This night, several people approached a house that remained the most nearly intact on a street of ruins. They came singly, and they spaced their arrivals at irregular intervals. Light from the Moon Stars created a pale nimbus that softened the jagged outlines of the broken buildings. In the distance, the night-sun that hovered over the Maim was clearly visible. Because of that silvery beacon in the sky, the people who approached the house were able to gather at night without any need to fear becoming victims of the tsotsis.
However, the dissenters felt no gratitude for that tangible gift from the new god. The night-sun and the rumors of sinister shadows that were killing off the tsotsis only exacerbated their misgivings. Their discontent was not based on loyalty to the Jagasti, who had abandoned – and been abandoned by – the Matile. Yet the doubters could not bring themselves to embrace the worship of the new god, whose adherents seemed to have profited rather than suffered in the wake of the near-disaster that had befallen the Empire.
The dissenters continued to converge on the half-fallen house until more than a dozen had made their way inside. The interior of the house remained dark until the last of the group had arrived. At the lighting of a single candle, their clandestine meeting commenced.
2
“How much longer will it be before we act?” a voice hissed out of the candle-lit gloom.
The speaker was a man named Adisu. He was a leather-worker whose goods and premises had been destroyed beyond repair by the rampaging Uloans. He had not been able to recover his losses nor resume his business, and the seeds of bitterness within him had now reached full fruition. And, like some others, Adisu blamed his misfortunes not on the invading Uloans, but on the Fidi and their new god. In his mind, he associated the islanders’ massive attack with the coming of the foreigners, as if the Fidi had somehow been the cause of the Uloans’ actions. Now, the invaders were long since defeated and destroyed. But the Fidi were still in Khambawe. And Adisu wanted them to be gone from the city.
“How long will we continue to allow these outsiders to rule us, change us, turn us into whatever it is they want us to be?” Adisu continued.
The light from the candle cast a wavering illumination on Adisu’s dark face as he awaited a reply to his questions. When none was immediately forthcoming, he forged ahead impatiently, his voice low in tone, but infused with fierce urgency and repressed anger.
“There is no time better than now to make a move,” he insisted. “Half of the sorcerers have gone off to the Uloan Islands, to do who knows what? They say they want to put an end to the scarred devils’ threat, once and for all. But for all we know, they could be bringing the rest of them back here to finish what they started.”
He allowed that ominous – and absurd – speculation to hang in the air before he pressed on.
“Whatever they’ve got planned, the point is, now we can do something about them, because they are at less than half of their full strength.”
After a short silence, another voice spoke out of the near-darkness of the meeting place.
“And what would you have us do, Adisu? Even at half-strength, the Believers are much more powerful than we can ever hope to be.”
All eyes turned toward the new speaker, whose name was Jass Kebessa. Kebessa was a minor member of the Degen Jassi whose status had been even further diminished with the coming of the Fidi and the defeat of the Uloans. His influence in the Emperor’s court was scant because of his steadfast refusal to embrace the new religion of the Almovaads.
More than once, he had told anyone who would listen that he would rather believe in no god or goddess at all than a god of foreigners, regardless of how beneficial this Almovaar appeared to be. That stance caused his standing in the court to become negligible at best. However, by virtue of his rank, Jass Kebessa was the leader of the small cadre of dissidents.
“Would you have us incite an uprising?” Kebessa asked. “That would be a difficult task, indeed. Most of our people are in love with these newcomers. There is nothing they would not do for them ... and nothing they would not do to anyone who caused harm to them. So ... what would you have us do?”
“Something! Anything!” Adisu shouted, no longer caring whether anyone passing outside the meeting place could hear him.
“The longer we wait, the fewer our chances,” the leather worker went on, his voice somewhat calmer. “Already, people are disappearing into thin air without any explanation.”
“But those people are only tsotsis,” another speaker interjected. “Most of us are happy to see those vermin disappear. Aren’t you?”
The new speaker was Tamair, a middle-aged woman who had lost her husband and children when the Uloans had attacked, and had nearly lost her own life as well before the night-sun first shone and the tide of battle turned. What she had seen and experienced on that deadly night could never be effaced from her soul. The Almovaads wanted her to forget her past, and embrace their future. But Tamair preferred to remember. And she was suspicious of those who advised her to forget her old life and begin anew. She would never forget. Never ...
“What happens when the Maim is empty of tsotsis?” Adisu retorted. “Who
