“You know, Shebeshi just might have the right idea,” Fetiwi mused. “If more of us joined up with him, and with each other, we could leave this so-called Empire behind and start something better on our own.”
He was looking directly at Hirute as he spoke, and in his eyes, the hidden meaning of his words was clear. Hirute’s response was harsh.
“If Shebeshi sticks his fool head out too far, he’s going to get it chopped right off his shoulders,” she said. “As for me, I’m not ‘joining’ anybody for any reason. The Thabas haven’t bothered us since I avenged Kassa’s death, and we get along just fine on our own.”
Hirute held Fetiwi’s gaze. A flash of anger – and perhaps something more – flickered in Fetiwi’s eyes before he looked away.
Hirute drained her cup of talla, then held it up to be refilled by the young girl who was serving the Imba Jassis’ table. When her cup brimmed once again, Hirute took another long swallow, then wiped her lips with the back of her hand, then wiped her hand on her chamma.
“I don’t trust these outsiders,” she reiterated. “I’ll be glad when we’re out of here, and that can’t be too soon.”
The others drank to her sentiment.
3
The Fidi were not the only outsiders in Khambawe. There were others, of whom the Matile were totally unaware. Their existence was the best-kept secret in the city. And the price for any betrayal of that secret would be paid in blood ...
On the seacoast, far from the lights of the Khambawe, a lone fishing-boat rested at anchor. It was indistinguishable from the many other craft that harvested the huge shoals of fish that swam close to the shore. Its owner, known to fellow fishermen as Sehaye, claimed to have come from Akara, a tiny island off the eastern mainland that had been considered remote and inconsequential even at the height of the Matiles’ power.
If others wondered what had caused Sehaye to venture so far from his homeland, they kept their questions to themselves. They had their own nets to mind, and little reason to cast any lines of curiosity into the life of a loner. Sehaye was polite but taciturn, speaking only when spoken to. His catches were neither larger nor smaller than usual. No one knew how he spent the meager profits he earned; he had neither family nor friends nor any known vices. He was seldom, if ever, the topic of gossip on the wharves. There were many more-interesting people to talk about.
Had they known the truth about Sehaye, however, the Matile fishermen would have burned his boat and sent him to the bottom of the sea tied to his own anchor. For the island he came from was not Akara, and it was not located to the east, but to the west. He was an Uloan, from the Shattered Isles that lay beyond the mist. As a spy, he angled for information that would help his people gain their revenge against the mainlanders. This night, he had news to send that he knew would create a furor on his home islands.
A scrawny, dark-skinned, narrow-faced man with a tangle of short, undecorated braids sprouting on his head, Sehaye sat near the stern of his boat. He was carefully stuffing a small tube of wood down the gullet of something that, at first glance, looked like a motionless fish. But the light of the Moon Stars showed that the object he held in his hands was nothing at all like an ordinary piscine. Its body was scale-less; viscid, as though created from some repellent internal organ rather than nurtured by any natural process. Its fins tapered at odd angles, and its eyes resembled flat pieces of stone stuck into the substance of its head, as a child decorates a model molded from clay.
The construct was called a gede, and it was a product of the Uloans’ peculiar version of ashuma, a version that had long ago deviated well beyond the type of magic practiced by the mainlanders.
A grimace of distaste crossed Sehaye’s face as he completed his task. No matter how many times he had sent such messages to the Uloas, he could not accustom himself to the touch of the gede’s skin. He had brought two of the constructs with him when he came to the mainland and, as the huangi – the master-sorcerers of the Islands – had instructed, he had placed them in a stagnant pool near his small house. No matter how many times Sehaye pulled a gede from the foul-smelling water, there were always two of them waiting for him when he returned.
He reached over the side of his boat and gingerly placed the loathsome construct into the water. It sank like a stone beneath the surface – then came to sudden, sorcerous life, rising and shooting away far more swiftly than any natural fish could swim. Its path led to the Shattered Isles; its unpleasant wake remained long after its body had swum out of sight.
In the tube was Sehaye’s written account of the coming of the Fidi. He knew no harm would come to the thing he had sent to his masters; even the most ferocious predators in the sea would swim far away to avoid it.
He watched its path as it disappeared in the darkness. Then he retired to the sleeping-mat laid out below the deck. He did not plan on losing sleep wondering what the huangi would do with the information he had sent them. Once they decided, they would let him know, and he would do whatever they told him.
In his own way, Sehaye was just as much a construct as the gede. That did not
