1
OSI ALWAYS DREADED returning home.
Out in the city, he was Junior Peacekeeper Osi, the pride of his community. In his pale blue robes, bronze half helm, and sturdy sandals, he was the very image of the Spearman. His duty to keep the city’s peace was a sacred one.
At home, he was just Osi. Washer of cutlery, sweeper of floors.
And today, he was even less than that.
“Eh heh, look at him,” his mama said, surveying his busted lip and swollen right hand. “The fighter.”
News of Osi’s day had flown ahead of him.
“Hello, Mama,” he said sheepishly, standing in the doorway, his eyes held fast to the floor.
His family was seated on the ground around a large, circular dining cloth. There were two open spaces to sit, one of which was left empty in his baba’s memory. Osi went to the other spot between his two older and two younger sisters, then sat with care on his tender backside.
“Does it hurt?” his youngest sister whispered.
He shook his head. His commander had given him ten lashes for insubordination, whipping him across his butt right in the middle of Central District’s most active roundabout. Pain was bearable. As was humiliation. The real punishment was far worse.
“So no Ascendance for this one,” his mama said sharply. Osi could feel her eyes on him. “In the entire history of this city, you are the first ever to be disinvited. What an honor for this family. Congratulations, Osi.”
The Ascendance was the biggest ceremony in the City of Truth. It was only held when it was time to induct a new class of Truthseekers, and it had been six years since the last Ascendance. The next was likely a decade away.
A once-in-a-generation event that Osi’s commitment to the Peacekeepers had earned him an invitation to, despite his record of misdeeds.
And he’d ruined it.
“What happened this time, eh?” his mama spat.
He took a deep breath. “Mama, they were thieves. I watched them steal from the Ihenwele bakery with my own eyes. So I chased them.”
“You chased them so much you broke your hand and face?” she asked.
Beside him, his eldest sister mumbled under her breath, “Do not explain. Just apologize.”
His sister was wise. Far wiser than Osi. An apology would lead to dinner, warm food in his belly, a peaceful night’s rest, and sanctuary from his mama’s ire.
But Osi didn’t care about any of those things. The world was a place of good and evil, right and wrong. Punishing thieves for stealing from innocent citizens was right. If it was against the rules for a Junior Peacekeeper to arrest bad people, then it was the rules that needed to change, not him.
Do not fear that you may do wrong, his baba had taught him from a young age. Fear that you may not do right.
Osi raised his face, his eyes meeting his mama’s. “I chased them and taught them never to steal again.”
“Why is he this way?” His eldest sister sighed.
An argument ensued.
Osi and his mama shared a temper—the sort that simmered before inevitably boiling over. All their fights transcended the moment, dredging up unforgiven trespasses from years before, burdened by a refusal to accept the other’s imperfections. To his mama, Osi bore the same impetuous foolishness that had gotten her husband killed. To Osi, his mama was too fearful and weak to imagine a better world.
Neither was incorrect.
“Again and again,” his mama shouted. “They have been patient with you, and this is how you behave? Disinvited from the Ascendance … Imagine! You are lucky he did not dismiss you entirely, you godsblind child!”
“Dismiss for what?” Osi shot back, earning groans from his sisters. “They were thieves! If I see bad people in our city, I will fight them and fight them and fight them and if you do not like it I DO NOT CARE!”
He was crying. He always cried when he got angry and he always got angry when he argued with his mama. Crying, chest heaving, every muscle in his body was clenched with the rage and fear and frustration of not being understood.
“And now he cries,” said one of his sisters.
“Mama, may we be excused?” another asked.
His mama’s rage seemed to evaporate. She beheld her son with only pity, like she was looking upon a sheep wandering the desert alone, unaware of the hunters on its trail.
“You think you are always right, Osi,” she said in a calm voice. “One day you will learn you are a fool like everyone else, and that you should have listened to your betters.
“But until that day…” she added, locking him in a lethal gaze, “you are not six, you are sixteen. Act your age. If you bring another drop of shame on this family, I swear by the Spearman Himself that I will disown you. Do you hear?”
Osi wiped the tears from his face, but they kept coming. He wanted to rage through the house, breaking every dish and tearing down the walls. But he didn’t want his little sisters to see him like that. So instead, he shot a final dark glance at his mama, turned, and stormed out the front door.
* * *
In the days of the Greatmamas, it was said that the city was surrounded by massive walls. But the Aleke had spent centuries tearing them down with giant machines that hurled rocks the size of a house. Now, there was no trace that the walls had ever existed. Instead, watchtowers had been raised throughout the city, allowing the Peacekeepers to both monitor the city’s happenings and to watch the horizon for the approach of the Aleke and his cult.
When Osi was a child, the Aleke’s raids had come often. Sometimes, the city burned. But most of the time, the Peacekeepers, his baba among them, would form up and march out to the city limits, facing the endless expanse of the Forever Desert. Led by the mighty Truthseekers, they would intercept the Aleke’s forces, turning them back. Baba had died in such a fight, slain in the desert by some unnamed Cultist.
But his sacrifice had not been in vain. The City of Truth still lived and was stronger than ever. The fear of the Aleke had created a sense of unity, driving crime down, bolstering the ranks of the Peacekeepers, and filling the city’s tax coffers so as to rebuild the watchtowers at the city’s farthest edges.
Osi climbed the watchtower nearest his home, an old model that was now rarely staffed. At the top, he leaned against the wooden railing, taking deep breaths. To the west, the sky was slashed pink and orange as the sun lowered toward the Citadel of Truth on the horizon. Cascading tiers of brick homes and businesses slid toward the river and its green-lined valley. To the east, the Forever Desert was an expanse of barren, untamed sand. It mocked the city with its mirage of emptiness; just beyond the horizon, in every direction, the Aleke and the Cult of Tutu waited patiently with their sharpened teeth and blunt-cut tongues. Only a thin ring of desert separated the stable order of the city from the mad violence of the Cult. It was the only defense the city had, besides the people of the city itself.
People like Osi. He was doing his best, but some days he felt like he was the only one who really cared.
“Osi!”
He followed the sound of the voice to the base of the tower.
“Osi?” Inusu called, peering up at him.
She was his neighbor and oldest friend. They’d gone through childhood side by side and had joined the Junior Peacekeepers on the same day. Unlike Osi, though, Inusu was smart and emotionally sober. She’d warned him not to pursue thieves, but he hadn’t listened.
Osi wiped the moisture from his cheeks and waved her up. She joined him but remained silent for a while, enjoying the city overlook.
“You heard me and Mama fighting?” he eventually asked.
She nodded. “You never close your windows. The whole neighborhood heard.”
Osi didn’t care what their neighbors thought of him. But he didn’t like them thinking less of his mama, even if he was angry with her. “Did you hear what she said?” he asked.
“She would be wrong to disown you, yes,” Inusu replied. “But you were disinvited from the Ascendance, Osi…”
She didn’t need to finish. The severity was clear. The greatest honor of his life, taken away.
“What is wrong with me?” he asked.
“Too much to say.”
Osi tried to laugh, but as soon as he opened his mouth, a sob came out and the tears came again and he buried his face in his hands. Inusu put a hand on Osi’s shoulder.
“There will be other Ascendances,” she said unconvincingly.
Of course there would be. But it didn’t matter.
This Ascendance was the only one he wanted to attend. These Ascendants—Izen the Wise, Dikende the Mighty, Clever Hizojie, and, most of all, the Legendary Lumhen—were the ones he’d idolized since he was a boy, the finest Ascendant class in living memory. Osi had only seen them once before, the day they were introduced as Ascendants and paraded through the streets. That had been ten years ago. Since then, they’d undergone the most arduous training in the world. He’d built himself up too, following in his baba’s footsteps of joining the Peacekeepers.
Osi’d always believed that if he could just see the Ascendants again, and let them see him, that maybe they’d understand his desire to better the city in a way no one else could.
Osi took a great inhale to still his shuddering chest. Crying was no use. Tomorrow, his peers would be enjoying the Ascendance. And he would be at the barracks, washing the laundry of every Peacekeeper in the city.
“I just want to do what is right,” he explained.
Inusu nodded but didn’t speak. And long after she’d climbed back down the watchtower and gone to bed, Osi stayed out, watching over the darkened city, praying for the day when he would finally learn from his mistakes.
It was a prayer he would soon regret.
2
OSI SCRUBBED THE INSIDE of a bronze half helm, his fingers pruned from water. Sounds of revelry floated over the barracks wall. As the city had awakened, so had the chants. So had the street singers. So had the squealing children and laughing families, all of them drunk on joy as they paraded through the city to the foot of the Citadel of Truth.
Osi couldn’t help himself.
He dropped the helm into the soapy bucket and scaled the wall. Seeing the festivities was even worse than hearing them. The road was a crowded mosaic of humanity. Beaming faces, pockets of jubilant dance. The elderly lined either side of the street, perched in their rocking chairs and looking on with expressions of peaceful nostalgia. Vendors sold roasted chicken and coconut gari. Young girls tied gold and blue ribbons in their friends’ hair.
It was everything he imagined. Except he had imagined himself as part of it.
Being a Junior Peacekeeper had become his entire life. He patrolled every day and trained every night. His devotion had cost him friends, to the point that his only remaining ones were Peacekeepers themselves. His work stipend was the only consistent income his family earned. All to follow in his baba’s footsteps.
But he was more than just a Junior Peacekeeper, much as the Spearman had been more than just a spearman. Most people believed history was the story of other people, but Osi knew better. History was the story of those worth writing about.
He was meant to be at the Ascendance.
Spearman, guide me.
Before Osi realized what he was doing, he was sliding down the other side of the wall and running as hard as he’d ever run in his life. He sped down narrow streets, maneuvering around celebrants and vendors, until he reached a throng of citizens pooled before the imposing figure of the Citadel of Truth.
Copyright © 2024 by Moses Ose Utomi
