Kalisha was well outside her place of employment now, slipping like a shadow between buildings and through alleys in which no one else from the Beit Amiya would ever willingly go. Her only garment was a scrap of black cloth twisted around her slender hips. A small, sharp knife nestled snugly between the cloth and her skin. When she slipped into the pools of darkness that lay beyond the reach of the Moon Stars, Kalisha was all but invisible. And when she emerged again into the light of the Moon Stars, she moved so quickly she could hardly be seen.
Anyone watching her would have considered the route she took circuitous and without any conscious purpose. But there was a method to her meandering course; it was not as random as it appeared.
Kalisha never duplicated her path on the clandestine trips she took to the Maim. Nor did she allow the same number of days or weeks to pass between such journeys. One of the few pieces of advice her mother had given her was these words: “Predictable tsotsi be dead tsotsi.” She never thought of her mother much anymore; not since she had died in a skirmish between her set and another.
Now, Kalisha skittered through the city’s meanest streets like a spider, never spending more than a moment in any lighted area. The closer she came to the Maim, the fewer of those spots she found. The buildings she passed became shabbier, the streets narrower, the smell of urine and rotting garbage stronger, the scuttle of rats’ feet louder. No trees or flowers grew here.
Tsotsi-set symbols – patterns of slanted slash marks decipherable only other tsotsis – were scratched into the walls of some of the houses. They were messages of hate and defiance, territorial markers, challenges, insults. No one bothered to try to eradicate the symbols anymore, for they would only be replaced almost as soon as they were erased.
It was becoming quieter now. Only the occasional scurry of a rat broke the silence; Kalisha herself moved almost without a sound.
Thus far, Kalisha had encountered no one. Only fools – or other tsotsis – revealed themselves in the streets this close to the Maim, especially at night. In the corners of her eyes, she had detected a few flickers of movement in the shadows and assumed that whoever made them was also on tsotsi business. She did not want – or need – to know more than that.
As she passed a half-fallen wreck that might once have been a shop, Kalisha heard growls and the sound of snapping bones. The noises were coming from the direction where she needed to go, and so she continued. She fought down a spike of fear when she drew close enough to see what was making the horrible clamor, even though she had already suspected what it was.
A hyena was tearing at a nearly naked corpse – the remains of a luckless victim of the tsotsis, stripped of everything valuable and dumped in the street. In the time before the Storm Wars, hyenas never dared to venture near Matile cities. Now, they were as numerous as the packs of dogs with which they sometimes competed. As they did in the wilderness, hyenas disposed of the dead in the neglected parts of Khambawe.
The hyena raised its head and glared at Kalisha, who kept her distance. Blood dripped from its massive jaws and speckled its mangy fur. Kalisha stared back at the beast. She kept her hand on the hilt of her dagger. She had no illusions concerning the effect the weapon would have if the hyena chose to attack her. But she also knew she would soon be dead if she betrayed any sign of fear.
As well, there was the chance that this beast was more than a hyena. It could be an irimu, a creature of legend that was human by day and turned into a hyena at night. Kalisha had scoffed at the legend, thinking it was nothing but a tale for children. Now, she could not be so certain it wasn’t.
The hyena stared at her a while longer before uttering a series of high-pitched yips that sounded like demented human laughter. Then the scavenger returned to its grisly repast, and Kalisha moved on, still uncertain whether or not she had, indeed, encountered an irimu.
She was even warier now, constantly on the lookout for danger that walked on four feet – or two. But nothing else accosted her before she reached her destination, which lay at the hostile heart of the Maim.
3
Eventually, Kalisha reached an opening between two buildings that leaned against each other so precariously only their proximity to each other prevented them from collapsing into the street. From the far side of the opening, she heard the welcome sound of drumming.
Kalisha squeezed into the opening, and darkness of the space between the walls swallowed her. Moments later, she emerged into a courtyard, beyond which stood a tumbledown aderash – a mansion that had in the distant past belonged to a Jass. Now it housed a notable of a different kind.
As she crossed the courtyard, Kalisha’s posture straightened, and her eyes no longer flickered back and forth, searching for danger. As well, her gaze lost the studied impression of vacancy she and other servants, fronting or not, affected in the Beit Amiya. Here, in the Maim, she was not just another shamasha among people who believed they were her superiors. Here, she was an equal.
A single tsotsi stood at the entrance to the broken building. He was a lean young man clad only in
