Athir remained silent.
“How you feelin’?” Mofo asked.
“Fine. Yourself?”
Mofo ignored that question. Instead, he asked one of his own that caused fear to crawl once again in Athir’s stomach. The semi-stupor to which the khat had taken him vanished abruptly, and the pain from his injuries greeted him like an old friend.
“You thinkin’ about runnin’, Fidi tsotsi?”
“No,” Athir said quickly. “Not at all, Jass Mofo. I would never do that. I’m proud to be a part of your fine organization.”
Mofo snorted in disbelief.
“Best not be thinkin’ about runnin’,” he said. “Once you Ashaki, you always Ashaki. Till you die.”
“Heard.”
“Good.”
Then Mofo knelt next to Athir. The Ship’s Rat felt as though he were sitting next to a hungry leopard.
“Show me how you make the bones fall the way you want them to fall, Fidi tsotsi,” Mofo said.
“Sure,” Athir agreed, fishing his dice out of their hiding place in a fold of his garments.
“Here’s how you throw a seven.”
He flicked the dice against the room’s bare stone wall. They bounced once, twice, then lay still on the floor. One face showed three markings, the other four.
“It’s all in the way you move your wrist,” Athir explained. “Very subtle.”
Mofo nodded.
“Like killin’,” he said.
Athir tried to swallow his fear as he continued Jass Mofo’s first lesson in the art of throwing weighted dice. And all he could think about was running.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Soon Come
1
Jass Imbiah stood alone on Jayaya’s beach, at the place where Sehaye’s gede had arrived. No ubia-vine dared to come close to her; the altered ashuma that surrounded her like an unseen shield provided protection against mwiti and animal predators alike. As for human evil-doers, the mere sight of her – chamma billowing in the salty breeze, spider-scars clearly delineated by the light of the Moon Stars – was more than sufficient to ensure her well-being.
“Too narrow,” Jass Imbiah said softly. “Me shoulders, them too narrow. Much too narrow for the task that is set for I.”
The Moon Stars transformed the crimson sand of the beach into a black blanket nearly indistinguishable from the darkness of rolling sea. Jass Imbiah tried to find solace in the sound of the waves breaking against the shore. But calm of any kind eluded her, as it had since Legaba had ridden her on the day the message arrived from the mainland.
She shook her head slowly from side to side, as though that action could ease the responsibility she had to uphold: the undertaking of Retribution Time, the ultimate culmination of the Uloans’ destiny, the final vengeance. Jass Imbiah knew what she and her people would be required to do now that Legaba had declared that Retribution Time was here. Her predecessors had also known. They had known; they had prepared; they had waited – but the call to Retribution Time was never heard.
Soon come, generation after generation of Uloans had told each other. Retribution Time, it soon come. And they never allowed themselves to doubt that one day, Legaba would lead them to their long-awaited reprisal against the blankskins and give the Uloans dominion over the mainland.
Jass Imbiah had never had even a moment of misgiving – until now. The source of her doubts was not in the truth of the words of prophecy that were uttered when the Storm Wars ended with so many of the Uloan Islands reduced to smoking lumps of rock barely breaking the surface of sea. And it wasn’t a lack of faith in Legaba that drove her to seek solitude on the beach this night.
It was herself she doubted. So much of what was to come depended upon her, for she alone was the Vessel of Legaba. The Spider God’s ashuma would ensure the success of Retribution Time – if she could contain and control it in her frail, aged body without breaking apart like a dry twig snapped underfoot.
Earlier that day, Jass Imbiah had met with an assembly of huangi from all the inhabited islands of the Uloas at her palace in Ompong. They had discussed their final preparations for Retribution Time down to the most minute details, and Jass Imbiah, the huangi of huangis, had imbued them all with confidence that they would triumph. But her confidence in herself was not as firm.
“Me shoulders too narrow,” she said again.
Her faith in Legaba was as deep as the ocean. Her belief in herself as the god’s Vessel was much shallower. As she stood on the shoreline, Jass Imbiah fought a battle within herself – a battle against her fears that she would fail not only Legaba, but her people as well.
My shoulders are more than wide enough, a familiar voice said inside her head.
“Legaba,” Jass Imbiah said, with a sigh of relief in her tone.
She prepared herself to be ridden again. But Legaba did not intend to put her through the ordeal of possession this night.
Jass Imbiah heard a stirring in the sand. The sound was coming from the place where the ocean met the beach. She looked down, expecting to see a gede, although now that Retribution Time had come, there was no further purpose for the magical constructs.
She saw a shape coming toward her, barely visible in the black-crimson grains. But she could see clearly enough to realize that this was no gede. The shape was a round dome of weed, with legs radiating from its center like those of a spider. Jass Imbiah remained motionless as the weed-spider reached her. Jass Imbiah knew the weed from which the spider was formed did not come from Nama-kwah’s realm of the sea, but from Legaba’s, which was a much different place.
And she welcomed its arrival ...
The weed-spider’s legs reached under her chamma and coiled around her body. The susurrating sound of their movements blended with the rumble of the waves as the weed-thing spread until it completely enveloped Jass Imbiah.
The web of weed did not constrict or smother her. She welcomed its touch as its substance was absorbed into that of
