“Cure?” Djola should have lied to gain time, to regroup and fend off the other masters, but his arrogant tongue refused. What lie would last longer than a day, a month? “Kyrie and I don’t know the cause or a cure.”

“Honest to a fault.” Azizi sighed. “Betrayal is shouting about poisons and offering crack-cruck measures before you know an antidote.” His eyes were an angry blur. “You saved my life and helped me conquer all the green lands from the savage north to the barbarian south, from the west waters to the sweet desert in the east. But today you stab me in the heart with jumba jabba. I banish you for abandoning me during the Empire’s greatest challenge. We must conquer the poison desert or die trying.”

Djola gasped. Too shocked to beg for reason, too wise to plead for mercy, he attended to his breath.

Books and Bones looked stricken. Arms wanted to gut Money and Water and slit Ernold’s throat. Grain slipped into the shadows by the Lahesh masks. Why go down for Weeds and Wild Things? Azizi avoided Djola’s eyes. “Banished.” Djola tossed his scrolls into the fire. Years of labor at the far edge of hope smoked and crumbled to ash. Too late, he spied daughter Tessa’s scroll, his shield. It caught a spark and burned. Tessa would scold him for that.

“Defend yourself,” Azizi commanded. “Change my mind.”

Djola shrugged, nothing more to say. Denial was as inexplicable as poison sand blowing across fields and twisting down alleys. Death whooshed in Djola’s ears and emptied his mind. His tongue went rogue, and he muttered, “Basawili.”

“What does that mean?” Azizi asked. “More Green Elder jumba jabba?”

“A northern outlaw language,” Books and Bones said. “Who knows savage talk?”

“Anawanama: not the end, more to come,” Grain translated. “Roughly.”

“Such a powerful conjurer makes a deadly enemy,” Ernold said.

“We should execute Djola on this stone floor,” Water said. “Savages have no honor.”

The guards aimed spears at Djola. Arms and Grain bristled. Djola felt like someone had smashed his head.

“Execute?” Books and Bones blinked, as if waking from a trance. “I don’t know.”

Money, Water, and Ernold shouted at the librarian. Arms and Grain yelled at each other. Azizi pulled Djola close and whispered in Lahesh, “Fool, you should have lied. What can I do when Kyrie deserts me and the whole table is against you?”

“But banish me, Zizi?” Djola stared at him, blank.

Azizi squeezed his shoulders. “Go visit all the libraries in the world. Talk to wise men and long-winded griots. Find your Xhalan Xhala cure and be quick. You can do that, can’t you?”

“I guess.”

“Twenty years ago, you made peace from blood and bile and ash.”

“Did I? That seems like a griot tale for children,” Djola sputtered.