Scarlet Odyssey

by C. T. Rwizi

  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.”

  “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, Ilap
ara 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.

  Case in point: BaMimvura, Ilapara’s current employer. Or as most people in the town know him: that greedy moneylender and mercenary boss who joined the Cataract’s loyal army of minions in exchange for having his competitors killed or threatened out of business.

  She crosses a street and walks past an old monolith with the hypnotic symbol of a gushing waterfall carved onto its faces. That symbol is on banners and plaques all over town, proclaiming to everyone who looks at it the identity of the town’s lord and master.

  The Cataract.

  Mystics of the Umadi tribe have a rather pesky ancestral talent; generally, their arcane power grows with the size of territory under their control, and the more important this territory is perceived to be, the greater the power it provides. As a result, every stopover town along the thousand-mile strip of the Artery running up Umadiland is prime real estate for any Umadi warlord.

  For many comets the Cataract was a powerful and well-established warlord with a solid grip on the heart of Umadiland, through which the Artery traverses. His power drank from Kageru and many other stopover towns, and it seemed for a long while that no one would unseat him from his throne. BaMimvura figured, therefore, that the warlord would be able to defend his hold on these lands indefinitely, and that currying favor with him was a worthy risk in the long term.

  He was wrong.

  Everyone in town is whispering about a new and mysterious warlord they call the Dark Sun. According to what Ilapara has heard, he’s been steadily creeping upward from the south, eating away swaths of the heartland from the Cataract. Just recently he took Seresa, the next stopover town south of Kageru, and now there are whispers that Kageru is next.

  As she skirts the edge of the town’s main market square, Ilapara lets her eyes sweep the muddy streets around her. Travelers from a caravan that stopped over last night can be seen all along the market stalls, buying, selling, bartering. Most are Umadi, the women in colorful veils and billowy robes, men in dashikis and kikois wrapped around their waists, but a number of them are from other, more distant tribes, judging by their foreign garments—boubous, djellabas, kitenges, and capulanas, all sewn in a thousand different styles. Everyone’s going about their business as usual. The merchants too. Not at all what would be happening if the town’s season was about to change.

  Mama Shadu is just being paranoid, Ilapara tells herself. This town is too important for the Cataract to let fall, and these people know it too.

  All she has wanted since joining Mimvura Company a comet ago is to be part of the company’s caravan security crew. The pay is far better for mercenaries who tour the Artery, and their valued experience guarding caravans from raiders and dangerous wildlife makes it easier for them to find other lucrative employment, should they wish to. Leaving now, when she is so close to being chosen, would mean she spent the last comet as a glorified goon for nothing. That won’t do.

  By the time she reaches the iron gates to the Mimvura premises, she has talked herself out of her anxiety. Mama Shadu is no sibyl. I can’t just leave town because she said so.

  Several stopover towns have a Mimvura office t
o facilitate the smooth movement of the company’s caravans along the Artery from one end of Umadiland to the other. The one in Kageru also doubles as the boss’s residence, a walled compound built along a wide street branching off the Artery, larger and steadier than most properties in the town and clearly belonging to a man who has grown comfortable with his position in the order of things.

  The main structure, BaMimvura’s colorfully painted three-story mud-brick house, is a rejection of the town’s aesthetic of utilitarian decrepitude. It has stained glass windows and a roof clad with shingles. A neat driveway of waterworn pebbles leads up to the house, lined by grand outdoor carvings. He even installed an expensive system of tanks and indoor plumbing, all imported from distant tribelands. Gold-feathered peacocks hold court near a spouting rock fountain, and a stable houses the boss’s enviable collection of prized tronic antelope and zebroids.

  Warlords exist whose homes aren’t nearly as splendid.

  As she walks past the gatehouse shack, she nods at the guard posted there, a young man with a pronounced overbite dressed in a shiny breastplate over a brightly colored dashiki.

  “Hello, Midzi,” she says in greeting.

  He nods back. “Ilira.”

  “Is the boss around?”

  “They’re all in the backyard,” Midzi says. “All of them.”

  She slows to a stop and then doubles back. What was that in Midzi’s voice? “All of them?” she says, watching him carefully.

  His eyes gleam with significance. “Yes. The boss, his whole family, Bloodworm.”

  Alarmed, Ilapara moves closer and lowers her voice. “Bloodworm is here? Why?”

  “No clue,” Midzi says, eyes wide. “Rode in an hour ago with two servants. You could go look. You have the perfect excuse.”

  Ilapara was planning to deliver Mama Shadu’s debt to the boss or his eldest son, but now she shakes her head. “I take over your shift in twenty minutes. You can go look yourself.”

  “Kwashe passed by some time ago. He went to look, and he still hasn’t come back.”