I shuddered and brushed my thumb across my chin, the sacred sign of the Pelican. Then I banished any idea of sleeping mats from my thoughts. The throne room roiled with discontent, but I smiled up at the platform, making sure Dayo saw my support for his ruling. I had beat the evil inside me. I had submitted, and remained silent.

In the allotted free time before supper, Kirah and I slipped away to the back corridors of the Children’s Palace, as we had every evening since we were small. Using a curtain cord as rope, we wriggled through a window and climbed to An-Ileyoba’s gilded battlements. The wind whipped Kirah’s red prayer scarf as we held hands for balance, then we sat and dangled our feet over the edge, watching the sun melt beneath the Oluwan horizon. Usually we tossed figs to peacocks in the courtyard below, laughing when haughty courtiers peered up in confusion. But today, we were quiet.

“What did you think of Dayo’s ruling?” Kirah asked.

“What does it matter?” I stared over the golden domes of An-Ileyoba. In the city beyond, Oluwan’s orange harvest festival was beginning to gain revelers. “The priests made it clear what council sisters are for. We should focus on protecting Dayo, not changing his rulings.”

“Priests don’t know everything.”

“Now, now.” I nudged Kirah’s shoulder, teasing. “Is that what Mama would say?”

She smirked. Kirah had long ceased to quote her mother’s prim truisms. When we were younger, the other candidates had mocked her—Mama says, Mama says—until she turned pink with anger, and sealed her mouth shut. “They’re spoiled rich brats,” she had complained to me in private. “They’ve never seen a desert, or herded goats, or worked a farm. They were raised to be tested at the palace. They’ve never had a real family.”

“Neither have I,” I’d pointed out. Kirah knew about my lonely childhood at Bhekina House, though I had kept ehrus and wishes out of it. “Do you think I’m spoiled?”

“Well … yes.” Kirah had flushed, straightening her prayer scarf. “No one made you change soiled nappies. Or chase vultures for miles to find water. Or dry camel dung to fuel the cook fires.” She’d paused, considering me. “But your mother never sang to you, or made you cinnamon milk, or stroked your hair when you were sick. I guess there are different ways of being spoiled.”

Now, from the rooftop, we could see men and women dancing in the Oluwan City markets, paint shining on their glistening bodies as drums gave a low, infectious heartbeat.

“Mama believes what the priests say,” Kirah said, answering my question. “That people are like rocks stacked in a totem: men over women, women over children. We accept our roles, or the whole tower falls apart.” She watched the palace’s sun-and-moon banners twist in the wind. “A songbird was not meant to soar as an eagle.”

I frowned, remembering The Lady’s words on the day I had last seen her. You caged me like a bird, but you could not make me sing.

“What about Empress Aiyetoro?” I asked. She had surfaced out of the genealogies drummed into me by tutors. Her name was old Arit, and I faintly remembered what it meant: peace from shore to shore. “Aiyetoro ruled Aritsar for decades. She’s the reason women can join the Imperial Guard. She founded the Imperial College, and abolished the interrealm slave trade, and—”

“Wait.” Kirah held up a hand, cocking her head to listen. “Dayo’s wondering where we are. I’m telling him we’ll be down in a few minutes. Sorry—what were you saying?”

“Never mind.” I looked away, trying not feel resentful. Kirah was my best friend. The roof had always been our space, away from the spying walls of the Children’s Palace. But Kirah wasn’t mine anymore. She belonged to Dayo and her council siblings now, with their minds connected through the Ray.

My gaze fell on the Watching Wall, which cut through Oluwan City below. In a muraled parade of conquerors, rainbow plaster enshrined every Kunleo emperor and council. Someday, Dayo’s face would join that parade. And Kirah’s, and perhaps Sanjeet’s as well.

My brow furrowed as I counted the painted emperors, comparing them to the genealogies in my head. Edebayo the First, Oluwatoyin the Vanquisher, Edunrobo Imperion, Abiyola the Third, Adeyinka the Mighty …

“Empress Aiyetoro isn’t there,” I said at last, blinking with confusion. “They didn’t paint her.”

“Aiyetoro was an exception,” Kirah said. “I asked the priests about her. They say she was a fluke: Am only gave Aiyetoro the Ray because her father died without male heirs. An exception does not negate the rule.” She flicked a pebble over the edge of the roof, fidgeting with the tasseled edges of her prayer scarf. “You know—when I left home, I believed no place would ever be quite as beautiful, quite as right as the Blessid Valley.”

“I remember.” I grinned, imitating Kirah at age twelve. “Mama says the Blessid Valley sky was woven by the Pelican itself. A tapestry with no snags, floating over honey-colored mountains.”

The corner of Kirah’s mouth lifted. “Beauty and order were our idols. To Blessids, a pot is not finished until every lump is smooth. Our parties are always the same: the same songs, the same food. Stories we tell over and over again.” She sighed. “Don’t laugh, but when I first came to the Children’s Palace, I used to fantasize about talking to Mama. In my dreams I’d tell her, ‘Today, I learned how to use a spear!’ Or, ‘Today, I solved a logic puzzle faster than anyone else!’ And Dream Mama would say, ‘My wise and disciplined girl! See how my Kirah takes her good home training into the big wild world.’ But now when I dream of Mama … I say things that make her frown.” Kirah paused, watching a flock of synchronized swallows soar across the red-streaked sky. “I say, ‘Why don’t Blessids ever let women lead the caravans? They do just as much work as the men.’ Or, ‘Why do Blessids wash their hands after trading with other realms? Those people are no dirtier than we are.’ And Mama cries and says, ‘Where did my Kirah go? Who is this sneering girl who spits on her home, who questions her elders? Does the world love you better than your family? Does it swaddle you at night, and fill your belly with goat’s milk? Where is my Kirah?’

“And I say, ‘I’m here, Mama’—but I’m not.” Kirah bit back a sob. “I’m far away, Tarisai. From all of them. And the more I learn, the farther I feel. I don’t know where home is anymore.”

I took her hand in mine. We sat in silence, watching the clouds fade to purple, and the torches flickering for miles across the city, like golden prayers in the dark.

I was not an Anointed One, and so my sleeping mat was far away from Dayo’s platform and the pallets encircling it. But every night—after the candidate-minders had retired to bed, leaving the Hall of Dreams unattended—I embraced my popular role as Dream Giver to the Prince’s Council.

“I want steamy dreams this time,” said Mayazatyl, propping herself up on her pallet with one hand. She grinned at me, wrinkling the red bar tattooed across her nose. “Can you manage that?” Mayazatyl was Dayo’s council sister from the rainforest realm of Quetzala. She was a prodigy of architecture and weapon design … and equally skilled at amassing love notes from tormented candidates.

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. But I’m not putting in anyone we know.”

She winked. “Once Dayo completes his council and they send us to Yorua Keep, we’ll be locked in that castle a long time, you know. When you finally let Dayo anoint you, you’ll have to be less of a prude.”

I looked away, wincing at finally. I was still cursed by The Lady, and until I found a way to break it—to protect Dayo—there would be no anointing. “Go to sleep, Maya.”

She hastened her slumber by chewing kuso-kuso leaves, and when her chest rose in snores, I touched the top of her silky black hair. I gave her a silly, made-up memory of a handsome warrior stumbling upon her bathing. She subdued him with a crossbow she had designed herself, then seduced him as she nursed his wound. Mayazatyl snuggled into the pallet, sighing contentedly.

To Kirah, I gave dreams of her mama and baba, who kissed her cheeks and stroked her hair, and said they weren’t angry about her leaving them. For Kameron, Dayo’s rugged council brother from Mewe, I fabricated a pack of hunting dogs, nipping cheerfully at his ankles as he tracked a boar in the forest. Dreams of blooming roses were for Thérèse from Nontes. Adoring crowds were for Ai Ling from Moreyao, and handsome swains for Theo from Sparti. To Umansa, a blind weaver boy from Nyamba, I gave new patterns for his tapestries, swirling them around him in a brilliant prism. Finally, to hard-faced Emeronya from Biraslov, I gave flurries of sweet-tasting snow and a wizened woman who wrapped her in wool, humming a dissonant lullaby.

Dayo’s sleeping platform was empty. I stared at the satin pillows and panther coverlets, remembering my first day in the Children’s Palace, when Dayo had let me sleep there. For weeks afterward, he had insisted I share the platform with him, and I had pressed my head against his, feeding dreams into his brow.