside here. Then when you don’t see Nosa again, you’ll know.”

“Okay, okay, aunty, I won’t come back. Shey you don’t want to see me again. I won’t come back.” Osezele said playfully.

Odion got serious quickly. There was something about having to deal with abandonment issues that removed the teasing from statements like that, especially when they were made by a child. She never wanted Osezele to feel a fraction of what she did. It was bad enough that Odion didn’t know who her parents were and what had happened during those missing sixteen years of her life. She didn’t want Osezele to ever doubt the love of her family, as the gaps in her memory forced her to.

“Osezele, even before you were born, I loved you so much more than you could ever imagine. If I could find a way to bring you and your mother here so that we could all live together, I would do that. But I can’t. I want you to be happy, and that’s why I’m making sure you understand how dangerous this visit is.”

Osezele nodded. “Aunty, I understand, I was just joking before.” Osezele’s gaze traveled around the room before returning to Odion. “Ehn-ehn, I almost forgot. I actually had a very good reason for coming here.”

“You had a very good reason for coming here and you forget?” Odion made sure that her lack of belief was evident in her tone of voice.

Osezele laughed. “Aunty, have you heard anything about the Community capturing a marked couple from Port-harcourt? The boy, Emeka, is a very strong werejackal, and the girl, Oshoke, is a pain commune. Oshoke was actually my first senior friend in St. Luke’s. She’s the one that taught me how to control my commune mark.”

Odion smiled at that. She’d had a vision of Osezele in St. Luke’s and had told Akhere to send her there. It was nice to hear that the vision had paid off, and that Osezele had other unknowns there to help her with her mark. But a marked couple? She shook her head. A young marked couple getting captured together was the kind of thing that the children in the Community tended to make a lot of fuss about. She would have heard of it. “No, why, are they missing?”

Osezele shrugged. “Emeka used to be the alpha of the werejackal pack in St. Luke’s, and the last time I talked to Nosa, he mentioned that he hadn’t heard from Emeka in a while and that he didn’t know if he should worry, so I just decided to check with you.”

Odion almost laughed at her niece’s attempt to cover up the fact that she’d come here out of anger at her mum. Had she ever been this young and this bad at making plausible excuses? “So, you expect me to believe that you risked your freedom because of a phone call you had with your boyfriend about a werejackal who is not even missing?” Odion gave Osezele a level look. “Tell me the truth, did you really come here to ask about Emeka and Oshoke?”

Osezele looked guilty. “Maybe I was a little angry at my mother,” she confessed. “But aunty she should have told me that I was marked, shouldn’t she?”

Odion decided to stay as far away from that conversation as she could. She wouldn’t pick sides. “Next time, find a different way to rebel, this is too dangerous.”

“I really wanted to meet you aunty, I’m sorry.”

Odion could tell that she was. She exhaled, deciding that she’d played the role of serious aunty for long enough. It was time for the cool aunt to come out. “Alright, so tell me about this Nosa.” Osezele looked ready to disagree, so Odion sweetened the pot. “If you tell me about Nosa, maybe I’ll tell you about the cute spotter who just moved into my apartment building.” Just thinking of the spotter, Oare, made Odion’s mouth water. Talk about hot.

The deal must have been too good to pass up, because Osezele started talking.

Osezele’s awe increased when, on tilting it underneath the light, she noticed that it seemed to sparkle with varying colors. She looked closer and saw “Osezele & Mitaire” inscribed in calligraphed text onto the rock.

“Thank you,” she said.

He winked at her. “Turn it over,” he suggested.

She did. She flipped the rock and saw a phone number inscribed onto the other side. Osezele burst out laughing, almost as amazed by his confidence as she was by the control he had over his mark and the ease with which he wielded it.

At the end of the tunnel, there was an open elevator. She walked into it and waved goodbye to Tai as he sailed away on his boat. Her tunnel boat-boy, she mused. She pressed the button for the third floor, wondering, while the elevator moved, what would happen if something ever came of the boat-boy’s flirtation. Not with her, of course, not when Nosa was the only boy she could ever care about. But she did wonder what would happen if another girl fell for him while visiting her family. Could an unmarked girl marry a marked boy who was locked in the Community? If it happened, would the unmarked girl be able to live in the Community? A part of her wanted to give into the romantic notion of two people breaking the marked-unmarked barrier and being together regardless. But the more practical part of her knew that could never happen. Even if they did manage to conceive a child, she had a sickening feeling that the woman would be locked away somewhere until she delivered, and then the baby would be wrenched from its mother’s arms and the mother would be cast out of the Community.

The elevator pinged, letting Osezele know that she’d reached her destination. Her fingers trailed reflexively over her bracelet, as she waited for the elevator doors to pull open. Once they were open, she walked into the third floor of the visiting logs. Two rows of rooms flanked her on both sides. She walked past the lines of closed doors and stopped when she reached the one room where the door had been left open. A woman with black braids, sat on a couch in the center of the room. Osezele found herself walking in without knocking or waiting for an invitation. She hadn’t seen the woman’s face, hadn’t received any indication that the woman was her aunty, but she was inexplicably drawn to her.

The woman’s shoulders drew up. She rose to her feet, as if she could sense Osezele’s presence in the room, and turned to face her.

Their eyes met.

They froze.

Osezele had known that she’d come to visit her mother’s twin sister, but she had not expected the resemblance to be so uncanny. It was as though she was looking at her own mother.

“Aunty,” she called out.

* * *

The hairs on the back of Odion’s neck stood up. She sensed that she was being watched, and not by the person she’d come to the visiting logs expecting.

Odion had only ever had one visitor, her sister Akhere, the only family she knew of. She pushed away the blank fog that momentarily filled her thoughts. Once, long ago, the missing years of memories had bothered her. It had vexed her that the first sixteen years of her life were gone. No images came to mind when she pictured a mother, no deep voice stirred her memories at thought of a father. After fourteen years, she was used to not knowing. She had Akhere, and her twin sister was more than enough.

Today was different. She felt it in the air around her, in the twitching of her nerves. This visitor was not Akhere. So, who was it? Odion was not one to contend with ignorance. She jumped to her feet and turned, a nervous excitement racing through her at the prospect of a new, unknown, visitor.

As soon as their eyes met, she froze.

Caramel brown eyes in a dark brown face caught and held her gaze. For a second, Odion forgot how to breathe. Her mouth hung open, her heart stopped in her chest, the very air around her seemed to freeze. There was only stillness.

Odion stared into those misty eyes and it was as if she was in a time machine being pulled back, sucked back to the first time she’d seen those caramel irises staring up at her from a pudgy, wailing, baby. She could hear the baby’s screams, Akhere’s quivering voice asking what was wrong, the pounding on the door. Her skin prickled with the memory of the moment when she and Akhere had frozen in horror staring at the door, breaths bated, and a cold sweat running down their backs as they waited to see who emerged. She went back in her mind, back to a few months before that fateful day.

They’d been sixteen then. Sixteen years old without a single memory of the life they’d had before. It was as if they’d simply started existing at that age. Except Akhere’s existence had begun pregnant. Odion could still remember those first few months in the Community, trying to adjust to life as a marked teenager with an unmarked pregnant sister on the outside. Akhere had been terrified, sixteen and pregnant with absolutely no memory of how the baby had ended up in her belly. They’d discussed an abortion, but Akhere hadn’t been able to go through with it. At the time, Odion had appealed to the council, the leaders of the Community, for a special license so that her sister could move to the Community with her. Her appeals had been denied.

Those were still the worst months of Odion’s life. It was in moments like that that she’d wished for memories of her past. Anything would have sufficed. She would have settled for just knowing who’d gotten her sister pregnant. But no memories came. They’d had no one to turn to for help. Things got better after Akhere found a job as a maid in a hotel. In the Community, Odion had been enrolled in school. She was marked, and all marked children were taken care of. It had struck her as blatantly unfair that she got the formal education, the free food and shelter, all because she could live in the Community, all because some twist of fate had placed a mark on her chest and given her powers of augury to go with it. They’d survived those first few months.

Then everything changed when Odion saw the vision of her niece’s birth. In that vision she’d seen that her niece, Akhere’s daughter, was marked, just like her.

She’d been elated. After months of loneliness she was finally going to have family living with her in the Community. She hadn’t been able to contain her excitement. The next time she saw Akhere, the words just came spewing out of her mouth. It wasn’t till after her sister broke down in tears that she realized how selfish her desires had been. She hadn’t even considered how Akhere would feel about having a marked baby. But they both knew what had to happen. It was the law. All marked children had to be turned into the Community. Which meant that Akhere would have to give her baby up. Odion tried to console her sister by assuring her that she would take care of the baby, it would be just as if the child was hers.

Akhere was inconsolable.

She was adamant.

She refused to give up her child.

Odion’s heart broke, but Akhere was her sister, her twin, and so she told Akhere the rumors she’d heard about communes who hid children’s marks, making them unknowns. It was illegal, and if they were caught, they would both be imprisoned and the child would end up in the Community, alone. Akhere considered the risks and she chose to take them. Odion knew her sister wasn’t strong enough to do it by herself and so she’d snuck out of the Community to help her.

Escaping had been a thrill. Normally, it was impossible to leave the Community without the council’s approval. However, things were different for augurs and sages. It was one of those rare moments when Odion had cause to be grateful for the intermingling of religion and politics in her country. It was because of this intermingling that Nigerian authorities allowed augurs and sages to live outside the Community and share their ‘gifts from God’ with the unmarked. They were, however, required to spend three years in the Community to master their marks. Odion had snuck into a group of augurs and sages leaving after their mandatory three years were spent. She’d lied her way amongst them, and she’d been driven right out of the Community.

Once Odion had joined her sister, she’d taken Akhere to a renegade commune, called Ebo, who’d been hiding under the guise of a native doctor. Ebo had suppressed the baby’s mark. Thanks to Ebo, the outward sign of the mark would never brand Osezele’s skin, and augurs and spotters wouldn’t be able to see or smell her mark until her powers came out. It gave Akhere at least ten years with her daughter, without fear of having her mark sensed.

There was only one problem.

Marked children gave off beacons in the moment of their birth.

Ebo’s magic suppressed that beacon, but they could not know until the moment of birth how much the beacon was suppressed. It depended on how strong the baby’s mark was. And it turned out that Osezele’s mark was strong, very strong. When she was born, she gave off a beacon so strong that as soon as her body came out, Odion had felt it and been drawn to it.

Unfortunately, Odion was not the only one who’d been drawn to it.

And that was how that moment came to be. Akhere lying on her birthing bed holding a wailing baby with tears suspended in her eyes as the door of her tiny apartment shook when someone pounded on it. The baby screamed. Akhere, tired from pushing the little baby out, turned to Odion and asked her, in a quivering voice, what was wrong. Akhere had been so afraid. The pounding on the door had only gotten louder until finally, it was opened. A spotter came in and pointed at the baby Osezele. Odion and Akhere stayed still, frozen in horror. A cold sweat ran down Odion’s back as she waited for the verdict. But she’d known, even as the augur held baby Osezele, she’d known that the beacon was gone and Ebo’s magic had already taken effect. She’d known that Osezele was safe.

She’d known that she wasn’t.

The augur noted that the baby didn’t have a mark and the spotter sniffed, sure that he’d not been mistaken in the scent that drew him to the room. He’d caught scent of Odion’s mark and Odion’s duplicity had been revealed. The augur got into her head, the augur bonded with her and she learned of Odion’s crimes. Odion had been able to hide what they’d done to Osezele’s mark, but only because the augur wasn’t looking for that secret. They’d taken her back to the Community. Since she wasn’t an adult, she wasn’t thrown in jail, but she wasn’t allowed to leave again either. The Nigerian allowances for augurs to live outside the Community after their three-year training was rescinded from her. She was taken back, and she’d never seen her niece again.

“Aunty,” Odion heard Osezele’s shaky voice calling out to her and was instantly brought back from her trip down memory lane.

“Osezele. Is that really you?” she asked, and then laughed at herself for sounding like one of those aunties, asking questions she already knew the answers to.

Osezele nodded.

Tears filled Odion’s eyes. She held her hands open and smiled when Osezele ran towards her. When she got close though, the girl began to curtsy. Odion frowned at the greeting, grasping her by the shoulder and pulling her close before she could bend. They hugged. Odion thought about loosening the vice-like hold that she’d ensnared her niece in, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” Odion spoke into Osezele’s ear, “I never dreamt of meeting you. Not even for a second. I didn’t dare hope.” Odion rocked Osezele as she spoke. The tears welled up in her eyes, threatening to pour over. It took a herculean effort, but after a great deal of time had passed, Odion managed to loosen her hold and let go of Osezele.

“Oh Osezele,” she said, sniffing a little. Odion realized she was acting like a cry-baby, but she could not help herself. She knew that she would laugh whenever she recalled this first meeting. She stepped back. “What can I get you to drink?” She asked, making her way over to the open door. The mini fridge was in a cubby built into the wall above the stove in the kitchenette. She closed the door and opened the fridge. She then proceeded to list every single beverage in the fridge, and more she knew off the top of her head, she would get whatever Osezele wanted. Only the best for her niece. She felt her eyes wetting again and shook her head at herself. When had she become such an old woman? Where was the cool aunt she’d always dreamt of being?

“Aunty, just Fanta is fine, thank you,” Osezele responded.

Odion retrieved a can of Fanta from the fridge and carried it back to the couch where Osezele was sitting. The couch was one out of five which formed a circular arch around the center table, in front of the TV. There was a queen-sized bed in one side of the room and a toilet behind it. These rooms were InCoSeM – (the International Coalition for the Security of the Marked) – mandated for all Community visiting logs. InCoSeM was the world-wide ruling body in charge of all Marked Communities. For some reason Odion couldn’t guess at, InCoSeM’s rule in Nigeria was not yet as secure as it was everywhere else in the world. The room was InCoSeM’s idea of fostering good relations between the marked and unmarked. It was as if InCoSeM thought that if they could make the visiting rooms nice enough, it would be easier for the unmarked parents of marked children to obey the law which required them to hand those children over to the Community. As someone who’d helped her unmarked twin sister to break that law, Odion could point out the flaws of their logic.

The subject of her thoughts sat on the couch, staring up lovingly at her. She handed Osezele the bottle of Fanta she’d gotten from the fridge and proceeded to sit beside her.

Her gaze lifted and she saw Osezele staring at her chest, at the outward brand of her mark that she wore proudly on it. The mark was a long thin oval with a line of bumps on both sides. Every marked person was born with one, and all marked people had supernatural abilities.

Odion smiled at Osezele. “I can’t believe you’re here. What are you doing here?” There was something about the combination of words that had the effect of shaking sense back into Odion’s head. In the excitement of seeing her, Odion had completely forgotten about the consequences of Osezele’s mark on this visit.

All the joy she’d felt at the sight of her niece was quickly evaporating. Anger grew to take its place.

“What are you doing here?” This time the question was an accusation, and Odion could tell, by the way Osezele looked away guiltily, that the young lady knew she was in trouble.

Osezele was marked. Of all the stupid, idiotic, things that she’d ever seen in her life, this one had to take the cake. For an unknown – as those with hidden marks were called – to deliberately walk into the Community, was unheard of. Didn’t Osezele understand the risks? Didn’t she know how much Odion and her mother had sacrificed to keep her out of this place? Odion’s anger began to give way to confusion. There were checks at the reception tower, augurs and spotters were placed there. If Osezele was marked, by the age of fourteen her powers would have come out, and she would not have been able to come in without her mark being discovered. Odion started to doubt the vision she’d seen of Osezele’s mark. She thought of asking Osezele and thought better of it. Instead, she grabbed onto Osezele hands and did what the Community and natural talent had made her so good at. She looked.

“Osezele ma,” she answered. “Osezele Omorodion.”

“Miss Omorodion. How are you doing today?” the woman asked.

‘Look!’ The voice in her head, the one she’d managed so far to ignore, jumped out and yelled at her to open her mind’s eye. To see. She distracted herself by focusing on the woman’s accent. It reminded her a lot of Tolani who'd once corrected her, insisting that her way of speaking was ‘good diction’ and not ‘talking like oyinbo’. The thoughts of her best friend shored up her defenses. She withstood the augur’s stalking; she kept her inner eyes closed. “Fine thank you ma,” Osezele responded.

“And who are you here to see?”

“My aunty, Odion Omorodion.”

“How is she related to you?”

“She’s my mother’s tw–sister.” Osezele immediately caught herself before she’d blurted out the word ‘twin’. She’d been specifically warned against that fatal mistake. It wouldn’t matter that they hadn’t seen her mark. If they found out that her mother was the twin of a marked, they’d conduct further tests, including the dreaded blood test. To her relief, the woman didn’t seem to catch her slip.

“Have you been here before?”

“No ma,” Osezele responded, shaking her head.

“How do you like it so far?” the woman asked with a warm, motherly, smile.

Osezele smiled back. “It’s very nice ma. Thank you.” ‘Look!’ the voice returned and Osezele just barely managed to keep herself from jumping out of her chair. All she had to do was open her inner eyes and the voice would go away. The feeling of dread, the fear of the unknown, all of it would stop. If she looked. The elderly woman continued speaking. She didn’t appear even the slightest bit frazzled by the way she stalked Osezele. Osezele prayed for the strength to withstand.

“You have very good manners,” the woman said. “Rare for children of your generation. Your parents must have raised you well.”

“Thank you, ma.”

“Where are your parents? Why aren’t they here with you?”

“I live with my mother, but she was too busy to come,” she replied, carefully leaving off the fact that she’d never met her father. That, as she’d been told, could also raise suspicion.

“I understand. But I’m surprised she let you come on your own, especially for the first visit.”

“She planned to come with me, but I had to come alone.” Osezele prayed for the interview to end, she didn’t know how much longer she could resist the urge to look.

“Something must have come up at the last minute.” The woman added sympathetically.

Osezele was glad to hear her reach the conclusion she wanted her to. She had been warned not to lie. The spotters would have gotten a baseline for her heart rate by now. If it sped up, they’d know she was lying. “Well, I can see why she would trust you to come alone. You seem like a very capable young lady.”

“Thank you, ma,” she responded.

The augur stood up and Osezele followed suit. The woman immediately extended her hand for a handshake. Seeing that the interview was at an end, Osezele reached out eagerly to accept the gesture. As soon as she touched the woman, the urge to open her mind’s eye and look overwhelmed her. All the fear that she’d felt, drawing closer to the Community, returned with a vengeance. The chill came, icy fingers crawled underneath her skin. Her body went through cycles of cool and heat. At one moment she felt so cold she had to ground her teeth together to keep them from chattering. The next moment heat enveloped her, sweat pooled on her lips and at her temples, and she had to fight the instinct to wipe them off. The voice yelling ‘LOOK!’ in her head, yelled it in an unending chant, barking at a volume louder than she’d ever heard anything before. She knew she was in danger, she knew that she had to look. Every part of her mind screamed at her to end the torture. Her brain became the augur’s agent, whispering for her to go into her mark, open her inner eyes and look. She couldn’t take it anymore! She was just about to give into the desire to open her mind’s eye, when the woman finally released her hand. Osezele was so relieved her eyes shimmered with tears.

“Come with me,” the augur said, making her way around the table.

Osezele’s fears returned. She knew she’d been caught. She hadn’t been strong enough, her efforts to withstand the augur’s stalking must have been noticed. Now the woman was going to send her for the blood test. What was she going to do? She walked towards the door, examining her options for flight with each step she took.

Her worries proved unfounded when, on getting to the door, the woman pointed towards the other end of the hallway and directed her towards the canal which led to the visiting logs. “Do you know what class of marked your aunty is?”

Nodding, Osezele responded, “she’s an augur”.

The woman was quick to correct her. Osezele of course already knew that ‘augur’ wasn’t a class of marked. She hadn’t wanted to come across as having too much knowledge of the marked which was why she hadn’t given the correct ‘Warlock’ answer. There were three classes of marked, Warlocks, Varmints, and Sages. Augurs were only a type of marked under the Warlock class. After making a point of correcting her perceived ignorance, the augur told Osezele what floor of the visiting logs her aunty was in.

Osezele was so relieved to have made it through the entire interview unscathed, that she found herself curtsying twice and profusely thanking the augur for her instructions. As relieved as she was though, she didn’t allow herself to relax until she made it out of the reception tower and into the tunnel which housed the canal.

It was mesmerizing.

Osezele stopped dead in her tracks and gaped at the view. She hadn’t seen anything so beautiful outside a TV screen. The arched roof of the tunnel was filled with hundreds of tiny radiant spots. She couldn’t quite tell if those spots were the smallest lights she’d ever seen, or if they were just holes covered with dyed paper which colored the rays of sunlight as they streamed through. Whatever they were, they made the tunnel appear as though it was lit by a thousand stars. The beautiful glow from the spots hit the surface of the dazzling blue water in the canal. Osezele had never seen stream water so clean. Little ripples flowed over the surface of the water, moving in a way that appeared as an orchestrated dance. Could water dance? She was forced to wonder as she continued to gape at the sight. It had to be magic, she concluded, elemental witch magic.

“Hey!” A voice called out.

Osezele jumped, startled. In her search for the voice, her eyes caught on the single vessel bobbing on the dancing waves. She must have glanced by it when she walked into the tunnel. Now that her attention was settled on it, she could not look away, it was easily as captivating as everything else in the tunnel. The vessel was a sleek, white boat, shaped like the canoes common in the Niger Delta. It had transparent glass surrounding it. The glass emerged from the gunwale and rose in a curved arc all the way to the white roof, covering all but a single slot which, the wooden steps in front of the hull showed, was the entrance to the boat.

A teenaged boy dressed in black khakis and a white shirt appeared in front of the patch of missing glass. This boy was the owner of the voice. Waving over at her he said, “come on in”.

Osezele walked the few steps over to the bank. She glanced warily at the moving boat. Before, she’d been too far away to see that the boat did not make perfect contact with the top rung of the wooden ladder. It yawed, moving from side to side, as a result of the dancing waves it sat on.

“Don’t worry, I have you.” The boy, said, as if he could sense her fears. Osezele noticed for the first time that his teeth were pearl white. She smiled back at him.

Taking a deep breath, she climbed up the steps of the ladder, and steeled herself for the fall as she stepped into the boat. Surprisingly, she did not sway until after she was standing squarely in the vessel. It almost felt as if the boat had just known to stop moving while she climbed on. Once she was on it though, it continued its yawing, and she proceeded to stumble right into the expectant arms of the boat-boy. Wordlessly, he supported her, guiding her from the side of the boat, to the leather seats within. Osezele slumped ungraciously onto the seat, which earned her a chuckle from her handsome helper. He flashed his smile one more time in her direction, then turned his back on her and walked over to the bow. She was shocked to see that a boy who looked about her age was actually able to drive a vessel like this. And he’d been smiling, that confounded her. For some reason, probably related to the horror stories she’d been told about this place, Osezele hadn’t expected to see any happy children inside the Community. But the boy looked as happy and carefree as her friends on the outside.

As if sensing the direction of her thoughts, once the boat started moving, the boy turned around and smiled at her. “What’s your name?” he yelled, trying to be heard over the noise of the engine.

“Osezele,” she yelled back.

“What does that mean? Edo princess, or something like that?” he teased.

She laughed. “No, it means because of God.”

His smile widened, and she felt her smile widen in turn. He had a twinkle in his eyes. “I bet I know what your mum was thinking when she named you,” he said.

Sucked into his teasing, Osezele replied in kind, “what was she thinking?”

“Because of God she’s so beautiful,” he stated.

Osezele laughed. It was a sound so loud and filled with mirth that it almost drowned out the roar of the engine. That was the first real moment of relaxation she’d had since stepping into the Community.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Mitaire. My friends call me Tai,” he answered, flashing his perfect smile at her. “So, who are you here to see?”

“My aunty,” Osezele responded. Then, “she’s an augur,” she added. It felt good to finally be able to say the words freely to someone without wondering how they’d react. “What are you?” she asked, free to ask that question without consequence for the first time.

“I’m a lover, a gentleman, and a legacy,” Tai answered solemnly.

Osezele burst out laughing before he could finish. Unable to maintain his solemn countenance, he joined in her laughter. When their laughter subsided, he turned on his swivel chair, giving her such a serious look that he captured her full attention.

Then he closed his eyes.

When Tai’s eyes opened, his irises and pupils were gone, leaving behind only crimson orbs which shone brightly in the wondrous lighting of the tunnel. Tai’s eyes had undergone a sclera shift, different from the iris shift of the Varmints, and the pupil shift of the Sages. The sclera shift showed that Tai was of the Warlock class, and the crimson color of his eyes, showed he was a commune.

He briefly extended his right hand, palm up, with his fist closed. When he opened his palm, a crimson flame appeared, hovering in the air above it. Then, he raised his clenched left hand slowly. As he did this, a rock flew out of the water. When he opened his left palm, the rock landed directly on it. He brought both hands close together, and the rock levitated up into the fire and hung suspended within its flames. Then, he closed his hands around the rock and the flame, raised his closed hands to his face, and blew at them. Finally, the sclera shift ended, and his eyes returned to normal.

“If you were asking about my mark,” he said with a grin, “I’m a commune. Does that scare you?”

Osezele had to force her attention away from his still closed hands where she hoped to see something interesting emerge from the casual magic he’d performed. She shook her head in response to his question, choosing not to mention the fact that she’d known what he was as soon as his eyes changed colors. No, she was not afraid, she was exhilarated. When she’d learnt about the commune mark, she’d learned that communes could only get their power from negative emotions like pain and anger.

The thought of communes and negative emotions cast a pall on Osezele’s mood. She thought of pain and communes and memories of her pain and her last encounter with communes threatened to push themselves to the surface. In her mind she was in a hollow tub-shaped bed, staring up at the group of communes who’d kidnapped her to use her as a human sacrifice so they could get power from the pain of her death. A bitter taste filled her mouth. She forced the memory away.

Not all communes were bad.

At least she hoped not, since she was a commune herself.

No, not all communes were bad. Oshoke hadn’t been bad. Oshoke was a commune, she was her friend, and she hadn’t been bad. But even Oshoke had needed to hurt her pets to get power. Seeing Tai use his mark without hurting anything gave her hope. For the first time since she’d learned about commune magic, she saw the beauty in it.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, uplifted by the performance she had just witnessed.

“No, you’re beautiful,” he responded with a smile. “This is just magic, dark magic, which usually scares the unmarked. I’m glad it doesn’t bother you.”

She tried to hold it in, to resist the urge to ask the question on the tip of her tongue, but she had to know. So, she asked, “How did you do that without hurting anything?” He looked startled by her question and so Osezele found herself stuttering, cursing the urge that led her to reveal so much knowledge of marked magic. “I, ehn, I j-just mean that erm…I mean I’ve been told that...”

“Commune power comes from hurting others?” he asked.

She nodded. He lifted his left hand slightly to display a leather bracelet around his wrist. “This is the Community, sweetheart. My power comes from this.” He jangled the bracelet.

She had so many more questions. She’d been taught that only witches had talismans. They were the only ones who could do magic without hurting anyone. Communes needed to use negative emotions as the source of their powers. Had the Community found a way around this? If so, she was curious to know how they had achieved such a feat.

But the boat stopped at that moment and any chance she had of asking more questions was gone. He turned off the engine and stood up to help her off the boat. As soon as they were on the ground, he opened his left hand, finally revealing the product of the magic display. A heart-shaped marble rock sat on his outstretched palm. Osezele was dazed by how he’d transformed the coarse amorphous rock which had risen from the water into this smooth, beautiful, object.

“Take it. I made it for you. A memento of our time together.” He said.

Prologue
-----------------

Outside the Community, Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria

Osezele didn’t realize her hands were shaking until the taxi driver pointedly remarked on it. She laughed off his concern, steering the conversation instead to the much more important one that they’d been having. In the time they’d spent parked by the side of the road, Osezele had only managed to convince the man to return half of the change she was owed. Haggling was not her forte. In fact, confrontation in general was just not her style. She was peace-loving. If only she’d embarked on this journey with Tolani. Despite her fear, a smile crept onto her face as she thought of how Tolani, her best friend, would handle this situation. If Tolani was here, this man would have already given her her money and even added jara on top.

Sadly, she was alone. That thought brought back her fears. The tremor which had developed in her hands spread to her throat. Her voice shook as she continued to barter with the driver. She should have brought more money with her, she would have, if she had any more. She’d brought all the money she had, all the money she could get without asking her mother. Just thinking of her mother, and the last conversation they’d had, rose feelings of guilt which combatted her fear. Her mother didn’t know where she was. She’d lied to her mother. Then she remembered why, and her guilt spawned anger. Her mother had lied to her for her entire life!

A red haze colored her vision.

“Oga abeg give me my change!” She snapped. As soon as the words were out, her vision cleared. She slapped her palm over her mouth, as if to retrieve the rude words she’d spoken and shove them back down her throat. She was not this person. “I’m sorry sir,” she began to beg.

The man hissed. It was a long sound, one created by sucking air through teeth pressed against a lip. Osezele had never had a talent for hissing, but the driver appeared to have a knack for it. As if the hiss was not enough, he ‘eyed’ her, sending his gaze from the top of her head to her waist and back a few times. Then, he retrieved the change he’d refused to give her, and flung the naira notes at her.

“Take your money and go. Rude girl,” he said, somehow managing to make the words sound like an extension of his previous hiss.

Osezele rushed to pick up the money. She’d just barely opened the door, when the car began to move. She jumped out of the car, and found herself on hands and knees, staring befuddled at the fumes gushing out of the exhaust of the taxi as it sped off. At least she had her change, she thought, rising from her sprawled position.

She turned her back on the road and was greeted by a large expanse of barren land. The area in front of her was a wide patch of muddy clay soil spotted with portholes. This was the area that surrounded the Community.

Simply thinking of her destination was almost enough to send her into a catatonic state. She gulped nervously, sweat trickled down her back, and her heart lurched.

Breathe.

She jumped. Her head swiveled, her frantic eyes darting all around her in search of the voice she’d heard. Suddenly, the world was out of focus. The blaring horns of the cars driving on the road behind her were now too loud. The cursory glances from passersby appeared a little too probing.

A motorbike rolled to a stop in front of her. “Where you dey go?” The okadaman asked.

Osezele gasped. The loud sounds dulled, and the probing glances glanced away. Her hand rose to her chest. Beneath her skin, she felt the pounding of her heart. She took a step back, moving away from the okadaman on his motorbike. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea. What was she thinking? All of a sudden, her life came into focus. She thought of Tolani, how remarkable it was that she’d found a friend like her, and how unwilling she was to lose that friendship. Then she thought of Nosa and her racing heart skipped a beat. No, she took another step back, it was all too much to risk.

Stay Calm.

This time, she didn’t jump, but just barely. She recognized the voice. Was her mind playing tricks on her? She recalled the conversation they’d had about her desire to come to the Community. He’d tried to dissuade her, but she’d insisted and so he’d told her to stay calm. He’d given her everything she needed to survive this trip.

Stay Calm. Breathe. Don’t worry. And most importantly, don’t look back.

The words were actually comforting now that she could place her uncle’s voice. It was a testament to the degree of fear she felt that she’d been startled by the memory. Her uncle’s warning not to look back reminded her that she’d come too close to the Community; she could already feel the eyes behind that gate peering at her. Turning back now would only arouse suspicion. She had to keep going. She trailed her finger over her bracelet, the binding she’d made to protect herself.

This time, she made sure to haggle about pricing before she climbed onto the motorbike, but as soon as it began moving, she felt her fears return. She was so nauseous her stomach churned. Her heart kept up its frantic beating and her palm was so wet she had to rub it against her knees to wipe off the sweat. How could she possibly make it into the Community as nervous as she was? She turned backwards and stared longingly at the tarred road vanishing in the distance. She almost told the okadaman to turn around. The stakes of this visit tightened around her neck like a noose, making it hard for her to breathe. So much hung on her ability to slip into the Community without getting caught. If they found out the truth about her, they’d never let her leave. She would never see her mother again, never gossip with Tolani or gaze into Nosa’s dreamy eyes.

Voices of reason told her to turn around. The risk was too great.

Her uncle’s voice rose louder in her head. Stay Calm. Breathe. Don’t worry. And most importantly, don’t look back. She couldn’t go back, she’d already allowed herself to get too close to the Community. They would already have sensed her coming. She reminded herself that turning around would only arouse suspicion. It didn’t matter how many times she repeated it to herself, knowing the facts didn’t stop her stomach from twisting into knots. She’d never done anything this daring before.

As the motorbike pulled closer to the Community, Osezele felt her fears, already astronomically high, somehow manage to increase. Her uncle had taught her ways to avoid being seen, and it took all of her focus to keep her guard up. The bike rolled over a hump in the road, prompting her to cling to the driver. As her clammy fingers wound around him, a jolt of jealousy shot through her. She was jealous of the oblivion he enjoyed. He wouldn’t feel the weight of the eyes that peered into her. He wouldn't notice the augurs who had the gift of sight, the ability to find other marked, even the ones like her whose marks were hidden. He wouldn’t pick up on the spotters, bi-marked werejackal-augurs, infamous for their ability to hunt down the marked. They were no doubt the ones she felt probing into her as they drew inexorably closer to her destination.

When the bike came to a stop, Osezele had to force her teeth to stop their chattering. She rose wide eyes to the scenery which greeted her. They had stopped a few feet away from a single tall glass building. There were no terrifying gates with heavily armed soldiers parading in front of them. No visible signs of the law-imposed demarcation between the marked and unmarked. All there was, was a tinted glass building, surrounded by tall trees and shrubs, and erected on a bed of carpet grass.

The okadaman spoke, his voice low and trembling as he uttered words Osezele was not particularly keen on hearing. “You know say dem dey turn to animal for night? I hear say dem dey grow nails wey sharp like knife and teeth wey resemble dog own dey come out from their mouth. I even hear say dem get power sotee your head go break from your neck if they slap you.” While he spoke, she felt his fear, like a living force polluting the air around them. She was helpless to stop her reaction. Osezele snapped her eyes shut, hiding the red she knew filled them as she sucked in the man’s fear like dirt into a vacuum. He finished by saying, “Tufiakwa! Nah witchcraft dey inside there oh”.

Osezele stifled the urge to respond with, “there’s witchcraft out here too.” Instead, she climbed off the bike, smiled at the driver, and paid him the money she owed. As soon as he took the money, he turned his bike around and sped off as quickly as he could, away from the Community. Her eyes watched his hasty departure and a little voice told her that if she was smart she would run away as fast as he did. With great reluctance, she turned her back on the bike and somehow managed to ignore the voice of reason whispering for her to go back home.

The Community, Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria

On the second floor of the reception tower, Osezele walked out from the ID room, where she’d had her fingerprints recorded for the first time. She walked steadily towards the small office she’d been directed to. As she walked, she folded her arms in front of her, a defensive gesture which had the practical ability of hiding her shaking extremities.

Breathe.

The memory of her uncle’s voice returned. She stopped walking and forced herself to heed his words. Images of her mother, kneeling on their threadbare carpet, her fingers steepled together in prayer and her elbows resting on their couch, invaded her mind. Memories of the tall lean Nosa flashing his mesmerizing smile at her, pervaded her senses. Whispers of Tolani’s teasing drifted through her ears. She had people she had to return to, people she had to be brave for. Osezele drew in a large gulp of air, and then released it in a slow huff. She did this over and over again, taking slow measured breaths in, and releasing them softly. Then she willed her hands to stop shaking. She took one last long inhale, held it for a second and then released it. Then she continued walking towards the office.

Her uncle’s words came back to her. From his teaching, she knew that the room she’d been directed to was where the interview would take place. She was aware that the interview would be conducted by a team of three. An augur would ask most of the questions while two spotters sniffed for any unusual emotions emanating from her. If she showed fear which they deemed too much, or appeared overly anxious, they would send her to a third stage of screening. This stage involved a blood test and they could tell from her blood if she was marked. If she got to that stage, she would be caught, and they would never let her leave.

Osezele paused briefly in front of the office. She’d barely been there a second before the door was opened by a middle-aged woman, neatly dressed in what was clearly a soldier’s uniform. The woman smiled warmly at her before gesturing her in with the bending of her fingers. It was an effort, but Osezele smiled back, curtsied a greeting to the older woman, and managed to walk in without tripping on her own feet.

‘Breathe, stay calm, don’t worry. Breathe, stay calm, don’t worry,’ she repeated in her head like a Catholic chant as she walked into the deceptively simple office for an interview which could irrevocably change her life.

She took in the other occupants of the room. A woman, much older than the one who had ushered her in, sat behind a very officious looking table. She had to be the augur who would conduct the interview. A dark, pensive man, dressed in the same uniform as the woman who’d ushered her in, paced the room as if he couldn’t wait to get the interview started. Osezele surmised that he and the woman who ushered her in were spotters. She had somewhat regained her calm by the time she made her way to the empty seat opposite the seated augur.

“Good afternoon young lady.” the augur greeted.

‘Breathe,’ Osezele reminded herself, even as she felt the woman’s eyes on her, digging into her skin in the hopes of eliciting a reaction. She recalled her training, how her uncle had taught her to deal with this sort of scenario.

What do you do when you feel someone looking at you? He’d asked.

Look back, she’d answered.

That’s how augurs want you to react. They have the gift of sight. The marked have enhanced senses. It’s like being in a world where most people are blind and only a few can see. The ones that can see are the augurs. They see everyone. The other marked are also blind, but their enhanced senses give them an aura. An aura that the augurs can see. The augurs can see this aura only when they’re looking for it or looking in the direction of the marked person. But the spotters can smell it, that’s why they're so good at hunting us down. Now, imagine that this aura is removed. How can the augurs tell the marked from the unmarked? he’d asked.

They can’t, she’d answered.

Again, he’d asked, what is so special about the augurs?

They can see, she’d promptly replied.

But what if they closed their eyes? he’d asked.

She’d smiled then, understanding. Then they’re just as blind as the unmarked, she’d responded.

Right. But they’ve seen, so they know that they’re being watched. Our natural response to being watched is to search for the person watching. It’s a protective instinct, it’s how we find the enemy. If we feel danger coming, our eyes open wide to collect as much information as possible. In the absence of eyes staring back, or an identifying aura, the augur tries to force you to look, by looking at you, by watching, by ‘stalking’. To evade detection by an augur, all you have to do is keep your inner eyes closed. Stay Calm, breathe, don’t worry, and most importantly, don’t look back.

Osezele took a deep breath. She could feel the eyes watching her, hunting her, prodding her to look. It was as if she was trapped in a nightmare, her heart racing because there was a killer running after her. Every instinct in her body told her to turn around, to open her eyes, to identify her enemy, to see. Cold fingers drew up her spine, crawling under her skin like tiny frozen spiders. Voices whispered in her head, ‘look’, ‘look’, ‘look’. All she had to do was open her eyes, and the fear would go away, because she would know where the enemy was. Osezele had never felt anything like this. She’d never been stalked before, but her uncle had trained her well. He’d given her the strength to ignore the demented voice that prodded her to ‘look’. This wasn’t a nightmare, no one was chasing her. The icy fingers walking along her back weren’t real. She breathed through it. She was terrified, but she kept her inner eyes closed.

“What is your name?” the augur asked.

Osezele cleared her throat. Her heart was racing. The woman wouldn’t be able to tell how scared she was, but the spotters would, they would smell it in the sweat coming off her and hear it in the rapid thumps of her heart. She knew spotters were werejackals. Fortunately, werejackals couldn’t tell the cause of fear. They would just chalk it up to the same fear that many previous interviewees would have exhibited in this room. The fear of the reputation of the marked. Showing fear would serve her well, make her seem like an unmarked person. So, she let her fear mask all her other emotions.

Tried to tag everyone who showed interest in the Marked Series from the end of the last book posted on Nairaland

Skywalker909 Amry eROCK247 BmanWheart ayshow6102 OluwabuqqyYOLO Askech lukfame Rynne Tuhndhay Fazemood doctorexcel Dathypebruv kelsmic cassbeat Smooth278 tunjilomo popeshemoo annayawchee HotB

For those curious about the order of the books in the Marked series:
1. Crimson Night (Free on okadabooks)
2. White Sight: The Awakening (this book)
3. White Sight: The In-between (written not yet published)
The Tomes of the Last Brio (posted on Nairaland) Not part of the Marked Series, but part of the Marked universe
4. White Sight: The Reckoning (next to write)

This is a short free excerpt of the second book in the Marked series (White Sight: The Awakening). At the end I’ve put in the link to the full excerpt and a link to the full book

@Tuhndhay yes, please do that, lol. I'm doing good thank you hope you're good too

@cassbeat thank you, I'm very happy you think so