Page 103 of The Gilded Ones

Tears sting my eyes. “I’m glad it was you, Keita.”

“Me too,” he whispers. He squeezes my hand one more time, then climbs onto Masaima. “Goodbye, Deka. Perhaps I’ll see you again one day.”

Just like that, he’s gone, riding out of the cave on Masaima as the deathshrieks and elder alaki snarl at his exit.

It’s all I can do not to weep, but I force my sadness into submission. There are other, more pressing things to think about. A thousand questions I must ask. If I’m the Nuru, the creature created to free deathshrieks and alaki, how do I go about fulfilling my purpose?

And what about White Hands? If everything she said to me was true, why did she allow me to commit all those atrocities against deathshrieks? She and Mother could have prevented everything that happened by just spiriting me away at birth. Why allow me to be raised by humans in the first place – to suffer through so much pain, when I could have been here with my own kind all along?

The questions spin through my mind, but I do not have time to ponder it further. Exhaustion has overtaken me, and it’s not long before I succumb to it and fall asleep.

When morning comes, White Hands is still at my side, a few of the other deathshrieks surrounding her. They all stand in a circle around me, hands connected, throats rumbling. The sound vibrates through my body, sparking yet more connections. I can feel my limbs knitting faster, my tendons attaching and strengthening, and I’m grateful for it, grateful for all the care they’re giving me. The emperor’s army is only four days away.

The thought fills me with worry. Britta and the others are still there, after all. I can only hope they’re not being punished now that I’ve been deemed a traitor. I can only hope that Britta’s still healing – that she hasn’t succumbed to her injuries or something even worse.

Like the Death Mandate…

I push away the awful thought by returning to the question of my origins. What does being the Nuru mean, exactly? How exactly will I free the goddesses? I know they’re at the top of this mountain, hidden in a temple like one of those that the deathshrieks nested in. That’s why the deathshrieks kept gathering at temples, why they massacred Keita’s family when they found them here. This is their most sacred site: the resting place of their goddesses. The primal nesting grounds were only ever a myth White Hands created so the emperor would gather all his armies here.

I suppose it makes things easier for me. While I’m freeing the goddesses, the emperor and his army will be too busy fighting. But what happens once I free them? I still have no idea. I don’t even know what the goddesses are like – what the truth of them is, versus what people have told me.

I turn to White Hands. She’s now standing hand in hand with Katya and thrumming. “White Ha— I mean, Fatu,” I say, correcting myself so I use her true name.

White Hands smiles. “White Hands will do. Fatu is an old name, one people have long forgotten to fear. White Hands, however…” She clicks her gauntleted fingertips together. “It is a name that will soon not be easily forgotten. Besides, it is my greatest honour to have been named by you.”

I shiver. There’s something in her eyes, a look that tells me she truly does feel this way.

“Why is freeing the goddesses so important? What will change if they come back to this world?”

“Everything,” she replies. “Everything will change.

“The emperors of Otera have oppressed our kind for too long. Proclaimed us demons. But now their turn has come. Once you wake the goddesses, they’ll make Otera back to what it once was: a land of freedom, a land where men and women ruled equally, where women weren’t abused, beaten, raped. Where they weren’t imprisoned in their homes, told that they were sinful and unholy.”

She looks down at me, her eyes serious. “You will help us bring those joyous times again. You will help us win freedom for all of us – every last woman in Otera, even the ones who aren’t alaki.”

Freedom for every woman…

I shiver as I remember Gazal’s fear of water, Katya’s longing for home, the tears in Belcalis’s eyes as she reminded me to never forget. All of them so different, and yet all fighting a world where they were unwanted, lesser than, despised.

Freedom for them – freedom for us all. I let the precious thought flow over my mind as the deathshrieks resume their thrumming.

It takes two days for my body to completely heal. All the while the deathshrieks surround me, throats rumbling. They never eat, never sleep, just remain attentively at their task. By the time I rise on the second day, I feel stronger than I ever have. It’s just as well. The army is at the foot of the mountains, the stronghold of the deathshrieks. The final battle is about to begin.

“It is time,” White Hands says, motioning for me to emerge from the water.

I do as she commands, marvelling at the new strength of my muscles, the power I feel in my bones. When I twitch, golden veins flash just beneath my skin. I can see them threading across my hands. Despite everything the official at Jor Hall said, my gilded sleep has destroyed the gilding that once covered my hands and arms. Perhaps this is part of what being the Nuru means. I feel more alive than I’ve ever felt before.

I know my path now. I know my purpose.

After all, White Hands was very careful to explain it to me.

These past few days, she answered all my questions – even told me how she and Mother became allies:

Being a Shadow, Mother never had to endure the Ritual of Purity. Any alaki at the Warthu Bera would be found immediately, since Shadows are injured almost every day due to the sheer brutality of their training. When Mother began bleeding the cursed – no – divine gold during her menses, White Hands quickly sensed it and took her on as an attendant, keeping her away from battle.

Then Mother became pregnant and her superiors found out before White Hands could hide her properly. They sentenced her to death for tarnishing the honour of the Shadows. White Hands had no choice but to help her escape. She arranged for a retired soldier – Father – to give her passage, and from then on did not contact Mother any further for fear of endangering her. By that time, the emperor was watching her closely, distrustful of the ideas she was spouting about an alaki regiment.

Then I turned fifteen, and the threat of the Ritual of Purity loomed. That’s when she and Mother went searching for each other.

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