The room smelled of cinnamon, cold iron, and the underlying, inescapable rot of the lagoon. It was the scent of ?k? perfume sprayed over decay.

  Ojie sat in the plush chair, refusing to sink into its softness. He kept his spine rigid, his hand resting near the hilt of the iron sword that seemed remarkably crude against the silk tapestries of Y?misí’s solar.

  Y?misí watched him. She did not sit behind her desk as a magistrate might. She sat on the edge of it, looking down at him, her silhouette framed by the balcony doors where the noise of the floating market was just a dull thrum.

  "You have the look of a man who expects a trap," Y?misí said. She reached for a crystal decanter and poured a dark, amber liquid into two wooden cups. "Palm wine. Tapped this morning from the groves in the south, mixed with honey. Drink. Poison is a coward's weapon, and I am many things, Ojie Osawe, but I am not a coward."

  Ojie took the cup. The glass was cool, sweating in the humidity. He did not drink.

  "You asked for a meeting," Ojie said. His voice felt rusty. He was used to silence, not the parry and thrust of courtly speech. "I am here. You said you had maps. You said you knew the disposition of the enemy."

  "I do." Y?misí took a sip of her wine, her eyes never leaving his face. "But information is like a river fish, little lion. It rots quickly if not used. And it is expensive."

  She set the cup down and picked up a scroll. With a flick of her wrist, she unfurled it across the low table between them.

  It was a map of the empire, but not one Ojie had ever seen. It was layered with markings in different inks; red for troops, blue for trade routes, black for something else entirely.

  "House ?ba is a dying beast," Y?misí said, her voice dropping to a business-like clip. "You think them invincible because they burned your home. But look."

  She pointed to ?do. "Ewuare the Bronze has not been seen in the lower courts for three months. They say he is meditating. My sources say he is coughing up blood that smells of copper. He is dying, Ojie. And the vultures are circling."

  Ojie leaned forward, the hunger in him spiking. "If he dies..."

  "If he dies, Osaze takes the throne," Y?misí cut in. "The Cold Heir. He is efficient. He is brutal. But he is not loved. The second son, Osagie, is loved, but he is weak. And the daughter, Esohe... she is a sword without a hand to wield her."

  She moved her finger to the west, to ìbàdàn. "And here. The Lord of the Iron Hills died last night."

  Ojie stiffened. "Lord Olúf???"

  "Gone," Y?misí confirmed. "Queen T??yìn rules in his stead, but her house is fracturing. Ewuare demands a marriage between Osaze and the Olúf?? daughter to bind the iron to the bronze. If that marriage happens, the empire is theirs for another century. You will never take ?do."

  The weight of it settled on Ojie’s shoulders. He had a sword and twenty men. His enemy was arranging marriages that would fuse the empires two greatest military powers.

  "Why tell me this?" Ojie asked. "If they are so strong, why waste breath on a ghost?"

  "Because Queen T??yìn is stalling," Y?misí said, a small, sharp smile playing on her lips. "She does not want the Cold Heir for a son-in-law. She needs an alternative. She needs a distraction."

  She looked at him, her gaze piercing the gloom. "She needs a lion to roar, so the leopard looks away from her throat."

  Ojie stared at the map. He saw the logic. It was cold, mathematical, and terrifying.

  "You want me to start a war," he whispered. "To be the distraction."

  "I want you to be a player," Y?misí corrected. "Right now, you are a piece on the board. A pawn that has forgotten it can move."

  She stood up and walked to a cabinet of lacquered wood. "I can give you the supplies you need. I can give you the names of the loyalist networks your father buried deep in the forest, men who have been waiting years for a sign. I can give you safe passage out of ?k? before the Iparun hunters close the net."

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  "And the price?" Ojie asked.

  Y?misí turned. The playfulness was gone from her face. "When you retake ?do and you will retake it, or you will die trying, and my investment is lost anyway, I want the river tax abolished for House òrì?à vessels. I want the monopoly on the salt trade from the delta to the north. And I want a seat on your council." This was even more than she had requested earlier.

  It was a kingdom’s ransom. She was asking for the economic heart of his future domain. She was asking him to sell the harvest before the seeds were even planted.

  "You ask for much," Ojie said.

  "I ask for what I am worth."

  Ojie looked at the map again. He thought of Dele, waiting in the safehouse. He thought of the village elder being whipped in the dust. He thought of the lion sleeping in his blood, waiting to be fed.

  "Agreed," Ojie said.

  Y?misí nodded, as if the outcome had never been in doubt. "Good. We will draft the contract before you leave. In ?k?, words are wind, but ink is iron."

  She walked back to the desk, but she did not pick up a quill. Instead, her hand hovered over a small object sitting amidst the ledgers. A wooden comb. Cheap, common, carved with a simple geometric pattern.

  "There is one more thing," Y?misí said softly. "A debt from the past."

  Ojie frowned. "I have paid for the information I bought years ago."

  " not that." Y?misí picked up the comb. She turned it over in her hands. "Twelve years ago, not long after you passed through, another traveler came to me. A woman. She was young, common-born, with eyes that had seen too much fear."

  Ojie felt a cold prickle at the base of his neck. He said nothing.

  "She was looking for someone," Y?misí continued, her voice devoid of inflection. "A young lord. She described him. Golden eyes. A way of walking like he owned the earth, even in rags. She asked if I had seen him."

  The name rose in Ojie’s throat, a taste like ash. Yetunde.

  He remembered the servant girl in the village where he had hidden for three months. He remembered the smell of woodsmoke in her hair. He remembered the desperate, clawing comfort they had found in each other in the dark, two terrified children pretending to be adults.

  And he remembered leaving. Slipping away in the night when the rumors of hunters got too close. He had not said goodbye. Goodbyes were for people who expected to see each other again.

  "Yetunde," Ojie whispered.

  Y?misí looked up. Her eyes were hard, assessing. "You remember her."

  "I remember," Ojie said. "She... helped me."

  "She loved you," Y?misí corrected. "She came to me begging for passage. She wanted to follow you. She thought..." Y?misí paused, watching him. "She thought you would want to know she was safe."

  "I could not take her," Ojie said. The defense came automatically, the mantra he had repeated to himself for a decade. "I was hunted. To be near me was death. I left her to save her."

  "Did you?" Y?misí asked. It was not an accusation, but a curiosity. "Or did you leave her because a servant girl is a heavy burden for a king in waiting?"

  Ojie stood up. The chair scraped loudly against the wood floor. The lion in his chest snarled, a spike of defensive anger. "I did what I had to do to survive. That was the command. Survive."

  "And did she?" Y?misí asked. "Did she survive, Ojie?"

  Ojie looked at the comb in her hand. He knew the answer. He had known it the moment she brought up the name.

  "She is dead," he said.

  "Three years ago," Y?misí said. "Fever. The coughing sickness that takes those who live too close to the water."

  She placed the comb down gently. She did not tell him about the boy. She did not tell him about the son who had watched his mother die, the son who had grown up eating bitterness and stories of a golden father who abandoned them.

  She studied Ojie’s face. She saw the guilt there, yes. But she also saw the relief. She is dead. The loose end is tied.

  Not yet, Y?misí thought. You are not strong enough for the rest of the truth. If I tell you about the boy now, you will break. Or you will rush to him and die. You need to be a king before you can be a father.

  "I am sorry," Ojie said. And he meant it. He felt a hollowness in his chest, a fresh crack in the armor he had built.

  "Sorrow buys no yams in the market," Y?misí said, her voice brisk again, closing the door on the past. "But remembering... remembering has value."

  She opened a drawer and pulled out a leather satchel. "The supplies. The names. A letter of introduction to a merchant captain who sails for Igwe?cha at dawn. It is the long way around to ?do, but the hunters guard the roads. The river is your only path."

  Ojie took the satchel. It was heavy.

  "Why?" he asked. "Why help me? For a percentage of a trade route you may never see?"

  Y?misí walked him to the door. She placed a hand on the frame, blocking his exit for a moment. She looked out at the lights of her city, the floating chaos she had conquered.

  "Because the water is rising, Little Lion," she said. "The Emperor is a husk. The priests are mad. The world is breaking. And when the storm comes, I do not want to be alone in a boat made of secrets."

  She looked back at him, and for a second, her mask slipped. He saw a girl who had escaped the pleasure house., a woman who was also a survivor like him.

  "Make it worth it," she commanded. "Make the burning worth everything."

  Ojie nodded. He touched the golden pendant beneath his tunic, feeling the metal warm against his skin.

  "I will," he promised.

  He stepped out into the humid night. The drums of the city were beating a rhythm that sounded like a heartbeat, or a war march.

  Dawn was coming. And with it, the hunt.