She is drunker than usual, I think.
But then I see she is looking ahead, and here they come—Verkusht, and Obai the balance priestess, and a small legion of guardsmen lent by Thorold, our Aspis Consortium patron.
And one other.
Katiiwa strides toward us with her usual grace. Never a movement or gesture that is more than required. Her jagged harpoon, cast in an unknown metal and gleaming azure blue, rests confidently over her shoulder. Incised arcane symbols cover its surface. Katiiwa wears the coral-colored garb of her seafaring people, the Bonuwat. A patterned head wrap gathers her coiled hair into a crown atop her serene features.
When she turns toward us, the ear with the torn, missing lobe becomes visible. Pale trails, left by a barracuda’s teeth, rake down the side of her neck.
Katiiwa embraces Sunasuka, undeterred by her coating of filth. The others keep the halfling at bay.
Verkusht approaches. I glower.
“Naturally,” he explains, “I had to be careful not to be seen on the way back. Couldn’t allow an ambush at the counting house. Securing the boy was crucial. And not a scratch on you, I see, so all has turned out well. I trust you learned something while you were there.”
We turn back to the counting house. I tell the others about Brachantes, of his intention to make the boy a trophy in a distant menagerie. We do not speak of our plans for him.
Nor do I ask how or why Katiiwa has joined us. It is always better not to know.
Aside from Arok, who waits for us still in the forest, now all of us are here.
“Come to think of it,” Sunasuka suddenly blurts, “it’s quite a thing that the place that refused to serve me anymore had our Xhasi prisoner in the back, isn’t it?”
Obai is amused. “Quite a thing indeed.”
“Coincidence follows you around, doesn’t it?” Verkusht says. He fidgets with the folds of his linen headdress.
Sunasuka produces a gourd from her reeking pack and takes a happy swig. “Someone once said to me that coincidence doesn’t follow me. I follow it.”
“I said that,” says Katiiwa.
“There you go then,” replies the halfling, as if all has been explained.
“There is no coincidence,” Obai says. “Only the actions of Nethys, god of balance, acting invisibly.”
“Everything is coincidence,” says Katiiwa.
“Including your presence here?”
“Especially that.”
There is more of this, all the way back to the counting house. Once there, I approach the boy’s room. An Aspis guard unlocks the door.
Sunasuka follows. Her interest in the boy might bring trouble, but I can’t see how to keep her out. The rest of us are hard, each in our own way. We will be ready to consign Mwonduk to his fate. Of the drunken nature priestess, I can’t be sure.
The room is large and well furnished, though the shutters are nailed shut and the door barred and manned. The boy does not sit on the bed or in any of the chairs, but has instead lodged himself in a corner. The Aspis have given him clean, fine clothes in the outlander style. He has not thrown them off, at least. The tunic is open, displaying the firefly birthmark on his chest, red and unmistakable. The mark of his ancestral curse. Cradled between his hands is a cooked yam. It is barely touched, a few nibbles taken off the top. He holds it as if for comfort.
“Are you well, Mwonduk?” I ask.
He nods, his eyes deep and wet.
On a table sits a bowl, full of fruits. Beside it, a round loaf of mashbread. No sign that he’s eaten any of it.
“Is there anything you’d like, that we could get you?”
He shakes his head.
“We’ll be leaving soon. Taking you into the jungle with us. Did Obai explain this?”
A nod, smaller than the one before it. Finally he speaks. His voice is a whisper. I guess that it is not much used. “She said you were taken by the men who tried to take me.”
“I was, but my friend came to save me.”
“Like you saved me,” Mwonduk says.
“Yes. Eat some food. We’ll be leaving soon.”
“Before they come after us?”
“Yes. Eat some food.”
He puts the yam in his pocket.
∗ ∗ ∗
We leave Free Station soon after—the five of us, and the boy. Offered the aid of a small party of Aspis explorers, we refuse. They would slow us down. Some would die.
When Free Station is out of sight, Arok appears beside us. Mwonduk’s face widens in wonder. He is surprised to greet a talking ape, but shows no fear of him.
Our route will take us across the grasslands. We will traverse Rechiend’s Plains, then enter the jungle. The openness of the vast savanna puts me on edge. I would sooner be under the shade of the high forest canopy. Arok shares my unease.
Wide swathes of the jungle escape claim by any clan or tribe. One may travel through them without trespassing. The grasslands clans, whose ways are different from ours, claim between them most every inch of the plains. Negotiation is always required. To move through them, one must seek permission, if not a grant of hospitality. The clans guard their borders jealousy, against their neighbors most of all. Between the six of us, we have nearly enough friends to patchwork our way across the great plain, connecting the lands of one friendly tribe to another. But we may have friends among two tribes who distrust each other. We may arrive on the borders of one tribe only to find that it has changed its Great Mother, or that its Women’s Council now bars entry to strangers. The boy will pose a problem, too. Their spirits will smell the curse upon him, and tell their spirit-talkers.
“Katiiwa does what must be done.”
My friendship with the Sabudu allows us passage through their lands. I warn them to steer clear of the boy. They reward us with gourd milk and cured antelope meat. Obai invokes the eighth taboo of the Budii, earning their reluctant passage. We are warned not to eat a blade of grass or step upon a spider and sent on our way, watched from a distance. The Budii watchers whoop and brandish arrows as we near Charpa territory, and come upon a hunting group on the opposite shore of a contested watering hole. The Charpa whoop and threaten back, until Arok beats his breast and screams, drowning out both parties. This seems to satisfy their code of aggression, or at least confuse them, and both withdraw. The Charpa allow us passage by ignoring our presence. From there we dash across a spur of land claimed by the Unnameable Tribe, who are not flesh and blood but are made of shadow. The sun is high, so they do not molest us.
Then we are feasted among the Walakuf, for whom Verkusht once performed a deadly favor, which neither he nor they will name. There Sunasuka becomes drunk and performs an obscene dance, winning her recognition as a huyo, or holy fool. When she passes out they drape an amulet around her neck, and tell us that it will also earn us passage across the lands of their sister tribe, the Jumvi. Night has come and Sunasuka is immovable, so we rest. The Walakuf anoint the boy with protective oils; the protection is for them, not him. They tell us that the fireflies came last night, for their hated neighbors to the east, the Kesh. We would be killed if we venture into the Keshlands, but it is not on our route. In the morning we are joyfully escorted to the Walakuf’s northern reach.
It is there that the troubles start. To the west live the Salipat, who offer outsiders hospitality in the wet season and death in the dry. It is the wrong time of year, so we cannot go there. Our other choice lies to the north, where dwell the lion riders of Kuta. None of us know them. We must dare to enter their lands, wait to be accosted, and hope they respond favorably to the Stranger Greeting.
Finding them is a matter of being found by them. If we head to the nearest of their watering holes, we can be sure they will appear to challenge us. I look for animal runs. A warthog trots calmly past us, his hooves kicking up dust on a
n ancient trail. I beckon the others to follow. Long before any sign of water, dots appear on the horizon.
It is the Kuta. According to the protocol of the Stranger Greeting, we go no further. I hold up my shield in the customary position, then make a show of setting it down. We wait, arranging ourselves around the boy.
Verkusht’s twitching fingers wander near the hilt of his dagger. I scold him with a look. A bead of sweat grows from the furrows of his forehead to slide down his nose.
Nearer they come: eight warrior women and their male entourage, astride their riding lions. The Kuta are outfitted in fine regalia, decorated in gold, zebra hide, and ostrich feathers, but it is the beasts that seize my attention.
They are like the lions I know, but taller and longer. Long, blockily muscular legs replace the lithe springing limbs of an ordinary big cat. Their feet widen into broad, hardened paddles, armed with wicked yellow claws. I have never seen a lion that would weigh half as much as these. Fiber saddles hold the proud-shouldered Kuta on their backs. The women ride lions; the men, lionesses. The beasts twist their heads, snarling, as if asking for orders. They’re hoping that their riders will let them tear us apart. It is scarcely a leap to imagine that they have done so before, to petitioning visitors who displeased their mistresses.
Though I have not seen the Kuta lions before, I know the myth. The first of the Kuta people, of course also called Kuta, gathered her starving family around her, unable to make her way in the harshness of the world, back when it was all one vast grassland. She went to the toad goddess, who could not bear her wailing and burrowed away from her, into the sand. She went to the bird goddess, who taunted her and flew away into the sky. Then she came by accident upon the proud lion goddess, who saw no threat in this spindly, starving creature. Driven by hunger and love for her children, Kuta wagered that she could wrestle the lion to the ground. In her desperation, she won out, and so the lion goddess gave her the weakest of her brood, transforming them into beasts of burden. In exchange for this, Kuta agreed that no member of her people would ever slay another, no matter how fearsome the crime.
As they advance, I see that we stand before the Kuta queen herself. The seven gold rings in her ear and the tattoos on her brow proclaim her royalty. In her right hand she holds the feathered crop of authority. In the left she grasps a leash. It leads to a pathetic and naked prisoner, covered only by a layer of sandy dirt. This battered wretch must run alongside the queen’s lion, the tallest and most powerful of the lot.
Obai steps forward to perform the customary half-bow, which neither claims superiority nor admits submission. “I am a stranger, and I greet thee, queen of the Kuta. I present my true name to you: I am Obai, of the Scarred Ones, a clan of the clanless. I am a stranger, and request naught else but passage through your goddess-granted lands.”
The queen replies. “You have spoken correctly and so will not be slain. But passage will not be granted.” A horsefly lands in her mount’s thick mane. The queen swats the fly with the tip of her crop, and her lion snarls its annoyance. The bug drops, smashed, beside its paw. On her fiber saddle, the queen straightens, rising to her full height.
Obai lowers her head ever so slightly. To abase herself to a tribal matriarch is not an easy thing for her; I see it in the tautness of her wiry frame. “May I ask why, Lion Queen?”
“We are lions. That is all the explanation you require.”
Katiiwa makes a barely audible clucking sound. Obai notes it and withdraws, in favor of the sorceress. Katiiwa leaves her harpoon behind before stepping forward, sticking its sparkling blue haft into the dry savanna soil.
∗ ∗ ∗
“I am Katiiwa. I offer you the solution to a problem.”
A rattle-shaking woman, painted from head to toe in the swirls and whorls of a grassland spirit-talker, leans to the queen’s right. She sniffs the air, frowns, and whispers something into the monarch’s seven-ringed ear.
“You are a demon,” the queen says.
Katiiwa is unfazed. “Only by distant descent, Queen Lion. The Kuta subscribe to a killing code, do they not?”
“The customs of my tribe are not your concern.”
“My comrade Xhasi was of the Ara, and knows well of killing codes, though his is surely different from yours. One Kuta may not slay another. Even a queen may not, not even when the crime is the gravest possible. Is it so?”
The queen shifts in her saddle. “What if it were?”
“The outcast. Her ear bears seven holes, where once the rings of queenship rested. Is it so?”
“Your eyes see well, demonkin.”
“Her crimes would be terrible indeed, to see her stripped of her crown. Paraded like a dog.”
The queen spits, nearly missing the outcast. “The dog is a wretched beast.”
“Were it not a worse crime than hers, you would surely wish this dog’s life ended.”
Queen Lion shudders. “This dog committed the worst crime. First, she kept food back when all were starving. Gave it to close kin only, even after granted the lion’s share. When discovered, she slew her own, to hide her shame.”
Without looking back, Katiiwa holds out her hand. I step forward, placing her harpoon in it. “Then today is a fortunate day for the Kuta, good queen. For my weapon and I perform the dirty work of justice.”
The bedraggled outcast silently weeps—from terror or relief, I cannot say.
“You are not of our people,” the queen says.
“Nor bound by your code.”
“I may not command you to do it, which is like doing it myself.”
“You have no authority to command me, good lion. If I choose to mete justice, it is not your doing.”
The queen drops the leash.
Sunasuka takes Mwonduk, wraps her arm around him, and pulls his head into her shoulder, so he won’t see what happens next.
The former queen stands quaking for a moment. Then she turns and runs, stumbling, exhausted, kicking up a cloud. Katiiwa strides evenly after her. The outcast stumbles. Katiiwa raises, then lowers, the azure harpoon. It is done with a stroke, with hardly a gurgle. The dry sand instantly drinks down the deposed queen’s blood.
Katiiwa turns her back on the slain woman. Her harpoon has cleaned itself of her victim’s gore. When she passes me to return to the group, dread skitters spider-like down my spine. Though I do not wish to, I am sensing the demon part of her. Fed, it resumes its slumber.
The lions champ at their grass-fiber reins. They quiver in frustration while the queen and her retinue slowly dismount. Finally they have completed their dignified clamber, allowing the lions to pounce on the corpse. The maned lions of the women’s retinue are allowed to feast, while the lionesses ridden by the men look on in envy.
This is a Kuta funeral. Were the victim not dishonored, toasts and ceremonies would precede the eating. The lions are considered part of the tribe, and like its two-legged members, may not kill its members. The divine law does not, it seems, forbid them from eating those already dead. When a person dies, the lions feed. When a lion dies, it is the people who consume its roasted meat.
The beasts tear apart flesh and break into bone. Of our party, all but Katiiwa and Arok turn away.
It is over in moments, the meal finished to the marrow. When we turn around, only scraps of reddened bone remain. The queen and her aides climb back onto their mounts. Assembled tribe members, human and feline alike, regard us and our discomfort with haughty amusement. They say it in the way they hold their heads: they are lions.
The queen and her attendants depart, lion tails switching behind them. We are left in the company of the lesser functionaries. They ride their lionesses toward a bare knoll to the north of the Kuta lands. We follow them—to Guest Hill, they tell us. Along the way, the ridden lionesses growl lowly at Arok, and he huffs threateningly back. Apes and lions ha
ve never liked one another.
Guest Hill reveals itself as a barren jut of stone and sand. Aided by an energetic Sunasuka, Katiiwa sets to work erecting a canvas shelter. I walk around the hill. White grains and pebbles of uneven shape rise between my toes.
Bone shards. Most guests here, I realize, remain on the hill, though not in recognizable form. I review the words exchanged between Katiiwa and the queen. Hospitality was granted with all the proper terms and observances. It is unlikely, I decide, that the Kuta will break the rules of hospitality and fall upon us in the night. Most probably those taken as prey on Guest Hill are exploring outlanders, who do not give the Strangers Greeting in the right way, and thus deserve only false promises.
I share this judgment with Katiiwa. It has been a long time since all six of us traveled together, so she reviews our customary sleeping shifts.
Before we turn in, I see Sunasuka huddled with Mwonduk. She has called a pair of bright red finches to whirl and dive in the air before his eyes. The boy watches, entranced. When the birds tire and fly away, he lapses back into his dull quiet, staring at nothing.
The halfling rises. She brushes dirt from her hide breeches, somehow getting them more dusty than when she started, and ambles toward me.
“Tell me again,” she says, none too quietly, “what crime the boy has done.”
I lead her away, down the side of the hill. “Ask Obai.”
“Obai will talk complicated nonsense and I will know less than when we started. I ask you, Xhasi.”
“Don’t make trouble.”
“Me? Trouble?”
“It is not a crime, but a curse. An angry goddess calls. You are a priestess. I should not need to explain.”
Sunasuka spits. “The world comes before the gods.”
“Ask Arok. He will tell you the world is out of joint.”
“I know that!” She looks up at the boy, silhouetted before the last purple light of the evening sky. “If the ape feels it, don’t you think I can feel it too?” The halfling uncorks a gourd. It releases the sharp reek of fermented mash, refilled at the Walakuf feast. She offers it to me; I shake my head. “It doesn’t sit right. There must be another way.”
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