Aritsar’s current older brother, or emperor, was Olugbade Kunleo: a direct descendant of Enoba the Perfect. I used to croon the patriotic anthem in our mango orchards. As I wove between branches, I would talk to an invisible emperor, sharing my thoughts on Arit history and governance. Sometimes I imagined him gazing down like the sun through the clouds, warming my bare shoulders with approval. How perfect he must be, to unite so many lands!

Dhyrma. Nontes. Djbanti. The names of the Arit realms tasted spicy on my tongue. My bones ached for those far places, described by my tutors in rainbow colors: The silk farms of Moreyao. The night festivals of Nyamba. The snowy peaks of Biraslov, the booby-trapped rainforests of Quetzala. I lay on my back, gazing up at the mango trees, trying to imagine the high-rises of Oluwan City: the seat of our divine emperor. Even Swana held its mystery. I had never left our grassland, but heard tales of lush cacao fields, and markets where women hawked candied papaya from baskets on their heads.

But more than cities and rainforests, I craved voices that would not call me demon.

I envied the children who passed by Bhekina House, with their grandparents who jostled them on their knees, their siblings who chased and teased them. The Lady was the only person in the world who touched me willingly.

One morning, as I watched the caravans from my study window, I learned another song.

Eleven danced around the throne,

Eleven moons in glory shone,

They shone around the sun.

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.

I liked the ominous rhyme. I whispered it around the manor like an incantation until a tutor overheard me. She asked, voice quavering, where I had heard such nonsense. I told her … and the next day, every window in my study was nailed shut.

I pried at the wooden slats until my small fingers were scratched and torn. That glimpse of the outside had been my lifeline. My portal to Aritsar—to feeling less alone. How dare they make my windows vanish? As The Lady had vanished, and Melu, and everything else I longed for?

I threatened to set the study aflame. “I’ll do it,” I howled at the servants. “Why not? I won’t burn. But your scrolls will. You will.”

My tutors had blanched. “There are things we simply can’t teach you,” they said, looking hunted as they bound my bloodied hands. “It is forbidden.” Like The Lady, my tutors had a habit of disappearing for months. This usually occurred after one of The Lady’s visits, when she found my learning to be unsatisfactory. Then new, nervous faces would replace the old ones.

On my eleventh birthday, two such faces arrived at Bhekina House, and accompanying them was the only birthday present I wanted.

“Mother!” I cried, launching myself at her. The Lady wore a richly patterned wax-dyed wrapper, which scratched my cheek as I clung to her. She cupped my face, a feeling so wonderful I shivered.

“Hello, Made-of-Me,” she said, and hummed that chilling lullaby: Me, mine, she’s me and she is mine.

We stood in Bhekina House’s open-air great hall. Sunlight streamed from our chicken-scattered courtyard, glowing across the hall’s clay tiles and illuminating The Lady’s black cloud of hair. The two strangers flanked her, standing so close to The Lady, I was jealous.

“Friends,” The Lady said, “please tell my daughter that you are her new, permanent guardians.” She seldom addressed me directly. When she did, her words were sparse and halting. I would later realize she was afraid of commanding me by accident—afraid of wasting her third precious wish, which still lay dormant inside me.

The word permanent piqued my interest. I had never kept a servant for more than a few months. The older stranger, a feline woman about The Lady’s age, was dressed entirely in green. Tawny brown skin contrasted with hard green eyes. Curly hair burst from beneath her cloak’s hood, which she wore even in the heat. An isoken, I realized. Isoken people had mixed blood, parents from different Arit realms. To hasten empire unity, the Kunleo imperial treasury rewarded families for every isoken child born.

“I’m Kathleen,” the woman sighed at me, then turned back to The Lady. “I hope this creature won’t be trouble. Does it have a name besides Made-of-You?”

“The ehru calls her something else,” The Lady said.

I had been trained to recognize accents. Kathleen’s lisp echoed her home realm, Mewe: a land of green, craggy hills in the distant northern fingers of Aritsar.

“My name is Tarisai,” I piped up, and greeted Kathleen in Mewish, hoping to impress. “May your autumn leaves grow back green!” I didn’t know what autumn was, and had never lived in a place where trees changed color, but it sounded like a nice thing to say.

“Am’s Story, Lady,” the isoken woman snorted. “Did you teach the kid all twelve realm tongues?”

“No harm in outshining the competition,” The Lady said smugly.

“They don’t test children on different languages,” Kathleen retorted. “Not anymore. Every realm speaks Arit now. That’s the point of being an empire.”

“Only Arit citizens,” droned the second stranger, “take pride in their cultures being erased. Why be unique, when you could all be the same?” He looked much younger than Kathleen—perhaps twenty, and more boy than man. His voice reminded me of a spider’s web, soft and gossamer. I could not place his accent anywhere in Aritsar.

He scanned me with eyes like half-moons, lifting a tan, angular jaw. A blue cape draped over his arm. Besides that, he wore nothing but trousers, and every inch of his body—face, arms, chest, and feet—was covered in what appeared to be geometric purple tattoos. I probably imagined it, but for a moment, they seemed to glow.

He gave a sardonic bow, straight jet hair shining over his shoulder. “A pleasure, Lady’s Daughter. My name is Woo In. My homeland, thank the Storyteller, lies outside this unnaturally unified empire.”

I gaped. “You’re from Songland!”

“You make it sound like a fairy world.” He rolled his eyes. “Of course I’m from Songland. I’m covered in these pretty pictures, aren’t I?”

His tone was sarcastic. But I did think they were pretty, if a little unsettling. Patterns twisted up his face and neck, like a logic puzzle with no solution. I gulped: Woo In was a Redemptor.

Songland was a poor peninsula nation on the edge of our continent. Their ancestors had refused to recognize Enoba as emperor—and as a result, the tiny realm was excluded from Aritsar’s bustling trade. A jagged range of mountains cut Songland off from the mainland. Aritsar might have ignored Songland altogether, if not for the Redemptors.

Enoba the Perfect had bought peace for our world at a steep price. Every year, three hundred children were sent into the Oruku Breach: the last known entrance to the Underworld. In exchange for this sacrifice, the abiku refrained from ravaging human cities and villages. The children, known as Redemptors, were born with maps on their skin, meant to guide them through the Underworld and back to the realm of the living. Few survived the journey. As a result, some families hid their Redemptor children at birth. But for every missed sacrifice, the abiku would send a horde of beasts and plagues to raze the continent.

Redemptors were supposedly born at random, to any race and class. But for some reason, every Redemptor in the last five hundred years had been born in Songland.

No one knew why. But guilt-ridden Arits, relieved from the burden of sacrificing their own children, had plenty of theories to help them sleep at night. The Songlanders had offended the Storyteller, they guessed. The Redemptor children were punishment for some historical sin of Songland’s. Or perhaps, Songland was blessed by the Storyteller, and their children were saints, chosen to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. The greater good, of course, was Aritsar.

I peered at Woo In. He did not strike me as particularly saintly. But he must have been special to survive the Oruku Breach. In the rare event that Redemptor children came back alive, they were scarred in mind, if not body.

I smiled at him and Kathleen. Maybe if these strangers—my permanent guardians—liked me, then I could stop talking to invisible emperors. Maybe, for the first time, I could have friends. Real ones.

Don’t think I’m a demon, I prayed. Think I’m a girl. A normal, market-caravan, not-scary girl.

“Do we have to nanny her?” Kathleen whined to The Lady. “Can’t you hire some mute nursemaid, or bribe one into secrecy?”

“No,” The Lady snapped. “Once my daughter leaves Bhekina House for Oluwan City, I cannot control what she sees and hears. She must be with people I trust.”

Leave?

Leave Bhekina House?

Kathleen crossed her arms. “You’re sure this … wish-creature is ready?”

“We are running out of time. Children are already being chosen. If we are not quick, there will be no more room on the Prince’s Council—” The Lady broke off abruptly, tossing me a nervous glance.

“Don’t fret, Lady,” said Kathleen with a smirk. “We can always make room.”