They were seldom women, and never stuttering girls.

She blinked up at me, a sandy brown face with crescent-shaped eyes. Her wrapper was plain and fraying at the hem. I would later learn that she had blood from multiple realms—an isoken, perhaps with blood from both Oluwan and a realm of lighter complexions, like Moreyao.

I nodded at her, ignoring the nobles. “Where is your home province, Adukeh?”

She shifted her feet. “O-Olojari, Lady Empress.”

My heart raced. I tried a smile, feeling as trapped as the child did. “No need to be nervous,” I said brightly. “This isn’t real court—it’s just a silly Rising.”

“She isn’t nervous, Lady Empress.” Adebimpe’s smile brimmed with malicious glee. “She always stutters. Don’t you, child?”

Adukeh inhaled, puffing up with anger. Then she shot me a furtive glance, touching the mark on her brow. “Th-There was an ac-accident. In the m-mine, when I was l-little. A sh-shaft collapsed, and . . . well. I c-couldn’t talk for a while. Then, when I w-woke up, I sounded like th-this.”

My cheeks heated. The nobles were rubbing it in my face—the power they still held over the people of Olojari. The things they could do to hurt them, if I kept interfering.

“We found her busking outside the forge,” crowed another noble. “Begging, really. She doesn’t even have a gele.”

He pointed at Adukeh’s head. Most Oluwan ladies would never appear in public without their geles: towering headdresses made of starched fabric, folded elaborately to boast of marital status and rank.

“I do t-too,” Adukeh retorted, and held out her bulky orange bundle. She unwrapped the stiff embroidered cloth, revealing the scuffed, hourglass-shaped gourd of a talking drum. Goatskin strings threaded the gourd from head to head, meant to be squeezed and released, changing the drum’s pitch. “My grandmother was a griot,” the girl explained to me. “My drum was hers, b-but I couldn’t afford a c-case for it. So I use my g-gele instead. It’s treated with st-starch, so it’s very st-sturdy, and I c-can tie it to my back when I—”

The nobles howled with laughter, bangles jangling on their arms as their shoulders shook. Adebimpe watched me, hungry for my reaction. She wanted me to hop and shrill like a ruffled peacock—to stamp my foot, and dismiss Adukeh in fury.

“Stop laughing,” I said quietly, and beneath my wrapper, the eyes of the lioness mask shone ever so dimly.

Every noble in the room fell quiet. Some gagged, as if something had knocked the air from their lungs. As their faces slackened in confusion, an eerie sensation made my skin itch. The last time nobles had obeyed me quickly had been at my Peace Banquet, when I ordered the continent rulers to sit down. To this day, I wasn’t sure what had happened . . . and why the Songlanders had been immune to it. But I was too angry to wonder on it now.

I turned to Adukeh. “Play,” I said.