Abengoni

by Charles R. Saunders

  Neither bothered to look for Jass Kebessa. The leader of the dissidents would be far to the rear of the procession, as befitting his lowly status among the Degen Jassi. He would be safe from what was to come.

  Now the gharri that conveyed Tiyana and Keshu was passing. For the briefest of moments, Adisu’s anger receded as he looked at her. Gebrem’s daughter possessed the beauty and courage of a goddess. And Keshu had risen high from the ranks of the common classes, people like Adisu himself.

  The respite lasted only for a moment before Adisu once again hardened his heart at the realization that even these two had fallen irrevocably under the insidious control of the foreigners.

  Mounted soldiers accompanied the procession as it wound its way through the city. They, too, were resplendent in their polished armor and lion-mane decorations. Their weapons remained sheathed, for no one was expecting any trouble ... no one other than the dissidents.

  Sehaye, where are they? Adisu demanded silently. Where?

  A moment later, his unvoiced question was answered.

  They struck with the quickness of cobras. The crowd had concealed them well; they had mimicked those who surrounded them with chameleon-like ease. The soldiers had no time to react; neither did the Adepts, for all their skill and power and preternatural awareness. So completely had the attackers hidden themselves that Adisu was oblivious to the fact that one of them had been standing at his other side all this time. He didn’t know until the chamma-clad figure hurled itself at a passing gharri, rushing beneath the rearing hooves of the soldier-escort’s startled quagga.

  The music faltered, then stopped completely, to be supplanted by shouts, screams, the neighing of quaggas and the crash of overturned gharris. Sunlight glinted from the weapons the assailants wielded. Tirss ... the chosen weapon of the tsotsis ...

  Even as the press of the panicking crowd pulled him one way, then the other, ultimately separating him from Tamair, Adisu exulted inside.

  He did it! That crazy man Sehaye did it! No one will blame us for what has happened! They will blame the tsotsis! The cursed tsotsis have freed us from the foreigners!

  Even as Adisu celebrated, his foot caught on a raised stone in the street, and he went down. The fear-maddened crowd around him did not notice as he flailed about in a desperate attempt to get back to his feet. But the feet of others pounded him like a hailstorm and kept him down. Some of the people in the crowd were running toward the procession to try to aid the Jassi and the Almovaads. Others were simply running away.

  Collisions abounded. Others besides Adisu fell and were trampled. Some managed to rise and escape further injury; others were not so fortunate. Adisu was not among the fortunate ones. Even as he died beneath the pounding feet of the people he had plotted to save from the foreigners, he heard the cry of the tsotsis rising above the clamor of the crowd:

  “This be for your shadows!”

  4

  “Tiyana! Beware!” Keshu shouted.

  The spikes of a tirss swooped toward Tiyana like the talons of some gigantic bird of prey. Shock at the suddenness and savagery of the attack had left her immobile. The arm that swung the tirss was lean and sinewy; the face of the wielder was twisted in a snarl of hatred.

  Before the tirss could complete its deadly arc and tear into Tiyana’s flesh, a dark shape interposed itself between her and the weapon. An ugly, rending noise accompanied the bite of the tsotsi’s “teeth” through cloth and flesh. Tiyana fell backward as two people stumbled against her. One of them was already dying; the other was screaming incoherent imprecations.

  The gharri rocked wildly as the fear-maddened quagga that was pulling it reared and kicked its hooves indiscriminately at the mass of people swarming around it. A tirss raked across the beast’s belly, spilling its blood and intestines even as it collapsed in its traces.

  As she tumbled out of the gharri, Tiyana’s head hit the stones of the street, and small replicas of the Moon Stars whirled in the sudden darkness in front of her eyes. Pain lanced through her skull. The weight of Keshu’s body pressed down on her, and she could feel the movement of the assassin’s struggle to pull his tirss free from the flesh in which it was embedded. She could hear the screams, the curses, the clangor of weapons, the pounding of feet and hooves. And she could feel Keshu’s body sliding away as the tsotsi pulled it away to get to her.

  Keshu is dead! she thought as she fought to retain consciousness. Keshu is dead! He died to save me! Keshu is dead!

  The tiny Moon Stars faded. The blackness before her eyes broke into small, moving dots. Through them, Tiyana could see the tsotsi looming above her. He had pulled his tirss free from Keshu’s body. Keshu’s blood dripped from the tips of the tines onto Tiyana’s face and arms. The tsotsi raised the weapon to deliver another flesh-rending strike.

  Rage ripped through Tiyana like a wet-season storm. A cry of fury and desolation erupted from her throat. The sound of the cry turned into power – a spiral of radiance like that of the night-sun that shone on the Maim after the day-sun went down. Blue light, similar to the healing illumination that had, only days ago, cleansed the Uloans’ bodies and spirits.

  What Tiyana unleashed now had nothing of healing in it. The blue spiral wrapped itself around the tsotsi like a python made of light, pinning his arms to his sides. The tirss fell to the ground with a clatter scarcely audible above the tumult that engulfed the interrupted procession.

  With hatred on her face that matched the tsotsi’s expression when he attacked, Tiyana concentrated her power. And the serpent of light constricted, slicing through the tsotsi’s flesh as though it were of no greater substance than the air that surrounded it. The tsotsi had time only to utter a truncated shriek of agony before the spiral sectioned his body into pieces.

  As Tiyana struggled to her feet, she refused to look down at the spot where Keshu lay. She did not want to see him as a corpse. And she had no time to mourn him ... the awareness in which she had earlier taken such great pride, the awareness that had failed her and all the other Adepts when they needed it most, was now warning her that another tsotsi was approaching her from behind. Without turning around, she sent a whip of magical energy looping around the assailant’s neck. The loop squeezed the sides of his throat together until he could no longer breathe.

  Other flashes of blue amid the chaos signalled that Tiyana was not the only Adept to have survived the tsotsis’ attack. With the moment of surprise gone, the tide was turning against the assassins. Instead of fleeing in panic, some of the people in the crowd were now turning on the attackers, in some cases tearing them to pieces as effectively as Tiyana’s sorcery had done.

  A deadly calm settled over Tiyana as she sought out the glint of a tirss and sent a blaze of vengeance that tore through the weapon’s bearer. Loathing spilled from her soul as she searched for more tsotsis to slay. The gharri in which she and Keshu had been riding was still upright, but its quagga lay inert in a welter of blood. Using the gharri as cover, Tiyana picked off as many tsotsis as she could see.

  With the momentum now against them, the surviving tsotsis fled. Some of the people in the crowd pursued them. Others stood in blank-eyed shock. Still others tended their wounds, and those of their fallen companions.

  Tiyana sank to her knees beside the body of Keshu. He stared sightlessly, his face set in a grimace that bespoke courage and determination. The front of his robe was shredded and his spilled blood turned its blue color into a muddy red.

  Tiyana took one of his hands in hers, and wished that the power of Almovaar could enable her to will him back to life. She knew that was not possible, and that knowledge brought tears to her eyes ... tears that flowed in twin streams down her cheeks.

  “Keshu,” she whispered as the echoes of the crowd’s pursuit of the tsotsis faded. “You saved my life, but part of me has died with you.”

  “Tiyana.”

  She looked up to see who it was that interrupted the beginning of her grieving. It was a soldier. Blood spattered his armor.
His dark face bore a grim expression.

  “Please come with me, Tiyana,” the soldier said. “The Emperor ...”

  His voice trailed off.

  Wordlessly, Tiyana released Keshu’s hand, rose, and followed the soldier through the thin crowd of people who remained behind. They skirted overturned gharris, as well as bodies surrounded by knots of mourners, some of whom acknowledged her as she went by.

  Although her tears had stopped falling, the wetness in her eyes blurred her vision. She had a premonition of what the soldier was taking her to see, and she did not want to see it; not now, not ever.

  But she knew she must.

  The tsotsis had concentrated their attack on the gharris that carried the most powerful people in the Empire. The Emperor and Leba had been the principal targets. So was Tiyana. And many others among the Degen Jassi and the Adepts had fallen victim to the assailants’ killing frenzy.

  The gharris of both Gebrem and Kyroun had been overturned. Tiyana saw Kyroun standing, head bowed, blood drying on his blue robe. Others stood in the same posture, and they stepped aside as the soldier led Tiyana through them.

  And when she reached the Emperor’s gharri, she saw her father lying on the street. His legs and arms had been straightened, and someone had respectfully closed his eyes. But no one could close the wound a tsotsi’s weapon had torn across his throat, a ragged, gaping gash that had taken his life and left him covered in blood.

  “I am sorry, Tiyana,” Kyroun said. “I tried my best to save him. Would that I had died in his place.”

  Tiyana paid him no heed as, for the second time that day, she sank to her knees beside the body of a man she loved. Her grief was even greater now; her devastation overwhelming. A deep sadness replaced the rage that had fuelled the ferocity of her retaliation against the tsotsis. And even as a weeping Tiyana wrapped her arms around her father’s bloodstained corpse, all the others around her – even Kyroun – knelt in the presence of their new Empress.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CONSEQUENCES

  1

  The light from a single torch guided Sehaye and Jass Mofo through the stifling darkness of the Underground. Their feet splashed through noisome mire, and the fetid air inside Khambawe’s sewers seemed to lodge in the two men’s lungs. Sehaye was carrying the torch, which was beginning to burn low. Jass Mofo walked behind him. The tines of the Mofo’s tirss pressed lightly against Sehaye’s back as they made their way through the muck. Sehaye did not like the touch of the weapon. But he did not complain. He was still alive. And above him, the tsotsis were carrying out their end of the bargain he had struck with Jass Mofo.

  The voice that had guided him for so long had fallen silent after he and Mofo had sealed their pact. Sehaye longed for it to return. Without its constant advice and encouragement, he was becoming uncertain about the chances for success of the scheme it had suggested when it first began to speak inside him. He was no longer even sure that the voice belonged to Legaba.

  But who else could it be? he wondered. Who else would talk so to I?

  The tirss jabbed a bit deeper into Sehaye’s back.

  “How much farther we got to go?” Jass Mofo demanded.

  “Soon come,” Sehaye replied, unconsciously reverting to the Uloan way of speaking.

  “Better be ‘soon,’” Mofo said. “This light go out before we get to the Fidi tsotsi, you gon’ be dead. Heard?”

  Sehaye did not respond to Mofo’s threat. He knew that when he led Mofo to the place where he had hidden Athir, the tsotsi chief would kill them both. Sehaye had trusted the voice to tell him the best way to avoid that fate. But now his guide was gone, and he would have to trust to his own wit and courage to survive. And he was far from certain that would be enough.

  Jass Mofo eased the pressure from the tirss. Sehaye pushed onward. The light of the torch was weakening, but Sehaye knew they were coming very close to their destination now.

  He could not forswear a grudging admiration for the tsotsi leader. Once Jass Mofo had accepted the scheme Sehaye had proposed, he not only commanded his own set to participate; he had also enlisted members of other remnant sets as well, including blood enemies of the Ashaki. The tsotsis knew that some – many – of them would die in the effort to cut off the head of the serpent that was slowly destroying them. But the Muvuli were killing them anyway. Attacking their oppressors appealed to them far more than passively waiting to be slain by shadows after dark. And to gain the gratitude rather than the hatred of the people outside the Maim ... that would be a lesser, but still worthwhile, reward.

  For his part, Sehaye had arranged with the other dissenters to spirit the tsotsis out of the Maim. He himself led the tsotsis through the Underground, into which they had never before ventured because the Maim had always been more than sufficient as a home and sanctuary. Jass Mofo had berated himself for not having thought to make better use of the Underground. But then, if Sehaye’s plan proved successful, they would not need its shelter in the future.

  Sehaye wondered how the battle above was going. He and Jass Mofo were too far Underground know. Neither clangor nor cries could reach their ears.

  Mofo had insisted on accompanying Sehaye alone. He knew the tsotsis would carry out his commands even in his absence, for they feared him more than they feared death. But then, as Sehaye had learned during the short time he had been among them, a tsotsi who feared death did not live long.

  Despite the silence of the voice, Sehaye was certain that Retribution Time had finally been fulfilled in a way. Khambawe had not been destroyed, as Jass Imbiah and all the others before her had promised. But at least the Uloans would have gained a measure of vengeance for the blankskins’ slaughter of the invaders. Sehaye hoped that Legaba had told the huangi back home what he had done.

  If not, he would inform them himself. He had long ago decided that if he lived through this journey Underground, he would steal a boat and return to the Islands. The need for spying among the blankskins was over. He wanted to find a huangi who would bestow upon him the spider-scars he had missed all his life. No longer would he live as a Matile ...

  The torch flame guttered lower.

  “You time runnin’ out,” Jass Mofo said.

  “Just follow I and quiet you-self,” Sehaye retorted.

  If Mofo noticed the change in Sehaye’s way of speaking, he did not say anything about it. And Sehaye did not care whether or not he had. They were very close now to where the Fidi was hidden, and Sehaye was preparing himself for Mofo’s reaction when he saw the prize that awaited him.

  Then they reached the alcove, which was so dark that the weakening light of the torch failed to show what was inside.

  “Him here,” Sehaye said, holding the torch forward so that Mofo could see the trussed-up Athir.

  The tsotsi pushed past Sehaye. The wordless sound that issued from Mofo’s throat would have been frightening if it had been uttered by some predatory animal, let alone a human. He snatched the torch from Sehaye’s hand and thrust its tip into the alcove.

  Then Mofo’s snarl of triumph turned into a shout of rage. He whirled and glared at Sehaye.

  “What game you playin’ on me?” the tsotsi demanded, his voice deadly in its calmness.

  “What you mean?” Sehaye asked.

  “Look!”

  Sehaye peered over the tsotsi’s shoulder. His eyes widened in shock when he saw that the hiding place contained nothing other than the ropes that had bound the Fidi. The strands lay in severed pieces.

  “Help I, Legaba!” Sehaye shouted as he whirled away from Mofo and attempted to flee.

  Then the Uloan had no more time to say or think anything else. The last thing Sehaye saw in life was the points of Jass Mofo’s tirss flashing toward his face. And the last thing he knew was that the voice that had guided him to his doom could not have belonged to Legaba.

  2

  In another part of the Underground, far from far from his erstwhile place of captivity, Athir huddled in darkness broke
n only by the shining of the mask his rescuer wore. He was holding a wriggling creature he could not identify. The mask-wearing girl had placed it in his hands.

  “Eat it,” she said, her voice partially muffled by the mask.

  Athir’s stomach heaved even though he was starving, not having eaten since the last time his captor had visited him and fed him just enough to keep alive. In the dim, silver glow of the mask, he could not determine what he was holding. A rat? A lizard? Some unknown slime-dweller unique to this benighted place?

  “Go ahead,” the girl insisted when she noticed his hesitation. “Nothin’ else down here to eat.”

  Fighting down a surge of nausea, Athir reached for what he hoped was the creature’s neck. A quick twist of his hands snapped its spine, and the wriggling ceased. Then Athir lowered his head and bit into the creature’s flesh. He swallowed hard and quickly, to make sure the chunks of raw, bitter-tasting flesh made it all the way to his stomach and stayed there. The girl’s masked face watched him imperturbably.

  When he had eaten as much of the creature as he could manage, Athir tossed its remains aside. They landed with a splash somewhere beyond his range of vision. Then the Ship’s Rat took a long, close look at his rescuer.

  “Who are you?” he asked. “Why did you set me free?”

  “You know me, Fidi-tsotsi,” she replied. “From the Ashaki. My name Kalisha. They call me ‘Amiya-girl.’”

  Athir remembered her as she was without the mask ... a somber girl who would appear from time to time with loot from the former Beit Amiya. His heart sank as he realized that she was a favorite of Jass Mofo.

  So this isn’t a rescue after all, he thought. It’s a cruel trick, just what I should have expected from Mofo...