Dominion

by Nicole Givens Kurtz

  “I go Jafojo this morning, go check the register.” He blinks, zones out for a second, as if trying to disbelieve what he saw. “The name whey I see there, the name no make sense.”

  Max already knows. “Just go to work. We go yan later.”

  “Na your Popsie name dey there, Maxy. Na Mazi Aniekwu dey the register.” Max holds

  Chidi’s eyes. “Go to work.” He turns to leave.

  “They say the body dey since like four, five years,” Chidi continues, oblivious of Max’s efforts to deflect him. “Nobody know, because na one mass burial like that, different people from different hospitals with no relatives for mortuary.” He sighs. “Bro, I swear, I no know—”

  Max puts up a hand. “Just go.”

  Chidi sighs again and heads for the car. Max goes back in, shuts the door and listens to the grunting sounds of the hearse until they’re out of earshot before he opens the kitchenette.

  The thing is still there, where he’d bound it with the neckties and stowed away under the shelves once again. Max, blinking, studies it and worries about his own safety. Imagine what the police will think about having your father’s mutilated body in your kitchenette. How many years in prison does one even serve for something like this?

  Max runs a hand over his head. This was how Nwanso’s madness started, first with the simple panic that leads to denial. Then came the slow descent into dementia, so much so that she had to be driven out, to sea. He feels it already, the onset of his own promised madness. What is this exactly, juju or what? He’s never really believed in all that rubbish, but then what happened to Nwanso happened, and now there’s a dead-but-not-dead father in his kitchenette. He isn’t going to sit around asking stupid questions.

  ✦✦✦

  Nwanso’s shanty is six two-by-four timbers dug into the sand of Oniru beach, with tarpaulin wrapped over and around them, situated only as far from the shore as the waves go at the highest tide. The woman herself is as ragged as the tarp and as old as the sea, her skin as pockmarked as the stabs of footprints in the sand around her shanty: stray dogs, seagulls, crabs left behind by rushing tide. Max notices his are the only human footprints beside hers.

  They sit opposite each other on little stools outside the shanty, the breeze snatching her words. She peers into Max’s face through cataract-ridden eyes, her hair wild and separated, like seaweed.

  “I told you, you don’t touch your people,” she says.

  “I know, I know. It was a stupid mistake.”

  “You don’t touch your people,” she repeats, “because if you’ve kept them alive enough in your chest, they will come back. Then you will think you can let them stay, you will think you can’t lose them again. And that’s how you become mad, old, rotten.” She shakes her head “That’s how you become them.”

  Max has known the hidden dangers of harvesting all along. Difficult to recognize a loved one who has bloated, shrunk and then decomposed, and sawing off body parts in pitch darkness didn’t help. You had to fail to know, and by the time you did, you’d already awoken something you couldn’t send back to sleep.

  “You’re saying I can’t take it back?” Max asks.

  She gazes at him, blank. “You don’t touch your people. It is known.”

  “Biko, Nwanso,” he says, leaning in against the breeze. “There has to be a way at least.”

  She shakes her head again, mumbles to herself. Max watches solemnly, remembering the once vibrant woman from her days as senior mortician at LASUTH, when she still topped the harvesting charts on the market. Not the crackled and remiss caricature that sits before him now, the ash dust of morning after a night of glowing embers.

  She stops mumbling, then says something. The breeze swats it aside. Max leans in. “You said what?”

  “You need to destroy it,” she screams back. Max lifts his eyebrows. “Like, burn the body?”

  She laughs, shakes her head. “You’re foolish. You think I haven’t tried that?” She casts a quick glance behind her, at the shanty’s opening. “Burning only worsens the smell when they come back.”

  “I don’t get.”

  “You still have something that keeps bringing it back that you need to destroy.” Max thinks, then it strikes him. “I’ve sold them already.”

  “Destroy it,” she says, looking past him at something distant, beyond the shore. A thrill runs up Max’s calves. “You mean I have to go and get it back?” Her eyes shift to him.

  “Destroy it,” she repeats.

  Max swears under his breath, then to Nwanso, “So there’s no other way?” She shrugs.

  “Did you destroy yours?” he asks. When she frowns, he adds, “Your sister.”

  Her face stays expressionless for seconds, blinking.

  “You’re still here,” Max says. “You must’ve found a way.”

  She studies him for a beat, then slowly, pitifully, she shakes her head from side to side, and glances back at the opening to the shut- off shanty. Max follows her eyes and notices two sets of footprints there. One leads out to where Nwanso sits. The other meanders about the opening, but never goes past it.

  Max knows he must go back to the buyer. Or else.

  ✦✦✦

  Chidi pulls the hearse off the Ketu-Oworonshoki expressway and eases down the windy path to Chinese Village. The arch-and-turret simulation of the Great Wall that passes for the entrance into the village looms above. Max thinks the “China Commercial City” written in logograms bears a dismal look. It frowns down at them, caught the wrong way by the setting sun.

  It is quiet inside the village, which is wrong in many ways, for it once possessed the vibe of the commercial hub it’s meant to be, until the customs authority raided it in 2006. So now, the shop windows have lace fabric, flower vases and jeans hung next to their Closed signs. It’s a dead man’s town with living people inside.

  Chidi drives to the far end of the village and pulls into a cramped nook before turning off the engine. Dusk quickly approaches and the place stinks of decomposing refuse. There’s a row of back doors to what used to be shops or living quarters or both. Or still are.

  When Max gets out of the car, Chidi doesn’t follow.

  “No way.” He folds his arms in the driver’s seat and pouts. Max slams the passenger door and heads for the door which Chidi has pointed out to him. He knocks, once, twice.

  “Wanda?” A voice asks from inside in Hausa.

  Max doesn’t respond. The door pulls back, and the buyer’s marked face peers out. He studies Max for a second, then frowns and steps out in a flurry of robes. Max’s eyes don’t miss the dagger underneath.

  “Me ya sa ka ‘a nan?”

  “We need the goods back,” Max says, pulling out the money from his pockets. “See, I have your money. Two sixty. I added ten on top, for the wahala.” He hands it out to the man, but the man doesn’t even look at it. His face is set, focused on Max.

  “Ba mayarwa,” he says.

  Of course, no returns. Rule number three of the harvesting game: Never ask for the goods back. Ever.

  “We can’t sell it anymore,” Max says, pushing his luck. “We need to use it for something else.”

  The man’s eyes rest on Max, then flit behind him to Chidi at the steering. He finally gives one short nod, and retreats into his quarters. There’s an antsy wait where Chidi smokes two cigarettes in huge drags and Max hops from foot to foot and sweats in his palms.

  Finally, the man re-emerges with the familiar lunch bag and hands it to Max. Max tries to give him the money again, but he isn’t even looking at it. He’s looking at Chidi.

  “Ba kudi.” He points to Chidi. “Ina son wannan.”

  Chidi spooks immediately he notices the man’s finger, and starts to get out of the car. Max is about to tell him to calm down, that he’ll take care of this, but it happens so fast.

  They appear out of nowhere. Five or six men, robed as the buyer himself, with daggers jutting from underneath
their robes. They pounce on Chidi, clamp his mouth and constrain his arms without any effort. One of them whips out his curved dagger and holds it to his face.

  “Wait wait!” Max says, suddenly confused. “What do you want, what?” The buyer cocks his head, stares at Max.

  “I say, we no want money,” he says in broken English. “We want,”—he points to Chidi, grappling between the men—“man.”

  “No, no,” Max says, tightening his fists. “You can’t just…take him. For what na?” “We no take am,” the buyer says. “Only goods.” He points to his body parts as he says them. “Yatsun, hakora, da kunnuwa.”

  Chidi’s eyes widen in understanding as the men clamp down harder. One of them pulls out his curved dagger and steps on Chidi’s ankle to hold his sandaled foot down.

  “Stop!” Max screams, clenches his fists and charges for them. The men back away and circle the nook, dragging Chidi along. Chidi’s whimpers echo off the walls. A shutter opens somewhere in response.

  “I’ll kill you if you touch him,” Max says, following them. “I’ll kill you, I swear.” They keep their daggers pointed at Max until they reach the buyer where he stands. The buyer rolls them in his palm as he steps out to meet Max.

  “We stop,” the buyer says, “if you bring goods.” He shows his hands. “Dukiya,” he says, weighing one hand. “Mutum.” He weighs the other.

  Goods. Man.

  I’ll make you fucking goods right now, Max thinks, head pounding and vision blurred. But truth is, for breaking a harvesting rule, the buyer is well within his rights to ask for whatever he likes from them.

  Chidi might be a bastard, but he’s Max’s bastard. Yes, he’ll even admit it now: Chidi is his vent, his release. Saving Chidi is the one thing that keeps the pressing guilt of leaving Mazi to die from smothering Max in his sleep.

  Oh.

  Max stops and unfurls his fists. The haze in front of his eyes wipes away.

  You still have something that keeps bringing it back, Nwanso said, that you need to destroy.

  She wasn’t talking about the body parts.

  “Wait,” Max says suddenly. “What if I bring you goods and man?”

  The buyer cocks his head.

  “Leave him,” Max says. “I’ll bring what you need.”

  The buyer shrugs, then taps on the back of his wrist, universal sign for get-the-fuck-moving.

  ✦✦✦

  The thing feels heavier than before when he pulls it from under the shelves, but Max doesn’t care. All he can think of is Chidi with one of those curved daggers paused just above his fingers, his teeth, his toes. Max quickens the pace, murmurs a made-up mantra to himself. Yes, he is exchanging—replacing—a dead thing with a living one. Yes, he is doing a Good Thing.

  He dumps the body into the wagon and bumps the boot, gets in and flies back to the Ketu-Oworonshoki expressway, practicing his negotiations. Take everything, he’ll say. Just take it. I’m done.

  Mazi used to say knowledge is power, and the lack of it, danger. But Max thinks it’s a blessing sometimes. Like now, when he’ll sleep better not knowing what they do with it. How he’ll sleep better knowing it’s never coming back.

  ✦✦✦

  Chidi is freezing by the time Max gets back to him, shivering after being left out in the post-drizzle cold. Max places his own dry shirt over the whimpering man and lays him down in the back seat.

  Max gets in the hearse and turns the rear-view mirror away as he eases out of the nook. He does not look back at the men who, under the pale light of yellow bulbs, circle around the thing that was Mazi and confer in hushed tones. He does not look as the buyer pulls out his curved blade and putters about the body. He does not look as the rest follow his lead, synchronous, making dead again what was once extinct.

  He refuses to look.

  CLANFALL: DEATH OF KINGS

  ODIDA NYABUNDI

  PROLOGUE

  Fisi Wahoo basked in the rapturous applause of the crowd. It seemed like the whole population of New Machakos had turned up for his coronation. Fisi! Fisi! Fisi! He could hardly believe that a few cycles ago the same crowd would have torn him and his to pieces. He glanced to his left. Fisi Twi was grinning in ecstasy, his ferrocalcific teeth gleaming in the sunlight. On his right, Fisi Tri was clearly having difficulty controlling his urge to cackle.

  “Don’t,” he vibed over their neural connector.

  Fisi Tri turned to look at Wahoo with his one good eye. The other had been ripped out by the ua claw of a Simba warrior. It was covered by a black plasteel patch. He grinned his acquiescence. Satisfied, Wahoo turned back to the crowd. Everyone was there. Everyone! Even the proud Ndovus and the recalcitrant Kobes. They loved him…or at least feared him, which was even better. He wanted this moment to last forever. In this charged atmosphere, he could almost forget how he had gotten to where he was. Almost.

  The Plasteel wall of the meeting hall melted like hot butter under the sustained plasma fire from Wahoo’s main canon. Suddenly the whole edifice went up in a whoosh, purple sparks winking in the soft gloaming as superheated ions escaped. Inside the hut the Simba Cubs squealed as their immature carapaces caught fire in the hellish heat. One of them tried to bolt but Tri’s clawed foot lashed out and booted it back into the inferno. Their dams were already on fire, their screams adding to the cacophony of the Fisi clan’s mad cackling. The Simba Clan warriors who had tried to defend this last refuge lay dead in front of the burning hall, many of them in pieces. Wahoo looked

  around. Perhaps they had been a tad enthusiastic in their attack against this last bastion of the ruling clan. But the job was done. A sudden gust of cold wind made him shiver in his night-black armour. Something made him look up and there in the sky, was a speck. His ocular implant immediately zoomed in and suddenly he was looking at a Mark 2 reconnaissance Ndege. Shit! He brought his main canon online and activated his targeting software, but it was too late: the Ndege was gone.

  ONE

  Harsh panting and darkness. That’s what she wakes up to. It takes her a while to realize she is the one doing the panting. She doesn’t know who she is. She doesn’t know where she is. She doesn’t know anything. Except that it’s very hot, very dark and she is in a lot of pain. She tries to moan and fails. Is she alive? Who is she? Where is she from? Desperately she tries to move a body she isn’t even sure she has. Pain, like an unlovely flower blooms within her and awareness goes away for a while.

  When she next awakes, it’s still dark and she still hurts, a lot. But it’s not hot anymore. In fact, it’s damn cold. And her teeth are chattering. Teeth! She has teeth! Where there are teeth there is often a head. And where there is a head, eyes are sure to reside. She opens her eyes and sees…nothing. “I am blind!” she screams silently. Suddenly…a memory rises in the stygian depths of her mind like a star in the darkness. Her name…. Shibuor. And she remembers more. She is a warrior. There was a battle and… “No, please no,” she whispers between frozen lips. And then like a lanced boil her memories return in a thick spurt.Her only escape is back into the comforting darkness.

  Agony in her leg, sharp as a Mbwehas combat claw. Shibuor jerks back into the world of the living. Her whole existence is pain, but the one in her leg screams louder than the rest. Her eyes fly open and the sunlight stabs her retinas. Quickly, she snaps them shut.

  Again, the stabbing pain in her leg.

  Frantically now, she opens her eyes again, slitting them against the bright sunlight. Slowly the world swims into focus. She is lying on her back in the sand. It is hellishly hot. Her mouth tastes foul. Her whole body aches. Her throat is dry and inflamed. And just to further complicate matters, there is an Achuth hacking a chunk out of her leg with a vibrasaw.

  Fuck!

  She jerks her leg away. Startled, the Achuth turns its wickedly beaked and horribly bald head to regard her. Warrior Instinct clicks in and her ua combat implant scythes out and impales the Achutch punching through its thin synthweave
armour and bursting out of the unfortunate scavengers back in a welter of blood, gore and hydraulic fluid. The Achutch squawks once and dies. But the action fills Shibuor’s whole body with hot tendrils of pain. She almost blacks out again, but as the world fades around her, she makes out more Achutch, silhouetted in the sun.

  Many more.

  Shit!

  Achutch are lightly armed and armoured and not overly burdened with intelligence. But a gang of them can be dangerous. Especially in her weakened state.

  She runs a quick diagnostic.

  Autocooler unit: offline.

  6cm Main canon: offline.

  2cm arm canon: offline.

  Shit shit shit!

  The Achutch gang is approaching. They are too light to mount canon but they have 9mm repeaters and those vibrasaws…

  Ua combat implant: online.

  That’s better but it may not be enough against the gang.

  Armour: 25%.

  Fuck me.

  Mobility: 45%.

  Not bad.

  But it won’t be enough to escape the Chutes. They only tackle the dead and dying. That they are advancing on her doesn’t bode well for her condition.

  50 calibre repeaters: offline.

  Dorsal jahanamu missile tube: offline.

  Just as well; antimatter missiles would have been overkill for these fucking vultures anyway.

  Half-centimeter wrist canon: online.

  Yes!

  Targeting software: offline.

  Oh crap.

  Ah well, she will have to wing it. She sits up in a tangle of pain. The sun overhead is relentless. The Achutch are upon her.

  The half centimeter canon is embedded in her left wrist. She brings it up and aims at them. The lead vulture opens up with his 9mm repeater and the rest join in. Shells ping off her abused armour. One penetrates a weak spot and tears a bloody hole in her gut.

  That does it.

  Shibour roars in pain and rage. She leaps to her feet and extends the ua implant to its full five-foot length. Forgetting the wrist canon, she wades into the gang. Death made real. Few things are as graceful, as fluid and as lethal as a Simba Mk 4 warrior in the grip of Zimu Rage. And Shibuor is one of the best. Deep in her battle trance she carves a bloody path through the Achutch. When her dance is over, 19 lie dead. Seven are horribly maimed and three survivors have taken to the air, squawking in indignation. She watches them flee.