The Gilded Ones: Chapters 19–26

At first, there is nothing, only the thousand erratic thoughts barging through my head: What if I can’t do this? What if something happens and—

“A word of warning: very few people know of Deka’s talent. Only those in this room, the jatu commanders, and a few select others are privy to this information. No one else may know—not even your other bloodsisters, on pain of death.”

You will lure the deathshrieks out, using your voice, and render them motionless if you can.

To my surprise, this answer comes from Belcalis, and there’s a faint smile on her mouth as she looks up from the cream she’s been mixing all evening. Belcalis is very good at poultices and solutions—a talent she learned from working at her uncle’s apothecary.

To my surprise, this answer comes from Belcalis, and there’s a faint smile on her mouth as she looks up from the cream she’s been mixing all evening. Belcalis is very good at poultices and solutions—a talent she learned from working at her uncle’s apothecary.

“Even if I weren’t your uruni, I would care.”
To my surprise, Keita’s other hand reaches up to clasp my chin. He lifts it up so I can meet his eyes. They’re warm, earnest.

A strange warmth rises in me at the sight of him, resplendent in the ornamental orange-red armor of a recruit.

We quickly don our helmets—piercing, spiky affairs with war masks in the shape of snarling demon faces attached to the front.

This is the first time I’ve seen the outside of the Warthu Bera since I entered, the first time I haven’t been within its confines, secluded by its walls—protected by them.

“Ensure that you keep your unholy ways well to yourself, because if I suspect for any reason that you are doing otherwise, I will give you so many brutal almost-deaths, you’ll marvel at my ingenuity from here to infinity.”

I drop him back onto the dusty ground and make a show of contemptuously dusting off my hands.

As I do so, a warm, buoyant feeling steals through me.

"Stop joking, Keita, I—”
"Apt words, alaki.”
When we look up, Captain Kelechi is standing above us, his mouth turned down in a disapproving frown.

My own body parts, strewn across the floor...

It comes from the corner of the entrance, where dark red splashes the ground and odd brown shapes are scattered haphazardly in the dirt.

All Shadows are well versed in the martial arts.

They even have their own specific style of fighting. Karmoko Huon demonstrated it once, but it’s useless for alaki, since it requires a delicacy we no longer have. There is too much brute force behind our movements.

I know White Hands intends to use me during the campaign, a pet weapon she will present with great fanfare to the emperor.

Her mutinous expression tells me she doesn’t see it that way.

White Hands is so enamored with her new idea about creating a martial art for me, she has no time to actually teach us during the lesson.

Ixa obligingly changes into his feline form.

Monsters...
The word plays a sickening refrain in my head all night, forcing me to realize I’ve been too complacent these past few months.

She’s a surly shadow leading me to our destination, one of the more remote buildings at the edge of the Warthu Bera’s hill.

Spend too much time ruminating in battle and you get killed.

Revulsion suffuses me at the thought, but I keep my face still. No matter the dread that wells up when I think of killing another wild deathshriek in cold blood, it’s my duty to keep Otera safe.

Revulsion suffuses me at the thought, but I keep my face still. No matter the dread that wells up when I think of killing another wild deathshriek in cold blood, it’s my duty to keep Otera safe.

Oyomo’s Eye is just as golden inside as it is out. That’s what I discover as I walk down the Hemairan palace’s gold-veined hallways the very next morning, my heart drumming a frantically nervous beat. I’ve never seen so much opulence in my life.

Thankfully, we’re garbed in the finest armor the Warthu Bera has to offer—Karmoko Huon insisted we wear it instead of the ornate robes the other karmokos wanted us to wear—as well as war masks to cover our faces.

Captain Kelechi and White Hands, as representatives of each group, stop just before the stairs and prostrate themselves on the floor.

“The Lady of the Equus,” the emperor rumbles, his voice deep and resonant to match his burly silhouette, which I can just make out past the sheer curtains.

“How wonderful it is to see you again, and in such auspicious circumstances.”

“It would be sacrilege,” yet another courtier, a stern-looking Easterner this time, objects.

We will exterminate the deathshrieks, destroy their primal nesting ground, and begin the path to victory in this interminable combat.

Let us continue on this path and lead our beloved One Kingdom to victory by ridding it of this pestilence of monsters once and for all.

It’s evening and we’re slogging through the marshes at Hemaira’s southern edge, heading toward a deathshriek nest deep in the marsh.

Mist hangs thick over us, as does a cloud of mosquitoes, which nip incessantly at our faces.

The blanket around me rustles as footsteps draw near, squelching loudly through the mud.

White Hands nods, a languid incline of the head.

And I intend for you to survive long enough to fulfill it, which is why you must understand—truly—how fickle your position is. The jatu, my cousin the emperor, and his courtiers—they’ll all love you now, when there are deathshrieks to conquer. The moment that changes, they’ll remember that you’re a woman. That you’re unnatural.

I am the procurer of monsters, after all. You see, you were wrong in that regard, Deka. I don’t breed monsters for the emperor, I find them.