Striving to suppress his fear and giving himself over completely to the guidance of the voice within him, Sehaye had stepped over the body of the tsotsi as he emerged from the mouth of the alley. He cast a glance at the street-stones, then at the wall on the opposite side of the street, and breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of only one shadow – his own.
Now, he was back in the Maim ... at a different location this time, and for a different reason. The voice had told him the purpose of the previous visit had been to prepare him for what he would see when a shadow struck. Then, the life of a luckless tsotsi had meant nothing to either Sehaye or the voice. On this night, however, a tsotsi’s life would mean everything ...
Sehaye waited in the darkness of another alley. The Almovaads’ night-sun shone pitilessly, creating shadows that were unavoidable. And before long, another tsotsi crept into view, keeping to the darkness as much as he could, but unable to prevent his shadow from following him.
His efforts to avoid the inevitable were unsuccessful. As the tsotsi drew closer to the alley in which Sehaye was hiding, a second shadow appeared behind him ... a shadow with a tirss in its hand ... a tirss it was raising for a slash into the substance of the other shadow that shared the space on the wall.
This time, Sehaye was more than merely an observer. This time, he acted. Even as the Muvuli’s weapon began to descend, Sehaye sprinted from the alley, seized the tsotsi, and dragged him back into the safety of the darkness. In the moment before he reached the alley, Sehaye was touched by an icy coldness unlike anything ever experienced by any Matile or Uloan, or anyone else in Abengoni. He shuddered even as the cursing tsotsi struggled to get away from him.
When an unseen point of the tsotsi’s tirss pricked his skin, Sehaye uttered curses of his own. Then he twisted the tsotsi’s arm behind his back and turned him so that he could see outside the alley.
“Look!” Sehaye commanded, forcing the tsotsi’s head in the direction of the street.
The tsotsi obeyed ... and saw a shadow where no one stood to cast it. Tirss still raised, the Muvuli looked left and right, looking for its prey. The apparition was still searching as it faded from sight.
While he watched the Muvuli disappear, the tsotsi’s body went slack in Sehaye’s arms. Now, his lean muscles tensed. Sehaye tightened his grasp.
“Who you is?” the tsotsi hissed. “What you want?”
Sehaye knew better than to expect gratitude, or even courtesy, from a tsotsi. Instead of replying directly, the Uloan asked a question of his own.
“Are you Ashaki?”
The tsotsi started, then stared hard at what little he could see of Sehaye in the alley’s gloom.
“Why you ask that?” the tsotsi demanded.
“I have something Jass Mofo wants.”
“What that be?”
Sehaye leaned forward and whispered a name in the tsotsi’s ear. This time, the tsotsi grinned.
“Mofo want that, for true. You coming with me. Heard?”
“Heard,” Sehaye said.
4
The Muvuli did not unnerve Sehaye nearly as much as did Jass Mofo. And he had to struggle twice as hard to contain his fear as he had in the alley in the Maim, when a mere brush from the shadow’s weapon had thrust a cold blade into his soul. The eyes of the Ashaki set’s leader were even colder than the Muvuli’s touch. Yet there was something else in those dark, empty chasms ... something that burned fiercely, yet emitted no warmth ... something that was as distant from sanity as the Moon Stars were from the world.
Sehaye was in the dilapidated aderash that was still the headquarters of the Ashaki set. A few candles provided illumination; these days, any other light after sunset was the tsotsis’ worst enemy. The tsotsis who surrounded their Jass seemed more wraithlike than real: their bodies were thin to the point of emaciation, and their eyes, showing the influence of the copious amounts of khat they chewed, flickered like the candles that lit the huge, nearly empty hall from which they and Mofo had once ruled the night.
Now, the night ruled them.
The tsotsi who had led Sehaye to the aderash had left him in the custody of several others while he went to inform Jass Mofo of his arrival. Sehaye knew the repetition of the name he had whispered would bring Mofo to him immediately. He was not wrong. He waited only a short time before the tsotsi reappeared, with Mofo at his side. During the interval, the other tsotsis had eyed him as though he were fresh meat, and they were starving. Sehaye ignored their attention. He knew he was safe among them.
Or so the voice told him ...
But when Sehaye first laid eyes on Mofo, that assurance fled: voice or no voice. Jass Mofo reminded him of the sharks that had tried to tear the catches from his nets during his time as a fisherman. The tsotsi’s previous finery was long since gone. The braids of his hair had become as tangled as a bramble bush, and his skin stretched tautly across the bones of his lean frame. Mofo looked as though he were cornered, and therefore even more dangerous than usual. The tsotsi eyed the Uloan for a long time before he spoke.
“You save Kutu from the shadow,” Mofo said, nodding toward the tsotsi at his side. “You give Kutu a name. That name bring you here alive. You want to stay alive, you say what you want here. Heard?”
“This is not about what I want, Jass Mofo,” Sehaye said. “It’s about what you want. Word is, you want two things. I have one of them. The name tells you which one it is.”
“The Fidi-tsotsi,”
