They all got along once upon a time. Then Salo became a disgrace to the family.
Ever the comedian, Jio says, “His Highness finally graces us with his presence,” and gets chuckles from the three other rangers seated on low stools around the matje board. “Where did you dig him up, mzi?” he says to Niko, using the affectionate term for cousin—what all rangers call each other. “Was he getting high with the cowherds again? Or was he hunting for spirit balls this time?”
Sibu, Jio’s right-hand man in all things, says, “He seems to like doing that, doesn’t he? Hunting for balls.”
More chuckles.
“Lay off him, will you?” Niko says, glaring from his stallion. “What did we say about disrespecting your older brother?”
Niko can talk like that because they actually respect him. He became the de facto leader of the kraal’s younger rangers within a moon of moving here.
“We’re just joking with him, mzi,” Jio says. “No harm done.”
“Your jokes are getting stale,” Salo tells them. “You should try thinking up new ones.”
The twins whisper something to each other and laugh.
Rolling his eyes, Salo starts making his way through the kraal’s open gates. He half expects Monti to follow, but the boy is obsessed with matje and has already scampered off to inspect the rangers’ game board.
“Don’t forget your promise,” Niko says behind Salo. “I expect you at the glade tomorrow at dawn.”
Salo makes a vague motion of the hand.
“Wouldn’t that be something,” Jio replies loudly enough for his voice to carry. “Four Eyes in the bull pen again. I wonder how long he’ll last this time before he wets himself.”
Poorly stifled giggles chase after him, but Salo keeps walking.
“For Ama’s sake,” comes Niko’s voice. “Must you be so cruel to him all the time?”
But Salo doesn’t expect any different from his brothers, and he certainly doesn’t expect Niko’s tepid rebukes to result in any lasting changes. This is just the way of things. The sky is blue, the moon is red, and rangers are arrogant bastards.
Well, most of them are, and there’s nothing to do about it but adapt.
The mill sits beneath a simple shed not far from the gates so that it is easily accessible to those who live outside the kraal. Normally, its metallic drone can be heard from miles away as its gearwheels turn at the behest of the mind stone inside the engine. But today it’s little more than a hulking mass of scrap metal.
Salo finds the millers lounging on old benches next to the shed like a pair of ruminating goats. Their chests are ashen with flour, their conical hats askew on their heads, and they’re both chewing blades of grass while they practically drool at the clan’s only Asazi, who won’t stop pacing in front of them like a restless leopard searching for prey.
She seems too lost in her journal of endless to-do lists to notice their lecherous stares, but she slams the book shut as soon as she spots Salo walking up the road. “Where on Meza have you been? I’ve been looking for you all day.”
You might mistake Nimara for a princess, what with her flowing skirts of patterned kitenges, the confidence with which she wears her beaded bodice and face paints, the intricate spiderlike choker of red steel coiled around her slender neck, and the beaded strings woven into the curls of her bouffant hair like diadems.
But Nimara is no princess. She only looks like one because she’s an Asazi, blessed with magical powers by a Yerezi mystic, and just as the Ajaha must embody the masculine virtues, Asazi must always embody the virtues of femininity, which someone long ago decided are artistry, nurturing, intelligence, scholarliness, and, of course, beauty.
Nimara lives up to all of them almost to a fault.
“I went out,” Salo says, choosing not to elaborate.
She looks him up and down like she suspects he might have gone swimming in filth. “You were smoking nsango, weren’t you.”
“I . . . maybe smoked a bit this morning,” Salo admits. “Why does it matter?”
“You reek of it.”
He sighs. “It’s for my headaches, Nimara. You know this. What’s with the inquisition?”
She blinks several times like she’s just realizing something. “All right, maybe I shouldn’t be taking my stress out on you. But the mill broke in a major way, and when you’re not here, people come complaining to me. Except I don’t do machines, remember? That’s your thing.”
“Well, I’m here now, so you can relax.”
She stares at him, biting her bottom lip. “I may also need your help in an unrelated matter.”
Salo watches her for a long moment. “I won’t like this, will I.”
“Who knows,” she says with a coy smile. “You just might. I’ll tell you about it once we get to your workshop.”
Not one minute inside the kraal, and I’m already wishing I could run off. He releases a heavy breath. “Let me take a look at the mill first.”
With the millers watching, he moves to the machine and unlatches the steel casing covering the engine. An old but well-oiled system of gears and cogs stares back at him from within. His gaze immediately lands on the shiny, pebble-size orb of pure tronic bone at the heart of the engine—or at least what was once an orb of tronic bone, with enormous reserves of arcane energy locked inside it, but is now just a useless, deformed husk waiting to be thrown into a rubbish pit.
“Idiots,” he says through gritted teeth. “Pure and utter idiots.”
“Anyone specific or humanity in general?” Nimara chimes in.
“Those idiots over there.” Salo points an accusing finger at the millers. “What part of ‘Don’t overload the machine, or it will overheat and destroy the mind stone’ don’t they understand? Am I speaking a foreign language here?”
Both millers scowl and stop chewing on their blades of grass. “You can’t talk about us like that,” says the older of the two. “Just because your aba is chief doesn’t mean we have to take shit from you.”
“I agree completely,” Nimara jumps in before Salo can retaliate with a string of vitriol. “But you do have to take shit from him because he’s one of two people in this kraal who can fix your mess, and the other one is a hopeless drunk.”
The younger miller curls his lip. “He’s not good at fixing things, though, is he? Clan Sibere has mills that work all day, and they never break.”
“True,” Nimara replies, remaining perfectly calm. “But they also have a mystic who can enchant things for them. Things like cooling elements so their machines never overheat. Last I checked, we didn’t have that. And last I checked, I was in charge of who works here, which means that if I needed to, I could have you replaced for your incompetence. As a matter of fact”—she smiles sweetly and opens her journal, a pen threatening to add another item to her to-do list—“shall I have that arranged?”
The two millers acquire constipated expressions, like boys just scolded by their mother in public. They shake their heads in unison, but Nimara keeps the pen where it is.
“Are you sure?” she says.
“No, Si Nimara,” the older one says. “I mean, yes, we’re sure. We like working here. Please don’t replace us.”