High Lady Judge of Aritsar?

Deciding the fate of Aritsar’s worst traitors and criminals? A sixteen-year-old girl who couldn’t remember her own past beyond five years ago, when she first came to the Children’s Palace? What in Am’s name had Thaddace been thinking?

I could refuse to accept. But the Emperor’s Council had deliberated for months, and my rejection would start the process all over again. After getting their hopes up for Yorua Keep, my council would have to return to the Children’s Palace—and even then, the results might be the same.

So I rose from my stool, clasped my hands to hide their shaking, and rasped, “I accept my title as High Judge Apparent.” Then I bent my head for the heavy gold circlet.

“You’ll have to take off the flowers first, Anointed Honor,” murmured the secretary.

I had forgotten Ye Eun’s lily-of-the-valley crown. As I removed them and the delegate crowned me, the Redemptor girl’s trusting, inquisitive features flashed in my mind. As High Lady Judge, I could influence the terms of the Redemptor Treaty. If I could help children like Ye Eun … maybe being High Lady Judge wouldn’t be that bad.

The rest of the ceremony passed in a blur. A smug Mayazatyl was appointed future High Lady of Castles, head of defense and civil engineering. Ai Ling, Hallowed with formidable powers of persuasion, was appointed future High Lady Ambassador, in charge of interrealm trade. Umansa, who could read vague fortunes in the stars, would be High Lord Treasurer, and Zathulu, with his bookish head for facts, would be a competent High Lord Archdean. Thérèse, our Hallowed green thumb, was destined to be High Lady of Harvests; and Kameron, who had routinely snuck dubious animal rescues into the Children’s Palace, happily accepted his future as High Lord of Husbandry. Mysterious Emeronya would regulate sorcery as High Lady Magus, and as future High Lord Laureate, bleeding-heart poet Theo would curate the art and music of all twelve realms.

When all of us were crowned, I allowed myself to relax. Our exhausting journey of diplomacy was almost over. Dayo would conduct the Peace Ritual with the continent ambassadors. Then our council would whisk away via lodestone to Yorua Keep, with nothing to do but study scrolls, play house, and throw sumptuous parties for decades to come.

Priests swept the four corners of the temple, ritually cleansing the chamber. Dayo, the eleven Arit ambassadors, and a royal emissary from Songland came to stand at the altar. A child choir of acolytes sprinkled myrrh around the marble platform and harmonized in rounds:

Sharp and cold the world received you

Warm with blood it sends you home

Back to earth, to holy black

Dark to dark:

Beginning and beginning.

On the altar rested a gourd flask and an ancient oval shield, which had once belonged to Enoba the Perfect. In one year, the thirteen continent rulers would travel to the capital and spill their blood into the shield’s basin, renewing humankind’s vow with the Underworld to uphold the Redemptor Treaty. In today’s ceremony, the Peace Ritual, Dayo, the ambassadors, and the emissary would spill water instead of blood, a good-faith promise that their realms would participate in the official renewal.

“To beginnings,” cheered the ambassadors as one by one they spilled water into the shield, sealing their commitment. First to approach were the ambassadors from the center realms—Djbanti, Nyamba, and Swana—then those from the north—Mewe, Nontes, and Biraslov. Ambassadors from the south, Blessid Valley, Quetzala, and Sparti, and from the east, Moreyao and Dhyrma, were next in line. Then came the emissary from Songland.

He was a bent old man in a sweeping, high-waisted robe who grimaced as he poured into the shield. “To beginnings,” he wheezed. “Songland shall participate in the Treaty Renewal. May it bring peace to our world. And may the parents of the lost children be comforted.”

The onlookers squirmed uncomfortably. The last words had not been scripted into the ritual, though no one dared chastise the emissary.

We all knew that Redemptors had once been born at equal rates throughout the continent. It was horrible that Redemptor children were now born exclusively in Songland, but for the most part, the continent rulers accepted this phenomenon as fate.

Why had Ye Eun thought I could change that?

Songland had tried to boycott the Treaty several times. But the Underworld would not be pacified unless every realm participated in the Treaty ritual. Whenever Songland resisted, the continent crawled with deadly plagues and monsters until at last Songland complied, grimly sending three hundred Redemptors into the Breach each year.

Dayo was last to pour water, representing both Oluwan and the empire of Aritsar. Then one of the choir children gave him a handful of myrrh, which he dropped into the shield. As a sign of the Underworld’s acceptance, the water was supposed to turn brown, the color of earth and fertility. I fidgeted, wishing for the ceremony to end, and for the chance to rest at last.

But the water bubbled and turned white: the color of bones and ash. The color of death.

The priests gasped, murmuring as the sulfuric stench intensified throughout the temple. The blue miasma thickened over the Breach, and up from the shadowy chasm rose two small figures, walking hand in hand.

I HAD SEEN DRAWINGS OF THE ABIKU before—demons that took the form of sickly children, a mocking tribute to Redemptors. But nothing could have prepared me for the creatures who approached the altar.

The courtiers and townspeople shrieked, and my palms broke into a cold sweat. They looked like twins, no older than five or six, with pallid gray skin and eyes made completely of red pupils. They stopped at the barrier of myrrh spread by the priests, unable or unwilling to come closer. Then they tilted their heads in unison, flashing tiny smiles of yellow, pointed teeth.

“Good health to you, Prince,” one of the abiku said. “Don’t you know it’s rude to withhold gifts at a party?”

Dayo swallowed hard. “What do you want, spirits? Why didn’t the water turn brown?”

The other abiku gave a grating peal of giggles. “Does a treasurer loan gold before the previous debt is repaid? You swear to honor the Treaty. But as we stand here, you break it.”

“That’s a lie,” Dayo said. “The shamans promised that every Redemptor of age has been paid to you.”

“They miscounted,” sighed the first abiku, its irisless gaze landing briefly on mine. “Every Redemptor has been sent except one.”

My blood turned to ice. The abiku were here for Ye Eun.

It wasn’t fair. How could the demons miss one little girl out of three hundred? What use could they possibly have for her? I set my jaw. If the abiku thought I could be bullied into giving Ye Eun up, they were wrong. Before the Treaty, during the War of Twelve Armies, the Underworld had suffered losses as well as humankind. Surely they would not give up peace for the sake of a single child.

“You spirits speak of debts? Of fairness?” sputtered the emissary from Songland. “How dare you!” The old man stood dangerously close to the myrrh barrier, eyes bulging with anger. “Shades haunt the halls of Eunsan-do Palace, the shades of child Redemptors, wailing day and night. If the abiku cared anything for fairness, they would cease to rip babes from the arms of their mothers, from the same poor realm, year after year!”

The abiku cocked their heads again, blinking as though surprised at the emissary’s outburst. “When it comes to the birthplace of Redemptors,” one of them purred, “it is the blood, not us, who decides.”

I frowned. What in Am’s name was that supposed to mean?

As the abiku spoke, two young Breach warriors had crept up behind them, expressions fearful and manic.

“You—you aren’t authorized to be here,” the young warrior stammered, gripping his weapon halter. “You’re in violation of the Treaty of Enoba. Back away from the prince.”

“There is no Treaty,” the abiku hissed, “until humanity’s debt is paid.”

The creatures took a step toward the warrior … and the Breach warrior spooked. He staggered back, scooped a handful of myrrh from the floor, and thrust it at the abiku.

“Die, spirits!” he cried.

The creatures screamed … then exploded in a cloud of noxious, biting flies.

“To the prince,” Sanjeet bellowed as the temple descended into chaos. Ambassadors, priests, and laypeople dove for cover. At Sanjeet’s command my council siblings leapt to their feet, and we retrieved our weapons from behind the stools. Sanjeet fit his pair of black-hilted scimitars in a snug halter on his back, and I brandished my steel-headed spear, shaft carved with the Kunleo sun and moons. Our eleven surrounded Dayo in tight formation, and the Ray synchronized our movements with inhuman speed.