Shackle and Bone: Chapter One Excerpt
Aya ran through the back alleys of Timbuktu, excitement coursing through her veins, knowing she could not be late. The sun was barely rising, and yet the muggy, dust-filled air was already suffocating in the ancient mudbrick city. Legs burning, lungs aching, she nonetheless pushed herself to run faster, and faster still, hopping over one of the countless rats that crept out of the gutters and refuse in the streets. She could already hear the distant rumble, and her heart pounded with anticipation. Somewhere ahead, she knew, the Kehleh Seli – Festival of Combat – was about to begin.
Letting her hands drag along the stone walls as she twisted and turned down a narrow alley, Aya glanced back to make certain her brothers were keeping up. There, she was relieved to see Kalidu, at her heels, and Sibiri, only a few feet behind. At nineteen, Kalidu was just two sun cycles older than she, while Sibiri, her baby brother, four sun cycles younger, was on the verge of manhood. The two of them, with their perfectly round hair and brown eyes, looked exactly like each other—and their parents—and yet nothing like her. Still, though Aya might be a girl, they had never been able to keep pace with her.
“Hurry!” Aya yelled over her shoulder.
Another rumble came, and although she had never been to the festival, she imagined it in vivid detail: the entire city, all nearly six hundred-sixty thousand citizens of Timbuktu, crowding into the Kolisiyahmu (Stadium) on this dry season holiday. It would be unlike anything she had seen before, and if her brothers and she didn’t hurry, not a single seat would remain.
Picking up speed, Aya wiped a drop of sweat off her brow and smeared it onto her frayed, ivory tunic, a hand-me-down from her Bamuso (Mother). She had never been given new clothes. According to her Bamuso, who doted on her brothers but seemed to reserve a special hatred and envy for her, she didn’t deserve it.
“Wait!” Sibiri yelled, an edge of irritation in his cracking voice.
Aya smiled. “Shall I carry you, then?” she yelled back.
She knew that he hated it when she teased him, yet her snide remark would motivate him to keep up. Aya didn’t mind his tagging along; she thought it was endearing how he, at thirteen, would do anything to be considered their peer. And even though she would never admit it openly, a huge part of her needed him to need her.
Sibiri gave a loud grunt.
“Bamuso will kill you when she finds out you disobeyed her again!” he yelled back.
He was right. Indeed, she would—or give her a good flogging, at least.
The first time her Bamuso had beaten her, at the age of five, it was the very moment Aya lost her innocence. Before then, the world had been fun, kind, and good. After that, nothing had ever been safe again, and all that she had to hold onto was her hope of a future where she could get away from her. She was older now, close, and yet even that dream was slowly eroding in her heart.
Fortunately, Aya knew her brothers would never tell on her. They were as loyal to her as she was to them.
“Then it’s a good thing Bamuso will never know!” she cried back.
“Father will find out, though!” Sibiri snapped.
She chuckled. Father already knew. They had made a deal: if she stayed up late to finish sharpening the swords due for delivery at the palace, she could go see the Combats. And so, she did.
Aya reached the wall at the end of the lane and, without pausing, wedged her fingers in two cracks and began to climb. Her hands and feet moved swiftly, and up she went, a good twenty feet, until she scrambled to the top.
She stood, breathing hard, and the sun greeted her with its bright rays. She shaded her eyes with a hand.
She gasped. Normally, the Old City was dotted with a few citizens, a stray cat or dog here and there—yet today it was positively alive. It swarmed with people. Aya could not even see the mudbrick ground beneath the sea of people pressing into Horseman Circle.
In the distance the ocean shimmered a vivid blue, while the towering white Kolisiyahmu stood as a mountain among twisting roads and sardine-packed two-and three-story houses. Around the outer edge of the plaza merchants had lined up booths, each eager to sell food, jewelry, or clothes.
A gust of wind brushed against her face, and the smell of freshly baked goods seeped into her nostrils. What she wouldn’t give for food that would satisfy that gnawing sensation. She wrapped her arms around her belly as she felt a hunger pang. Breakfast this morning had been a few spoonfuls of soggy porridge, which had somehow managed to leave her stomach feeling hungrier than before she ate it. Given that today was her eighteenth birthday, she had hoped for at least a little extra food in her bowl—or a hug or something.
But no one had mentioned a word. She doubted they even remembered.
Light caught her eyes, and Aya looked down to spot a mahogany and gold carriage weaving through the crowd like a bubble through honey, slow and shiny. She frowned. In her excitement, she had failed to consider that the royalty would be at the event, too. She despised them, their haughtiness, that their animals were better fed than most of the people of Timbuktu. Her brothers were hopeful that one day, they would triumph over the class system. But Aya did not share their optimism: if there were to be any sort of equality in the Monarchy, it would have to come by way of revolution.
“Do you see him?” Kalidu panted as he climbed up beside her.
Aya’s heart quickened as she thought of him. Muntaga. She, too, had been wondering if he was here yet, and had been scanning the crowds to no avail.
She shook her head.
“There.” Kalidu pointed.
She followed his finger toward the fountain, squinting.
Suddenly she saw him and could not suppress her burst of excitement. It was the same way she always felt when she saw him. There he was, sitting on the edge of the fountain, tightening his bow. Even from this distance, she could see his shoulder and chest muscles move beneath his tunic. Hardly a few years older than she, he had brown hair that stood out among heads of black, and his chestnut-brown skin glistened in the sun.
“Wait!” cried a voice.
Aya glanced back down the wall to see Sibiri, struggling with the climb.
“Hurry up or we’ll leave you behind!” Kalidu goaded.
Of course, they wouldn’t dream of leaving their younger brother, although he did need to learn to keep up. In Timbuktu, a moment of weakness could mean death.
Kalidu ran a hand through his hair, catching his breath, too, as he surveyed the crowd.
“So, who is your money on to win?” he asked.
Aya turned to him and laughed.
“What money?” she asked.
He smiled. “If you had any,” he answered.
“Makan,” she replied without pausing.
His brow lifted in surprise. “Really?” he asked. “Why?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Just a hunch.”
But she did know. She knew very well, better than her brothers, better than all the boys of her city. Aya had a secret: she hadn’t told anyone she had, on occasion, dressed as a boy and trained at the palace. It was forbidden by royal decree for girls—punishable by death—to learn the ways of the jawarah, yet male commoners were welcome to learn in exchange for equal amounts of work in the palace’s stables, work which she did happily.
She’d watched Makan and had been impressed by the way he fought. He wasn’t the largest of the jawarah, yet his moves were calculated with precision.
“No chance,” Kalidu replied. “It’ll be Diaranke.”
She shook her head. “Diaranke will be dead within the first ten minutes,” she said flatly.
Diaranke was the obvious choice, the largest of the jawarah, and probably the strongest; yet he wasn’t as calculating as Makan or some of the other warriors she had watched.
Kalidu barked a laugh. “I’ll give you my good sword if that’s the case.”
She glanced at the sword attached to his waist. He had no idea how jealous she had been when he received that masterpiece of a weapon as a birthday gift from Bamuso three years ago. Her sword was an old leftover one her father had tossed into the recycling pile. Oh, the things she’d be able to do if she had a weapon like Kalidu’s.
“I’m going to hold you to it, you know,” Aya said, smiling—although in reality, she would never take his sword from him.
“I’d expect nothing less,” he smirked.
She crossed her arms in front of her chest as a dark thought crossed her mind.
“Bamuso wouldn’t allow it,” she said.
“But Father would,” he said. “He’s very proud of you, you know.”
Kalidu’s kind comment took her off guard, and not knowing exactly how to accept it, she lowered her eyes. She loved her father dearly, and he loved her, she knew. Yet for some reason, her mother’s face appeared before her. All she ever wanted was for her Bamuso to accept her and love her as much as her brothers. But as hard as she tried, Aya felt she could never be enough in her eyes.
Sibiri grunted as he climbed the last step behind them. He was still about a head shorter than Aya and as scrawny as a cricket, but she was convinced he’d sprout like a bamboo shoot any day now. That’s what had happened to Kalidu. Now he was a muscle-bound hunk, hovering at six foot three.
“And you?” Aya turned to Sibiri. “Who do you think will win?”
“I’m with you. Makan.”
She smiled and ruffled his hair. He always said whatever she said.
Another rumble came, the crowd thickened, and she felt the urgency.
“Let’s go,” she said, “no time to waste.”
Shackle and Bone: A Ki Khanga Tale by Balogun Ojetade is available now for preorder from MVmedia. Release date: September 3, 2026. Click the link below to order today!
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