The underbelly of Igwe?cha did not smell of salt and money like the docks of ?k?. It smelled of ancient, stagnant things. It smelled of bonny light, the crude oil that slicked the water in iridescent, poisonous rainbows and the fermentation of cassava soaking in wicker baskets.

  Ojie walked the wooden slats of the lower districts. Here, the buildings were not built on the water; they seemed to be rotting into it. Mangrove roots, thick as a man’s torso, curled around the pylons like constrictor snakes, choking the life out of the structures they supported.

  He was alone. Y?misí was securing the logistics of their river journey, and Dele… Dele was gone. The grief was a dull ache in Ojie’s chest, buried beneath the heavier weight of necessity. He needed men. Y?misí’s maps and gold were useless without hands to hold spears.

  He wore his father’s iron sword, wrapped in oilcloth to keep the damp out. His hood was pulled low, but he could feel the eyes of the slum on him. The people here were hardened by the slow suffocation of the Delta. They had the eyes of the Python still, unblinking, waiting for a mistake.

  He passed a group of women smoking catfish over a rusted oil drum. They stopped talking as he passed, tracking his boots good leather, despite the mud with predatory calculus.

  "You are lost, fine boy," a voice rasped from the shadows of a drying rack.

  Ojie kept walking. "I am looking for the Market of Whispers."

  "This is the Market of Drowning," the voice laughed. "Whispers rise. Here, everything sinks."

  Ojie turned a corner, stepping onto a wider platform that served as a communal square. It was crowded. But the crowd was not trading; they were watching.

  In the center of the muddy platform, a group of boys no, young men were stripping the valuables off a prone giant. Ojie recognized the brutality of the scene. A hierarchy had shifted. A new alpha had risen.

  Sitting on a crate of stolen gin, wiping blood from his hands with a scrap of silk, was a boy. He was lean, sharp-angled, with skin the color of deep obsidian. He couldn't have been more than thirteen or fourteen, but he carried himself with the terrifying, unearned confidence of a king who had just won his first war.

  Ojie stopped. The itch between his shoulder blades flared hot. The Lion in his blood growled, a low, subsonic vibration that rattled his teeth. It recognized something here. Not a threat, exactly. A resonance.

  The boy looked up. His eyes were dark, burning with a lingering, electric heat.

  "This is my dock," the boy said. His voice was raw, cracking slightly, but he pitched it loud enough for his pack to hear. "Toll is paid in tribute or blood. Choose."

  Ojie looked at the bodies on the ground; the giant, Tolu, groaning as he tried to gather his teeth, and the other thugs nursing broken limbs. This boy had done this? He looked half-starved.

  "I have no tribute for children," Ojie said calmly. "And I have shed enough blood this moon. Step aside."

  The boy, Ayo stood up. The movement was fluid, dangerous. He kicked the crate aside.

  "Children?" Ayo spat. He gestured to the fallen giant. "Ask him if I am a child. Get him, boys."

  The pack moved. There were twelve of them, armed with rusted filet knives, lengths of chain, and clubs made of petrified mangrove wood. They were the Mud Sharks, high on the adrenaline of their recent victory, eager to prove loyalty to their new warlord.

  Ojie sighed. He dropped his pack.

  The first attacker, a youth with a face full of tribal scars, lunged with a knife. It was a clumsy, desperate thrust aimed at the gut.

  Ojie didn't draw his sword. He didn't need iron for this.

  He stepped inside the guard, grabbing the boy's wrist. He twisted. The radius bone snapped with a dry crack that echoed across the water. The boy screamed, dropping the knife. Ojie shoved him into the second attacker, sending them both sprawling into the mud.

  "Flank him!" Ayo shouted, his eyes widening. "Don't line up like goats! Circle him!"

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  They were street fighters, dirty and vicious. A chain lashed out, wrapping around Ojie’s forearm. The attacker yanked, trying to pull him off balance.

  Ojie went with the pull. He used the momentum to drive his shoulder into the chest of the chain-wielder. He gave way. Ojie ripped the chain free and whipped it back, the heavy iron links striking a third attacker across the face. Blood and teeth sprayed onto the wooden planks.

  It was brutal. It was fast. It was the efficiency of a Stage Three warrior against untrained aggression. Ojie moved through them like a thresher through wheat. He broke knees. He shattered noses. He threw a boy bodily into the black water, where the current almost sucked him under the pylons.

  Within moments, six of them were down. The others backed away, terror breaking through their bravado.

  Ojie stood in the center of the groaning bodies. He was breathing calmly, the golden tattoo on his shoulder pulsing with a dull, hungry light beneath his tunic. Unlike him, his bonded spirit is usually very aggressive and wants to kill everything in sight, although this time it was restless, containing himself was taking a toll.

  "I said step aside," Ojie warned.

  Ayo did not step aside.

  The boy snatched a heavy, curved machete from the belt of a fallen thug. He didn't hold it like a street brawler, hacking wildly. He settled into a stance. Feet apart. Knees bent. The blade held low, point drifting, deceptive.

  Ojie froze.

  He knew that stance.

  The Leopard Stalks.

  It was the opening form of the ?do high guard. It was the stance ìgbàrádì had taught him in the courtyard of the Golden Lion, twenty years ago.

  "Where did you learn that?" Ojie whispered.

  Ayo didn't answer. He attacked.

  He was fast. Impossibly fast for an unbonded boy. He came in low, feinting a strike to the leg, then twisting mid-air to slash at Ojie’s throat.

  Ojie barely leaned back in time. The wind of the blade cooled the sweat on his neck.

  This was not brawling. This was a lethal strike.

  Ojie drew his iron sword. The scrape of metal was loud in the sudden silence.

  He parried Ayo’s next strike, iron ringing against cheap steel. The impact jarred Ojie’s arm. The boy was strong—stronger than his thin frame should allow. There was weight behind his blows, a psychic density that Ojie had only felt from bonded warriors.

  Thump-thump.

  The resonance was deafening now. The Lion in Ojie’s blood was confused. It wasn't roaring in anger; it was roaring in recognition, perhaps. A lot more restless now and harder to contain.

  Ayo spun, using the momentum of the parry to bring the machete around in a backhand arc. The Python Coils.

  Ojie blocked it, but he was slow, distracted by the impossibility of what he was seeing. How did a gutter rat in the Delta know the secret forms of a fallen House?

  "Who taught you?" Ojie roared, shoving Ayo back.

  "The mud taught me!" Ayo screamed back. "Hunger taught me!"

  Ayo charged again. He was relentless, a whirlwind of aggression. But he was sloppy. His footwork was untrained, his extensions overcommitted. He had the instincts of a predator but the discipline of a brawler.

  Ojie saw the opening.

  Ayo went for a high chop, exposing his ribs.

  Ojie stepped in. He didn't cut. He dropped his sword and slammed his palm into Ayo’s chest.

  He didn't use the force of the Lion—that would have stopped the boy's heart but he put some strength into it. Gold light exploded from the contact point.

  The shockwave lifted Ayo off his feet. He flew backward, crashing into the pile of crates he had claimed as a throne. The wood shattered. Dust and splinters filled the air.

  Ayo lay in the debris, gasping, the wind crushed out of him. The machete lay five feet away.

  Ojie walked over. He picked up his iron sword. He stood over the boy, the tip of the blade hovering inches from Ayo’s throat.

  The rest of the Mud Sharks watched in terrified silence. Their new king had been defeated in seconds.

  Ayo looked up. There was blood on his teeth. His eyes were wide, the pupils blown, swallowing the iris. And deep in that blackness, Ojie saw it. A flicker. A spark of gold that mirrored his own.

  It cannot be.

  "Yield," Ojie commanded. His voice shook.

  Ayo coughed, spitting a glob of blood onto Ojie’s boot. He pushed himself up on his elbows, baring his teeth in a snarl that was all animal.

  "Kill me," Ayo rasped. "Do it. Or I will come for you."

  Ojie stared at him. He saw the pride. He saw the reckless, suicidal courage. He saw the face of a woman he had left behind twelve years ago, overlaid with the dead spirit of his own father.

  Could it be, Yetunde.

  The realization hit Ojie harder than any blow. The timeline. The location. The eyes.

  I did not leave her alone.

  The Lion in his chest went silent, stunned by the sudden, crushing weight of guilt.

  Ojie slowly sheathed his sword. The sound was final.

  He reached into his tunic, pulling out a small pouch of cowries—the last of what Y?misí had given him for food. He dropped it on the boy’s chest.

  "You have potential," Ojie said. His voice sounded hollow to his own ears. "But you fight like a child throwing a tantrum. If you want to hold this dock, learn to stand before you strike."

  Ayo grabbed the pouch, but he didn't look at the money. He looked at Ojie with a hatred so pure it felt like heat.

  "I don't want your charity," Ayo hissed.

  "It is not charity," Ojie said, turning away because he could not bear to look at the boy's face any longer. "It is tribute. To the King of the Gutter."

  He walked away. He forced himself not to look back. He forced his legs to move steady and slow, though every instinct screamed at him to run, or to turn back and grab the boy, to ask the question he was too cowardly to voice.

  Behind him, Ayo scrambled to his feet.

  "Go back to your palace, ghost!" Ayo shouted, his voice cracking. "Run back to the high places! The mud will be here when you fall!"

  Ojie kept walking until he was off the platform, back into the maze of the stilt-city. Only then did he stop. He leaned against a slimy pylon, his breath coming in jagged gasps.

  He pressed his hand to his chest, over the golden pendant. It felt heavy. It felt like a millstone.

  Survive, his father had said.

  But his father had never told him that survival would cost so much.