Everything you believe could be wrong.

Patience, forgiveness, that is our song.

Elder musicians lost the beat and melody. Dizzy, they dropped kora harps and drums. The Sprites stumbled to a halt. Warriors in lion masks raced down Mama Zamba’s stone hills and burst through sand drifts carrying axes and swords: Zamanzi, ambushing them.

Nobody brought weapons to a crossover ceremony. Shadow warriors wore cloud-silk robes, not Aido spider-weave, and couldn’t disappear.

Yari brushed unruly braids from a sweaty face. Vie clutched a heaving chest. “Something in the wine.”

They were all drug-addled except the two Elders with spiral scars.

Awa gasped. “Anyone could betray us.”

Zamanzi warriors surrounded them. Nobody put up a fight. Yari dumped salt into a gourd of water then guzzled it. Shock gripped Awa. She clutched Bal’s hand. A Zamanzi war chief shouted commands and warnings in Empire vernacular. “Decide to live right or face the ax!” They’d come to liberate Sprites and vesons who agreed to be griots, wives, or soldiers.

Blood splattered across feast tables. Several Elders and Sprites refused to choose quickly and lost their heads. Bal lunged at a warrior twice her size. Awa held her back. He laughed. Three Zamanzi men doused a white-haired veson with tree oil and set vie on fire. The burning Elder raced across the enclave circle. Yari vomited on the purple sand-bells and howled.

The one who burned was Isra, Yari’s partner of twenty-five years, the love Yari always returned to, the weaver who taught Bal to fashion spiderwebs into dreams and shadows into Aido cloth, the friend to horses and wild dogs, the scout who never let anybody get lost. Yari and Isra had rescued Awa before Father sold her to a mine, brothel, or Hezram’s huts.

Isra died rolling in a sand dune. Vie suffocated the fire before it could spread to anyone else. Tears blinded Awa. Her breath was a wheeze. Her heart cracked and muscles gave out. She and Bal collapsed. The burly axman headed for them. Yari blocked him, sober and ferocious, hair a bristling storm cloud. The axman hesitated.

“Basawili, Isra.” Yari spoke the Anawanama prayer for the dead, then helped Awa and Bal up. They almost fell again. “Not the end, more breath to come.” Vie shook them. “Survive. Find each other.” Turning to the axman, Yari shouted, “I choose griot.”

“Prove yourself.” Spiral scars decorated the axman’s naked cheeks, just like the traitor-Elders. Thin braids with bones on their tips fell to his shoulders. He raised his blade.

“I know secrets about everyone and everything.” Yari swaggered in full griot trance. “I’ve traveled farther than any griot and listened to many hearts. I hold all the people. I’ve persuaded emperors to peace. Xhalan Xhala. I carry the past to the future. Take heart in the story I tell.” Looking at Awa and Bal, Yari chanted an epic in the language of Zamanzi ancestors: