“Can I go now, with my ‘stolen treasure’?” Sehaye asked when the guards’ laughter finally subsided.
“Go ahead, go ahead,” the more talkative of the two said. “Next time, though, you’ll have to split your loot with us.”
That set off another round of laughter, which echoed in Sehaye’s ears as he pulled the heavy cart away from the Gebbi Senafa.
3
Before the invasion of the Uloans, the Maim had been the most dangerous part of Khambawe. During the time that had passed since the defeat of the Islanders, that distinction still held true – but for a much different reason.
In the past the Maim had, for all its squalor and decrepitude, teemed with life and a knife’s-edge form of verve. Rival tsotsi sets had roamed the streets: preening, profiling, socializing, fighting. Brave or foolish people from the outer city would venture into the Maim on missions of illicit business – or unconventional pleasure. Even wildlife of a sort thrived in the blighted district. Hyenas and feral dogs fought over human carrion in fetid alleys, while hordes of rats lay in wait to devour whatever scraps the larger scavengers left behind.
And if some of the hyenas were really shape-shifting irimu, few in the Maim considered that to be a matter of importance. For back then, the tsotsis themselves had been irimu of a sort – deadly predators in human guise.
In the daytime, only a few vestiges of the Maim’s previous vitality remained. Tsotsis could still be seen in the streets, but their movements were guarded and furtive. The bravado they had exhibited before was gone. Almost no one from the outer city came into the Maim anymore. The khat trade had ground to a halt, as had the other vices the denizens of the Maim offered to the rest of Khambawe.
And at night ... at night, the light of the Moon Stars and the blazing night-sun conjured by the Almovaads illuminated streets that were nearly entirely devoid of life. Even the scavengers avoided the bright glare that sought out the prey of the Muvuli. The light was harsh, accusatory ... as though it embodied the wrath and contempt the rest of Khambawe held for the tsotsis’ depredations during the time in which the city was fighting for its survival.
Even though many of the Matile whose homes had been looted by the tsotsis while the Uloans were burning the city harbored bitterness in their hearts, no one visited the Maim to wreak vengeance on their own account. Although the Almovaads had assured the honest people of Khambawe that the Shadows posed no danger to them, only to the tsotsis, they were disinclined to put that pledge to the test. Besides, the Almovaads had convinced the people that the Muvuli were more than adequate surrogates for ensuring the destruction of the tsotsis. The shadows were picking the tsotsis off like lice from a scalp, one at a time ...
Had the voice in his mind not assured him of his safety, Sehaye would never have gone to the Maim even during the day, let alone at night. Yet he trusted that voice as implicitly as the Matile trusted the Almovaads. And the voice told him neither the shadows nor the tsotsis would harm him.
This was not Sehaye’s first venture into the Maim. He had come once before, and had seen what no one other than the tsotsis themselves had witnessed.
From whispered conversations he had engaged in with people who lived on the fringes of the Maim, Sehaye had learned that one set of tsotsis continued to roam the district’s streets at night, despite the constant danger of an encounter with the Muvuli. The members of that set were searching for something more valuable to them than loot – or their lives. The informants had told Sehaye the name of the set, and of its much-feared Jass.
Armed with that knowledge, and with the reassurances of the voice within him that he would not be harmed by the Muvuli, Sehaye had ventured into the Maim. Before Retribution Time, he’d had no reason to go there. The time he had spent in Khambawe had been devoted to selling the fish he caught and seeking information to pass on to Jass Imbiah. Otherwise, he had avoided the blankskins, primarily because the sight of them reminded him of his own want of spider-scars.
Even so, his lack of familiarity with the convoluted streets of the Maim had not mattered. The voice inside him, the voice that had become his friend, but also his insistent taskmaster, guided him unerringly. He had seen no shadow other than his own, and the dogs, hyenas and rats had avoided him as though he were part of the silver glare that turned night into a disconcerting semblance of day.
Hidden in an alley that contained his shadow and no others, Sehaye had waited until he heard rapid, scuttering footsteps coming down the street. Then the footsteps paused. A moment later, a tsotsi appeared in the opening of the alley. Fear was written plainly on the youth’s face as he peered into the darkness of the alley. The tsotsi carried a tirss in his hand. He held the weapon in front of him as though it could somehow detect danger he could not see.
The tsotsi could not see Sehaye ... but Sehaye could see the second shadow that suddenly appeared on the street behind the tsotsi. He saw the Muvuli raise its tirss and plunge it into the back of the tsotsi’s shadow. He heard the tsotsi cry out in fear and agony at the impact he felt on his own flesh, even though
