The Fires of Vengeance

by Evan Winter

  Tau refused to think of it as faith. “I know who he is and what he’s capable of doing,” he said.

  “You believe in him.”

  “Of course.”

  “I understand,” Thandi said. “It’s how I feel about the queen and the Goddess.”

  Tau stopped midstep. “Clean thrust,” he said.

  Thandi gave him a small smile. “Yes, it was, wasn’t it?”

  Tau walked to the infirmary door and opened it. “Lady Gifted,” he said, “can you tell the queen to meet us at midnight tomorrow?”

  “What happens then?”

  “She can watch us hold back the demons.”

  SEVEN

  Tau was nervous. The night before, after deciding to ask Jabari to fight in Isihogo, he’d gone to his friend’s bedside and explained everything. Jabari couldn’t speak, not with the damage to his throat. It was likely he’d never speak properly again, but Tau had gotten an answer from him anyway.

  At the end of his tale of demons, dragons, Gifted, and suffering, he’d placed his wrist in one of Jabari’s bandaged hands and asked the Petty Noble if he would do this terrible thing with them. He couldn’t believe Jabari would refuse, but as he waited for a response, he pictured himself in his friend’s place and started to doubt.

  Ashamed for putting his friend in such a position, Tau began to rise, intending to leave Jabari to rest, but Jabari squeezed his wrist before he could move away.

  Tau looked into his best friend’s eyes, the blacks at the center the only normal thing about them. Once the Petty Noble’s condition had stabilized, the Sah priests had done what they could to make his body function as it once had. Early on in the process, they’d sliced away the fused flesh on his eyelids, permitting Jabari to open his eyes fully. It had been done long ago, but the whites around Jabari’s pupils seemed to be permanently bruised and stained red.

  “You’re certain?” Tau asked.

  Another squeeze. Jabari’s eyes had a hunger in them.

  So, on that next night, the night the queen was meant to see them fight the demons, Tau was at Jabari’s bedside again. The curtains around the Petty Noble’s bed had been pulled back, but there was no one to gawk at Jabari’s condition. Priestess Hafsa, not knowing the reason for the request but grudgingly respecting the authority of it, had moved all patients except for Hadith and Kellan into another ward. The infirmary was Tau’s.

  Hadith, at the other end of the ward, his chest wrapped tight with bandages, was sitting up and watching them. The grand general had wanted to be moved closer, to observe. Tau told him it wasn’t wise. He wanted enough space to stop another … accident, if one occurred.

  Next to Hadith, Gifted Thandi was with Kellan. The Greater Noble had woken that morning, demanding his release from Hafsa’s care and an immediate return to duty. The physician, declaring the worst behind him, had refused regardless. She wanted him in the infirmary for one more night.

  Tau had already gone to Kellan and spoken with him. He told him as little as he could while still convincing him that he could not train in Isihogo. Tau had said that the same strength of blood that allowed the Gifted to move their powers through him meant that the demons could move the injuries they caused him in Isihogo into Uhmlaba.

  It was basically the truth, but Tau knew that Kellan knew there was more to it. Thankfully, Kellan was too graceful to treat Tau’s explanation as anything other than the whole truth.

  Thandi had come then, telling Kellan that he’d been brave and lucky to survive Tau’s foolishness. She told Kellan that her concerns about him fighting in the underworld had been due to her theory about his blood and the way it would interact with the demons.

  Again, Kellan was graceful. He was always graceful, and the effect his good manners had was never more apparent than when women were present. Gifted Thandi hung on the Greater Noble’s every mutter or mumble. So as Thandi and Kellan conversed, Tau took his leave, walking over to Jabari’s bedside.

  The sun had just set, the rest of the unit would arrive within a span, and Tau intended to work with Jabari until that time. He’d show him how to enter and leave Isihogo, and though he tried to hide his worries, Tau wanted this to work.

  True, Isihogo had its price, but it was a rare thing of value that didn’t. And if Jabari could withstand the underworld, he’d finally learn to fight as powerfully as any Ingonyama. Tau wanted that for him.

  “You understand what to do?” Tau asked. “We’ll enter and leave Isihogo a few times. I want you familiar with that before the others come.”

  Jabari squeezed his hand.

  “You’re sure you’re ready to—”

  Squeeze.

  Tau smiled. “Of course. Close your eyes and listen to my voice …”

  In all the times Tau had taken himself to the underworld, he had never entered it indoors and was unsure what he’d see. The mists, heavy, oppressive, and omnipresent, were there, and so were the infirmary walls, but they had been transformed, taking on the shape of outcroppings of gray vertical rock instead of the infirmary’s cleanly scrubbed adobe. It was as if Isihogo denied the design of human hands, though that didn’t explain how Tau’s armor and weapons appeared to him exactly as they did in Uhmlaba.

  Glancing about, Tau saw that there were no beds, tables, or anything else that could be easily moved. All that was temporary or unfixed was not replicated in the underworld’s version, and the souls of Kellan, Hadith, and Thandi, the ones who had not joined them, could barely be seen. The souls’ glow of those three looked more like afterimages of light than they did the real thing.

  Then, afraid of what he’d see, Tau turned to the place where Jabari’s bed would be.

  “Tau …”

  “Jabari.” Relief flooded him. “Jabari!”

  The Petty Noble was on his feet, his sword belted to his hip, and he had on the thick gambeson he’d worn to their countless training sessions back in Kerem, but none of that held Tau’s attention. Jabari’s face did. Tau’s friend was unburned, uninjured, and it filled Tau’s heart to see him so.

  “There’s no pain, Tau. Goddess be praised, there’s no pain.”

  “Jabari, I—”

  “Will it last?”

  “Last?”

  “I don’t think I can go back,” Jabari said, his voice breaking. “The burns, they hurt so much. And the priestesses and priests, they come to scrape at me, telling me they’re removing dead and ruined flesh, but it feels like they’re there to torture me, to pick at me like biting ants feeding on helpless prey. Tau, I spend my days in agony, and the nights are worse.”

  “I—I should have been here … I should have come more often.”

  The Petty Noble’s eyes were hard as he stared down at Tau. “Yes, you should have.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Jabari shook his head. “It’s no matter. You’re here now, and you’re giving me so much more than you know.”

  “I am sorry,” Tau said, hearing a howl in the distance, out beyond the gaps in the rock that took the place of the infirmary’s windows. “We have to leave.”

  “Leave?” Jabari asked. “No, I can’t go back to that body.”

  “Jabari, the demons are coming.”

  “I’ll hide. I’ll hide and I’ll stay.”

  “Look down at yourself,” Tau said. “See the way you’re glowing? It calls to them. They’ll find you. They always do.”

  “Then I’ll fight,” Jabari said, touching the sword on his hip. “Isn’t that why we’re here? I’ll fight to stay.”

  “You will fight, but not now. Come back with me, brother.”

  “To what, Tau? For what?”

  The howls had multiplied. More demons were coming and they were close.

  “We’ll be back,” Tau said. “Trust me.”

  “Trust you?” Jabari’s smile was strange. “Of course, brother. Of course.”

  “You remember how to get back?” Tau asked.

  Jabari nodded.

  “Good. Free the ai
r in your lungs. Let no more take its place. It’ll feel like you’re dying and—”

  “Every moment I have feels like I’m dying,” Jabari said, walking three steps away and exhaling.

  Tau watched as Jabari’s golden glow flared, dimmed, trembled, and vanished, taking Jabari with it. By then, the demons had arrived and it was too late to leave as Jabari had. Body itching in anticipation, Tau pulled his swords free.

  Tau’s eyes flew open and he was back in Uhmlaba. There had been three smaller demons at first and he’d held them off for a while. It was when the fourth had joined the fight that he’d fallen, and he was still coming back to himself when he felt Jabari squeezing his wrist.

  Jabari’s eyes and mouth, the only parts of his face not covered by bandages, were wide open and his back was arched.

  “Jabari?”

  The Petty Noble kept squeezing Tau’s wrist.

  Something was wrong and Tau began to rise. “I’ll get Hafsa.”

  Jabari latched on to Tau’s wrist, holding him in place and, given the state of his hands, Tau could imagine what it cost him to do it.

  “You don’t want the physician?”

  Jabari, slowly, purposefully, shook his head.

  “What then? What do you need?”

  Jabari spoke one word, broken and hoarse, like the hiss of water thrown on a fire. “Isihogo.”

  Tau rubbed his neck with his free hand. “The demons will be closer. They are called to the places we go and they stay around them for a while after we’re gone.”

  Jabari squeezed his wrist, one, two, three times.

  Tau understood. “We have to be quick. No fighting. If you engage the demons, the only way to leave the underworld is through death, and, for now, it’s more important to learn how to enter and leave Isihogo. Are you ready?”

  Another wrist squeeze.

  “Close your eyes and …” Jabari’s eyes were already closed and he was working to bring his breathing under control. “Listen to my voice,” Tau said, helping to focus and guide his friend to their destination.

  “How long can we stay?” Jabari said, shouting over the underworld’s mists.

  “Not long. If we come back to the same place, there are always demons waiting.”

  “Can you move me? Move me in Uhmlaba? Then I can come back and it will take them longer to find me?”

  Tau hadn’t thought of that. “Perhaps,” he said. “It might help a little, but it is never long before they come. The glow calls to them.”

  “Can we stop the glow?”

  The question brought Tau’s mind to Zuri, and the memory hurt. “No,” he told Jabari. “We can’t. Gifted can shroud themselves in the underworld, but only Gifted.”

  “How do you know? Have you tried?”

  Tau didn’t answer.

  “You’ve tried …,” Jabari said. “Maybe it’s because you’re a Lesser? Maybe I can—”

  “You can’t.”

  A demon roared from beyond the walls.

  “I can’t go back yet,” Jabari said. “I need more time.”

  “We have to leave.”

  Jabari screamed in the direction of the roar. “Cek!”

  Still angry, he turned to Tau and expelled the air from his lungs, holding his eyes on Tau’s face as he did it.

  They went back two more times. The last time they had only just stepped into the underworld when the demons had marked them. So after that they waited for the others, and without the need for words, Tau could sense Jabari’s impatience.

  Uduak was the first to arrive, and with a quick salute to Tau, he went to sit by Hadith. Yaw came next, bobbing his head at everyone, which made his necklace swing back and forth.

  After the first fights in Isihogo, Tau’s sword brother had taken to wearing the short necklace symbolizing deep faith in the Goddess. As best as Tau could tell, Yaw’s necklace was typical. At the end of a short bronze chain hung a circle of wood that had been carved with the Goddess’s likeness, and fingering the wood as Tau had often seen old Proven do, Yaw elected to stand a few strides away. He was trying to make it look as if he were examining the other infirmary beds, but Tau knew that Yaw simply wasn’t sure how to be around Jabari, given the Petty Noble’s particular state.

  Themba was the last to join. He strode up, saluted Tau a little too sharply, and smiled down at Jabari.

  “You’re a fool to do this,” he said to the burned man. “Brave, but a fool.”

  “Themba, bring Uduak and the Lady Gifted. We’ll begin,” Tau said, not wanting Jabari to have to wait any longer.

  Themba’s smile was back. “Can’t even give him a moment, can you?”

  “Who, Uduak? He’s been a better brother than I have. He’s always with Hadith.”

  Themba chuckled and lifted an eyebrow. “Well, that makes sense given … everything.”

  Tau was feeling tender after worrying over Jabari and didn’t need Themba piling on. “Given what, exactly?”

  Themba let his eyebrow drop back in place and raised his hands, palms out. “Don’t take me the wrong way. I’ve no problem with it,” he said. “It’s just that they got a lot more serious after Uduak was injured in the melee.”

  “More serious?”

  “Yes, after Uduak was hurt and Hadith …” Themba cocked his head. “Wait? You can’t mean you didn’t …” The smile was back and Themba began speaking to Tau slowly, like he was talking to a child. “Why do you think I made all those jibes about Uduak and the pleasure houses or Uduak becoming the queen’s champion and having to perform all his duties there or … Goddess wept, you didn’t know why I was always teasing him? How small is Kerem?”

  Tau wasn’t listening anymore. He was staring at his two sword brothers, Uduak and Hadith, clasping wrists and speaking in low voices to each other. “It’s not … uh … Kerem isn’t that small.”

  “So you say,” Themba said, smirking at a straight-faced Yaw and then at Jabari, as if the three of them were sharing a joke.

  “In any case,” Tau said, “bring Uduak and the Lady Gifted. We should begin.”

  Reminded of their purpose that night, Themba grew serious and went to get them.

  When he’d walked away, Tau turned to Yaw. “Did you know?”

  Yaw shrugged, then nodded.

  “I didn’t,” Tau said, watching Uduak and Gifted Thandi follow Themba back to them.

  Themba’s smirk was back. “Champion Solarin, may I introduce you to Uduak, an Ihashe of the Omehi military. I’m not sure you two … really know each other.”

  Uduak glanced at Themba from the side of his eyes while Gifted Thandi ignored him outright.

  Following Thandi’s example, Tau left Themba to his smirking and got right to the point. “Lady Gifted, I hope to begin tonight’s training immediately, but I’d like to know when we can expect the queen.”

  Thandi wouldn’t look at him. “She’s not coming.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “The fiefs are sending far fewer Ihagu than the queen asked them for. So, she’s meeting with Nyah and this city’s umbusi to discuss how best to bring the rest of the umbusi in line, because we can’t take back Palm without more soldiers.

  “In any case, she thinks that you also need more fighters and that, even once you have enough to hold the circle, they’ll need time in the underworld before they can actually do it.”

  They hadn’t even begun the real work and already Tau was weary. “I told you there are no more men whom I trust with this, and why would the queen be so sure we need more fighters?”

  “Hmm … it could be because she asked my opinion on whether five fighters were enough.”

  Tau knew he was glaring. “And what did you tell her?”

  “The truth.”

  Tau put his face in his hands and massaged his temples. “The truth? What is the truth, as you see it?”

  “You can’t keep the Gifted safe with just five men.”

  Tau didn’t have time for this. “What happened to all your talk of f
aith and the Goddess and … char and ashes; Gifted Thandi, I won’t have men I cannot trust face the underworld.”

  Thandi nodded. “The queen knows that.”

  “Then what do you expect me to—”

  The doors to the infirmary opened, and lacking even a hint of their prior servility, in stalked Auset and Ramia, the queen’s handmaidens.

  NCHANGA

  Who’re they?” asked Themba.

  “Auset and Ramia, the queen’s handmaidens,” Tau told him.

  “I thought this was secret training. Why are the queen’s handmaidens here?”

  “I believe the queen wishes to bolster our numbers … and I think she finds it amusing to keep me off-balance.”

  The handmaidens were standing on either side of Gifted Thandi, and Tau had to admit, they looked intimidating when they weren’t pretending to be otherwise.

  “I’ll teach you how to enter the underworld,” Tau said to them, while worrying that Jabari would become impatient with another delay. “It’ll take time from tonight’s training, but what counts is that you’re willing to do this with us. Thank you.”

  “We have been with the queen since the beginning,” Auset said, her lips moving without seeming to affect the rest of her face. “We know how to come and go from Isihogo, Champion.”

  “Ah … of course you do. Apologies,” Tau said.

  “Wait, wait a moment.” Themba was waving his hands like he was shooing flies. “Why are handmaidens coming with us?”

  “They’re not handmaidens,” Tau said.

  “Yes, we are,” Ramia said, her voice sweet as the fruit from a masuku tree.

  “See? Handmaidens,” Themba said.

  “Begin, Champion. Let’s waste no time on the prattle of fools,” Auset said.

  “Fools?” Themba asked. “Do you know what we’re doing tonight? I’m trying to help you.”

  “You can barely help yourself, Ihashe,” Auset told him.

  “Auset,” Ramia said, “he doesn’t know.”

  “He should. He has eyes. He’s choosing not to accept what they tell him.”

  Themba walked up to Auset. “Listen, it’s not my way to be rude, but you need to—”