Finally – mercifully – Kece’s life came to an end, and he lay still. The Muvuli stood alone on the surface of a house wall, and shook shadow-drops of blood from its tirss. Then it faded out of existence, its work done.
2
Jass Mofo and the rest of what was left of the Ashaki found Kece’s corpse the next day. The tsotsi lay in a pool of congealed blood. His body remained undisturbed; that was how the others knew Kece had been slain by one of the Blue Robes’ shadows. Ordinarily, the Maim’s contingent of hyenas and wild dogs would have long since devoured the fresh carrion. But the scavengers never touched the remains of those whom the Muvuli had slain.
Mofo gazed dispassionately at the butchered corpse. The other tsotsis – fewer than a dozen of them – in turn gazed at their Jass with half-averted eyes and deliberately blank expressions on their faces.
No longer did Mofo exemplify outlaw royalty. The braids of his hair were matted and bereft of the silver and gold ornaments that had once weighed them down. His regal chamma was gone; he wore only soiled, torn black leather senafil. His hand was clenched tightly around the hilt of his tirss. If anything, the cold, affectless void mirrored in his eyes had grown deeper and darker since the night the tsotsis’ reign in the streets had ended.
The tsotsis’ power over the Maim and the other, poorer, parts of Khambawe had become only a memory now. The outlaws’ former prey no longer feared them. The Emperor’s soldiers ruled the city by day, and the Muvuli owned the night. One by one, the tsotsis were disappearing, either through death or capitulation to the new realities of the city.
But Jass Mofo refused to surrender. Two obsessions drove him onward, even as other tsotsis gave up their miscreant ways and attempted to become part of the new Khambawe – or if not that, escape it.
“He be careless,” Mofo muttered as he looked down at Kece. “Should’ve watched he-self.”
Ordinarily, silence would have greeted Mofo’s statement. This time, though, one voice dared to allow itself to be heard.
“If you not send him out here, he not be dead.”
Whispers of indrawn breath accompanied Mofo’s motion as he turned to face the speaker, who was Jumu, the only Ashaki who still had the courage not to cringe before the leader of the set. Jumu had not been openly rebellious, but he had come close to reaching that line before. Now, he crossed it.
“What you say, Jumu?” Mofo asked softly.
“You got bad ears, or what?” Jumu said coolly.
Jumu didn’t drop his gaze when Mofo looked at him.
Jumu tightened his grip on his tirss, and his face took on an expression of daring and determination. He had thought about this confrontation for a long time, and had convinced himself that Mofo had lost his edge, that the Ashaki Jass was no longer to be feared, that he was ready to be taken.
Jumu thought he was ready to challenge Mofo, to pit his prowess with the tirss against that of his leader.
He wasn’t.
Mofo had grown leaner than he was before. But he wasn’t any slower. And he had always been the quickest tsotsi in the Maim.
Before Jumu could say or do anything more, Mofo’s tirss reached out to him – and bit. The impact of the weapon’s sharp spikes sheared away half of Jumu’s face. Then Mofo struck again, laying Jumu’s chest open to the bone and exposing his still-beating heart.
Eyes wide and round, Jumu crumpled to the ground, dead before he had a chance even to cry out. His fresh blood mingled with the pool of congealed gore that surrounded Kece.
Mofo turned to the rest of the set and stared at them all, each in turn. None of them met his cold gaze.
Then he said the words the Ashaki had come to dread; the words they had been hearing every day since their loot had been stolen by the Fidi, Athir, who had beaten them at their own game.
“Find the Fidi-tsotsi,” Mofo said. “Make him give back what he take from us. Kill him – slow. Then bring me his seed-sack. Heard?”
“Heard,” the tsotsis replied in a ragged chorus.
“Find Amiya-girl,” Mofo continued. “Bring her back, alive. She be my luck. Never should’ve let her go. Heard?”
“Heard.”
Mofo nodded. Then he waved his hand in curt dismissal. And the set scattered, for soon the soldiers their henchmen would be patrolling the streets they had once ceded to the tsotsis and the hyenas. Though none would say it aloud, more than a few of the set wished that one of Muvuli would come and claim their Jass, so they could finally be free of him.
4
To find Athir Rin, the tsotsis would have had to make their way into the Gebbi Senafa. Then they would have needed to evade human guards and magical wards. And if they somehow managed to succeed in slaying the Fidi but failed to avoid capture, they would have received a punishment even worse than what the Muvuli that stalked the Maim could mete out.
The reason the erstwhile Ship’s Rat was safe was that he had become an honored guest of the Emperor Gebrem. And even as the Ashaki set scoured every reeking alley and bolthole in the Maim, Athir was ensconced in his own chambers in the Palace, enjoying sumptuous food and the finest talla and kef, attended by a pair of young female servants who supplied him with more than just food and drink.
Athir took another sip of his talla and savored the tangy taste. It was much better than the rotgut he had forced down his throat in the talla-beits of the districts close to the Maim, or other dubious concoctions he had
