Ilapara stops next to Kwashe, a silent spectator leaning against a wall a safe distance away, watching the unfolding ritual with his arms crossed. She feels the temperature fall around her, the cold embrace of a harsh truth her mind won’t accept.
“What’s going on?” she says.
Kwashe was once a carefree young man with a quick smile, and then he went on his first tour up the Artery. Now, whenever she looks into his eyes, she sees only disillusion and anger swimming just beneath the surface.
“The boss got spooked,” he says without looking away from the spectacle. “He’s paid Bloodworm to perform a muti ritual of protection for his family.”
Ilapara feels her stomach churn as she regards the bleeding Faraswa man. “But that’s their gardener. He works here.”
“For fifteen years,” Kwashe says and lifts a shoulder in a half shrug. “Faraswa blood, and all that. And apparently the muti is stronger if there’s a bond between victim and perpetrator, so.” He shrugs again.
Inside the circle of the kneeling family, standing over the victim, Bloodworm’s bony figure sways, trancelike, to the beat of the drums. He is a disciple of the Cataract, the judge and executioner presiding over Kageru in the warlord’s name, and is feared by all for his terrible powers over blood and flesh. Even now Ilapara sees trickles of his victim’s blood—blood that had fallen to the earth—crawling up his legs and thighs like living worms, converging upon the putrid gash on his belly and feeding the poisons brewing there.
He reaches down from behind and cups his docile victim’s chin, his manic, bloodshot eyes staring into the east, where the moon will rise in a few hours. “By the power of the Great Woman of the Skies,” he shouts in a voice that makes Ilapara shiver, “she who sits upon a throne of blood, we summon you, our ancestors from the Infinite Path, so that you may hear our pleas.”
And with a quick motion of the witchwood knife, Bloodworm severs the gardener’s other ear.
“I can’t watch this.” Ilapara turns away in horror, gouged to the depths of her soul.
But Kwashe’s arm shoots out to grab her, his nails digging painfully into the skin beneath her crimson robe. “Don’t you dare turn away.”
She wrests her arm back, tears flinging from her eyes. “Why the devil not?”
His gaze is cold and without mercy, just like his voice. This is not the Kwashe she once knew, the optimist who was always ready to tell a joke; this is a hollow stranger in his body. “That poor man is being tortured to death for the simple crime of being what he is. The least we can do is bear witness. Let his death torment us, drive us to madness if need be. The Blood Woman knows we deserve worse.” He looks back at the ritual, eyes hard as stones. “We chose to work for this man.”
“No.” Ilapara shakes her head vigorously as if to cast the words out of her mind. “I never chose this.”
“But you knew what he was, didn’t you?” Kwashe says. “We all did. And yet here we are, like tsetse to a festering wound. Collecting debts for him, protecting his properties, running his errands. We’re no different from him, Ilira. We might even be worse.”
Kwashe isn’t holding her anymore, but his words keep Ilapara rooted to the ground. She’d like nothing more than to tell him he’s wrong, that she’s played no part in this atrocity, but she knew going in what kind of man BaMimvura was.
She’d heard the rumors of muti killings. They are not strictly uncommon in Umadiland, despite those who practice them being universally hated and reviled, and there were whispers that BaMimvura was one such individual. But she closed her ears to such talk because she needed coin and a job.
Kwashe is right, she realizes. I deserve to watch every second of that man’s death. But when Bloodworm reaches into the gardener’s compliant mouth and begins to cut out his tongue, she averts her gaze for the last time.
“I have gate duty,” she says and can’t walk away fast enough.
3: Musalodi
Khaya-Siningwe—Yerezi Plains
Salo and Nimara walk past the kraal’s grammar school on their way to his workshop. Several girls in colorful beads and skirts are sitting on reed mats along the school’s polished veranda, frowning in concentration at the chalky slates in their hands while a heavily pregnant woman watches with hawkeyed attention.
Both Salo and Nimara wave at her; she smiles and waves back, her copper bangles shimmering reflectively.
“Hello, Ama,” he says and smirks at the girls. “A numbers test, I presume? And I’m guessing you didn’t warn them.”
“They are girls,” Ama Lira says unapologetically. “Their minds should be quick, and they should know to be always prepared.”
Ama Lira is the chief’s wife and Salo’s stepmother. She is also one of the grammar school’s teachers, with a reputation for testing her students frequently and often without prior notice.
“Go easy on them, Ama Lira,” Nimara suggests with a wistful smile. “I remember how much I hated surprise exams.”
The girls mumble in agreement, prompting Ama Lira to shake her head at them with both hands on her waist. “Listen to these children. They want things to be easy when they should be begging me to make them harder.”
Her students complain in unison.
“We are not playing games here,” Ama Lira says. “When Nimara awakens, she’ll need Asazi to work with her. But the girls of this clan have lagged behind for too long. You need to be whipped into shape! Now get back to it before I deduct another five minutes from your time.”
The girls return to their slates with muted grumbles, and next to Salo, Nimara’s smile becomes fixed. “Good luck!” she says. “And don’t be nervous.”
When they have walked out of earshot, Salo studies the side of her face. “Are you okay?”
She doesn’t look at him. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
“If you say so,” Salo says, deciding not to pry.
The thing about Nimara is that she’s practically the only woman in the entire clan still willing to serve in an arcane capacity. In fact, Clan Siningwe hasn’t known a mystic in over ten comets.
It is whispered that the last AmaSiningwe cast a curse on the clan before her death, ensuring that any woman who attempted to succeed her would suffer an untimely end. Salo isn’t sure he believes this, but a succession of Siningwe women did die at their awakening ceremonies, either accidentally or by the redhawks they had summoned.
The queen was forced to step in so the clan wouldn’t remain defenseless, but even she wouldn’t go further than blessing Nimara and the clan’s Ajaha with her power. She rarely sets foot anywhere near the kraal.
And so, as the first woman in years willing to take her chances and prove the curse a myth, Nimara has become the clan’s best and only hope for a clan mystic. So far she’s done a fine job of it, but these days her smiles don’t come as quickly, and they rarely reach her eyes. A restless energy lingers about her all the time, like she’ll explode if she sits still even for a moment. She hasn’t complained to him about it, but he can sense her unease. Everyone is looking at her, waiting, expecting, and it’s slowly eating at her.
He might have pitied her were she not the most capable person he knows.