The fort was a skull, picked clean and left to bleach in the sun.

  Its walls, once reinforced by the earth-shaping arts of Stage Six walkers, were now just stone and mud. Vines choked the northern ramparts. The protective wards, carved into the gateposts by Ojie’s grandfather, had faded to shallow scratches that no longer hummed when touched.

  Ojie walked the perimeter. It was his morning ritual. Check the walls. Count the provisions. Ensure the twenty souls sheltering here, aging loyalists, their wives, a few children born in exile; had not vanished in the night.

  He stopped at the eastern bastion. Below, the scrubland stretched toward the border of ìbàdàn. Heat haze shimmered off the red earth. Nothing moved.

  He felt the itch between his shoulder blades. The lion wanted to hunt. Even starved, even neglected, the spirit beast was a living thing woven into his soul. It resented this cage. It resented the silence.

  Ojie pushed the feeling down. He had become an expert at suppression. Be small, he told the beast. Be quiet. Be nothing.

  He descended to the training yard. It was a patch of packed earth behind the stables. He drew his sword; iron, heavy, unadorned. He moved into the forms.

  The Leopard Stalks. The Python Coils. The Lion Strikes.

  His body knew the movements better than his mind. Sweat slicked his skin. He pushed faster, harder, seeking the point of exhaustion where thought ceased. He lunged, imagining an enemy, faceless, armored in bronze and thrust.

  "Your footwork is sloppy, my lord."

  Ojie froze. He lowered the blade and turned.

  Dele stood in the shadow of the granary. The old soldier leaned on a spear that had seen better decades. His hair was white now, his face a map of deep lines, but his eyes were the same hard flint they had been twelve years ago. He watched Ojie with a mixture of affection and disappointment that stung worse than a whip.

  "Dele," Ojie said, wiping his brow. "I did not hear you approach."

  "Because you were fighting ghosts," Dele said. He stepped into the light. "And ghosts do not hit back."

  "Did you find the merchant?"

  Dele nodded. He had gone to the nearest village two days ago to trade woven baskets for salt and news. It was their only link to the empire that had moved on without them.

  "I found him," Dele said. His voice was heavy. "He came from Edo."

  Ojie sheathed his sword. The name of the city was a physical blow. He gestured for water. "Tell me."

  Dele did not speak immediately. He looked at the crumbling walls, at the few chickens scratching in the dirt, at the pathetic reality of their exile.

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  "House Oba moves," Dele said finally. "Lord Ewuare seeks to bind the Iron Hills. A marriage has been proposed. Ewuare’s heir, Osaze, to the daughter of House Olúfé."

  Ojie drank from the ladle, the water warm and metallic. He calculated. House Oba held the Bronze Throne and the political center. House Olúfé held the iron mines and the war mammoths. If they joined, the empire’s spine would be unbreakable.

  "It is a smart match," Ojie said quietly. "Ewuare is thorough."

  "There is more." Dele stepped closer. His voice dropped to a whisper, though there was no one to hear but the chickens. "News of your uncle."

  Ojie’s hand tightened on the ladle until the wood creaked. "Ehi."

  "He is dying."

  Ojie looked up. He expected to feel satisfaction. He felt only a cold shock. "How?"

  "The bond," Dele said. "The merchant says the stories in the wine-sinks are gruesome. The Golden Lion rejects the traitor. His tattoos are cracking, my lord. Turning grey and splitting like dry mud. The spirit is eating him alive from the inside. He has months, perhaps weeks."

  "Good," Ojie said. "Let him rot."

  "In his fever," Dele continued, relentless, "he talks."

  The air in the yard seemed to vanish.

  "He talks of the past," Dele said. "He talks of his brother. And he talks of the boy who went into the river. He has named you, Ojie. He has told Ewuare that the line did not end."

  Ojie let the ladle drop. It clattered against the water bucket, loud in the silence.

  Twenty two years. Twenty two years of erasing himself. Twenty two years of eating dust and silence. Undone because a dying man could not keep his tongue still.

  "Does Ewuare believe him?" Ojie asked.

  "Lord Ewuare believes in eliminating risks," Dele said. "The merchant saw hunters leaving the city gates. Not the city guard. The Iparun. Osaze’s personal trackers."

  The Iparun. The Destruction. Men and women bonded to tracking beasts; hawks, hounds, jackals. They did not arrest. They erased.

  "They will come here," Ojie said. It was not a question.

  "They will start at the river and work outward," Dele said. "They will question the villages. They will find the tracks we thought were hidden. They will be here. Soon."

  Ojie looked at his hands. They were shaking. Not from the exertion of training. From terror. The same terror he had felt at eight years old, dangling over the black water.

  "We must leave," Ojie said. "Gather the others. We can move north, into the desert—"

  "To what end?" Dele slammed the butt of his spear against the ground. "To starve in the sand instead of the forest? To run until you are old and grey and forgotten?"

  "I am alive," Ojie snapped. "That was the command. Survive."

  "Your father commanded three things," Dele said softly. "Survive. Remember. Return."

  He looked at Ojie, at the faded yellow mark peeking out from the collar of his tunic.

  "The time for surviving is done, my lord. The hunters are coming. You can die in the desert as a runaway, or you can die here as a lord."

  "I have twenty old men and a crumbling wall," Ojie said bitterely. "I have a bond that I cannot even manifest. You ask me to fight House Oba? I might as well fight the sun."

  "I ask you to choose," Dele said. "What will you do, Ojie Osawe? Run? Or stand?"

  Ojie looked at the old soldier. He looked at the sword at his hip. He looked at the fort that had been his tomb for twelve years.

  He had no answer. The fear was too large. It filled his throat like ash.

  "Leave me," Ojie whispered.

  Dele held his gaze for a long moment, then bowed; a stiff, formal bow, the kind given to a king, not a refugee. He turned and walked away.

  Ojie stood alone in the center of the yard. The sun beat down on him, but he was cold.

  That night, sleep did not come. Ojie walked the ramparts, watching the dark line of the forest. Every shadow looked like a hunter. Every rustle of leaves sounded like a leopard’s step.

  He closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against the rough stone.

  And in the darkness behind his eyelids, golden light flared.

  It was faint, distant, like a fire seen across a valley. But it was there. And with it, a voice. Not the voice of the uncle who betrayed him, or the soldier who shamed him.

  Return.

  The lion stirred in his blood. It was hungry.