“Of course not. I was waiting for tonight. Have you?”

Dayo bit back a smile and shrugged.

“You have!”

“I peeked,” he admitted, laughing and dodging my blows to his arm. “A few days ago. I’m sorry! I couldn’t wait. But it’s better this way—I get to watch you see it instead.”

The wall curved, so we rounded a corner . . . and there it was.

“Well?” Dayo breathed. “What do you think?” But tears drowned any sound I could make.

I noticed the anklet first. How strange, my mind thought, retreating immediately to denial. The cowrie shell anklet on that enormous painted foot looks just like mine.

“. . . incredible attention to detail,” Dayo was saying, his voice faint in my ears. “The artisans outdid themselves. I could barely believe my . . .”

My eyes traveled up the wall, up the shapely brown legs, tall as tree trunks, up the towering torso and rainbow-colored wrapper, and stopping, at last, at the distant face. Dark eyes surveyed the city with proud serenity, framed by a billowing black mass of hair.

“Well?” Dayo repeated.

“Eep,” I replied.

He beamed and pulled me close. “That’s what I said too.”

Dayo’s likeness stood shoulder to shoulder with mine, majestic and clear-eyed, the long, latticed burn scar giving him an air of heroic solemnity. Close around him stood our council siblings, faces wise and unsmiling. The murals were so lifelike, I expected the massive Sanjeet to sigh and run fingers through his curls, and the giant Kirah to wink and fray the ends of her prayer scarf.

The space behind me was conspicuously empty. The artists had left space for my soon-to-be council—the vassal rulers of Aritsar. I gulped and looked away, concentrating on my siblings.

Our unlined faces struck me the most. Every other likeness on the wall was hardened and wrinkled with dignity, but ours were smooth and vivid, the youngest rulers ever to grace the Watching Wall. I wondered if, deep down, that bothered Dayo. Our glory had come at the cost of his father’s life.

“Don’t be too long, Imperial Majesties,” Captain Bunmi said, squinting up at the high-rises. “I’d like to secure the perimeter.”

“It’s secured,” said one of her warriors, flagging a shadow on one of the rooftops, which slowly gestured back. “Whoever’s posted up there returned the signal.”

“I know. I just . . .” Bunmi bit her lip, frowning. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

“How should we end the pilgrimage?” I asked Dayo, giggling with nerves at our giant doppelgangers. “Should we bow to ourselves?”

Dayo genuflected with a clumsy flourish. I copied him, both of us slightly tipsy from the wine chalice.

“We pay homage, oh Dayo the Gullible and Tarisai the Maleficent,” he caterwauled, and I shushed him, doubled over with laughter. My sprites danced overhead, as if in on the joke. Dayo grinned at me. “We pay homage, oh shiniest—”

Then an arrow lodged with a thwack in the Watching Wall, inches from my head.