Dance of Burning Blades

Book : Invoker Trilogy

by M. H. Ayinde

Genres: Dark Fantasy; Fantasy action & adventure

Synopsis

War rages on in the second heart-pounding novel in M. H. Ayinde’s relentless epic fantasy series The Invoker Trilogy, a sweeping epic of revenge and rebellion set in a richly drawn world of warring clans and ancestor magic.

Tension simmers across Nine Lands. In the capital, the people of Lordsgrave seethe with resentment after the horrors of the greyblood attack. Clan Adatali is in open rebellion against the king, and as war in the Feverlands rages on, a humble tree feller—who looks a lot like missing invoker Jinao Mizito—has not forgotten the promise he made to avenge his brother.

Meanwhile, in the shadows, the king’s daughter Lyela continues to move her pieces across the board. Can the people of the Nine Lands reclaim their stolen history and unlock the secrets that have been kept from them for centuries?

Release date: August 11, 2026

Publisher: S&S/Saga Press

Print pages: 576

Sample

Chapter One: Temi ONE Temi
The streets of Lordsgrave District were not peaceful.

They hadn’t been since the day a greyblood army had risen from beneath the city to slaughter hundreds. It had been six moons since the Lordsgrave Massacre, yet Nine Lords’ easternmost slum had not recovered. Broken, abandoned buildings stood on every dirt road. Each household knew someone who had died that day, and each had lost two souls more to the king’s war draft. No one had forgotten how the bluehawks, the invokers, the entire city, had abandoned Lordsgrave District to its fate. A deep anger simmered just beneath the surface, and as the moons went on, it hardened into rage.

It shone in the eyes of the dockworkers down on the banks of the River Ae, as they watched galleys slide past, filled with millet and wheat and rice bound for highblood homes. It hung in the shadows with the beggars and vagabonds, whose cups were empty of alms, their clothes hanging from wasted shoulders. It flavoured every conversation at the newly risen shanties, where those fleeing the squalor of empty villages had set up home. It echoed in the shouts of children as they played on rooftops and in alleyways, children sent outside for longer each day as their elders worked more hours for less coin. It rose, unspoken, in the chatter around cookpots as stews were watered down and meals shared between ever more mouths. It was everywhere: in the stories sung at inns, in the chatter at the teahouse, in the glances of the whores, in the grumbles of the elders, in the gossip at the boreholes, in the cries of the street traders, in the very air itself. The streets of Lordsgrave were not peaceful, and Temi knew, as she stood at the bakery window that morning, that soon the simmering rage would overflow.

“Monks coming!” cried Maiwo, running in from the street. Temi’s cousin might have been only nine rains of age, but he knew when the family needed a warning.

“How many?” Aunt Selek called from behind the counter.

“Five!” Maiwo said, joining her. Temi looked round to see her willowy, powdered aunt pulling their special loaves down from the back shelves and into the sack they kept ready beneath the counter. Maiwo hefted the thing, his scrawny dark brown arms straining, and then disappeared into the kitchen just as the door banged open.

Nothing could clear the bakery faster than the arrival of Father Palui the Pure. As he strode into the bakery, trailing four burly monks in the golden robes of the Garden, their remaining customers slipped outside… all save Old Javesh, Temi’s neighbour, who stood leaning on his cane.

Palui’s bulging eyes swept the room, like some great bird of prey sighting its next meal. He reminded Temi of the giant tortoises Old Baba had told her stories about—long-necked and curious, every movement measured. Beneath the looping golden fabric of his robe, his sinewy brown arms were corded with dense muscle. The knuckles of the hand that gripped his holy staff—the crystal at its heart blinking—were as bruised and bony as a dockside fighter’s. Temi wondered who he’d punched today. She hoped they’d got in a few hits of their own.

“Good day, Holy Father,” Temi said as Aunt Selek glared at him from beneath her heavy brow. Temi’s Vushemi aunt had never been one to hide her temper, and that had only deepened since her wife, Yeshe, had gone away to war. “Afraid all we got left is Yennish black… what with the price of grain and all.”

“Each of the loaves on the shelf, please,” Father Palui said, turning to his burly noviciates. “And anything you can find in the back.”

“You are not coming back here,” Aunt Selek said, striding to the end of the counter in a rustle of skirts and beads. “This place, it is only for family.”

Father Palui eyed her. “You stand in the king’s city, upon the king’s soil, and all that lies within it belongs to the king. Please move aside. I do not wish to use force.”

His soft, whistling voice was all the more sinister for how mild his tone was. His face, too; he always wore the same half-smile, as though he had glimpsed beneath the surface of the world and knew every secret it had to tell.

Selek held his gaze for a few moments longer, then stepped back, muttering a string of Vushemi curses under her breath. Temi watched, powerless, as the monks strode to the shelves, pulling down the remaining loaves, tearing them open, then casting them aside.

“Oi!” shouted Old Javesh. “That’s good bread what you’re throwing away there!”

Temi kept her face neutral as the monks strode into the kitchen. She prayed that Maiwo had had the good sense to drag the sack to the back of the yard, but after a moment, she heard more shouts—Uncle Amaan, his child Mtobi—and then one of the monks returned brandishing the sack of special loaves.

“Found this in the back, Your Holiness!” he said.

Father Palui strode forward, his eyes bright. Since the first day he arrived on the street—the day Temi’s mother and Aunt Yeshe had gone to war, along with so many—he had been watching the bakery. He came to them several times a week, sometimes alone, sometimes with a swarm of golden monks in tow, to inspect the bakery, the yard, the family room, even their sleep room. He hadn’t yet found Old Baba’s workshop—not since Aunt Selek had moved the goat pen on top of it. But Temi knew it was only a matter of time. Father Palui sensed techwork, and however well the Bakers of Arrant Hill might hide what they did, eventually, he would find it.

Father Palui snatched a loaf from the bag and tore it open to reveal a blackened hollow in the middle. “What is this?” he said, holding it up like a talisman. He threw it at his noviciate, then tore at another, to find the middle much the same.

“Looks like mould,” Old Javesh said, sucking on his gums. “ ’Ere, you selling them, Tem? I’ll take whatever I can get—got ten hungry mouths at home to feed.”

Father Palui touched the bread with the tip of his staff, as delicately as if it were a wetwoods python. The crystal at its heart began to glow, Forbidden glyphs sliding across its surface, faster, faster. Temi wished, not for the first time, that she shared her brother’s skill for that secret language—ancestors preserve Tunji’s soul. But from the tightness in Father Palui’s jaw, she knew that he had discovered nothing.

“Not sure why that keeps happening,” Temi said quickly. “Must be something to do with that last lot of rye we got.”

“Take them all,” Father Palui said, sweeping his eyes across the bakery again. His gaze came to rest on her. “That is not mould.”

“You will not!” Aunt Selek said, striding forward to take the sack back.

“Auntie,” Temi said softly, as Selek pulled on the sack of bread.

“Oh my, what’s happening?” came a soft voice, and there stood Mama Elleth, Temi’s Yennish grandmother, a round, pale-skinned, white-haired woman. She wore a striped Yennish smock still dusted with flour, and the bemused frown of an elder who no longer quite understood the world.

“They are thieves!” Selek declared, as the monk wrenched the sack from her hands.

“These items are being confiscated,” Palui said. “They pose a threat to king and kingdom. Now please stand aside.”

“Well now, that is a lot of words,” Mama Elleth said pleasantly. She turned to Temi. “Temi dear, what is the holy man saying? Something about taking food from hungry locals?”

If Mama Elleth was good at one thing, aside from baking, it was sowing unease with the sweetest of smiles. Every Lordsgrave resident south of the river knew about her sharp eyes and even sharper mind, but to these monks, she was the picture of a bumbling elder.

As the monks strode out into the street, Old Baba lifted shakily from his chair beside the door, hand wobbling as he steadied himself on his cane.

“How the fuck did he know they were in the bread?” Temi muttered as she followed. “I thought you said he wouldn’t be able to detect them?”

A warmth slid up her arm from the scar a spirit witch had given her a lifetime ago. The heat blossomed in her chest, as enticing as Jebbanese red, as forbidding as the flames of a pyre. A burst of emotions uncurled in Temi’s mind—amusement, irritation, condescension and that familiar, barely contained fury. The sensation coalesced into a voice that echoed in the recesses of Temi’s mind.

[What does it matter?] Vunaji said. [He will find nothing, I assure you.]

“Aren’t you going to stop them?” Old Baba said, pointing after the monks.

“Leave it, Old Baba.”

But her grandfather ignored her, hobbling after them and shouting, “Stop this! Bring back our bread!”

Within a heartbeat, half a dozen people had emerged from the wooden shacks and mudbrick huts of Arrant Hill.

“What’s going on, Old Uncle?”

“You all right?”

“Hoy, monk—what’s in the sack?”

Once, the people of Lordsgrave would never have dared speak to a monk in anger. But that had been before the Lordsgrave Massacre, before the holy ones abandoned the district in its time of greatest need, before the monks marched hundreds of its people to a doomed war. So when Old Baba hobbled after them and took hold of the sack, nobody in the crowd trailing behind him sought to intervene.

Then it happened. One of the monks pushed Old Baba back, and he went tumbling to the ground with a soft “Ah-ah!”

“What the fuck?” cried Jumiki, child of the woodcutter at the bottom of the hill. Their fist snapped out—reflexively, really; just an instinct, and the monk who had pushed Old Baba crumpled to the ground.

Temi had known that the district was at breaking point. She had known that something would have to change. But she hadn’t imagined that it would be her own family that caused it.

“Did you see?” cried Mama Elleth from the bakery doorway. “The monks attacked an elder!”

Father Palui turned to Jumiki. “How dare you strike a brother of the Holy Orders!” He lifted his staff, the crystal at its heart beginning to glow.

“Bring back our bread!” one of Jumiki’s friends shouted, before lunging at the sack of loaves. Meanwhile, Father Palui swung his staff round and caught Jumiki in the side of their head.

Jumiki fell, blood seeping from the wound to soak into the dirt of the road. The air seemed to still as they hit the ground. Mama Elleth, the elders outside the inn, Old Baba—sitting up now… everyone had become motionless.

Then Jumiki’s friend jerked a knife from her belt and screamed, “Bring back our bread!” before plunging it into a noviciate monk’s neck.

Chaos. As the scene before her descended into a brawl, Temi ran into the street. Selek was already helping Old Baba to his feet when Temi joined them.

“We need to get inside,” Temi said.

She glanced back to see Father Palui holding his staff high and shouting in the Forbidden Tongue. Then he removed a twinkling artefact from beneath the folds of his robe, and a shimmering circle appeared around him.

More of Jumiki’s friends poured in from the surrounding streets—all out of work, all thirsty for something. The remaining monks were soon buried beneath a swarm of pounding fists. Wood and stones flew, some hurtling towards Father Palui where they struck his sphere of protection and dropped, useless, to the ground. Temi saw no hint of fear on his face. But when he looked up, his eyes cut straight through the madness to land on her.

[I believe this situation may swiftly escalate,] Vunaji said.

“No, really?” Temi snapped as she bundled Old Baba and Mama Elleth back inside. Someone was brandishing the bread sack like a war banner while shouts of Bring back our bread! sounded from a dozen mouths.

“Perhaps we should shut the shop, dear,” Mama Elleth said, reaching to turn the sign to closed. “That’s probably enough excitement for one morning.”

Temi watched the Lordsgrave Riots unfold from the top of the hill she called Bakery Mount.

By mid-morning, Jumiki’s friends had marched to the monastery down near the banks of the Ae, their numbers swelling with each street they passed. The chants of Bring back our bread! seemed to echo from every corner of Lordsgrave, a battle cry taken up by the entire district. It was appropriate, Temi supposed, with the city still under rations—at least, for lowbloods. There was not enough food, not enough work, not enough of anything to go round.

Near highsun, Temi’s yellow-haired, pale-skinned cousin Kierin came picking his way up the dry grass of the hill behind their house.

“What the fuck’s going on?” he said. “People was trying to break into the warehouses. Rewin had to knock about five of ’em into the Ae.”

“Riot,” Temi said.

“Someone said it started at our bakery.”

“Yeah,” Temi said. “Well. They made the mistake of attacking Old Baba.”

“Fuck me,” Kierin muttered, dropping down at her side. “There’s a full-on war happening in Ida Square—about two hundred bluehawks and more monks’n I ever seen in my life! I swear some of the Families sent their fighters out, too, just for fun.”

In the distance, over the sea of bamboo rooftops, a plume of thick, black smoke snaked into the air.

“It’ll calm down by highsun,” Temi said. “Come on, let’s go inside.”

But at highsun, Temi stood at the bakery window, unable to nap, still watching the street. In the city beyond, the fires raged on, the sour, acrid smell filling her nostrils. A group of youths ran past, faces covered, brandishing lengths of wood. Not long after, two dozen bluehawks marched past in formation.

[The spark has been lit, it seems.]

“They need to fucking unlight it before the whole district burns.”

[Your holy ones won’t let that happen. There is too much of interest to them here.]

Temi supposed that was true. It wasn’t just the dozens of dormant greyblood bodies that still dotted Lordsgrave. It was the Lordsgrave Wall itself, that newly risen ring of blackglass that now encircled the entire district. Each day, monks swarmed its length, sweeping away the flowers and trinkets locals had left to remember those who had died trying to climb its smooth length.

Temi smiled to herself as she thought about what Aunt Yeshe would have said. It’s all them greyblood bodies cursing us. That’s why the city knows no peace.

Ancestors, but she missed her aunt. She missed her gravelly voice and her filthy laugh and her stern tongue. And she missed her hugs, and the way she always knew how to raise a smile, and how certain she was about everything, how she always knew which way to steer the family to keep them on course. Without her, the family was rudderless, adrift. Mama Elleth and Aunt Selek might try, but it wasn’t the same. Without Yeshe, they weren’t whole.

“Got any paratha?” a voice said, and Temi started as someone rapped on the glass.

Haarit. That was his name. A member of the Bhuten Family. He had a smiling, pleasant face, but she’d seen the steel behind his eyes the very first time he’d walked into the bakery. She thought he’d given up visiting, after the last time she told him she had no interest in an arrangement with his Family. She knew what the Bhutens were. Another criminal organisation, just like the Chedus, and she had no interest in anything they had to offer. He leaned on the glass, his black topknot falling to one side.

We’re closed, Temi mouthed at him, then made to turn away.

“I thought you might like to know why the monk doesn’t just kill you all,” he called through the glass.

Temi paused.

[Do not let him manipulate you.]

Temi strode to the door and jerked it open. “What you talking about?”

“Why have you been ignoring our invitations?” Haarit said, cocking his head to one side. Temi guessed he was close to thirty rains of age, and he had the compact, economical frame of a skilled fighter.

“Because I ain’t interested in your Council of Elders.”

“Well, you should be. Because it’s the only way your family is going to survive.” His eyes dropped to her arm, and the scar that linked her to Vunaji. “That thing you brought out the day Harvell Chedu got killed—”

“Nothing to do with me.”

“Yes, yes, course it isn’t. But that thing you brought out marks you as an invoker. The only invokers in the land are the Nine Clans. Anyone else is… unsanctioned.” Haarit paused as a cart crashed down the hill behind him, one of its wheels aflame. A group of bluehawks marched after it, dragging with them several people in chains. “This is madness. They’re going to start executing people in the streets if it continues.”

“What is it you want?”

“I told you. You need to present yourself at the Council of Elders, before your fate is decided for you. My Family is willing to… sponsor you.”

“For a price.”

He grinned. “Everything has a price. But as I said, I came today with information it might interest you to hear. Your grandfather has been providing that monk with… bespoke services. I believe that is why you haven’t simply all been killed.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I? Where does your grandfather go, each morning before highsun?”

“He goes for a walk to the convent, to ask the ancestors to watch over my aunt and my ma.”

“Is that what he tells you? Curious, then, that one of my scouts saw him meeting a senior monk and passing him a… package.”

Temi felt a twist of unease. “You’re lying.”

“They’ve spotted him three times now.”

“Old Baba’s got lock-hand. He can scarcely hold his own cup, let alone make… whatever it is you’re insinuating he’s making.”

Haarit held up his hands. “Just letting you know what we saw. Do with it what you want. Consider it a gift from us—a demonstration of our good intentions.”

“We don’t need you.”

“Yes you do. The Chedus or the Sengs will come for you. You disrupted their business and you killed their kin. It is only a matter of time. The monks will come too, once they’ve got everything they need out of your grandfather.”

“Let ’em try.”

Haarit held her gaze, his dark eyes glittering. “Why don’t you bring your ancestor out? Let me talk to them myself. I’m very curious. The rumours have painted… quite the picture.”

Temi stared at him, and let Vunaji pool in the tips of her fingers, her brown skin glimmering with blue light. She closed her eyes, until she could feel the heat of him tugging on her pores, and more: she could feel Haarit’s ancestor, too, swirling just beneath his skin. A woman… Sombre, quiet, calculating. “I can feel her,” Temi said. “Bhuten. She’s… confused. Scared. She’s trying to shrink away, but there’s nowhere for her to hide. Maybe I should let them meet.”

She opened her eyes, and to her satisfaction, Haarit had taken a step back, his lip curled in distaste. His family tatau—a dark beetle and some kind of spear—glowed pale orange as he stared.

“I like you, you know,” Haarit said, forcing nonchalance back onto his face. “But you must realise your days here are numbered. My Family can offer you protection. When you’ve changed your mind, come to the Laughing Tiger teahouse on the corner of Spire Street and the Royal Causeway. Come alone. I promise you’ll be safe. Then we can discuss terms.” He patted her hand. “I’ll see you soon.”

Then he dipped his head in a mocking bow and strolled back into the sunlight. Temi watched his guards join him—two burly fighters, who melted out of the shadows of the building opposite. As they headed down the hill, Temi muttered, “What’s he mean with all that? Old Baba hates the monks.”

[Yes. But they wield power over you all. You know there is another option.]

“No. I told you a million times already. No.”

[What is it you fear from the ancestral realm? Or what is it you fear from me?]

“It’s not about fear. What you do is wrong.”

[If we return and continue to strengthen me, I can protect you all.]

“Strengthen you by letting you eat… whatever those spirit things are, so you can steal their power?” Her thoughts drifted to the way Vunaji had sent Harvell’s captured ancestor to cleave the woman in two. “I don’t trust you. I didn’t want you to kill Harvell, and you knew I didn’t. But you did it anyway.”

[Then strengthen me so that we can part. When I am strong enough, I can return fully to the mortal realm.]

The door clicked open and there stood Mama Elleth, a cup of tea trembling in one freckled hand.

“Everything all right, dear?” Temi’s grandmother said, offering her the cup.

“Yep,” Temi replied, taking it. “Thank you, Old Mama.”

“Quiet day, eh?” Elleth said, coming to stand beside her.

“Very uneventful,” Temi said, with a smile.