“No,” barked Bunmi and Dayo in unison. Their voices hurt my ears, echoing from the hall ceiling. Sensing the tension in the room, Ae Ri began to wail.

“I need to train,” I insisted. All around me, the wispy ojiji children floated, shrilling in a treble chorus. Do more. Justice. Have to pay. “I need to be the best Redemptor I can be.”

“Why?” Dayo demanded, patting Ae Ri’s back as her cries rose in pitch. “What’s the point in learning how to survive if you kill yourself now?”

“Our ancestors sent thousands of children into that cold,” I reminded him. “If they had to endure it, why shouldn’t I?”

Dayo’s full lips pressed together, and his large black eyes glistened with hurt. “I knew it. You aren’t really training, are you?” he whispered. “You’re punishing yourself. Something’s wrong with you, Tar. You haven’t been all right for a long time, and . . . I’m worried. All of us are.”

He is blind, hissed the ojiji. He is blind, they are all blind, andyouarealone—

I wrenched out of Bunmi’s arms and teetered to my feet. “I’m tired,” I rasped, “of being treated like I’m crazy. Of being the only one who seems to care that our empire killed people for hundreds of years! We tortured children! We still do, if you count the quarries and mills. And I’m going to fix it.” I swallowed hard, voice dropping to a whisper. “I’m going to be Tarisai Idajo.

“Again, Ye Eun.”

“This must be doing wonders for your ego,” I quipped several evenings later as Zuri deposited me in a heap on the courtyard training grounds. It was the fourth round of sparring I’d lost.

I squinted up at Zuri, irritable. The setting sun made a halo around his bare, glistening shoulders, winking on the metal cuffs in his locs. Far above, my sprites congregated in the sky, dipping and wheeling. The creatures had remained on edge ever since I started training with Ye Eun. I would have been training now, if Dayo hadn’t fainted after my last session. Only then had I agreed to rest for a night—though by “rest,” I meant studying for the Pinnacle and holding my first sparring session with the Crocodile.

“You aren’t that bad,” he said, smirking and helping me up. He gestured to a scrape on his chest. “You scored a hit.”

“Once.” A hiss escaped through my teeth as I retrieved my weapon. My leg throbbed. I wore a crimson training skirt, slashed on either side from hip to ankle for ease of movement. On my exposed thigh, a black bruise had begun to form. “Is that why you asked to spar?” I asked, scowling. “To show me how weak I am?”

“Quite the opposite.”

“You have a fetish for vague answers,” I muttered, brandishing Sanjeet’s gift: the finely balanced spear, engraved with golden letters. Already the bruise on my thigh had begun to fade—thanks to my nearly complete council of Anointed Ones, I was immune to bleeding, even internally.