Page 73 of The Gilded Ones

Just like that, our audience with the emperor is over, and we are backing out of the room so as not to dishonour him by giving him our backs.

As we ride back to the Warthu Bera, Ixa emerging from my pack to ride on my shoulder, my confusion continues building. White Hands creates monsters for the emperor, yet she also persuaded him to create the alaki training grounds? Does she truly create monsters, or is that one of the many deceptions she wears in place of a mask? Is she a villain, or the saviour who protected us? I don’t know what to think any more. Except I have so much more to be grateful to her than I knew. We all do – which is why we neophytes continue staring at her, unsure of what to say, as she rides at the front on Braima, Masaima trotting at their side.

After a while, she turns to us. “I can feel your thoughts like little insects scurrying down my back.”

“You persuaded the emperor to create the training grounds. Why?” I ask.

She shrugs. “Because I don’t like seeing things go to waste, that’s why. The alaki were just being thrown away. A waste…”

“You saved us,” Belcalis whispers. To my surprise, tears are glazing her eyes, and there’s a strange, unsettled expression in them. “You saved us…”

“She’s right,” Britta says. “Without ye, who knows where we’d be?”

“Well, don’t get sentimental,” White Hands huffs. For the first time, I see that she’s flustered. “If you’re really grateful, show it on the battlefield.”

“Oh, we will,” Adwapa promises. “We certainly will.”

White Hands humphs, rides on and I continue to watch her, still not sure what to think.

When we finish lessons later that night, Belcalis and I remain behind to pack up the weapons. We all take turns every evening, and tonight, it’s our turn to shine and store the swords from practice. As usual, they’re filthy, so we have to carefully soak them in aqua regia, then scrub them to remove the gold crust from the blood that was spilled.

I do so even more vigorously than usual, my mind ablaze with all the things I learned today. White Hands freed us from the Death Mandate, and gave us the chance to fight. Just as she promised, we’re the emperor’s crown jewels and will ride at his side in less than two months and deliver Otera from the deathshrieks once and for all. She’s proven herself a woman of her word again and again.

So why do I feel uneasy?

As I finish polishing the swords in the armoury, I turn to Belcalis. She’s making more aqua regia, her eyes troubled as she mixes the chemical solution. Usually, I would just leave her to her thoughts, but today has been a strange day, by all accounts. I need someone to talk to.

“Can you believe it was White Hands all along?” I say, hoping to start a conversation. I walk over to where she’s packing the swords away. “What good fortune we’ve had that she came along. Had we been born just a year earlier, we’d have already been executed.”

“Good fortune?” The words drip like acid from Belcalis’s lips. “Is there such a thing for our kind?”

I find her shaking, every muscle quivering with barely suppressed fury. Even though she rarely speaks about her past, I know she was somewhere awful before she came here.

Wherever it was, I know that it was even worse than the temple cellar – that it was so nightmarish, she wakes up screaming at least once every few weeks and is filled with a constant, unending supply of pain and rage.

“What happened to you…what happened to me – these things, they alter us,” Belcalis says. “They change us in the most fundamental ways. The emperor and his men, they can use White Hands and the rest of the karmokos to make us into warriors, they can even give us absolution, but they can never change what they did. They can never take back the horrors that have already been inflicted on us.”

Gold on the floor…the look in Father’s eyes… The memory of my torture surges before I can stop it, that familiar heaviness accompanying it. That pain and humiliation once more surfacing.

I’ve been so dedicated to building myself into the perfect little warrior these past few months. Did I really think I’d gotten past all this? Did I really think I could forgive and forget, just like that?

If it weren’t for White Hands, I’d still be in that cellar and the elders would still be doing what they did, taking advantage of my ignorance, my desperation, to ensure that I continued submitting to the atrocities they disguised as piety. The realization slaps me in the face, as does another:

“I don’t remember things like I used to,” I whisper, looking up at Belcalis. For once, I allow myself to feel the pain coiling tightly inside me, the pain I so often stifle in an effort to pretend I’m fine. “I used to have excellent memory, but ever since the cellar, little things escape me. Like Father’s face… The only thing I remember about him now is his expression as he beheaded me in the cellar. His features, what his smile looked like – I don’t remember any of it any more.”

It’s a devastating, awful admission, and I gasp for air, trying to steel myself against the force of it. “I know that what he did was wrong, but he’s my father. The only one I have, anyway. There were good times – before… Now, every time I try to remember him, his face slips away.” I look down, surprised to find tears in my eyes. “All my memories from before, they just keep slipping through my fingers.”

“Is that why I forgot my anger so easily today? Is that why I forgot everything that I’d gone through?”

“I was thirteen when it happened,” Belcalis says softly, turning to me. “I cut myself slicing onions. Onions. Can you imagine how stupid that is? Girls aren’t supposed to play with knives… When my father saw the gold, he knew immediately what it was – he was a priest, you see. He thought it was Oyomo’s will that my blood had appeared so young – a sign that I was meant to be spared. So he called for his brother in Gar Calgaras and asked him to help me disappear into the city so I’d never have to undergo the Ritual of Purity.

“Father trusted his brother, loved him… He was an apothecary, a good man who helped people.” She laughs a short, bitter laugh. “It wasn’t even a month before that ‘good man’ sold me to the brothel. But that was his mistake, you see. When the procurers saw my golden blood, realized that it was actually real, they killed him immediately so he would never lead the jatu to them – mistakenly or not. And then they offered me to their most…particular clients. The ones who like to hurt children – like to watch as they scream.”

My hands are trembling now. There’s so much pain in Belcalis’s eyes, I feel the echo of it deep inside me.

“Belcalis,” I say, “you don’t have to—”

“They would give them a knife as they came into the room.” Belcalis’s voice is low and painful as she continues. “‘You can do whatever you want to her and she’ll heal’ – that’s what they told them. She’ll heal.” Belcalis’s voice breaks at these words.

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