I ran agitated fingers over gowns and wrappers. I told myself I wanted to impress villagers at the festival. A future High Lady Judge should be seen at her finest. My indecision had nothing to do with a pair of broad shoulders and tea-colored eyes, nothing at all.

I rubbed my skin with shea until it glowed. Rainbow beads stacked in towers on my arms and neck, in the Swana style. Most Arit fashion mixed elements from all over the empire, but Anointed Ones were encouraged to represent their home realms through their clothing. I wondered if this would change after Thaddace’s Unity Edict.

The Nu’ina Eve festivities would be conducted by priests of all four Arit religious sects—including priests of the Ember. I shuddered, steeling myself in advance for copious displays of fire. Unable to extinguish the thought of flames from my mind, I held up a wrapper of red and cardamom yellow. I had designed the pattern myself; the Yorua village women had taught me how to make my own wax-dyed cloth. In the keep courtyard, my council sisters and I spent hours using beeswax to draw patterns on yards of fabric. Once we finished, we plunged the cloth into vats of dye, and then into boiling water. The wax would melt away, leaving our intricate designs behind.

I wound the garment around my body. Across my hips, a huntress and heavy-maned beast repeated in a pattern, silhouetted in ochre and crimson. The figures connected at tail and spear, so that the woman and monster blended together. Even when my eyes crossed from gazing, I could not tell which would devour the other.

“YOU’RE SQUIRMING,” KIRAH YELLED AT ME over the music, elbowing my arm. “You should join in.”

“I don’t dance,” I said uncomfortably. “Leave me alone.”

My council had arrived at Yorua Village in a parade of palanquins, guards, and liveried servants. The villagers had welcomed us with drums and palm leaves, flinging the branches across our path as they sang that ancient folk rhyme:

Eleven danced around the throne,

Eleven moons in glory shone,

They shone around the sun.

In return, we had brought food enough to feed the village for a week. We held the festival in an oceanside valley, beneath the glittering black quilt of the Oluwan night sky. The air smelled of cayenne and thrummed with talking drums. Spilled goat’s milk and honeywine ran ruts in the red earth. Rice and pepper stew rose in savory mountains on each table, and children’s faces glowed with grease and cream. My council watched the revelry from cushions on a narrow dais, piled high with the villagers’ gifts of herbs and good-luck carvings. Thaddace and Mbali had their own dais, and after Mbali blessed the Nu’ina festival, acolytes from the temples of Clay, Well, Ember, and Wing began their holy dances.

All four religious sects in Aritsar worshipped the Storyteller, and believed in the basic catechism of creation. But People of the Clay revered Queen Earth above all else. Many lived in rural realms like Swana, Mewe, and Moreyao, and they refused to eat meat and opposed the clearing of jungles and development of cities. In contrast, People of the Well criticized Earth for her fabled infidelity to Water. Many of these believers lived in coastal realms, like Sparti, Nontes, and Djbanti, seafaring people who discovered islands and continents beyond Aritsar. But the most devoted inhabited the rainforests of Quetzala, praying at lakes and underground rivers. People of the Ember—the most popular religious sect in both Oluwan and Dhyrma—credited Warlord Fire with Earth’s wealth, and showed their gratitude by mining jewels and precious metals, and forging tools and weaponry. Finally, fastidious realms like Biraslov and Blessid Valley appealed to People of the Wing, who worshipped only the Pelican Storyteller. They covered their heads, spurned other gods as distractions, and embraced a life of simplicity, piety, and sacrifice.

The festival drumming tripled in speed, and the acolytes united to dance the irubo: a pantomime of the sacred Pelican flying down to save Queen Earth, piercing its own breast to nurse her. The dancers’ bodies rippled with sweat, chests glistening with crimson paint as they pulsed to the music. They leapt and spun, stretching mantles of feathers across their backs as wings.

Kirah nudged me again. She looked stunning in the tunic and billowing trousers of her home realm. A gauzy green prayer scarf nestled around her face, and belts of silver coins dangled at her waist and brow. “I’m going to learn it,” she said. “The irubo.”

I groaned. “Why do you always have to memorize everything?”

Kirah’s features were round and bright. I suspected that she’d had too much honeywine, though her hazel eyes were hard and clear. “Because I’m tired of limits on what I’m supposed to know.”

I was quiet for several moments, letting the downbeat of strings, talking drums, and shaker gourds braid themselves together in my ears. Faintly, I had a vision of standing at a window, watching children as they sang beneath me on a rolling grassland.

But traitors rise and empires fall,

And Sun-Ray-Sun will rule them all,

When all is said-o, all is said

And done-heh, done-heh, done.

“Wherever I came from,” I told Kirah as irubo dancers whirled around us, “I think music was forbidden. Whenever I hear a song, it feels like I’m stealing something.”

In the center of the festival, a vast pit gleamed with ominous red light. From within, firebrands and white coals made heat ripples in the crisp night air. Villages dug the pit to represent Am’s journey to the Underworld. If a reveler found an unlucky token in their honeywine, they were considered cursed until the next Nu’ina festival … unless a champion crossed the pit on their behalf. A single wooden slab lay across the pit’s mouth, making a laughably narrow bridge. It was only for show. Most festivalgoers would sooner brave a year of bad luck than have a friend cross that deadly oven.

My palms sweated every time a dancer whirled too close to the edge. I wanted to scream when village children peered into the pit, throwing bits of goat fat and giggling when the flames crackled and popped. Didn’t they know how dangerous fire was? How evil and treacherous?

No. Those children are normal. You’re the crazy one. I stuffed my mouth with fried plantain, wishing for more honeywine to dull my frayed nerves. My scalp still ached from the tight yarn-plaits, throbbing every time I moved my head.

As the irubo ended to cheers and applause, the musicians struck up a mischievous tune on bells and shaker gourds. Children flocked to the festival clearing and took turns doing the worst dances they could imagine. They pursed their lips and pulled faces as they chanted, Brother-sister do as I do; don’t laugh as I do; don’t laugh as I do … Each child had to copy the leader’s dance without smiling or falling out of step, or else lose the game. My council tried to keep dignified faces, but within minutes our cheeks smarted from laughing. Dayo jumped off the front of our dais, dancing into the circle of children. With mock gravity, he pulsed his hips to the beat, shaping his arms in a tangle of poses.

The village watched, speechless. Then a little boy dared to giggle. Then, an old woman—and in a tidal wave, the crowd was copying their future emperor’s ridiculous dance, helpless with laughter.

Dayo grinned. He reminded me of a pool in a savannah, drawing creatures of every stripe to quench their thirst. He made people love him: naturally, permanently. And the brighter he glowed, the more fragile he seemed to me. He was everything our empire hoped for, and everything we had to lose.

I jumped as the pit flared up again. Someone had tossed a bowl of perfumed oil onto the flames, signaling that it was time for the choosing of tokens. Village elders disguised by large wooden masks chanted over vessels of honeywine. The vessels’ tapered necks shielded the tokens inside from sight. One by one, the masked elders called us to dip smooth-handled drinking gourds into the vessels. We were each to drink until we found a token.

Dayo went first, fishing a smooth cocoa bean from his gourd. The token had a well-known meaning: a future bitter and sweet. “That is a token you may trade,” intoned one of the elders. “Shall you keep it, Imperial Highness?”

Dayo’s slender fingers closed around the bean. “Of course,” he said, raising the token above his head and making the traditional speech. “I will swallow bitterness so the lives of my people may be sweet.” The villagers cheered as Dayo chewed the raw bean, and my stomach churned for reasons I could not name. A young village girl crowned Dayo with a wreath of woven grass, and then trembled before him with an unspoken request. He knelt to hear it, and the girl pointed shyly to his mask.

“Make it sparkle,” she lisped.

Dayo grinned, then cried the word emblazoned on the mask in old Arit, calling its power as only true Raybearers could. “Oloye!”