A hush of terror smothers the town. Free Station’s traders and workers stride quickly through Free Station’s sodden, winding streets. They dart from building to building, reading the sky for insect clouds.
“The fireflies come at night,” Thorold says, “Or have so far. This gives us no great courage, not even with the sun high overhead.”
“How many dead in all?”
“Several score. My employers fear Bloodcove will be next.”
We cross a small wooden bridge into the town. At first I am ready: even when accompanied by one of their own, a Zenj man carrying a spear and wearing a boar-fur headdress might not always expect a welcome in such a place. But the furtive traders pay us no mind.
I ask my next question having already guessed the answer. “And this prophet of yours?”
“She communes with a two-faced god.” He pats his pack, where the strange instrument is stored. “Her services are costly, but she is reputed to enjoy strong divine favor.”
I am about to say more when I see someone I do not wish to be seen by. I shrink back behind an abandoned foreign-style hut. Built on a poor foundation, it sinks already into the Mwangi earth.
The undesirable quickly traverses the town’s wide main laneway. His wary gaze travels from side to side, not skywards, as if he has more to fear from his fellow man than from flesh-stripping fireflies. A Bekyar headdress of flowing linen covers his head. Its simple cord headband has been stripped of clan symbols. His white tunic and leggings are dirtied and worn, but he wears a new pair of northern boots. He mutters as if rehearsing a grudge.
Thorold proves himself wise; he waits until the man has passed to inquire. “Who is that?”
“A non-person. Take me to your Nethys priestess.”
It is no surprise that the Consortium counting house is the largest of Free Station’s buildings. Thorold escorts me inside, past nervous Bonuwat guardsmen in Aspis livery. We creak up a cocked staircase to a third-floor room. Incense colors the air: sandalwood, burnt nutmeg, cockatrice oil. Hesitantly he knocks on a battered door, its paint peeled by humidity.
“Enter,” commands the voice inside.
Thorold steps in, head half-bowed. “Milady priestess, I met someone in the jungle, who—”
“Look who the cat dragged in,” says the woman inside.
“Obai,” I say.
She perches, posture arrow-straight, on the edge of a padded wooden chair. She is of the weird and ancient Mauxi people. Her cheekbones are high, her complexion tinted with ash. Draped and interfolded robes enlarge her skeletal frame, wrapping it in deep-dyed reds and purples. Around her mouth are raised ritual scars, a series of dots, each the size of a delicate fingertip. Those on the left side of her lips curve up, extending her mouth into a smile. Those on the right curve down, giving that side of her face a frown. The scars declare her oneness with the great god Nethys—distant and inscrutable guardian of arcane secrets, maintainer of cosmic balance. Her frown-smile says that she is, like him, always her own opposite. “Where’s the ape?” she asks.
“In the forest, waiting.”
“Of course.”
“You know each other,” Thorold says.
He has allowed himself to give voice to the obvious. Obai judges him for it. The left side of her face is amused, the right side condemning.
Thorold continues. “Then the two of you—you are both of the Scarred Ones.”
“There is no such group,” I say.
Obai smiles and frowns.
The Ulfen can’t help himself. “And the man-ape as well.” With his finger in front of his face, he traces the pattern of Arok’s scars. “You are all Scarred Ones.”
“Have you the sextant?” she asks him.
He removes the instrument from his pack. She places it in a stand on a wide table, among five identical objects. The devices whirl and click, and Obai studies them intently. With a distracted wave, she dismisses the northerner from her presence. He meekly withdraws.
I tell her what Arok sensed, about the urunr.
Obai nods. “His perceptions align with the sextant readings. Thorold got closest to the imbalance. Its resonance partakes of both the divine and the natural realms.”
“A nature god, then.”
The tilt of her head suggests agreement. “Local, but powerful, and angry. We must do what must be done when gods are displeased.”
“And what is that?”
“Appease them, naturally.” Her words lilt with the usual amused contempt.
“Your god does not mind you pleasing another?”
Obae stares at the instruments again. She neatly inscribes a line of Mauxi hieroglyphics across the surface of an unfurled papyrus scroll.
“Nethys, in his totality, contains and circumscribes all other gods, which are but contesting manifestations of his sublime balance. To please the displeased, or to distress the contented, is to pay my twin-faced master homage.”
From her robe she produces a folded booklet, its pages dark and brown. “A codex of the Kembe,” she says. “Made from the pressed bark of a fig tree, which has not grown there for a thousand years.”
The Kembe are a long-departed people. Their ruined civilization lies in the jungles to the east.
“By Nethys’ grace, I have decoded its odd pictographs and rendered them into speech.” She holds up the booklet.
A drawing shows a firefly hovering over a stepped pyramid. Hunters sometimes stumble across such structures, buried under mounds of choking vine. They are to be avoided, as wells of bad magic.
“This is Kitumu,” she says, “the firefly goddess. Quite carnivorous, when awakened. Like many of the jungle godlings once known to the Kembe, a voracious demander of human sacrifice.”
I shiver; she turns her smiling side my way.
“If we are detecting unstable mystic energy of a divine and natural resonance, and our problem consists of devouring firefly swarms, it is reasonable to conclude that Kitumu, mother of fireflies, has awakened and is hungry.”
“We must find the goddess and feed it?”
“Dicey work, certainly. Local gods are trouble. They let you get so close to them.”
I don’t like where this is going. “And have you chosen an adequate meal?” I ask.
Her face grows grave; only her scars lend it expression. “I’d hoped the readings would lead me elsewhere. There’s a boy who lives in the jungle outside town. A member of an orphan band.”
Such child-tribes are too common now. Their parents interfered unwisely with foreign trade, and were extirpated.
“He comes occasionally to beg for scraps,” Obai says. “The other children mistreat him. They say he’s cursed. Apparently the curse’s sign is a birthmark over his heart, in the shape of a fly.”
“A firefly?”
“We will need to see it more closely. It’s been several days since he was last in town—when the first of the attacks began. The other orphans don’t share with him, so he’ll grow hungry soon, and come in.”
“And his name?”
“The orphans call him Mwonduk.”
It is a Zenj word I know all too well. It means “accursed one.”
∗ ∗ ∗
“Obai seeks only balance.”
For two days, the priestess and I, along with Thorold and his fellow Aspis traders, fan out through the town, waiting to catch this Mwonduk. We know him only by description, and accost many orphans, none of whom bear his mark.
On the third day, Obai and I hear a boy-child’s screams of protest. They come from the patch of scrubland west of town, and I bound forward, the priestess lithely following.
Bekyar slavers surround the boy. Other children rush from the scene, unpursued. The slave-takers want only this single scrawny orphan.
There are seven strong-shouldered men, and a fat captain, armed with a whip. Without warning or preamble, Obai corrects the imbalance of forces, scourging them with divine fire. The men shriek, their clothes and flesh consumed by Nethys’s ire.
The men holding the boy stand outside the bursting flame, and one of them hoists the child high on his hip as the others turn to fight. I plunge among them, my weapon striking high and low. They fall, squealing and groaning, like the cowards slavers so often are. I am not a cruel man, but their pain is one I exult in. They flee my hateful spear.
The boy is running, too. Obai faces the fat, whip-wielding one, and I leave her to it, veering to intercept the boy. He stops, stunned, as he watches the priestess lay hands on the fat man. The heavens howl as the big-bellied slaver is reduced to dust and bone.
On the boy’s chest, I see the insect birthmark. It is a firefly.
“You are Mwonduk?” I ask.
He nods.
“We’ve rescued you,” I tell him. This is not the same as saying that we are his rescuers, and so is not quite a lie.
Obai and I dash him to the Consortium counting house, before more slavers appear. Once there, we sequester the boy in a room and converse privately.
“The Bekyar are involved,” she says.
“I know.”
“They were interested only in the boy.”
“Yes.”
“If the Bekyar are involved...”
I shake my head.
“He’s in town.”
“I know. I saw him, coming in.”
Obai smiles and frowns. “Nethys moves his pawns. He provides tools to restore balance.”
“No,” I say, but the battle is lost, and I know it.
“If it’s slavers against us,” she says, and her words have the ring of finality, “we must fetch Verkusht.”
Chapter Two: Friends and Other Enemies
Verkusht is as I had seen him a few days before, when I first came to Free Station, seeking an end to the firefly plague. I shrank back, then, so he would not see me. Now I, along with the balance priestess Obai, stand before him, seeking his favor.
With a ragged fingernail, he picks at a morsel of food lodged between his small, uneven teeth. “I saw you, you know.”
We stand in the back parlor of a drunkard’s den. Here northern liquors are served, along with palm wine and the strength-sapping mash of the garuti plant. Free Station overflows with such places. It is one thing for the foreigners to poison themselves. That is their custom. But it is not the Zenj way, not in a place that smells of blood and vomit, away from friend and kin and the safety of the feasting circle.
Verkusht repeats himself. “I saw you try to hide from me. I didn’t confront you, because you know how I hate embarrassment.” His sharp-ended beard, waxed in the manner of an outland dandy, bobs up and down, agreeing with him. As it always does when he’s aggrieved, Verkusht’s left hand absently strokes the raised red scar encircling his right wrist. If you ever look closely at his right hand, you will see that the lines of his arm do not quite match up with those on his hand.
“It is right to dislike embarrassment,” I say. “So let us speak no more of it.”
“Not so fast.” He leans forward in his wooden chair. His linen Bekyar headdress lies over its back, exposing the black hair slicked tightly to his skull. “After all we’ve been through together, you hide yourself from me?”
“What we have been through together,” I repeat. “That includes the time of the Moon People?”
“I explained that a thousand times already. My seeming betrayal was merely a ruse.”
“At the ruins of Shopar?”
“I meant to come back for you.”
“In the Vault of the Locust?”
“Again: seeming betrayal, merely a ruse.”
The priestess shrugs. “In that instance, arguably the truth.”
Verkusht removes a dagger from his boot. With its razor tip, he expertly pries lodged dirt from beneath his nails. “Let me waste no more time with this ungrateful loghead,” he mutters to Obai. “That I regard him as a brother evidently means nothing to him. Tell me again what I stand to gain by keeping company with those who do not value it.”
“The Consortium generously rewards me,” she says.
“Even though you’re really in it to strike the balance of Nethys. Double loyalties.”
“I thought you’d approve.” She gestures toward his ragged attire. “Clearly you could use the silver.”
“You complain of my fickleness, yet seek my aid in betraying my people.”
“I said nothing about fickleness.”
“You say it with your gaze, priestess. Always with those damned eyes of yours.”
“You are still an outcast from your people, as Xhasi here is from his.”
“Helping keep them away from this child of yours won’t exactly get me back in their graces, will it?”
“Tell me what you want the Aspis to pay, and I’ll see they pay it. We need to know why the slavers sought the boy specifically, and neither Xhasi nor I...”
“Neither of you are effective sneaks and betrayers?” He breaks off mid-chortle, suddenly righting himself. The legs of his chair bang against tavern floorboards. Foreigners pour in through the doorway and a pair of windows. They carry short swords, cutlasses, and clubs with nail-covered heads. More than half a dozen of them fill the drinking hall.
“You will pay what you owe,” growls a towering half-human, whose other half might be orc or ogre. “You will pay in gold or blood!”
“My good friends here dispute the justice of your claims,” says Verkusht. He seeks the smallest of his adversaries and kicks him between the legs.
Verkusht vanishes into the scrum. The meadhall becomes a whirl of grunting flesh and swinging swords. Three of them are upon me. With difficulty I find room for my spear and push them back. Obai, her best spells expended against the slavers earlier in the day, lays harming hands on one opponent, who falls back groaning. She takes up her double-edged sword, its hilt decorated with the masks of Nethys, and lays into the debt collectors. Steel rings against steel. The weaker foes fall back while the stronger rush in. The half-human lumbers toward me, his enormous club clearing his path. He strikes a comrade, who sinks to the floor, head bleeding. If the mishap troubles him, he shows no signs of it.
I duck beneath his club, though it comes close enough to dislodge my boar-fur headdress. I stab at him with my spear, but he deftly sidesteps. A glancing blow tears at my flesh; the tips of the club’s jutting spikes carve a raking pattern across my shoulder. I connect my spear haft to his bony jaw. Though the blow is a solid one, he shakes it off, hardening his face into an idiot grin. I step aside from his next blow, then slash his fingers with the spearhead’s edge. He bleats out what is undoubtedly a curse in some outland tongue as his hand unclenches, dropping the club. When he ducks down to retrieve it, I direct a haft-blow to his temple. It judders across his thick skull to little effect. His great hands are upon my throat, thumbs pressing deep.
The half-human’s eyes roll back in his head. His grip loosens, and I step back to let him collapse. A curving Bekyar dagger handle protrudes from his back. The blade has pierced his heart from behind. Verkusht admires his handiwork approvingly, then ducks an enraged blow from another creditor. He arranges his fall so that it pulls his enemy with him. Then they are on the floor, with Verkusht behind the man, Verkusht’s garotte tight around his neck and the debt collector clawing vainly at it.
Verkusht breathes a harsh whisper into the man’s ear. “Order your men to stand down, Zenes, or you’ll lose more of them today.” A slash of a smile incises itself on Verkusht’s face. “You’ve picked on more than just one bedraggled gambler. Today you face the Scarred Ones.”
Zenes, an olive-skinned man with oiled beard and hair, tries to speak but hasn’t the air. He waves his hands in a gesture of surrender.
Two broad-armed men in motley armor step back from Obai, whom they had pushed into a corner. Spread across the floor are three men, their throats slashed. One still lives, a whitening hand pressed hard to keep the vei
n closed.
“Go, then,” Zenes wheezes.
Verkusht is first to leap up, leaving us to bear the brunt if his debt-holders choose to charge. With a determined pull he retrieves his dagger from the big man’s corpse. We follow him, eyes fixed on the men still capable of fighting. We walk backward and ready from the drinking house, but the men remain within.
The Bekyar strides merrily down the road. “Sorry to keep dragging out the argument like that. I thought Zenes and his bunch would never arrive. It goes without saying that I’ll go along on this mission of yours. Assuming the Consortium bargains fairly for my services.”
It is fruitless, but I cannot help myself. “You owe them a gambling debt?”
Verkusht shrugs. “There are two sides to every story.”
“Verkusht has an unusual definition of friendship.”
“You could have offered them the fees you’ll earn for the mission.”
His face ovals in shock. “And be left with nothing? Your judgment wounds me, Xhasi. You may well be a man of the jungle, content with nothing more than trees over your head and an overflowing basket of grobfruit and areca. I, however, am a person of civilized virtues, ill suited to deprivation or indignity. Now on to the important question: these slavers who were attempting to take your god-cursed boy—I don’t suppose you saw the clan markers on their headbands?”
I shake my head.
Noticing that his beard was blunted by the fight, he restores its waxen point. “Never mind. Most likely they are of the Rostoun.”
“Your clan,” Obai says.
Verkusht loses some of his flamboyance. “Indeed, priestess. You remember details well.”
“Have they seers and magicians among their number?” she asks.
Plague of Light Page 2
