“Take your seats. Eat while we wait,” Azizi shouted. Good citizens flooded feast tables. Hezram looked pleased by the audience. Azizi watched them anxiously. Could the emperor be trusted not to go whichever way the water ran? Djola took a sharp breath. Nobody is who you think she is. Mango flapped her ears, cooling them both. Masters sat down on whimsy chairs borrowed from carnival players. Kyrie crouched on a torch-bug stool. Arms sat in a monster’s mouth, Money and Water on the wings of a butterfly.

Boto laughed as he and Ernold plopped between the tentacles of who could say what sea creature. He winked at Djola when no one was looking then masked his face in a blink. An excellent spy—but for whom? Djola stiffened. Boto or Grain or Azizi could be a weak chink, acquiescing to Hezram’s lies and illusions. Hezram might even have launched more than one traitor. Djola scanned the masters and audience, more alert. He’d been too busy mourning the end of his life to sniff out danger coming. Nothing was as it seemed.

“Stop worrying.” Kyrie scolded him in Anawanama. Tembe and Hezram eyed her with fear. Good. “Clowns have to play the moment. Whatever it brings.”

“I was always too serious to be a good clown or maybe too arrogant.” Djola slipped into the trees, into their woody whispers and sweet breath.

14

Doubts

“When I’m a haint in Djola’s Dream Gates, I shall miss you.”

Awa buried her face in Fannie’s mane, relishing the scent of salt water and sweaty horse. They loped down the long boardwalk at the harbor with Bibi and Meera as boats came in on a full moon tide. Every mooring had a ship or two bobbing in the swell. Sails were tucked away; waterwheels had stilled; lights winked in windows. Bal and a legion of shadow warrior-clowns rode guard. They joined the shadows at the loading docks, hiding in empty stalls and behind storm curtains.

The warhorses had taken Awa and Meera on a midnight run around Arkhys City so they could feel the neighborhoods, touch silvered gates, and listen to Weeds and Wild Things. The last stop was the docks, where they’d greet travelers coming for the Festival of Memories. Kyrie’s idea, to stop Awa dreading Hezram’s next move. We have to get him out of your head, Kyrie declared. Our story, not Ernold’s or Money’s or Hezram’s. In Jumbajabbaland, Hezram’s spirit slave had known what Awa was thinking before she did. If it weren’t for the bees, she and Azizi would be dead.

Awa groaned. “Zst!”

“What?” Meera chewed a hunk of fish and goat cheese. “You’ve said Zst five times.”