A Creature of Smokeless Flame

by Margaret Ball

  Eventually – not nearly soon enough to suit me – the path rose again, and the boy who’d been drafted to guide us held up his hand for total silence. We moved forward slowly, inch by inch, until I could see dark grey weathered stone shapes beyond the mangrove trunks. He stopped and pointed downwards. There was a deep trench immediately in front of us: a straight line cut through the jungle and down into the coral rock, with smooth sloping sides. It looked firm, regular, and distinctly un-African.

  “Army Corps of Engineers?” I whispered to Lensky.

  “Archaeologists,” he murmured back, his lips barely moving. “Rashiduni ran them off, remember?”

  I was suitably grateful to the unknown archaeologists for giving us such a fine place to lurk. Since they left, storms and attrition had already begun covering up the trench; once we scrambled into it, we were able to crawl under where some large limbs had come down across the cut, giving us shade and partial cover.

  When I looked back, our guide was gone.

  Our post was too far from the principal ruins for us to get a clear idea of what was happening there – not much, actually, it was siesta time – but it turned out that we were admirably placed to watch the training exercises. Nothing much happened while Lensky assembled the rifles, but as the sun dipped lower, we could see occasional movements outside the walls. Then, in answer to a shrill cry, a dozen boys formed a ragged line on the flat ground. A man walked along the line, handing out rifles that were bigger than some of the children who had to take them, and haranguing them in a harsh shout. In answer to shouted commands, the boys ran up one at a time to throw themselves behind a coral block, aim the rifle and fire. The first time one of them pointed his weapon straight at us, I ducked so fast I scraped my forehead on the side of the trench.

  “They don’t let them play with live ammunition,” Lensky muttered, sounding amused.

  Whatever that meant. I didn’t want to get killed by dead ammunition either, did I?

  “There’s Bobby Navarro,” I whispered, brilliantly identifying the only blond boy.

  Lensky nodded. “And I’ve spotted Sam. Khamisi?”

  “Tabari is the tallest one.” He jerked his chin at a lean brown boy who appeared, to me, to be playing the same game as Sam: how to show the least possible amount of school spirit while avoiding getting yelled at by the coach. My kid brother Andros was an expert at that –

  Oh. Oh, shit. This wasn’t a game. The man I’d been thinking of as “Coach” yelled at Tabari, grabbed him by the ear and jerked him into the middle of the practice ground, then kicked him behind the knees to force him down. He shouted something at the other boys and they came forward slowly, eyes wide. Khamisi was cursing under his breath. “Coach” took the rifles from the boys and handed out sticks, pointed at Tabari’s kneeling figure and shouted an order. Khamisi’s body jerked. “They will kill him! I have to – Give me a rifle!”

  Lensky moved sideways, smoothly putting himself between Khamisi and the weapons. One big hand fastened over the back of Khamisi’s neck. “Cool it. They are not going to kill him now – but they certainly will, if they catch us.”

  I could tell when Khamisi’s body relaxed because Lensky’s hold loosened at the same time.

  And so we watched, through an improvised screen of fallen branches and trash, while the other children in the training camp beat Tabari bloody with their sticks for his failure to show appropriate enthusiasm. But when the call to prayer rang through the sky and “Coach” allowed them to stop, Tabari stumbled to his feet and followed them back into the ruins, limping. Khamisi was cursing now, regularly, monotonously.

  “You two have thrown away the best chance we will ever have!” he upbraided us, furious, but still very quiet. “We had all three of the children within sight, and but one guard—”

  “There are four children,” I said. Also quietly. “You are forgetting Rosie Jamison.”

  Khamisi spread his hands. “We will never be able to rescue her. She is not with the child soldiers. Better to take the three we can find.”

  “You missed some guards,” Lensky told him. “I spotted three rifle barrels behind that tumbledown wall. You would only have gotten yourself killed if you’d run out there, Khamisi. That wouldn’t do Tabari any good.”

  “Instead, I watched him beaten, and did nothing!”

  “Thanks be to Allah that you had that much sense. Do you think Tabari would have escaped beating just because you threw your body in front of him – and got shot for your pains?” Lensky’s face looked hard as I’d only seen it once before, hard as a statue’s. “Listen well, Khamisi. I am in charge of this operation. Can I trust you to follow orders, or do I have to kill you myself?”

  Khamisi was breathing hard. “You can’t risk shooting me! They would hear.”

  Forgetting Swahili mores, I grabbed his arm and shook it. “Khamisi, don’t be stupid. He probably knows six ways to kill you without making a noise, and in five of those you wouldn’t even see it coming!” I hate it when people underestimate Brad.

  “Four.”

  “Huh?”

  “Offhand, I can only think of four ways to kill him that he wouldn’t see coming,” Lensky said, very matter-of-fact. “The other three, he might notice something, but don’t worry, he wouldn’t have time to make a noise.”

  Khamisi slumped back against the wall. “You people are assuredly mad, and you are probably all majini and shetani, and I was mad to come here with you.”

  Mr. M. popped his head up over the waist vee of my bui-bui. “Well, good,” he said cheerfully, “I’m glad we have all that cleared up.”

  He volunteered to scout the ruins for us, saying happily that the Swahili seemed to be extra-afraid of snakes because they thought that the Djnoun took the forms of serpents, and anyway he could camouflage himself as well as any topologist, and furthermore he still had his personal weaponry with which to defend himself.

  “I think I should go with you,” I said.

  “On no account,” said Mr. M. “My task will be infinitely harder if I must conceal you as well as myself.” I was perfectly able to camouflage myself without his help, but before I could point that out he continued listing his objections.

  “You are large—”

  Well, from his perspective, I suppose.

  “—and clumsy, and noisy when you walk. I have the advantage of a naturally lissome and athletic body which takes up very little space and can move very quietly… Do we have any coffee?”

  “We do not.”

  “A pity…”

  I thought it was more of a saving grace. When caffeinated, Mr. M. frequently sings. Aesthetic considerations aside, our chances of infiltrating the training camp unnoticed would rapidly approach zero if even one of our number roared into action with a spirited rendering of “The Fall of Idols.” (We’re hoping he’ll get over his recent fascination with Morbid Angel and other death metal bands. So far, all efforts to redirect his attention have failed.)

  19. Classical methods

  It was after dark when Mr. M. returned, and we were all tired, hungry and thirsty. If we didn’t move soon I might not be able to teleport at all.

  He reported that the three boys and the other child soldiers all slept in a large room at the edge of the ruins. The room’s doors and windows were long gone, but there was a guard on duty. Rosie Jamison was not there; he thought she might be in Omar’s personal quarters.

  “Did you figure out where those are?”

  “One room was guarded by the djinn. Being unsure of her allegiance, I felt it wiser not to converse with her.”

  “Well, duh. She belongs to Omar.”

  “Between a human being and one of the Djnoun,” Mr. M. said pedantically, “the question of who belongs to whom is debatable. On our last encounter with her, TheSila did you no harm. She even frightened away the thief who awakened you. Still, I felt unwilling to take the risk of open contact. As for the guard on the boys,” he said, admiring the moonlight on his silver scales,
“the man on duty now is a user of bhangi, and in addition he seems more concerned with preventing the children from leaving than with watching for intruders. These amateur groups are so slipshod. Nabû-kudurrī-usur would have had his head.”

  “Don’t worry about the guard,” Lensky said, “he’s mine. Thalia, you will have to carry one of the rifles until I neutralize him. Then we can ask the boys where Rosie is.” He slipped the Glock out of its holster on his hip.

  “Ah, wouldn’t it be better to ‘neutralize’ him from a distance with the rifle?”

  “In this light? Anyway, we don’t want to alert them with gunshots.”

  “Lensky, I’ve heard you fire the Glock. It’s not exactly silent.”

  “That’s why I’m not planning to shoot the guard.” Lensky hefted his pistol thoughtfully. “It may have been a mistake to go with this polymer frame. Right now I could really use a nice solid steel pistol. Oh well, too late now.”

  Oh.

  I decided to shut up and do what I was told. It would be a nice change for Lensky.

  Never having been inside the ruins, of course, I couldn’t teleport us directly to the children. All I could do was keep camouflage over us and try not to fall over my own feet while we oozed silently towards the battered walls of grey coral blocks. Well… sort of silently. It might be more accurate to say we rustled, thumped, and sidestepped our way to the opening in the wall that Mr. M. indicated. At least I didn’t have to fight my way through the hampering folds of a bui-bui this time. We’d decided that it wouldn’t really help if anybody caught sight of us, and my concentration was better put to use keeping up camouflage around us all.

  The guard’s presence was announced by a powerful whiff of pot. He had evidently indulged to the point of drowsiness before coming on duty. We weren’t so impolite as to disturb him; a single blow from Lensky put him out for the duration.

  Most of the children were sleeping soundly, presumably exhausted from a busy day of pretending to shoot, decapitate and disembowel infidels. One long form twitched and moved restlessly. Tabari, still in pain from that beating? Khamisi went down on one knee and put his hand over Tabari’s mouth until the boy’s eyes opened and went wide with recognition. He mouthed something at Tabari, got a nod of response, and lifted his hand.

  Lensky had already spotted Sam Harrison on the far side of the room. He moved out of my camouflage space to reach him, stepping between sleeping children with that incongruous grace he displayed in combat situations. Just as he reached Sam, one of the smallest boys moved in his sleep, tossing back the fabric that had been over his head, and I recognized Bobby Navarro’s blond head gleaming in the broken moonlight that came through the remnants of a roof. I went past Tabari and knelt beside him, dropping camouflage so as not to scare the kid. “It’s all right, Bobby,” I whispered, “we’re here to rescue you.”

  The boy’s eyes opened and widened just as Tabari’s had done. Only I hadn’t put a hand over his mouth, and I was too slow to stop him when he gasped and screamed.

  “Wazungu! Majini! Help!”

  The room erupted with shouting children, and I heard people running towards us. Shit. And we were spread out across the width of the room. I hauled Bobby to his feet, nearly dropping the rifle. Khamisi took him from me and threw him over his shoulder, then shoved me towards Lensky. He had evidently grasped that we all had to be touching for me to get us out of there.

  I fell over another child and grabbed Lensky’s arm. Behind me, I could feel Khamisi reaching for my elbow. I had to trust that he had Bobby and Tabari, and that Lensky was still holding Sam.

  The pier, the pier made of crooked bleached driftwood, the pier in moonlight instead of afternoon sun. I croaked, “Brouwer,” and the habit of long practice helped to form the two surfaces in my mind, glowing against infinite blackness and touching at just one point.

  We were on the pier.

  The boat wasn’t there.

  And someone was shouting in the village. Just our luck, I’d forgotten to raise camouflage again as we teleported and some idiot had been sitting up in the moonlight to see our extremely untidy arrival on that pier. I disentangled myself from Bobby Navarro’s legs and Khamisi’s arm, pulled the rifle sling over my head and handed it to Khamisi. Seemed like time for somebody who knew how to use it to carry this thing.

  Counting heads: Tabari, Khamisi, Bobby, Lensky, Sam. And Mr. M. was coiled around my waist. Good, I hadn’t left anyone behind.

  Except Rosie Jamison, of course.

  “Majini! Shetani!” More Swahili followed, apparently amounting to, “Kill them!” according to Mr. M.

  Oh, dear. Why couldn’t these people react to the sight of teleporting devils by hiding in their huts? They were way too excitable.

  Lensky fired a very short burst at the villagers. (“Over their heads, Thalia,” he corrected me just now. “Killing anybody would have been an unnecessary complication.”) Then he shoved his rifle at Tabari.

  “You two,” he said to Khamisi. “Hold them off for a few minutes. Try not to use too much ammo. Thalia and I will be back for you.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “We’re going back for Rosie.”

  “Hadn’t we better take Tabari to show us where she is?”

  “We need him here. Unless you want to ask Sam Harrison to take a rifle?”

  “But – how are we going to find her?”

  Lensky’s grin would have been terrifying if we weren’t on the same side. “Classical methods.”

  Seconds later we were just steps from the outer wall of the ruins – I’d been paying attention to the terrain; it wasn’t hard to teleport the two of us back there – and Lensky was holding his gun against the neck of a terrified guard while I relieved the man of his weapons. My hands were shaking; I wasn’t sure whether it was cowardice, or overdoing the applied topology. Maybe both.

  “Now,” he breathed, “you are going to tell me where Rosie Jamison is.”

  Mr. M. translated.

  The guard’s eyes rolled up and he sagged, whispering something to himself.

  “He is praying,” Mr. M. informed us. “He has no idea what you asked him.” He addressed the terrified guard directly. “Msichana mzungu wapi?” and snapped at the answer. “More prayers! Useless!” He added something else in Swahili and the guard moaned and tried to slither down to the ground. Mr. M. said a few more words in a voice like a whiplash and the man started babbling.

  “As I thought,” he told us, “the child sleeps in the quarters reserved for Omar. It seems we will have to deal with TheSila after all.”

  “Did he tell you enough?” Lensky asked. “Can I knock him out now? I would rather not try to drag him with us.”

  We left the guard unconscious, gagged, and tied up with bits of his own unsavory clothing. For his sake I hoped there were no snakes on the island; he hadn’t personally done us any harm, and he had pointed us towards Rosie.

  “Only after I promised that Lensky would shoot him in the kneecap and cripple him for life,” Mr. M. told me.

  We stopped outside a stone house that was in slightly better condition than most. Blue flames flickered up out of the ground between us and the walls. I concentrated on keeping our camouflage up while Mr. M. engaged the djinn in discussion. It didn’t sound like they were speaking Swahili; maybe it was Arabic. I wouldn’t know. All I knew was that after several increasingly tense minutes, the cold flames parted to let us through.

  Beyond the open doorway the room was black. I tripped over something on the floor, threw out my hands to save myself and came down, hard, on something soft and yielding. Softer than the rocks I was expecting to land on, anyway. The man’s body thrashed under me; I tried to get up, slipped, and my elbow came down on something even softer than the rest of him. There was a gurgling, choking noise.

  “Nice move, Thalia. Encourage him to stay down, will you?” Lensky thrust something small and hard into my hand. Oh – his backup gun. I lifted my elbow slightly, allowing Omar to
breathe, and pressed the short barrel against his neck.

  “Rosie, it’s all right. Your mommy sent me for you, Rosie.” Lensky’s voice was calm and soothing as he scooped the little girl up. She clung to his neck, but she was sobbing. We needed to get out of there. I tried to grab his leg, but a shadow of flame came between us.

  “First keep your promise,” TheSila hissed from her cold, shimmering flames. “Quickly, before he calls on me!”

  “Promise?”

  “He sleeps with it under his pillow.”

  I slid one hand under there, found something hard and cold and drew it out. Not a weapon; a glass bottle.

  “Break it! Break it!” The non-flames danced higher, and the whole room grew cold. In a radiance without any visible source, the bottle shone blue and iridescent.

  I had to sit up to lift it, removing my elbow. Omar’s gurgles turned into something more like words. I swung the bottle by its neck and hit him in the head. Not nearly hard enough; his lips were still moving.

  “No, no, break it!”

  An impossible frost was forming on everything in the room. I swung the bottle again, this time aiming at the wall, and was rewarded by a tinkle of breaking glass. The flames transformed into blue flickers and vanished into Omar’s mouth. His lips went slack; his open eyes gleamed in the moonlight. Lensky stooped and put one finger against the man’s throat, then took my hand. “Can you teleport?”

  “Of course.” I’d definitely overdone it; I felt sick and dizzy. But what was one more little jump with Lensky and the kid?

  The answer: it wasn’t worth much. True, I was able to get us to the pier where Khamisi and Tabari were still firing occasional short bursts to discourage the villagers. But the boat still wasn’t there, and I was pretty sure we didn’t have enough ammunition to keep the villagers off until I recovered enough to teleport us out of there. It would have to be back to Mombasa, we hadn’t put in at any of the coves or beaches on the way down. Fifty miles, over water, and somehow I didn’t think the villagers were going to give us food and water to replenish my blood sugar. If I couldn’t get over these shakes, I might drown us all in the escape attempt.