The tsotsi tossed the pouch toward Athir. Reflexively, he reached out and caught it. Then he gave the tsotsi a quizzical look, even as the others gathered behind him. They were all young, but they were as hard-looking a lot as Athir had ever encountered.
“Don’ want your gold, Fidi,” the tsotsi said. “You be what we want.”
“Me?” Athir asked, more afraid than ever.
Rather than reply, the tsotsi bent down and picked up Athir’s dagger. He held it in one hand and compared it to the fearsome weapon in his other hand.
“This your teeth?” the tsotsi demanded, looking from the dagger to Athir and back again.
“I – I guess so,” Athir said, trying to fathom the tsotsi’s meaning.
The tsotsi laughed.
“That ain’t hardly no teeth,” he said.
Then he held up his tirss.
“This be teeth,” he said proudly. “Heard?”
“Uh, yeah, heard,” Athir said, reckoning that was what the tsotsi wanted him to say.
He waited a moment, then asked a question to which he didn’t really want to know the answer.
“You going to kill me, tsotsi?”
“Don’ know yet,” the tsotsi said. “Jass Mofo decide. He the one want you. We gon’ take you to him now.”
The tsotsi stuck Athir’s dagger in the belt that held the loop into which he then placed his tirss. Then he made a gesture.
Immediately, the sharp point was removed from Athir’s back. At the same time, something was thrown over his head, cutting off his vision. Then the point poked him again, and he understood its message: get moving.
He began to walk.
I’m still alive, he thought, as he had on numerous similar occasions. But this time, he wondered if the Ship’s Rat’s luck had finally run out.
3
Blindfolded and stumbling, Athir allowed the tsotsis to poke and prod him through the squalid back streets of Khambawe. Although he could see nothing, the fetid smells that reached Athir’s nose told him all he needed to know. His travels had taught him that offal smells the same everywhere, and these streets had to be choked with the stuff. He guessed that this was the infamous Maim. He had known he would have occasion to enter the tsotsi district sooner or later.
But not like this ...
His captors had remained silent, and discouraged him from trying to communicate with them. He attempted to remain optimistic. They haven’t killed me yet, he reminded himself. And they hadn’t played any cruel tricks on him, like walking him into walls or letting him trip over obstacles in the street.
Once, he heard a crunching of bones, followed by high-pitched, inhuman laughter. The tsotsis broke their silence at that sound. They made Athir stand still while they cursed and tossed objects at the source of the sound until the laughter stopped and rapidly receding footsteps signalled the departure of whoever – or whatever – it was. Athir thought he could detect the clicking of a beast’s claws. And he was glad he couldn’t see what it was that loped away.
Finally, Athir was hustled up a short flight of steps, then pushed through an entrance into a building. Immediately, the odors changed. Fragrant smoke and aromatic oils replaced the reek of decaying garbage. He could also hear music – a slow, hypnotic, rhythmic drumming.
The hands that gripped Athir’s arms jerked him to an abrupt halt. He heard the shuffle of footsteps around him and a cacophony of hushed voices. The drumming suddenly stopped. He heard footsteps moving away from him, and others shuffling, as though to get out of the way of whoever was walking. For a long time, no one said anything. The unseen hands held him easily, but firmly. Finally, someone pulled the makeshift blindfold off his head.
Athir blinked. The light in the building was dim, but he could still make out the piles of loot scattered throughout the room, as well as elegantly made furniture pushed haphazardly against walls covered with intricately woven tapestries. Tsotsis swarmed around him, looking at him with idle curiosity rather than open hostility. Some of them were chewing khat, and were looking at him and through him at the same time. The tsotsis who were not transported by khat seemed to be fascinated by his sand-colored hair and his pale complexion, which seemed resistant to the browning rays of the Abengoni sun.
Athir was struck by their youthfulness, and the lithe, catlike grace of their bodies. But it was their eyes that made the deepest impression on him – those of the women as well as the men, and even the children. Athir Rin had gazed into the eyes of thieves, outlaws, murderers and other rogues in more than a score of far-flung countries in Cym Dinath and beyond. But never before had he seen such an absence of warmth, or any other kind of positive sentiment. The tsotsis’ eyes reminded him of the cinders left by a burnt-out fire. They were the eyes of people who expected nothing – and gave less in return.
Athir forced himself to return the gazes of the tsotsis. Long-honed intuition told him these youths who were near, into, or just barely out of adolescence wouldn’t hesitate to gut him like a fish if he showed any sign of the fear that continued to gnaw at his stomach and tickle his spine.
Then the crowd of tsotsis in front of him parted, and a lone, regal figure approached.
Their leader, Athir presumed.
This new tsotsi stood taller than average, which meant that he towered over Athir. Beads of gold and silver decorated the braids that hung from a strip of hair on an otherwise-shaved scalp. Thick chains of gold and silver hung across his bare, sepia-colored chest. A wispy mustache and chin-beard decorated his grim, dark face. His clothing and ornaments were those of a wealthy man, but he wore it as though its opulence meant nothing. He had the type of frame that could make rags look
