But ah, Priya didn’t have it in her to even threaten this old bully. She stepped back.
What a big void there was, between the knowledge within her and the person she appeared to be, bowing her head in respect to a petty man who still saw her as a street beggar who’d risen too far, and hated her for it.
“Thank you, Gautam,” she said. “I’ll try not to trouble you again.”
She’d have to carve the wood herself. She couldn’t give the shard as it was to the boy. A whole shard of sacred wood held against skin—it would burn. But better that it burn her. She had no gloves, so she would have to work carefully, with her little knife and a piece of cloth to hold the worst of the pain at bay. Even now, she could feel the heat of the shard against her skin, soaking through the fabric that bound it.
The boy was waiting where she’d left him. He looked even smaller in the shadow of the forest, even more alone. He turned to watch her as she approached, his eyes wary, and a touch uncertain, as if he hadn’t been sure of her return.
Her heart twisted a little. Meeting Gautam had brought her closer to the bones of her past than she’d been in a long, long time. She felt the tug of her frayed memories like a physical ache.
Her brother. Pain. The smell of smoke.
Don’t look, Pri. Don’t look. Just show me the way.
Show me—
No. There was no point remembering that.
It was only sensible, she told herself, to help him. She didn’t want the image of him, standing before her, to haunt her. She didn’t want to remember a starving child, abandoned and alone, roots growing through his hands, and think, I left him to die. He asked me for help, and I left him.
“You’re in luck,” she said lightly. “I work in the regent’s mahal. And his wife has a very gentle heart, when it comes to orphans. I should know. She took me in. She’ll let you work for her if I ask nicely. I’m sure of it.”
His eyes went wide, so much hope in his face that it was almost painful to look at him. So Priya made a point of looking away. The sky was bright, the air overly warm. She needed to get back.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Rukh,” he said. “My name is Rukh.”
if you enjoyed
THE UNBROKEN
look out for
SON OF THE STORM
Book One of The Nameless Republic
by
Suyi Davies Okungbowa
The first book in a major new epic fantasy series, set in a world inspired by the empires of precolonial West Africa.
In the thriving city of Bassa, Danso is a clever but disillusioned scholar who longs for a life beyond the rigid family and political obligations expected of the city’s elite. A way out presents itself when Lilong, a skin-changing warrior, shows up wounded in his barn. She comes from the Nameless Islands, which, according to Bassa lore, don’t exist—and neither should the mythical magic of ibor she wields.
Now swept into a conspiracy far beyond his understanding, Danso will set out on a journey with Lilong that reveals histories violently suppressed and magic only found in lore.
CHAPTER ONE
DANSO
The rumours broke slowly but spread fast, like bushfire from a raincloud. Bassa’s central market sparked and sizzled, as word jumped from lip to ear, lip to ear, speculating. The people responded minimally at first: a shift of the shoulders, a retying of wrappers. Then murmurs rose, until they matured into a buzzing that swept through the city, swinging from stranger to stranger and stall to stall, everyone opening conversation with whispers of Is it true? Has the Soke Pass really been shut down?
Danso waded through the clumps of gossipers, sweating, cursing his decision to go through the central market rather than the mainway. He darted between throngs of oblivious citizens huddled around vendors and spilling into the pathway.
“Leave way, leave way,” he called, irritated, as he shouldered through bodies. He crouched, wriggling his lean frame underneath a large table that reeked of pepper seeds and landfowl shit. The ground, paved with baked earth, was not supposed to be wet, since harmattan season was soon to begin. But some fool had dumped water in the wrong place, and red mud eventually found a way into Danso’s sandals. Someone else had abandoned a huge stack of yam sacks right in the middle of the pathway and gone off to do moons knew what, so that Danso was forced to clamber over yet another obstacle. He found a large brown stain on his wrappers thereafter. He wiped at the spot with his elbow, but the stain only spread.
Great. Now not only was he going to be the late jali novitiate, he was going to be the dirty one, too.