“And now it’s gone!” Ade-Ige shouted. “I don’t know who you think you are!”

Her temper flared hot in her face. “I am Yenni Aja-Nifemi ka Yirba, and you would do well to remember that!”

Ade-Ige and the others bowed their heads, all except her brother, and Yenni winced. She’d promised herself she would use her prowess as a tracker, not her title, to win their respect. But pigheaded Ade-Ige always got under her skin.

“Let’s return,” she said, and before anyone could answer, she turned and pulled ach’e through her speed runes, dashing toward the white houses of the city and the gleaming gold palace perched on the top of the hill.

Later in the day, Yenni sat in her bedroom on a wide reed mat beside her hammock, mixing runepaint. Once it was the right consistency, and the perfect shade of blue-tinged white, she took up her runebrush, dipped the coarse boar’s-hair tip in, and started the rune for strength on her bicep. As she drew she sang the hymn of strength, and her song infused the paint, making it glow, until she tied the hymn off with a final low note and the rune set, seeping into her skin. It would stay there until she used it up.

She nodded in satisfaction and went back to mixing. The circle of prongs that made up her new blackwood whisk clacked against the shiny, matching bowl—a going away present from her older sisters. Blackwood was incredibly hard to come by, but it was best for blending the purest runepaint. Typically only the Masters, in their temples along the coast, had access to the sacred wood. How her sisters had come by the set she had no idea, but the two of them were bright eyed, sweet voiced, and charming, and tended to get their way more often than not. Yenni had not inherited their same powers of persuasion, but she had been able to sway her parents on the thing that mattered most: tomorrow she would leave for the Empire of Cresh.

Three sharp raps sounded on her door. It had to be a servant, or her brother Dayo. He was the only member of her family who waited to be invited in.

“Enter!” she called, and frowned at the chalky paint on her fingertips.

Sure enough, her oldest brother strode into the room, dressed as always in a long, regal kaftan tied around the middle with a thick golden sash, his gold prince’s cape over one shoulder. She couldn’t understand why he insisted on such formal attire at all times, and in this heat. Yenni preferred her hunting clothes: a simple shift tied over one shoulder—or perhaps a half-shirt and skirt—and her hide sandals.

“How go your preparations, Kebi?” he said, using the informal address for a younger sister.