“Then this won’t happen again, will it?”
“No, Si Nimara. It won’t.”
“Excellent.” Nimara aims her fake smile at Salo. “When can we expect the mill to be functional again?”
Salo glares at the millers, not quite convinced by their sudden contrition, but a nascent headache dulls his will to fight. “I’ll have to take the engine apart and assemble it around a new mind stone. If I do it too fast, the spirit won’t accept its new home.” He shakes his head morosely. “It’ll probably take a full day. Maybe two.”
“All right, so you can start first thing tomorrow morning and hopefully have the mill working by sundown?”
He hesitates, remembering his promise to Niko. “Maybe?”
“Perfect.” Nimara’s steel bangles ting pleasantly as she jots something down in her journal. When she’s done, she tucks it away in her colorful reedfiber shoulder bag and clasps her hands together. “Now, I have an appointment with that big brain of yours, so why don’t I walk you to your shed?”
“Fine. But Nimara, if this is what I think it is—”
“Hush.” She takes his arm and starts leading them away from the mill and toward his workshop. “We’ll talk about it in private.”
2: Ilapara
Kageru, along the World’s Artery—Umadiland
The World’s Artery: an ancient roadway stretching up the Redlands from the southernmost cape of the Shevu tribelands, going up thousands of miles north to Yonte Saire, the heart of the continent, then reaching farther up to the fabled desert city of Ima Jalama, where the Redlands start to give way to the barren dunes of the great Jalama Desert—and the strange lands that lie beyond.
In a shantytown straddling the Artery somewhere in Umadiland, Ilapara treads along a muddy backstreet with quick, determined steps, each one avoiding the rivers of raw sewage oozing down the road. Those boots of hers are high-quality hide, bought for over half her monthly earnings, and she’ll be damned if she lets the filthy streets of Kageru muck them up.
Rickety market stalls line the road on either side of her, all waiting for an insistent wind to blow them sideways. As she comes within view of one such structure, the short woman behind the counter ducks down.
At the stall, Ilapara balances the blunt end of her spear on the ground and sighs. “Don’t, Mama Shadu. I’ve already seen you. And even if I hadn’t, that’s hardly a good place to hide from me.”
The woman bites her lips sheepishly as she rises back up. Murky little flasks of medicines are arranged in neat rows on the planks of the makeshift counter in front of her. She wears her dark veil loosely enough to let her rufous dreadlocks spill out.
“Oh, hello, Ilira. I didn’t see you there. I was just . . . looking for something I’d dropped.” Mama Shadu shows the wooden pestle in her hand, which she was using to grind herbs in the mortar on the counter. “How are you, anyway? Is there something I can help you with? Need a soul charm? Another contraceptive elixir, perhaps?”
Ilira is Ilapara’s Umadi alias. She’s even dressed like a young Umadi woman, with a crimson veil wound tightly enough around her head to keep all her dreadlocks tucked under. Her leather and aerosteel breastplate, however, worn over billowy crimson robes, might raise an eyebrow or two, since it’s not exactly conventional. But it’s not entirely unusual, either, so she gets away with it.
“Let’s not play this game, Mama Shadu,” she says. “You know exactly why I’m here.”
“You’re right. I do know.” Mama Shadu drops the oblivious act and folds her arms, her kohl-ringed eyes flashing with defiance. “The question is, Do you, Ilira?”
“I’m pretty sure it involves you paying me the ten rocks you owe my boss.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Mama Shadu says. “I’m talking about why you’re still here, in this town, working for a man who chose sides, and worse, the wrong side.” She puts her hands on the counter and leans forward so that her yellowed teeth come into view. “It’s in the winds, my dear girl. A change of season is upon this town, and when it comes, it’ll be swift and bloody, and those who did not plant well will weep. I would not linger if I were you.” She leans even closer, speaking in a harsh whisper. “They’ll smell your master on your clothes.”
An unwelcome tingle begins at the nape of Ilapara’s neck. She subdues the urge to rub her silver nose ring, holding the aerosteel shaft of her spear tighter in her grip. The smile she puts on shows too many teeth. “I really don’t want to have to force you to pay, Mama Shadu. I respect you too much for that. But you are trying what scant reserves of patience I have.”
“And I respect you too, Ilira. Actually, I like you. You’ve been a good customer these last few moons, which is why I’m warning you. Get out before it’s too late.”
“Thanks for the warning. Now the money you owe, please.”
Mama Shadu doesn’t move, her expression mulish.
Ilapara holds her gaze, placid but firm as a brick wall.
Finally the woman clucks her tongue and draws a leather purse from beneath the counter. While Ilapara watches, she counts out ten square-shaped silver coins, identical in size but with dissimilar stamps on their faces—in a stopover town along the continent’s busiest roadway, every other coin in circulation will have come from a different tribe.
Mama Shadu pushes the coins across with blackened fingers. “Here. Take your damned money.”
Ilapara picks up the coins, hides them in one of the pockets of her leather shoulder belt, and turns to leave.
“Wait. Take this too.” Seeming reluctant, Mama Shadu slides something else over, a pale circular band of witchwood with esoteric glyphs carved all over its surface. Embedded into the hollow at the center of the band is the silvery orb of a mind stone. “It has the spirit of an inkanyamba. It’ll come in handy should you ever need to disappear in a pinch.”
Ilapara stares down at the soul charm with narrowed eyes, wondering if the woman really managed to collect the mind stone of a dreaded inkanyamba. She has bought charms from her before, and none have been nearly that impressive. “How much?” she says, not bothering to hide her mistrust.
“Oh no, dear. This one is on me.”
“I don’t need your charity.”
“But I’m doing this for myself, dear girl,” Mama Shadu says with an unsettling smile. “I would feel very guilty if you got your head chopped off and I didn’t help you when I had the chance.”
A chill ripples down Ilapara’s spine, but she doesn’t let it show. She picks up the soul charm and says, “BaMimvura thanks you for your business.” Then she walks away.
“Tell him to enjoy it,” Mama Shadu calls behind her. “He won’t be in business for much longer.”
The rules of surviving in an Umadi stopover town: obey the reigning warlords, but don’t get too close to them, don’t pick sides when they fight, and don’t ever get in their way or in the way of their disciples.
Most people ambitious or desperate enough to live in a stopover town know to abide by these all-important rules, but there is no shortage of fools who think the rules don’t apply to them. It never ends well.