The royal compound of Benin City thrummed with the low, ceaseless heartbeat of drums, but inside the mask maker's workshop the air lay thick as palm oil. Master Odion's hands, gnarled yet precise, shaped wet clay over a wooden core while Efe ground ochre into powder beside him. When the palace messenger burst through the woven door, sweat beading on his shaved scalp, the boy's pestle froze mid-motion; the man's voice cracked like lightning over the harmattan wind: "Igbinosun has fallen. He wore the new mask and clawed his own eyes before the council."
Odion did not look up. His fingers kept smoothing the clay, but Efe saw the tremor that traveled from wrist to elbow, the way a spider feels the first tug on its web. The messenger thrust a summons sealed with the Oba's red wax; the wax still warm, as though the king's anger had melted it. Efe's heart hammered against his ribs—he had polished that very mask only yesterday, had traced its carved spirals with a cloth dipped in shea butter, had felt nothing but pride.
Night settled over the city like a mourning cloth. Efe crept to the drying racks where the mask waited, its empty eye sockets staring at the moon. The wood smelled of fresh sap and something sharper, metallic, like blood left too long in the sun. When he touched the cheek, the surface burned cold, and for an instant he thought he heard Igbinosun's scream echoing inside the hollow.
The compound gates clanged shut behind the guards who came for Odion at dawn. Efe watched from the shadow of the iroko tree as his master was bound with cords dyed the color of sacrifice. The old man's eyes found his apprentice across the dust; they held neither fear nor plea, only a command older than words: Find the truth. Then the guards marched him toward the palace, and the drums began their mournful roll.
Efe returned to the workshop alone. He lit a single oil lamp and laid out every tool: chisels, awls, the sacred knife with the ivory handle. The mask sat on its stand, innocent as a child's toy, yet the warriors whispered that three more men had woken screaming since midnight. Efe lifted the mask and turned it to the light; beneath the fresh pigment he found a hairline crack, deliberate, running from brow to chin like a secret seam.
He pressed his ear to the crack. A faint vibration hummed within, not the wind but something alive, patient, waiting. The boy's breath fogged the wood. In that moment he understood the accusation was only the surface of a deeper wound, one that had been carved long before the first stroke of Odion's adze.
Efe hid the mask beneath his sleeping mat and went to the market at twilight, where gossip flowed freer than palm wine. Traders spoke of Igbinosun's madness in hushed tones, but an old woman selling cowries caught Efe's sleeve. "The mask was not born in Odion's fire," she rasped. "Another hand shaped its spirit." Her eyes, milky with cataracts, saw more than the boy wished.
That night Efe dreamed of masks growing on trees like fruit, their mouths opening to swallow the moon. He woke with the taste of iron and the certainty that someone had entered the workshop while he slept. The sacred knife was missing from its sheath, and on the clay floor lay a single white cowrie, split cleanly in half.
The drums had not stopped since dawn. They beat out the rhythm of a city holding its breath, waiting for the next warrior to fall.