“Name your price,” Sanjeet told Mongwe. “The tutsu will listen to you. We’ll pay anything.”

She snorted. “Haven’t the two of you slung gold around the savannah enough today? You will be robbed and toothless before the evening is out.”

“Please,” I begged. “Dayo’s life depends—”

“What am I supposed to do? I am a priestess, not a sprite whisperer. You need a bath, a cure for the common cold, I’ll help you. But tutsu?” She sucked her teeth. “I just let them nest on my home. In return, they keep beetles away from my yams. They also guide me to honeycomb, if they are feeling grateful. But other than that, I ask them no favors. You will just have to convince them that you are someone worth listening to.”

I sighed, glancing at the roof. “At least they look calm.”

Mongwe’s cracked lips spread in a grin. “Those are only spritelings. It is their parents you will have to persuade.” She cocked her head and sniffed the air, grimacing. “You smell like a frightened hare. Perhaps you should bathe first—”

“We don’t have time,” I said, standing. “Tell us where to go.”

She pointed beyond the house, where knee-high grass rustled in an airy field. I realized then that the constant, high-pitched humming in the compound was not wind.

“Let me go alone,” I told Sanjeet. “We wouldn’t want to spook them.”

When I crept into the soft, dense grass, the air throbbed with silvery voices, an army of mouths and wings I could not see. Specks of lavender light danced in intricate patterns above me. Some of them hovered close to my face, investigating my heavy braids, ash-covered arms, and borrowed imperial uniform. The tutsu whined and tittered, flying in circles until I felt dizzy.

I was being mocked.

“Understood,” I muttered. “I’m a mess. But I’m guessing you know why I’m here. Please, I just need to find Melu. Don’t you want Aritsar to be safe? I’m tired of being dangerous; help me be normal.”

The tittering increased in pitch, drowning out my voice. I bit my lip in frustration.

I tried again, struggling to be heard above the whining. “If I can break The Lady’s hold on me, then Melu will be free too. Don’t you care about him?”

The tutsu did not break their lazy patterns, continuing to swoop and dart as though I had not spoken. Even the few that hovered around me lost interest, going to join their brethren in the dance above my head.

I yelled and pleaded. I insulted. I even threatened to trap them in jars, like the merchants who sold sprites in markets. “You could be night lamps for all I care,” I said. But nothing worked. The tutsu ignored me.

Hot-faced, I stomped back to Sanjeet. “It was worth a try,” he said. “We can find Melu’s pool another way.”

I nodded grimly. “We’ll visit every puddle in Swana if we have to.” But my heart sank. Swana was the second-largest realm, bigger than Djbanti and Nyamba combined. It could take us weeks to find Melu’s pool on our own. Months. And if The Lady had as many spies as I feared … she would find me long before then.

“Back already?” said Mongwe when we returned to the courtyard.

“They didn’t care,” I said. “Not about Melu’s curse, or keeping Dayo safe—none of it. They don’t care about anyone but themselves.”

Mongwe laughed that dry, wheezy sound again. “Of course they don’t.”

“Then why did you let me try?”

Mongwe hummed, savoring the harsh, nutty smell wafting from her soap pot. “First lesson of growing tall,” she said. “People never listen to what you want. They listen to who you are.” She paused and cocked her head toward the house. “The tutsu are chanting about you, girl. They say there’s someone you are desperate not to hurt.”

I straightened, alert. “Yes, there is. Do they know how I can protect him?”

She listened. “No. They think your case is hopeless, for the most part, though the gem that he carries”—she pointed to Sanjeet—“will help.”

Sanjeet blinked in surprise, then shyly drew a small, fiery object from his pocket. The sunstone I had given him on Nu’ina Eve; he had kept it. Even after calling me a monster.

“Maybe that’s it,” I whispered. “Maybe the stone can cure me.”

“Of course it can’t,” Mongwe snorted. “I don’t know what ails you, girl, but I know a sparkly bauble isn’t medicine.” She frowned, considering. “Sunstones are known to strengthen the will, however. In some. If you are tempted to do harm, a sunstone will not protect you. But it may make it easier, just a whit, to resist.”

My heart sank, but when Sanjeet insisted, I took the stone, threading it through a leather tie meant for my hair and suspending it from my throat.

Mongwe smiled. “Now. Doesn’t a bath sound nice?”

She had arranged the washtubs on opposite sides of the linen screen. Still scowling, I stalked to one side and peeled off my grubby uniform, but I kept the sunstone on. Miles of dirt and dust chafed my skin, and when I lifted myself into the tub, my scowl melted away. The water was cool, and fragrant rosemary and neem leaves floated on the surface, clinging to my legs. I scrubbed with a lump of soap mash, still warm from Mongwe’s pot. At first, I held my braids atop my head, craning my neck at awkward angles to protect each yarn plait from the water. The roots throbbed, and my scalp itched with sweat and grime. I paused then, noticing my shadow on the linen screen. My shape was contorted and stiff, like a rooster perched in a barnyard. I felt ridiculous.

So I plunged my head in.

A bubbled sigh escaped my lips as my roots soaked up the water. I could feel the yarn frizz, curls escaping from the tightly coiffed edges. Unruly, the palace braider fretted in my ear. Shameful. Think of your title. Ladies rein every strand into place.

But what title would ever describe me?

Assassin? High Judge Apparent? Puppet demon? Vanquisher of Bush-spirits? I had betrayed Dayo. I had saved his life. No yarn, no matter how tight, could hold back the jumble of contradictions that was Tarisai of Swana. I lathered my scalp and dunked the braids again, letting the suds froth around my ears.

When I emerged from the water, I gasped, braids streaming in a sopping mantle down my back. My limbs felt oddly light. I hummed as I wrung the plaits over the sweet-smelling water. After, I reached for my dusty Imperial Guard uniform, and then thought better of it. Instead I opened my travel pack, pulling out the starry blue garments from Tegoso.

What title can contain me?

The cotton chemise was soft, with sleeves that hung loosely to my elbows. Over the chemise I wound the wrapper, tying it snugly at my waist. I smiled, admiring the woven pattern as it clung to my hips.

Sanjeet was quiet for a moment when I stepped out from behind the screen. Then he said, “It suits you.”

He had bathed and changed too. The kaftan from Tegoso looked imperious on his towering form, and droplets sparkled in his hair. “Ready to go?”

“Not until I’ve said goodbye,” I said.

He followed me, puzzled, as I marched behind Mongwe’s house and strode into the field of tutsu. They whined and tittered again, but I spoke louder, chin high.

“You don’t have to help me,” I told them, shaking my head of gloriously clean, wet hair. “But you will listen when I speak. You will listen, because there is no history I cannot see.” My chest was burning, but this time it didn’t hurt. Instead, the sunstone warmed over my heart, soaking up the heat, and sending it in pleasant tingles down my collarbone. I reached with my Hallow into the ground, consuming the births, deaths, and dances of a million sprites, drinking the tiny stories of power seeping into every blade and flower, every tree and anthill in the vast savannah.

“I am Tarisai of Swana,” I murmured, “and I’ve seen your stories now. They belong to me, as mine belong to you. You don’t have to help me change the world. But you mark my words; when I get going, this world will change. And you can be a part of that … or you can stand back and watch.”

The field went quiet. The specks of light grew still, hovering like stars in the daytime. My heart thrummed in my ears.

Then the tutsu swarmed.

The specks of light dove at me with a deafening hum, surrounding me in a tunnel. I held up my hands in defense and heard Sanjeet cry out … but no pain came. Instead, warmth radiated over my skin as the tutsu streamed beneath my arms, over my shoulders, through my hair: a living breeze.

“They aren’t attacking me,” I yelled.

“No,” Sanjeet yelled back, laughing incredulously. “They’re choosing you.”

My feet left the ground. As the tutsu continued to swirl, something fell into the grass. A length of yarn. Then another, and another. The tutsu unbraided my hair, removing the hundreds of plaits with blurring speed, until there was nothing left but my midnight cloud of hair, unbound and unyielding, bursting from my scalp in a dark halo.

The tutsu set me down at last, and then hovered at a distance. Waiting for orders.

I glanced back at Sanjeet. Mongwe had joined him at the field’s edge, arms crossed.

“Well now,” she said placidly. “Didn’t I tell you a bath would help?”