“I—” Mbali’s warning gripped my throat. I must be a tree who loved her pot. I fought to keep my tone docile. “I was not aware that death was the punishment for trespassing, Your Imperial Majesty.”

“You do not understand the charges.” Olugbade arranged his features in a sympathetic smile. “Many years ago, The Lady committed treason. She led a coup, trying to turn my own candidates against me. I showed mercy, allowing her to escape, but her continued disregard for the law has forced my hand.”

Lies, my heart pounded. Lies, lies, lies.

“No one at court has seen The Lady since she was a child,” Olugbade continued. “Few, if any, have made the connection between the woman I have in custody and the child traitor of thirty years ago. For your protection, I would prefer to keep it that way. The court gossips know only that I have imprisoned your mother, a raving Swana woman, for crimes against the empire.”

He wasn’t trying to protect me. He was afraid that someone at court would recognize The Lady, and revive rumors of a second Raybearer. “If my mother is a traitor,” I asked, doing my best not to snap, “then why did you allow Dayo to anoint me?”

“Because it was time to rewrite the past.”

We stared at each other. I understood, then, the true reason I had survived as a child in Olugbade’s palace. He had not killed me, because doing so admitted the possibility that I was a Raybearer. Killing me admitted that The Lady had been right all along.

Olugbade had watched me grow beside his son, watched my subservience, my submission in my gilded cage—and he had enjoyed a peace of mind that my death could not have brought him. My First Ruling would be his ultimate victory. The final proof that only one Ray ruled in Aritsar. Mbali had known this all along, and her message in the hall had been clear: survive.

“No one is above the law, Your Imperial Majesty,” I repeated, and curtsied serenely. “I look forward to my First Ruling.”

When I emerged at last from Olugbade’s chambers, my attendants flocked around me in the corridor. “Was it terrifying, Anointed Honor?” Bimbola fretted. “Am’s Story! Such trembling hands. Your fingers, they’re cold as rocks—”

“Take me to see her. Now.” My voice was hoarse. “I want to see The Lady.”

SHE TOO LIVED IN A TOWER NOW. BUT UNLIKE me, The Lady had not chosen hers. The open-air prison of An-Ileyoba was located on a roof overlooking the north courtyard, and most children learned of it from a nursery rhyme:

Thieves will rot in hell below, hell below, hell below

But Heaven is where traitors go, traitors go, traitors go.

Ordinary convicts were kept in the palace dungeons. But Heaven—as courtiers had nicknamed the turret obscured by clouds, with no walls and a sheer, ten-story drop—was reserved for the emperor’s most personal enemies. The design was effective: No guard could watch a prisoner better than a crowd of gawking courtiers. Day and night, visitors squinted from the courtyard to observe a distant, sunburnt figure sleep and eat. The giggling audience dodged out of the way when the prisoner vomited, or emptied his or her bladder over the edge.

As a child at An-Ileyoba, I had never let myself believe that the prisoners in Heaven were real. They were shadows against the sky, and their anguished cries were so faint, I could pretend to hear the call of birds instead, or the wail of wind between the turrets.

A staircase inside the tower led to a landing, from which a single door led out to Heaven. I smelled the roof long before my attendants reached it: the sickly sweet stench of feces and urine. The door was made of iron bars, and a hatch opened at the bottom. Two buckets lay on the other side: one with water, and one encrusted with filth and flies. An impassive pair of guards manned the landing, which was lit dimly by a lamp on the floor. On the roof, a stiff bundle, pressed against the landing door, attempting to shelter itself from the night wind.

Mother.

My lips felt frozen, but I must have said the word out loud. The bundle shifted, and cracked hands gripped the bars. Then a slow, elegant voice.

“My darling girl.”

Three words, and sixteen years of abandonment evaporated. I was no longer Anointed Honor Tarisai, the High Judge Apparent. She was no longer The Lady, a puppet master who had forced me to attempt murder.

I was a little girl in a cold study, and she was my warmth: the only one who touched me, who loved me, who wasn’t afraid.

I let the guards search me for lockpicks and weapons, then I bribed them to stand out of earshot. When I knelt at the door, The Lady reached through the bars, touching my loose hair. “This must be recent,” she observed. “My spies did not report it.” The Lady’s throaty voice was still musical, though her comment turned into a weak cough.

“I’ve missed you,” I said.

She laughed and made a tutting noise. “Now, now, Made-of-Me. We both know that isn’t true.”

The words stung. “You pretended to leave me,” I said, pulling away. “When I was small. You lied and hid at Bhekina House, even though I cried for you every night. Why?”

She sighed. “Children are always so ungrateful.”

“What? Mother, I—”

“You had a lovely childhood.”

She spoke with such calm certainty, I began to doubt my own memories. Perhaps I hadn’t been so miserable, locked in that study with no light. Perhaps I hadn’t thrown myself in firepits, or sobbed myself to sleep when she went away.

“You were perfectly happy,” she continued. “I provided every comfort you needed, and you repaid me with hatred. You chose to forget your own mother.”

“I don’t hate you.” This was not how I had imagined our reunion. I had envisioned The Lady smiling as I appeared on the landing, holding me through the bars as we cried in each other’s arms. I had thought she would tell me about her days in exile, her years as a child bandit queen. I had planned to talk about my life in return, sharing the adventures that spies could never tell her.

Instead, The Lady crossed her arms and stared over my head. Her features were stony, wounded, a queen betrayed by her vassal.

“I was scared,” I protested. “You told me to kill someone. An innocent person.”

“Everything I said,” she replied, “everything I did, was for you. For our future together.”

“You never told me anything. I didn’t know—” I broke off and glanced at the guards farther down the landing, lowering my voice even more. “I didn’t know you wanted to be empress. But Melu told me everything. About Aiyetoro’s masks. And about … you.”

The whites of The Lady’s eyes flashed. “Then Melu is a fool,” she growled, “and he has put you in grave danger. If Olugbade’s brat ever finds out that you have a right to his throne …”

“I don’t want Dayo’s throne, Mother. Even if I did, I wouldn’t hurt him. I can’t do it. I won’t.”

A tarnished cup lay by The Lady’s hand. She plunged it into the murky bucket of water and drank. “Did Melu show you,” she asked, “what your darling prince’s father did to me?”

“He shouldn’t have banished you. I know that was wrong. But Dayo isn’t responsible—”

“Did Melu show you what happens to a palace girl who is thrown onto the streets?”

My heart sank. I shook my head.

She continued in a cool tone. “Did Melu let you see the bruises on my body? The scars that never faded? Did he show you the starvation and the cold? Or did he shield you from those things, as I shielded you in Bhekina House, where you never felt a pang of hunger or endured a single day of suffering?”

Shame heated my face. “I didn’t mean to be ungrateful,” I stammered. “I’m sorry, Mother. About everything.”

“And I will forgive you,” she replied, “because you are mine. But your years under Olugbade’s thumb have made you weak.” She sighed. “I expected more of you, Made-of-Me.”

I swallowed hard and said, “Say my name, Mother.”

Her jaw hardened. She pressed her lips together and was silent.

“You’ve never done it before,” I said, gripping the bars. “I … I just want to hear you say it.”

Tears glinted on her smooth cheeks. “So Olugbade has won after all. You have let him convince you to disown me. You despise being made of me, you are ashamed.”

“No. No, Mother, I just—”

“You would let him poison your mind. You would cast off your own blood, your own family.”

Humiliation washed over me. I remembered just minutes earlier, bowing with a docile smile before the emperor, who had signed my mother’s death warrant.

“I won’t abandon you,” I whispered.

“What a coincidence,” murmured The Lady. “That is what Woo In said months ago, when I was captured. I told him to ensure your safety first. But here you are, safe and sound … and he is nowhere to be seen. So much for council vows.”

“Woo In read your journal at Bhekina House,” I said. “He thinks you’ve betrayed him.”

For the first time, The Lady looked unsettled. She picked at the frayed edge of her mantle, muttering almost to herself. “He will forgive me, of course. He loves me. He is mine, just like all the others.”