Neither bothered to look for Jass Kebessa. The leader of the dissidents would be far to the rear of the procession, as befitting his lowly status among the Degen Jassi. He would be safe from what was to come.
Now the gharri that conveyed Tiyana and Keshu was passing. For the briefest of moments, Adisu’s anger receded as he looked at her. Gebrem’s daughter possessed the beauty and courage of a goddess. And Keshu had risen high from the ranks of the common classes, people like Adisu himself.
The respite lasted only for a moment before Adisu once again hardened his heart at the realization that even these two had fallen irrevocably under the insidious control of the foreigners.
Mounted soldiers accompanied the procession as it wound its way through the city. They, too, were resplendent in their polished armor and lion-mane decorations. Their weapons remained sheathed, for no one was expecting any trouble ... no one other than the dissidents.
Sehaye, where are they? Adisu demanded silently. Where?
A moment later, his unvoiced question was answered.
They struck with the quickness of cobras. The crowd had concealed them well; they had mimicked those who surrounded them with chameleon-like ease. The soldiers had no time to react; neither did the Adepts, for all their skill and power and preternatural awareness. So completely had the attackers hidden themselves that Adisu was oblivious to the fact that one of them had been standing at his other side all this time. He didn’t know until the chamma-clad figure hurled itself at a passing gharri, rushing beneath the rearing hooves of the soldier-escort’s startled quagga.
The music faltered, then stopped completely, to be supplanted by shouts, screams, the neighing of quaggas and the crash of overturned gharris. Sunlight glinted from the weapons the assailants wielded. Tirss ... the chosen weapon of the tsotsis ...
Even as the press of the panicking crowd pulled him one way, then the other, ultimately separating him from Tamair, Adisu exulted inside.
He did it! That crazy man Sehaye did it! No one will blame us for what has happened! They will blame the tsotsis! The cursed tsotsis have freed us from the foreigners!
Even as Adisu celebrated, his foot caught on a raised stone in the street, and he went down. The fear-maddened crowd around him did not notice as he flailed about in a desperate attempt to get back to his feet. But the feet of others pounded him like a hailstorm and kept him down. Some of the people in the crowd were running toward the procession to try to aid the Jassi and the Almovaads. Others were simply running away.
Collisions abounded. Others besides Adisu fell and were trampled. Some managed to rise and escape further injury; others were not so fortunate. Adisu was not among the fortunate ones. Even as he died beneath the pounding feet of the people he had plotted to save from the foreigners, he heard the cry of the tsotsis rising above the clamor of the crowd:
“This be for your shadows!”
4
“Tiyana! Beware!” Keshu shouted.
The spikes of a tirss swooped toward Tiyana like the talons of some gigantic bird of prey. Shock at the suddenness and savagery of the attack had left her immobile. The arm that swung the tirss was lean and sinewy; the face of the wielder was twisted in a snarl of hatred.
Before the tirss could complete its deadly arc and tear into Tiyana’s flesh, a dark shape interposed itself between her and the weapon. An ugly, rending noise accompanied the bite of the tsotsi’s “teeth” through cloth and flesh. Tiyana fell backward as two people stumbled against her. One of them was already dying; the other was screaming incoherent imprecations.
The gharri rocked wildly as the fear-maddened quagga that was pulling it reared and kicked its hooves indiscriminately at the mass of people swarming around it. A tirss raked across the beast’s belly, spilling its blood and intestines even as it collapsed in its traces.
As she tumbled out of the gharri, Tiyana’s head hit the stones of the street, and small replicas of the Moon Stars whirled in the sudden darkness in front of her eyes. Pain lanced through her skull. The weight of Keshu’s body pressed down on her, and she could feel the movement of the assassin’s struggle to pull his tirss free from the flesh in which it was embedded. She could hear the screams, the curses, the clangor of weapons, the pounding of feet and hooves. And she could feel Keshu’s body sliding away as the tsotsi pulled it away to get to her.
Keshu is dead! she thought as she fought to retain consciousness. Keshu is dead! He died to save me! Keshu is dead!
The tiny Moon Stars faded. The blackness before her eyes broke into small, moving dots. Through them, Tiyana could see the tsotsi looming above her. He had pulled his tirss free from Keshu’s body. Keshu’s blood dripped from the tips of the tines onto Tiyana’s face and arms. The tsotsi raised the weapon to deliver another flesh-rending strike.
Rage ripped through Tiyana like a wet-season storm. A cry of fury and desolation erupted from her throat. The sound of the cry turned into power – a spiral of radiance like that of the night-sun that shone on the Maim after the day-sun went down. Blue light, similar to the healing illumination that had, only days ago, cleansed the Uloans’ bodies and spirits.
What Tiyana unleashed now had nothing of healing in it. The blue spiral wrapped itself around the tsotsi like a python made of light, pinning his arms to his sides. The tirss fell to the ground with a clatter scarcely audible above the tumult that engulfed the interrupted procession.
With hatred on her face that matched the tsotsi’s expression when he attacked, Tiyana concentrated her power. And the serpent of light constricted, slicing through the tsotsi’s flesh as though it were of no greater substance than the air that surrounded it. The
