meet OSIRI, HAFSA, and APROBATE ANDULI from SWARM:
Osiri rolls over, gets his shackled wrists under his chest, waits for the violent buzzing in his head to dull and the nausea to fade before shimmying his way upright. The underground cell is muggy and pitch dark. Everything aches, but nothing hurts quite as badly as one realization:
The buzzing between his temples redoubles, digs itself into his neck and throat. Osiri squeezes his eyes shut against a hot stinging surge of tears. This is the part where Hafsa would call say Don’t cry Akorin, you’ll sadden the sun! But Hafsa isn’t here to say it, because Osiri once again walked them into danger.
Overhead: footsteps, clear and sharp – on wood. Harsh muffled laughter and a crack, and then twelve paces left of his cell, a door in the roof opens, bleeding out –
Light. Beading, yellow, illuminating the room in fat, viscous drips: a dirt ramp cut out of the side of an illegal cellar. Dirt floor in his cell speckled with old blood. Metal bars on his cell. A tiny window cut into the side of the cell wall opposite. Outside it, unfamiliar stone, polished; yellow gloved hands, a maid’s gloves, smoothing bags of dirt over freshly imported flower beds. Heavily petalled flowers already wilting.
Osiri’s stomach clenches. Only one kind of person would be so stupid as to plant flowers in summer.
A loud thud pulls Osiri back to the ramp. A small body swathed in red and gold slides down the ramp and hits the wall so hard his own back smarts. Osiri clambers to his feet, ignoring the pain in his body.
“Hafsa!” he cries. “Hafsa, say something!”
Black boots descend the ramp. A brown man clothed in military uniform and shadows crouches next to Hafsa. Osiri squints, trying in vain to see the man’s features in the dim light. The light behind him is too bright; he is but eddying shadows in imperial skin.
“Funny,” the man murmurs, voice startlingly soft, like fire ash swept away by a cool breeze. “I asked your companion to do the same. She did not answer me, either. At least in this, we are equals, you and I.” With a white gloved hand, he thumbs away a bead of blood from Hafsa’s split lip, smearing it across their cheek, then strokes a hand over Hafsa’s hair. Osiri cannot help pressing angrily against the bars of his cage as the man examines one henna-dyed lock like a child poking an interesting looking insect.
“Not she,” Osiri snaps. “Hafsa is ègbè. Not that you would understand, you–”
“Egbe? I see. I was unaware,” the man continues as if Osiri hadn’t spoken. “Forgive my ignorance, Singer; yours is a rich and cultured language. I am still learning the notes of your Song.”
Osiri stills. He knows of the Song?
All at once the man’s fist tightens in their hair. With clean, stiff strides he drags them across the floor, unlocks the cell door, and throws them in. Hafsa hits the dirt with a groan. Osiri pulls them into his lap as the man’s shadow looms over them.
The man stands tall at attention, heels in, toes out – like a soldier, but with the ease of a general. He tilts his head, and this time the light catches him – ink black hair, straight, and coiffed short; a prominent nose; a naked upper lip; and brown skin, just a few shades lighter than Hafsa’s. Not a white man, like the other officers, and not of the continent either, but brown.
Brown, yet he proudly wears Imperial white.
“Tell your friend that the next time 'they' are questioned by Aprobate Anduli,” the man smiles, cordial and chilling, locking the cell with expert flicks of the wrist, “They would do well to provide answers.”
And Osiri is sure it's the head trauma or the Song getting confused in his head or the electric lights from upstairs leaking into the basement cell, but when Aprobate Anduli turns his back and makes up the stairs, for a moment, a moment, the violent buzzing flares behind his ears again, and Hafsa's beautiful brown eyes burn honey gold.
Osiri is an Akọrin ("singer"), a kind of magical traveling griot and healer. He is charged with immortalizing the soul of his homeland by collecting stories and memories from its inhabitants, and storing them in magic jars in a massive apothecary box (that his apprentice carries, of course). Akorin were once staples of his society, but ten years ago another nation invaded and took power, and executed most of the Akorin, because their king understood how rebellions use shared histories to build coalition and power.
During the violent takeover, Osiri was injured and lost his memories, but when he meets Hafsa, a young, traumatized, and deeply violent youth who is being used as a human pet by an Imperial Consular, who awakens a startling affinity for "Singing the spirit" (aka using song to cast magic), Osiri remembers how to Sing again. He is a peaceful man who refuses to kill, but as he and Hafsa become targeted by imperial spies, rebel cells, rival magic users, bored tourists with human-hunting licenses, and dangerous safari wildlife, his pacifism is challenged. He doesn't know why, but he is plagued by violent nightmares and carries an immense guilt and sadness deep in his chest, and whenever he sees a honeyguide bird he starts to cry... and maybe remember pieces of who he is, or used to be.
Hafsa, Osiri's Àwọn ("choir", aka apprentice), is his sweet, big-hearted and bigger-mouthed apprentice. Hafsa is wildly fucked up but trying so hard to be gentle and kind like Osiri... of course, because they're obsessed with him, because they're the reason Osiri has no memories! Osiri was actually murdered by Hafsa ten years ago after catching Hafsa using his Singing for dark magic! Hafsa tried using Singing to bring Osiri back, but was too weak. They started creating facsimiles of Osiri to assuage their guilt and fill the hole left behind while they gain the power to bring back the real Osiri from the dead. (The real Osiri's body is embalmed in enchanted honey and kept in the back compartment of Hafsa's massive medicine box.)
Throughout the story, every time Osiri starts to remember things he doesn't, Hafsa wipes his memories. At some point Osiri realizes what's going on, and remembers why he cries when he sees honeyguides: honeyguide used to be his pet name/given name for Hafsa, because they're so sweet and taught him to look for the sweet things in life even when things look dour. Oops!
Aprobate Anduli is the Imperial Agent that causes them a ton of trouble. He's trying to work his way up the ladder, but hasn't quite realized that being brown will keep him from succeeding in a, you know, racist ass empire.
