The Gilded Ones

On the fourth day of lessons, White Hands has Deka stay after the others have left to privately ask about her dreams. Deka talks about the dark ocean where she hears voices calling to her (all using her mom’s voice) and pointing her towards a golden door. White Hands tells Deka to go through the door next time, then pricks her neck causing unconsciousness.

Deka sees the door, remembers to enter, and is covered in gold light. White Hands wakes her and Deka sees “a shimmering mystical light” (198) over all living things, including White Hands. White Hands explains that Deka is feeling a pure combat state. Deka can see her gilded blood and control it to keep from bleeding when holding a blade. White Hands says this state is where Deka will develop her voice.

The next morning, Deka goes to the deathshriek cages and finds White Hands there wearing a mask in front of Rattle. White Hands tells Deka to go into the combat state. Deka focuses on her hands to enter the golden door. After this, she is able to order Rattle to kneel. White Hands is proud, and Deka falls unconscious.

In the teacher’s library, Thandiwe tells a raiding party—Deka, Britta, Belcalis, Gazal, Adwapa, Beax, and Mehrut—that there’s a gathering of particularly nasty deathshrieks in a cave to the south. Their uruni will accompany them there. Thandiwe reveals Deka’s talent for commanding deathshrieks and swears more bloodsisters to secrecy. The plan of attack is Deka rendering deathshrieks immobile so others can kill them. Deka is nervous.

In a little free time before the raid, they have dinner. Acalan (Belcalis’s uruni) asks Deka about dying. Deka says it is cold and lonely. When asked what comes after, Belcalis answers that it’s warm and Oyomo is kind in the Afterlands. Acalan accuses her of blasphemy and storms off. Li (Britta’s uruni) says he’ll talk to Acalan. Keita asks how many times Belcalis has died; she answers six times from bleedings. When the girls explain to him that blood is sold by elders, Keita is horrified and runs off. Deka considers how sheltered the boys are.

Deka goes alone to her favorite tree: a “blue-flowered nystria [...] a towering old giant” (208). Keita comes to her and apologizes for running off like a child, as well as for what she has endured. Surprised, she jokingly compares him to a horned lizard rather than a child. After talking about the death mandate some more, Keita admits his opinions are changing by working with Deka. He asks for the names of the elders who dismembered her for money. Deka says it doesn’t matter, and Keita squeezes her hand, saying she matters to him. When he holds her chin, she gets tingly. Keita alludes to a painful past and lets go of her. Keita also says being her uruni for all her life is closer than friendship.

Deka is outfitted in heavy leather armor for her first raid, and the group sets out on horseback. Once beyond the walls of Warthu Bera, a crowd gawks at alaki, uruni, matrons, and assistants. Captain Kelechi heads the raiding party. When he asks Deka about her talent, she reassures him that it doesn’t work on people, and he threatens her if it ever does. The crowd yells, calling them demons and whores. This reminds Deka of how the people in Irfut treated her. When a man lunges at Britta, Deka picks him up and defends her friend. The Captain asks which men would like to go on raids instead of the alaki, and people shrink away from his call to be soldiers. The crowd disperses, and the raiding party hears the waterfall.

As they travel through a plain that has dried up, the captain tracks deathshrieks with coucals (birds). Deka senses them. At the edge of the jungle, the raiding party sets up camp to prepare for an attack in the early morning. Deka worries about failing to use her voice and repeatedly sharpens her atika (sword). When Keita comes over, concerned, Deka admits to her fears. Keita admits to vomiting and fainting on his first raid at eight after deathshrieks killed his family; he jokes about becoming the Lord of Gar Fatu when his father died. Deka apologizes for his loss. Keita tells her more about his past: being sent to Warthu Bera and giving up his rank. As they bond, Kelechi comes over and says Keita should check the perimeter and Deka should get some sleep.

When the moon begins to set in the early morning, the raiding party reaches the deathshriek nest, which is cold and misty among giant trees. Deka has doubts but does her deep breathing and reaches the combat state. When she points out leapers, Captain Kelechi signals to her, and she heads off towards them with Britta and Keita. The wild deathshrieks are more lively than captive ones, but Deka easily orders them to be silent and still. Keita kills them, and Deka experiences a flashback to the cellar. Britta distracts her from the internal trauma.

Another deathshriek finds the bodies of its comrades. Belcalis kills it, but it makes a noise, which causes the other deathshrieks to start screaming. Deka is resistant to the sound but weakened by commanding the deathshrieks. Britta carries Deka, and at least 30 monsters surround them. The leader of the deathshrieks makes a slicing motion across its throat, which frightens Britta and the others. Kelechi tells Deka to control them. She goes deeper into the combat state and commands the deathshrieks to stop moving. They obey, and the raiding party beheads all of them. Deka feels sick from the killing, and others notice that her eyes are strangely black. Before Deka passes out, she sees a girl running in the forest.

When Deka wakes again, the raiding party is sweeping the area to make sure no deathshrieks remain in the nest. Britta is excited that Deka has revived. The uruni taking trophies from the deathshrieks reminds Deka of the elders bleeding her. Deka asks about the girl that no one else saw. She theorizes she was hallucinating. However, the reader later learns that deathshrieks, as the final form of alaki, try to save girls with gold blood before they are doomed by the Ritual of Purity; this girl—real or hallucination—foreshadows the connection.

All of the men are excited about Deka’s talent. There are zerizards and bodies of people in the nesting cave. As Deka travels through the cave, she intuitively finds a path no one else sees. Britta, Belcalis, and Adwapa find Deka on the path and they go through a door at the end of it. Behind the door, there are statues of four women with golden veins wearing regional clothes; they are in a temple for the Gilded Ones. Here, they discuss the intermingling of demon and human, and wonder about the worshippers/blasphemers.

Deka is psychically pulled to an underground lake that holds a reptilian serpentine creature that looks “like a drakos, one of those aquatic dragons” (241). Later, the reader learns it is a shapeshifter. Deka is called to reach down and does. The creature bites her, and as she pulls it out of the water, it changes into a large bluish kitten. It communicates telepathically, saying “Mine,” and that its name is Ixa.

After hiding Ixa in her armor, Deka swears the others to secrecy about the temple. As they ride back to Warthu Bera, she hears Ixa say “Deka” telepathically.

Deka wakes the next morning to her friends pointing weapons at Ixa as he sits on her chest. He changes into the water dragon form, but she calms him telepathically, causing him to change back to cat form. Her alaki friends ask about Ixa, and Deka replies that he’s harmless because the voice from her combat state told her so. Deka adds that White Hands reassured her that the combat state voice is reliable and trustworthy. Britta makes Deka agree to ask White Hands about Ixa specifically.

After dinner, they find White Hands on her usual carpet with plum wine, fruits, and cheeses. They talk about the raid and the combat state being connected to blood flow. White Hands suggests channeling power through “targeted movements. A dance, as it were” (249), and creating a martial art for Deka. Deka feels like a pet weapon that White Hands will present to the emperor. Britta told White Hands not only that Ixa is Deka’s new pet, but also that Deka is letting it feed on her blood. White Hands says to continue to trust the combat state, but she will make inquiries about Ixa.

While the girls train, White Hands writes about Deka’s new martial art on her scroll, and after an hour lets them go. Deka calls for Ixa, who appears as a bird, then changes into a cat, and then into the drakos form in order to catch and eat a fish. Britta asks if Ixa can change into a human, but Deka doesn’t think so. She tells Ixa not to drink her blood in front of others, and Britta realizes they’re talking telepathically. Deka asks Britta not to tell White Hands, Belcalis pets Ixa, and Deka insists on calling Ixa him, not it.

Later, she tells Keita about Ixa under the nystria tree. Keita is suspicious and tells Deka to be careful because Ixa is an unknown oddity. Deka agrees to hide Ixa. Then Keita says he’s heard that White Hands breeds monsters for the emperor, which makes Deka question everything.

All night, Deka wonders if White Hands bred her and/or Ixa; much later it is revealed that White Hands put some divine seed (from the goddess’ tears) in the Warthu Bera lake, which impregnated Deka’s mom. In the early morning, Gazal comes by with new robes and says White Hand requests Deka’s presence. In a remote building, where the walls have been covered with mirrors, White Hands teaches Deka to use smaller amounts of energy through a series of moving meditations that will help eliminate fatigue.

White Hands brings in Rattle, and Deka dreads killing more deathshrieks in the future, foreshadowing that deathshrieks are a form of alaki. The movements White Hands has created include using one hand to direct energy from heart to throat. This small ribbon of energy allows Deka to command Rattle to kneel without fatigue. The mirrors also allow her to see how her eyes go completely black when using magic for the first time. Several other attempts are successful, but when Deka loses focus, she uses too much energy and collapses.

These sessions harnessing Deka’s combat state continue over the next few days; she improves as the weather starts to turn colder. She also goes on more raids, and seeing dead human bodies at deathshriek nests makes Deka’s guilt about controlling them lessen and her rage grow. Her raiding party earns the nickname the “Death Strikers” (264), which the villagers now chant (instead of chanting whores) when they ride out. Deka advances to where she can use hand movements instead of words to control the deathshrieks.

One night, a man in a grand carriage gives White Hands a scroll that turns out to be an invitation to the palace. The Death Strikers visit the opulent golden palace with extravagantly armored jatu and nobles in jewels. Keita and Deka exchange compliments on fancy armor, and Britta has a stomachache (foreshadowing a stomach injury that nearly kills her later in the book). White Hands calls the emperor cousin, and Deka is surprised at her royal blood.

After the Black emperor orders his courtiers out of the throne room, he asks about Deka’s special talents, as well as her Northern accent in Southern (brown) skin. White Hands clarifies that her mom was a Shadow. Then, the emperor recognizes royal-blooded Keita and asks him to protect Deka. They learn that the Death Strikers will ride alongside the emperor in the campaign. They also learn that White Hands was the one responsible for creating the alaki army before leaving the palace.

During the ride back, Deka asks White Hands about creating the training grounds; White Hands replies she didn’t like the Death Mandate (but later it is revealed that White Hands is of divine blood as well and secretly created the alaki army to overthrow the patriarchy). In this moment, even White Hands’s cover up story causes Belcalis to tearfully thank White Hands for saving her life.

After lessons that night, Deka and Belcalis clean swords together. Belcalis tells Deka about her past: Her gold blood was discovered when she was cutting onions, and her dad tried to help her disappear instead of giving in to the Death Mandate. However, the uncle that Belcalis’s dad entrusted ended up selling Belcalis to a brothel where clients could pay to hurt her. The scars that Deka saw the first day in the shower have healed from repeated resurrections. Deka feels guilty about her own trauma blinding her to Belcalis’s and the alaki hug. Belcalis, crying, warns that the men will hurt them again and not to forget the past.