The Fires of Vengeance

by Evan Winter

  “He saw what I did to him.”

  “What you did? What did Kana see?” Nyah asked.

  “They were on their ships and trying to sail back to shore. I think they hoped the warlord was still alive…. I don’t know. I—I gave them proof that the man was dead.”

  Nyah shrugged. “All the better. Kana himself can take the truth of his father’s fall to the tribes. His own words will tear the alliance apart and give us the time needed to retake the throne.”

  “You didn’t see his face,” Tau said.

  “Whose face?”

  “Kana’s.”

  “Why would I need to? The late shul, the first to set so many of the Xiddeen tribes to a common purpose, is dead, and now his greatest military leader is as well.”

  Tau shook his head. “You didn’t see his face.”

  “Tell us what you saw,” the queen said.

  “Rage.”

  Tsiora blinked at him. “And what can one do with rage?”

  “Everything.”

  “Is it like love, then?”

  His father’s face, Zuri’s face, both flashed in his mind. “Rage is love … twisted in on itself,” he said, using some of the words she’d spoken to him on the night Zuri died. “Rage reaches into the world when we can no longer contain the hurt of being treated as if our life and loves do not matter. Rage, and its consequences, are what we get when the world refuses to change for anything less.”

  The way she was looking at him made Tau worry he’d overstepped, but he was weary of making himself less than he was so that those cloaked in power might be comfortable.

  “How can you have peace, if you think this?” she asked.

  “Among the Omehi, I am called a Lesser, and failing that, I am made a Drudge,” Tau said, thinking of the old man who had died in the fields. “What is peace to people like me?”

  “Lessers can’t know peace?” The queen asked it in earnest, her whole face the perfect picture of it, as if it was impossible for her to have known or imagined the damage that had been done to people like him.

  “Champion…. ” It was the vizier, warning him, but warning a man about the inyoka he’s already stepped on is worthless. He must take its bite and pray he can survive the venom.

  “We’ll know peace,” Tau said, “when we put an end to those who would deny it to us.”

  It was then that the queen’s expression of cool neutrality slipped, and Nyah moved closer to her.

  “A queen’s champion fights for the queen’s causes and those only,” Nyah said, her small fists clenched.

  Tau nodded. “True for all real champions,” he said.

  The vizier’s hand twitched, like she wanted to hit him, like she wanted to reach into the underworld, snatch the power there, and hurt him with it. “After all that’s happened this night, you speak this way?”

  “You’d like me to wait for a time of your choosing to speak my truth?” Tau asked.

  “We will wait,” the queen said, spreading her skirts and sitting on the floor. “We will wait to hear about your sword brother, Champion Solarin, because rage won’t help him tonight, but a little love just might.”

  Seeing the queen sit on the floor, Nyah made a sound somewhere between a strangled-off screech and a squeaked “meep!”

  “Will you join us, Vizier?” Tsiora asked.

  Nyah, nostrils pulsing like a pierced vein, behaved as though the ground might accost her, but she did, to Tau’s surprise, sit.

  “The queen is … sh-she’s sitting!” Nyah said. “All of you sit, immediately.”

  The Queen’s Guard were first, Yaw dropped into a cross-legged position, and Tau did the same.

  “Too much talking,” Uduak grumbled, head on his knees.

  “It has been, yes,” the queen said, leaving them with little choice but to sit in silence.

  Tau hated it. He hated the thought of Hadith so close, but fighting alone. He hated the hurt that Uduak was in. And it was torture to sit so still. He had nothing to distract him from the agony of his leg and the call of Isihogo.

  He closed his eyes and tried to be mindless, to let his miseries, hopes, losses, and pain wash over him, leaving him untouched. He tried, he did, and when it failed, the roiling inside him no less quiet, he made his choice. He did not think the others would notice much, if he went to spend his own palpable rage on the underworld’s demons.

  He readied himself. It had been too long. It was time to—

  A door opened and Tau’s eyes flew open. Hafsa was standing in the doorway.

  Uduak was on his feet. Tau leapt to his. The queen was more dignified in the way she rose, and then Hafsa began to speak, addressing them all. Though, as was right, she gave Tsiora her focus.

  “He’ll live,” she said.

  Uduak cried. Yaw went to the big man’s side. Tau nodded and wiped at his eyes, stripping them of the water that had formed there.

  “The Goddess laid Her hand on him and his result is a promising one,” the priestess said. “Yes, his lung is collapsed, but the spear only just pierced it and no other vital organs were hit.” She smiled at them. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s able to be up and moving in a day or two, albeit slowly.”

  Tau swore he’d send a prayer to the Goddess that same night. “And fighting? How long until that?”

  The priestess looked at him twice in rapid succession. “Fighting? He’s alive, but as I said, with a collapsed lung. He’ll never fight as he did.”

  “What? You said his was a promising result, that the Goddess had laid a hand on him.”

  The priestess’s smile left her face. “Perhaps we see things differently,” she said. “I consider the Goddess intelligent enough to find a purpose for men besides the killing of others.”

  Somehow he’d insulted her. “Of course,” Tau said. “Alive is better than dead.

  “Are you sure?” the priestess asked. “You don’t sound sure.”

  Tau inclined his head to her. “Priestess, I am sure and I am grateful, but I’ve given offense, and for that I am sorry.”

  The queen glided over to Hafsa and took her hands. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for saving him.”

  Not seeming to know what to do or where to look, Hafsa mumbled a thanks in return. The queen smiled at her reaction and gave her enough space to come back to herself.

  “Alive is more than enough,” Uduak said. “Much more than enough.”

  The smile returned to the priestess’s face. “Perhaps it is,” she said.

  “I’ll see him now?” Uduak asked.

  “He’s resting.”

  Uduak made for the door anyway; Hafsa raised a hand to stop him but then let it fall, allowing him to pass.

  “No one else, for now,” she said. “He needs to rest.”

  Tau wanted to catch the priestess’s attention. He wanted to offer his own thanks. She would not look at him. Every time their gazes came close to crossing, she’d look away.

  “I should get back in, if you’ll excuse me, Your Majesty.”

  “We will, Priestess Ekene.”

  Hafsa bowed her head and went back into the room, closing the door behind her.

  “Where is the sun, do you think?” the queen asked, turning to her vizier.

  “Rising, my queen.”

  “We feared it so.”

  Tau didn’t understand. “The sun?”

  “We must gather the Nobles and Lessers in the city’s largest circle. It must be public when we deliver justice to Otobong and Mirembe. We must show the people the Goddess’s reward for treachery.”

  “That’s to be done now?” Tau asked.

  The look she gave him, though warm, was weary and pointed.

  “It seems these two deaths and the message behind them very much need to be sent.” She laid a hand on his arm as she moved past, her touch leaf light. “We must remind everyone what side they are on.”

  Shadowing the queen, Nyah breezed past as well, and after the briefest of pauses, Tau, champion
to Queen Tsiora Omehia, followed them. He went to hear his queen’s message and to watch a nearly unthinkable thing. He went to witness the execution of two Greater Nobles.

  HANGED

  The rain had stopped, the sun had risen, and Tau was standing next to the queen and Nyah in one of the larger circles in Citadel City. They were surrounded by the Queen’s Guard, who served as a human barrier, preventing the mass of people who were coming into the circle from getting too close to the queen. The distance didn’t stop the stares, and though he was next to the queen, it felt like everyone was sizing him up.

  Tired of all the looks, Tau lifted his face to the sky. The clouds were thinning and the day was getting hot, but after so much rain, the city and its populace had yet to shake the damp. As the circle filled, the crowd’s smell and murmurs washed over Tau, their individual scents mashing together in a swirl of sweat and stink while their words were garbled behind the clamor of carpentry hammers swung by the three Lessers finishing work on the gallows behind him.

  Caught in his thoughts, Tau realized he’d missed the queen’s words.

  “Beg pardon, my queen?”

  She tilted her head. “We seem to have forgotten. It’s so rare we find cause to repeat ourselves.”

  “Apologies, I was … I was thinking.”

  Nyah arched an eyebrow at that. Tau saw her do it, and that one pointed eyebrow felt like splinters in his skin.

  “When this is … done,” the queen said, “we will need a general to lead our forces.”

  Queen Tsiora had an impressive ability to hide the way she was feeling. On the outside she could appear as expressionless as stone, but however she’d learned to do it, the performance was meant to be viewed from a distance. Up close, the illusion was not as effective, and Tau could see how uncomfortable she was with what she’d decided to do.

  “You will be our grand general,” she said.

  That startled Tau. “Neh? Uh … my queen?”

  “You are our champion. You can be our grand general.”

  Tau shook his head. “I am … I’m honored, Your Majesty, but I am not a good choice.”

  “On that, I’ll agree,” Nyah said.

  Queen Tsiora was not ready to release the argument’s hilt. “We seem to be in a strange position where we find ourselves with few to trust and we would like to trust you, Champion Solarin.”

  “If it please you, Your Majesty, name no one for now,” Nyah advised. “Give me time to determine the best remaining candidate from the Indlovu. I will provide a list of—”

  “No, Nyah. We must begin our preparations to lay siege to Palm, and for that we need a general who can lead and motivate Lessers as well as Nobles. Our champion, as champion, fords the river between the two.”

  “My queen, he holds the title, but too many will see the Lesser in its place. I must still recommend—”

  “We think this is the right choice, Nyah.”

  Tau was enjoying watching the vizier lose an argument, but if she lost entirely, they’d all be worse off. He was no general.

  “I am not the right one to serve you in this way,” he said to the queen, and Nyah waved her fingers in his direction, as if to say, “See?”

  “We will not place one we can’t trust in charge of our forces.”

  “You trust me?” Tau asked.

  There was that look from her again, and a pause.

  “We want to,” she said.

  It would have to do. “Hadith Buhari,” Tau said. “He is your grand general.”

  Nyah laughed. “Solarin, you can’t really be that blind. Choosing you would have been risk enough, and you are the queen’s champion. In your place, you’d ask Nobles to follow a wounded Lesser? A Proven?”

  “There’s no one I know with a greater mind for strategy.”

  “You know too few people,” Nyah said.

  “Enough,” the queen said. “Champion, we trust your opinion of your brother, but Nyah is right. We cannot risk the ire or open rebellion of the Nobles left to us.”

  Nyah crinkled her forehead and angled her body toward Tau. “You’re young, Champion, and there are pieces within pieces, puzzles layered over puzzles, that must be considered when choices like this are made.”

  Tau adjusted his stance, trying to take weight from his burning leg. “I was asked to take up a task to which I know I am not equal. I gave the name of one who is the task’s equal. You’re right, Vizier. I know little of puzzles in puzzles, but I do know who I trust to get me out of a fight.”

  “And this is some of your problem,” Nyah said. “You’re still thinking about fights, when we need to win wars.”

  “The traitors,” the queen said.

  Councilwoman Mirembe and General Otobong had arrived in chains and under a heavy escort. Someone, Tau noticed, had taken the time and effort to redress Otobong’s stump with clean cloths.

  The cloths wrapped round Otobong’s wrist were the cleanest thing about either of the Greater Nobles. It had been less than a full day since their attempted escape, capture, and imprisonment, and they were in poor shape. Mirembe held her head up, but her eyes were sunken, and Otobong’s hunched shoulders told his story.

  Tau had not considered the crowd’s reaction to the sight of the two prisoners and found their silence unnerving. Perhaps for them, as it was for him, the execution of Nobles was also foreign.

  “You cannot!” Mirembe shouted in Tau’s direction, to the queen. The councilwoman, flanked by two Gifted women, had her hands tied behind her back, and in their place, she pointed to the gallows with her chin. “This is a Lesser’s death.”

  Otobong, raising his head at her words, saw the hanging scaffold and came to a stop. The Indlovu behind him put a hand round his collar and pushed him onward.

  “Do you see?” Mirembe shouted to the crowd. “Do you see the new world your child queen promises you? How long, do you think, until other Nobles stand where I do now?”

  The crowd remained silent.

  “You are traitors to the queen, to her people, to the Goddess!” Nyah said. “And you will be given a traitor’s death.”

  Hanging, the punishment for traitors and disobedient Lessers, Tau thought, watching the soldiers pull a struggling Mirembe up the gallows stairs.

  “Traitor, Nyah?” Mirembe said. “I am no traitor to my people or Goddess.”

  The noose was fitted round her neck and she flinched at its rough touch.

  “Last words?” Nyah asked.

  “I did all that I did for my people,” Mirembe said, her voice rising in timbre, growing harder to understand. “When I saw that you would not listen, I did what anyone who loves their fellow women and men would do. I went to find someone who would.”

  “You think crawling to a man, to a man like Abasi Odili, would help your people? You lying wretch!” Nyah said.

  Mirembe laughed, a hacking, desperate sound. “We weren’t riding to him. We were going to General Bisi to ask that he bring his army back from the front lines and end your squabble,” she said. “Odili and the child queen you support are the difference between the scorpion’s sting and the inyoka’s bite. Both will kill our people, though they take different paths to do it.”

  Tau saw Queen Tsiora send a look Nyah’s way.

  “Goodbye, Mirembe,” Nyah said, lifting her hand into the air for the executioner to see. “May the Goddess greet you.”

  “Lie with a Lesser, nceku!” Mirembe turned her face to the crowds, staring them down.

  And down came Nyah’s hand, down came the executioner’s lever, down went the floor beneath Mirembe’s feet, and down she fell, the sound of her neck snapping louder than Tau expected. She died instantly, her legs swinging just above the ground, stalks in a gentle breeze.

  She hadn’t moved, but Tau could hear the queen. She was breathing too fast. He glanced at her and her pupils were tiny as pinpricks. He’d been there before, in Daba, when he’d come close to falling unconscious.

  “Slow your breathing,” he whispered to
her, his mouth barely moving. “In through your nose and out through your mouth. Nice and slow.”

  She gave no sign that she heard him, but she did as he asked.

  “Last words, Otobong?” Nyah said to the general as his neck was placed in the next noose.

  “I am no traitor,” he said, head still down. “I have always fought for my people and I go to my Goddess after a failed attempt at doing more of the—”

  The wood beneath his feet creaked, broke, and collapsed, sending him falling after it. The rope round his neck drew taught, someone in the crowd screamed, and the wooden scaffolding to which the rope was attached crumpled under Mirembe’s and Otobong’s weight.

  Mirembe’s legs hit the ground and bent until she looked like she was kneeling. Otobong’s side was higher up, and though he dangled, choking to death, his toes skittered across the ground, searching for some stable purchase to relieve the neck-breaking strain.

  The general’s face grew dark and swollen, his eyes bulged, and he shook this way and that, spasming on the end of a rope too long to kill him and too short to let him save himself.

  The queen had her hand over her mouth, her fingers trembling like she was caught in the throes of a deadly fever. Nyah was frozen, except for her head, which she shook back and forth in silent denial of the moment.

  The executioner scrambled around aboard the collapsing gallows, trying to bolster the post that held Otobong’s and Mirembe’s bodies. But he was not strong enough to lift it so that Otobong could die.

  Seeing that, Tau broke through the circle of Queen’s Guards, strode over to the suffering general, pulled free the black blade on his right hip, and with his left hand, he drove it through Otobong’s straining heart. The general sighed and went limp, his torture ended.

  Tau pulled his sword free and walked back to his queen’s side. The quiet crowd did not need the Queen’s Guard to keep them back. They gave the champion more than enough room.

  “W-we need … we need to leave,” the queen said to Tau. “We cannot … we …”

  Her eyes were wet and her hands were still shaking. Her mask was slipping and Tau did not need to see all the layers to Nyah’s puzzle to know that the crowded city circle was not the place for that to happen.