Firebrand

by A. J. Hartley

  “But no children in the last few days?” I said.

  “There’s a clavtar over there,” said Radesh. “And ghosts.”

  “Ghosts aren’t real,” said Jadary.

  “The clavtar is,” said Radesh, as if that closed the subject.

  “What about Aab?” I asked. The girl was watching me intently. “Have you seen anything?”

  The child looked to Radesh, who was gazing across to the fragment of temple on the far side of the river looking fearful. Bertha extended a hand and touched her gently on her shoulder so the girl turned and looked at her.

  As Bertha repeated my question, she gestured with her hands, making pictures and symbols with her fingers, which the girl considered seriously.

  Small person. Over there. Seen?

  Gazing at Bertha with a kind of wonder, Aab nodded once.

  “You saw someone?” I asked.

  The girl pointed emphatically over the water.

  “She doesn’t know what you mean,” said Jadary. “She can’t hear, and she gets things confused.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” said Radesh. “She’s not stupid.”

  “She understands,” said Bertha, loud as ever, but soothing. “Don’t you, sweetness?”

  Aab made a noise and pointed again at the distant temple, then stabbed with her index finger at each of her friends in turn.

  “Children?” I said. “That’s what you mean, right? You saw children over there?”

  “It was probably just monkeys,” said Jadary, sounding uncannily like her mother.

  “How many?” asked Bertha, holding up her fingers to Aab and counting them off. She had gotten as far as six when Aab reached forward earnestly, her eyes serious, her body uncannily still, and grasped her hands.

  “Six?” I said. “When?”

  Bertha repeated the question carefully, signing instinctively, indicating the sun and then thumbing over her shoulder. The past.

  Aab nodded, fascinated by the woman’s hands.

  “One day? Two?” I tried, holding up my fingers as Radesh had done.

  Aab reached forward and bent one finger back into my fist.

  One.

  “Yesterday,” I said.

  * * *

  I DID NOT KNOW the south bank side of the river once you left the docklands, and I set out uneasily, beginning with a railway journey by Blesbok class locomotive with nothing but third-class carriages and half a dozen open haulage trucks. I sat in the rearmost car facing backward, scarf bound round my head, and my old work satchel in my lap with the strap looped over my head and one shoulder for safety. There was an old Lani man who I thought might have been a village elder sitting up front, two white ranchers, and a dozen Mahweni laborers, most of whom slept the whole way. No one spoke, and everyone ignored me, which was how I liked it.

  We went directly west, crossing the river at a narrow canyon four miles from Bar-Selehm on a single-track girder bridge, arcing south for another mile before I disembarked at a platform that hadn’t so much as a canopy to shade travelers from the blistering sun, but that did have a small steam crane with its own coal bunker for loading freight. The place was named only by mile marker, and I was the only one to get off there, startling a pair of female nyala grazing on the weedy ballast beside the track.

  I took a path east past a cotton field and a ranch where tsobu grazed and then there was, for a while, nothing. On either side was tall, wild grass and stands of acacia and nikorel trees throbbing with hummingbirds. I moved carefully, quietly, constantly looking about. There could be all manner of animals in the area, everything from elephants and one-horns, to weancats and hyenas. Birds whose names I did not know swooped and called overhead as I plodded on, sweating heavily, feeling the weight of the pistol stowed in my satchel but knowing its single shot would be of little use against anything large that decided to investigate what I was. Or tasted like.

  Not helping, I thought.

  In fact I saw nothing but a pair of giraffes in the distance and a single mud-caked warthog, which minced away when it caught wind of me, its tail in the air, indignant and absurd on its little trotters. It reminded me a little of Agatha Markeson in her high-heeled shoes.

  I didn’t know how far I would have to go exactly. I was following little more than a hunch bolstered by the reports Sureyna had shown me and what I could glean from her office’s maps about the land this side of the river. I didn’t know I would find what I was looking for, and a part of me wasn’t sure I wanted to. But about a mile from the railway, I came over a low rise and saw, off to my right in an open swath of wild grassland dotted with thorn trees, a flock of nbezu.

  There were perhaps fifty of them, smaller and more goatlike than antelope, and they were tended by three men and a small dog, which patrolled the group watchfully. The men were young and black, dressed in the traditional skirt and shoulder-draped robes of the Unassimilated Tribes.

  They were brothers, men who had saved my life once before. One was called Wayell, the other was Embiyeh, and the third, the one who came striding toward me and clasped me in a strong embrace to his bare, smooth chest while the others bowed and smiled as to some foreign dignitary, was Mnenga.

  CHAPTER

  26

  I SAID HIS NAME, then broke from the embrace and gazed at him, smiling.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  He shrugged and beamed, his face alive with joy as he took my hands and gazed at me.

  “Well,” he said, “we had good rains and there is new grass, so the nbezu are very happy.”

  He laughed then at the absurdity of what he was saying and hugged me to him again. I was overcome with relief, not just at seeing him, but at his easy acceptance of me, his pleasure that we were together again. I had feared he would be indignant, even angry with me, after our long silence. Now, feeling the warmth of his arms, his smile, I closed my eyes and clung to him.

  But that was too easy, and I did not deserve easy. Not yet.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, pulling away once more. “I meant to write to you, started to, but I couldn’t think what to say and wasn’t sure how to reach you so…” It sounded so stupid and ineffectual that I fished desperately in my pocket and pulled out the sorrel nut, showing it to him as if it was some luxorite gem encased in gold and crystal.

  He frowned, baffled.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I have some.”

  “No,” I said. “This is one you gave me. I saved it to remind me of you. When I felt lonely or was missing you, I would take it out and hold it.”

  “This nut,” he said.

  “Yes,” I answered, feeling more idiotic by the second.

  He tipped his head on one side thoughtfully, and we were suddenly conscious of his brothers watching.

  “That is…” He sought for the word. “Nice?” he said. “Sweet. Yes. Sweet. Thank you.”

  His gratitude pained me, his very kindness exposing my paltry gesture for what it was. I was getting it wrong again. The disappointment showed in my face, and he put his palm against my cheek. Tears of frustration were gathering in my eyes, but his touch stilled them, and I realized with a shock that he was smiling broader than ever. He leaned in close.

  “You know,” he whispered, “that you can find these nuts everywhere.”

  “They are not rare?” I asked, stunned out of my other confused feelings. “Hard to find?”

  He took his eyes from mine and glanced quickly round, his gaze alighting on a shrublike tree covered in new leaves.

  “Some there,” he said, turning and nodding to his left. “Another bush over there.”

  I frowned again, eyes brimming, and then he was holding me again and laughing till I joined in, till my guilt and anxiety melted in the simple joy of being with him once more.

  “Better?” he said at last.

  “Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “Now,” he said, “tell me why you are here.”

  I hesitated, but there was no critique, no judgment in
the remark, so I took a breath and told him about the refugees, who they were, why they had come here, and how I had tried to find them. He nodded gravely without asking why I was looking for them. That accepting disinterest was part of his special kindness and grace, and feeling it, like the warmth of his smile, I experienced another ripple of shame that I had—again—sought him out only when I needed his help.

  I took his hand, smooth on the back, calloused on the palm, as if he were the brother I never had, and in doing so, I remembered wondering if for him home was less about place and more about people. I could not read his smile for subtleties because it contained nothing more than happiness that I was with him, and for a moment—a wonderfully content and uncomplicated moment—I felt the same.

  At last, I released his hands.

  “We have heard of these people, or some like them,” he said, after consulting with his brothers in their own language. “Quundu, I think. We think they are closer to the river that way.” He pointed east, back toward the city, toward the ancient temple over the water from the Drowning.

  I nodded grimly. The haunted place. For all his pleasure at seeing me, he couldn’t hide the ripple of unease that thinking of it gave him. It was at least as dreadful for him as it was for me.

  “I need to go and look for them,” I said. “But I cannot speak to them. I was hoping—”

  “I will come,” he said.

  And that was Mnenga. Whatever fear of the place he might have, however inconvenient it would be, however dangerous, he would come. No hesitation.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I do not deserve your friendship.”

  Rarely had I said anything that felt more deeply true, though he rubbished the remark with a wave of his hand.

  “My brothers must stay here with the nbezu,” he said. “They are too stupid to leave alone. The nbezu,” he clarified, “not my brothers. Although…”

  His face split into that wide grin of his, and he turned to Embiyeh, translating quickly till they were both laughing, heads thrown back, roaring with delight. Wayell just smiled, and when he spoke, he looked concerned. Mnenga answered him shortly, again waving away whatever concerns his brother had raised, touching him on the shoulder and speaking slowly into his face, till Wayell pursed his lips and nodded with solemn acceptance.

  “These people,” Mnenga said. “The Quundu. We were also looking for them. The elders of my village have heard of them coming here from the north. Those who try to cross the desert die, so some have come by boat around the coast. But if they are caught by the city people, they are sent back, even though where they come from is very terrible, and many will die. You know there is a war there, yes?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But the city sends them back anyway,” he mused, shaking his head.

  I nodded, thinking of the way he divided the world not by tribe, class, or race but by “city” and “not city.”

  “If you found them, what were you going to do?” I asked.

  “We were supposed to tell our village elders where they were. That’s all,” he said, dissatisfied. “I think we should do more. Help to keep them safe from the city.”

  “Some people in the city want to help them too,” I said.

  He gave me a doubtful look.

  “Not many,” I conceded. “Some.”

  He nodded at that and managed a smile, which said that was as much as could be hoped for. Then he shouldered a roll of fabric lashed with twine and suspended from a hide cord, and picked up his short-shafted assegai. I hovered awkwardly while he said his farewells, then I shook his brothers by the hands and followed Mnenga as he checked the position of the sun and headed east.

  “They did not want you to go,” I said.

  “The temple is an old place where many dead are,” he said. “We like to leave it to them. And to the animals.”

  “I heard there was a clavtar in the area,” I said, hoping he would laugh the idea off.

  “There is,” he said, hefting his spear thoughtfully. “We have heard it. Let us hope we do not see it.”

  “And if we do?”

  “We will die,” he said, with a shrug and a half smile at my astonished face. “Probably,” he added, as if that would make me feel much better.

  “Probably?” I said, giving him a pointed look.

  “Possibly,” he said. “We may survive. Only be very badly injured.”

  “I think you can stop now,” I said, giving him a grin. “I missed you,” I added on impulse, realizing just how much even as the words formed.

  “I also,” he answered. “Every day.”

  He smiled, but sadly, and I had to look away. It was several minutes before I asked him to tell me about the temple.

  “It is very old,” he said. “We call it Umoya ithempeli. Long ago it was a place of … like a village where everyone comes for festivals.”

  “A place of community?”

  “Community,” he said. “Yes. Before the white people came. The dead were left here.”

  “Buried?”

  “Only the chiefs of their tribes would go into the ground,” said Mnenga. “The rest were left to feed the animals.” He caught my look and smiled. “It is the spirit that matters for us. The body is just like a … embewini. The outside of a seed or fruit.”

  “A shell? A husk?”

  “Husk, yes,” he said. “It is not important.”

  The idea was not so very far from those I had been raised with in the Drowning. We burned our dead, but sometimes the fire was only a token gesture, and there was a lot left for the jackals and crocodiles.

  “So why does the place upset you?” I asked.

  “We remember our ancestors,” he said. “We keep them in our thoughts, and we celebrate them in festivals. They watch out for us from the spirit world. But if we forget them, they become angry, dangerous.”

  “The people buried by the temple have been forgotten?” I asked.

  “Who is here to remember them?” he asked. “All the people here died when the white men came. Died, or were moved to other places, their dead left alone. For three hundred years, they have been left alone: no festivals, no sacrifices, no one to remember what they did.”

  “This will make them angry?”

  Mnenga shrugged. “I do not know. Perhaps. Perhaps none of it is true.”

  He looked sad and annoyed at himself, at his confused and diluted faith, as if he had lost something but was not sure how. Without thinking, I took his large hand in mine again, so that he gave me a quick, startled look, then nodded in acknowledgment, and walked in silence beside me.

  It was over an hour before we began to cut north toward the river. I felt Mnenga’s unease deepen as we did so, particularly as the land began to descend and the vegetation grew thick, lush, and pulsing with the life of the wetlands below. Insects whined about our heads, and Mnenga paused to pick broad green leaves from an unremarkable-looking plant, which he crushed in his hands and smeared on my face and arms. The juice was slightly sticky and smelled of oranges and spice.

  “Keeps the mosquitoes away,” he said. “Mostly.” He frowned as he looked about him, and I was conscious that he had raised the tip of his spear as if he might need to use it at a moment’s notice. “Stay close,” he said, “and stay quiet. There are many dangerous animals here as well as the clavtar.”

  I had never seen a clavtar and knew few of my age who had, though some of the Lani elders had stories of days before they had been confined to the south bank of the Kalihm. I had seen pictures, of course, but the animals themselves were rare, hunted close to extinction during the initial conquest by Belrand when Bar-Selehm as it was today had first taken shape. They had retreated into areas where people were few and game was plentiful, but their names were still whispered with awe and horror throughout the city. The clavtar is a kind of lion unique to the region, gray as steel and very large, three or four times the body weight of the most impressive weancat. Exotic though they were, I could live a lifetime with
out seeing one in person.

  The first sign that we were entering what had been the old temple grounds was a collapsed ring of stone that looked like it may once have been thatched with reeds from the riverbank. The ground was scorched in parts as if by lightning strikes or brush fires, and the whole had an air of the desolate and abandoned. The air was still, and I heard no birdcalls, so that the silence felt weighted and significant. I drew the ornamental pistol from my satchel and checked that it was loaded, drawing a doubtful look from Mnenga. I shrugged, but—feeling no more comfortable for holding the weapon—said nothing. We both knew it wouldn’t stop a clavtar.

  The temple itself, if that was what it was, was an uneven stone pyramid made of steps, rounded and irregular on the sides. It was flanked by tumbledown alcoves sporting roughly carved faces, all eyes and teeth. It wasn’t clear if they were human or animal, but they leered with undeniable menace. Mnenga made a private gesture, both ceremonial and fearful, an instinctive flicker of the hands to ward off evil. If it was intended to make me feel better, it didn’t.

  The place was eerily silent, the air itself dead, though I also felt an unsettling presence as if the very stones had eyes. With each step we took, the quiet menace of the place swelled, but I heard nothing beyond our own footfalls in the dry grass, as if something was holding its breath, waiting. Maybe it was the wildness of the place getting to my urban heart. Or maybe it was the past, all that had once been here before the whites came and reduced it to ghosts and echoes. Whatever it was, it was dreadful, and I stayed close to Mnenga, wishing I could hear his breath, his heartbeat in this strange dead place.

  The top of the pyramid was a crag so that it was almost possible to believe that the structure had not been made by human hands at all, but was an accident of geology, a part of the earth that had speared up through the ground. It was the portion of the temple visible from the Drowning. If the lost children were still in the area, this was where we would find them. I felt a sudden and powerful urge to get them and go, run back to the city and never look back. Mnenga’s tales of angry spirits haunting these stones seemed far more plausible now that we were among them, the light softening as the sun began its descent in the west.