Back upstairs, Bhekizitha clapped his hands with a "Haya!" and sat Atiena down with his elbows. "Now, let's see."
The old man pulled Atiena's bonnet off her head, and folded it up. Her hair looked like it was slicked back.
Bhek started picking at it, pulling one strand and the whole stiff crown with it. She squeaked and he shushed her. Her hair was full of dirt and sweat and grime, and it was almost hard. The Southerner took his dagger from his waist and started stabbing it into the bush and yanking, ripping out tangles by the handful.
"Yawa!Baba?!—"
"Shh."
"Wee! Aaai! Woi! Woiyee! Baba, stop!"
"Shhh!"
Nandi ran up to the pair squawking. "Ebo! Acha hyo, Mzee, what are you doing to the poor girl, leave her alone." She bumped Bhekizitha playfully and stole his spot, tsk-tsk'ing with a whining empathy.
"Ehh yani, you're going to kill the girl." She lifted Atiena's chin and kissed her forehead, tears streaking on her cheeks. "You men, it's a miracle her hair hasn't fallen out yet."
"Come here, mwanangu," Nandi cooed, casting an icy glare at Bhekizitha in a tease.
The Basondi poured some water onto the mat of clay Samir had gifted the child, and started kneading it in her hands. The woman sat the girl down with her elbows, just as Bhek used to do for her.
Nandi's braids used to be little more than a few lines of thread when she was a little girl.
Thank god for young Asha.
"A little bit of Mchanga will give you the perfect hair," Nandi whispered, and Ateina's skin tingled with goosebumps.
Just in time.
Everyone, fed and happy, started to sit in rows like a theater, facing the balcony. Samir and Faraji were arguing under their breaths in the corner beside the arched opening. Then, with a final nod, Samir took up a long mattress, held it with wide arms, and started waddling towards the center of the arch. He took every measure to make sure the straw board fully hid his brother.
"Please welcome," he started, putting on some accent nobody could place. Everyone blew out their candles and started huffing and humming in a low rhythm, drumming their fingers on their thighs. They used to stomp their feet for the drum roll, and that's why they had to switch rooms.
"The one… the only… the spectacular…Griot of the Broken Rock— Faraji Ngubane!" Samir tossed the mattress high into the air and caught it by the bunks, revealing the hidden storyteller.
The people erupted into a quiet cheer, and Faraji's yellow smile beamed confidently from the stage. He was so backlit by the white moon that he became a black silhouetted spirit, a ghost of story and lore.
The Griot of the Broken Rock used to give Fortus nightmares— Faraji didn't sound like himself, move like himself. A ripped tunic over his shoulders bat in the high wind like a cape, and he bowed his head over his chest and raised his arms like a spider when he talked. His voice croaked like the librarians of old empires.
"Oros. The Visumite Empire. A time when the weapons of war were clubs and slings, not swords and rifles…
"Samir Ben-Ayurr. Please step up and into the shoes of the daring scoundrel— the great Muumban pirate of Kazini, Blessed sailor of the great stone ship: the Jemedari—- Dhanomo!"
The crowd started whistling and booing, depending who you asked. Bhek, of course, cheered loudest. Samir jumped onto the stage, his hair in three ponytails like braids and his robe open to reveal his chest. The pirate gloated and begged for more— the hate fueled him, and the listeners loved to throw it.
"And for my role…You will meet the treacherous, the selfish, the greedy, the wicked— Aulus the Visum!"
Samir stopped puffing his chest and chuckled. "A Visum?" he asked, in his normal voice. Then louder, "What happened? Did someone overcook you?!"
The room erupted in a hundred ways, louder than the nighttime import whistles outside. Voice like the song of the Amadlozi Amabi.
Merek laughed from his dark bunk. He was listening to every word. He was a great lover of opera in his visits to idyllic Paradiso.
"And his wife!" Faraji added. Samir whipped his face towards him like he wanted to go over the script one more time. "Decima, played by the lovely Nandi Kahnyile!"
Everyone laughed twice as hard.
"Now, wait, hold on—" Samir interrupted.
Nandi skipped up to the stage giggling. "You torture him, Mfo wami." She wrapped a muddy arm around Faraji.
The guest stars sat, and the Griot of the Broken Rock sang.
"With a hand against the clouds, Dhanomo hauled his great stone ark through the seas to the far west of Oros…
"In those times there was a kingdom—"
A young girl screamed until they beat it out of her.
Everything stopped.
"Go, go, go!" Faraji barked, spit flying. The children flinched and ran.
Samir, Nandi, Fortus, and Bhek shovelled the youngest girls into the deepest corners of each bunk, rushing them to their spots. None earlier than Atiena herself. Then the women, the couple they had, piled in after them— walls of age and expendability.
Merek ran up and dared to try and help. "What is happening? Who was—"
Faraji snapped towards him with wild white eyes, and clapped his hands hard in front of the man's face.
Merek ran to the top bunk in the far corner and watched.
Faraji collected the shovels.
The women were slotted like wood between concrete walls, and the older women hushed the girls through all their sobbing. Samir and Fortus jammed the thin straw-filled mattresses into bunks on their sides for walls, and all the young boys and hurt men crowded on the balcony. Fortus went with them.
Nandi stayed.
She ran to the corner just next to the entrance slit, and laid on her stomach to slide under the bottom bunk. She ripped down two of the extra mattresses, and threw them over herself. She clutched that single Scindreux shard close to her heart, and snuffed out its light with her body.
She waited.
So did the other six: Faraji, Samir Ben-Ayurr, Sāfil, It's Brother, Bhekizitha Ngubane, His Dagger.
Most of the room was wounded or sick with something.
Footsteps started to march up their slope. Rope rustling, girls whimpering, women crying as quietly as they could manage. A man humming.
Faraji turned that handle in his hands. Again and again.
Seuu-Shish! sparked through the room. A long slab of stone thudded onto the ground over the formerly two foot entrance. Its sides still hissed with the chartreuse steam of a Scindreux cut.
A spindly Superior pushed over the block in his new-made doorway with all his strength. He ducked his head as he stepped over it. Nobody saw his cleft lip or sixteen rings of every gem in Ihlok. They saw the hole he carved in their filled wall, and the red-eyed women crying and holding up what was left of their clothes.
None were very old.
"Good evening, I hope the food was well." The man pushed up his glasses to focus on the proud soldiers in front of him. "I see you have an elder in your company." He turned to face Bhek and bent down like he was talking to a child. "Sir, with your age, I know there must come prudence. You know well this process and its necessity. Let us not complicate this any further." He smiled.
Bhek spat on his shoe. "Nilijaribu kumuingilia mama yako— lakini foleni ilikuwa ndefu sana!" The elder coughed up a laugh. "Is that why your face is like that? Your lips couldn't pick a father?"
Of course, the boy's mother did nothing to warrant any of this. The Superior frowned and scanned the old man. "Right." he drawled.
He shoved past Bhek and advanced into the room. "Where are your women? What have you done to— Are they in the bunks?"
Faraji and Samir closed in around the boy.
"Get out."
"Leave."
Fortus wanted to say something, too.
"Do you speak Mchangan?" Bhek called from the door.
The Superior huffed. "You will address me in Kāpuran, or you will not address me at all. You know this, slave."
"Slave?! I'm sorry— let me explain— I am not your slave."
The Superior stomped his foot and whipped around. "Then what are you?" he growled, with more energy than he'd ever had. "Eating my food, living in my house, breathing my air?" The Superior started marching towards the old man, completely forgetting what he had come for.
Bhekizitha chuckled a little bit. He really was a spindly kid. "Your air?" He laughed louder then, roared and slapped his knees.
In all the noise, Faraji shifted Sāfil in his hands, and crept closer.
"I didn't know Shujaa Mkubwa had walked into our bedroom! Us! Weeeh, I would've cleaned! You're younger than I've heard, boy. Three hundred looks good on you."
The Superior sucked his teeth and drew his Scindreux. He had a prior engagement to attend after work.
All the hidden girls mumbled and squeaked when they heard that familiar ring.
"You know…" Bhek continued, staring down the edge of the blade. "Technically, none of this is yours."
The boy inched closer.
So did Faraji.
"And…well, technically— You eat Mkubwa's food, live in his house. So then— and I'm only a hunter, but— wouldn't you be his slave? Ah, then! Welcome home, brother!"
The Superior lifted his blade, and Sāfil ripped through his flesh until it tink'd against his spine.
The Superior curled to his knees, and before he could open his eyes again, Samir slammed his shovel so hard across his face it dented the metal.
The boy's Scindreux flew into the air and spun, cutting through one of the mattresses and its stone supports. Sand and straw spilled out of the burlap, and every girl in those bunks recognized the smell of burning Scindreux. All at once, like hornets from a nest, the women rushed out of the bunks, jumped over the violence, and huddled by the balcony with the boys.
The sword had landed, like always, with its blade through the stone of the ground. The people on floor thirty-one could see the glow of its tip in their ceiling.
The Superior fell back with blood like dark wine pouring out of fractures in his face. He gargled himself with every breath.
Nandi leaped out from her spot beside the door, and the women screamed.
"Shh, Shh! Shh, Sisters, Shh. Come, come! Now! Come!" Nandi rushed them downstairs to her people's assigned room— already checked.
One of the women touched her forehead to Nandi's and kissed her lips. She said something in an old language that the Basondi couldn't understand.
"You're welcome," she answered.
Bhek leaped onto the dying Superior's waist and wrapped his legs around him. He pushed on his chest and leaned to look him in his eyes.
"Hujambo!" he greeted, snickering. He drew his dagger.
The boy turned his face. Bhek stabbed into his bicep and twisted. "Look at me! Look at me, boy!" He did. "See?! You understand me, I know you do! Because you're Mchangan, you idiot! Mchangan!"
The Superior almost looked like he smirked when he heard that. Bhekizitha jolted his wrist and carved out a chunk. The boy screamed, and he ignored him, eyes glued to the women washed in moonlight.
Bhek was shaking then, and his eye grew wild, excited. "These women— They're not slaves, dog, they're Mchangan! They're your family! Your sisters, your—your—" Bhek slammed hard on the man's chest like a petulant child. "…You take everyone."
"I am not Mchangan." The Magharibi Superior turned his head to look as proudly as he could. Blood painted his teeth. "I am a son of the Dying Sun, a man enthroned, free of spirit. All men shall rise—"
Bhekizitha growled and chopped his dagger into the boy's collar, and didn't stop grinding until he felt bone. "Your code! Your mantra! You people are like birds: copy, copy!" He ripped up the blade and slammed it on the other side. "Do you think it did anything for the rest of you?!"
The Superior labored with every muscle to draw a breath. "Th…" wheeze, "The rest…?" wheeze.
Bhekizitha bounced his gaze between the stern faces of Faraji and Samir. Both his eyes finally went wide, and he laughed wildly like the young man who killed seven monstrous dogs before getting shackled in his own home.
"You—" he could barely talk through the laughter. "You have no idea just how many of you silk-green dogs I've killed." He made sure he said every word perfectly.
The boy's eyes were draining. "And you know what," the Southerner added. He stuck the tip of his dagger under the boy's jawbone, right by his ear. He pushed. "You're the worst kind. These girls…These women…"
Bhekizitha started carving down the curve of his bone, and the boy slammed his face away, turning his neck and craning towards the trembling girls.
His eyes landed on the crying Atiena at the front,
and her pretty new hairstyle.
Her hair was split down the middle and pulled into two thick, clay-red braids that framed her face and stopped at her chin.
The dying boy had never seen braids like that.
"What." Old Bhek croaked, in his throat and for himself. "What?!" he yelled. He threw his dagger aside and grabbed the boy by his face.
"Even now?!" He yanked up his head and slammed it into the rock with all the strength his thinned tendons could muster.
"That…" His anger tripped for a moment, and he leaned.
He shook his head. Then bloomed into life.
"That is a little girl, mbwa wewe!"
He slammed the boy's head again and again, harder every time—easier. He went until there was nothing left to grip.
"No! You don't die, mbwa wewe, not yet!"
In defiance of Bhekizitha, he did.
The Old man brought the boy's swollen face very close to his. He whispered, no theatrics. "Mtwana wami…when Mkubwa finally makes his way into Kanaloa's pipe, tell him Bhekizitha Ngubane of the Ts'itibe sent you there. There will be a line."
When the moonlit dust settled on the pulpy skin of the shredded man, Atiena rang out shrieking tears and ran to her father.
The little girl wrapped herself around his legs and cried into his skinny thigh. All she could think was the heat in her face and the boil in her stomach.
Bhek could feel his sweet girl teetering on her toes, her heart beating on his leg. He felt her little hands caked in moisture from the fear, and the smoke billowed in his lungs. He threw himself forward.
He barked more than he talked, though there was so much he wanted to say. He kicked the tender skin of the boy with the bottom of his sand-crusted boot until his skull was out of place and the old man's ankle rolled.
Atiena shrieked and threw herself to the ground. The baby shoved her knees to her lips and cried, crushing her ears in her palms.
Samir bent to touch her, and the girl screamed. She ran to the balcony and buried herself in the crowd.
When he saw that, Bhek's temples beat, and his hands shook. He felt the heat in his ear, the drum in his skull, and the command to kill that boy in ways death couldn't manage.
He always noticed it. It wasn't this way, with the Ts'itibe.
He dashed like a badger and yanked up his dagger.
"Baba, stop!" Faraji yelled. He grabbed the old man's wrist and twisted out the dagger.
Old Bhekizitha elbowed his son and tore his hand back. "Go away, boy!"
Faraji bowed his head and watched the floor. He went to comfort his son.
Bhek ached for his dagger and dived for it.
"Nasiru! Son, what happened?!" Two Superiors dropped their women and rushed up the adobe slope.
Nandi dived back under her mattresses, and clutched her twinkling Scindreux shard.
Samir ran to join her, pressing his back against the filled wall, his bloodied shovel already out like a bat.
They waited.
Bhek too. They waited.
A man ran in with his Scindreux drawn, a great head of curls. His dark boot slammed on the old stone in front of Nandi, and she threw out her fist, slashing through his ankle with her Scindreux shard.
His foot stayed neatly in his boot. The rest of him fell forward.
Nandi leaped up and yanked his Scindreux into her hand, tearing through his collar by accident. In the same arc, she whipped it around and stabbed through the stomach of the second Superior. A wet squelch and a gasp was all he offered to the room. He dropped his blade, too, and it almost slashed the woman's toes.
Fortus watched the whole thing. His chest drummed in great festivals and wails, but he never moved. Never even sweat.
He watched.
3 dead Superiors. 3 Scindreux blades.
New shoes for three slaves.
The scared girls at the balcony followed Nandi with their gazes as she collected the blades. She could feel their little eyes, without looking up. Even between slaves and masters— they were still women, and the Superiors still men. Their slavery was not the same as Fortus'. Nandi Khanyile seemed like something out of old legend in that white moonlight.
Bhekizitha didn't look at the new bodies or their swords. He inched to the balcony with his head swinging, a child on his way to be scolded. He spoke with gentle politeness and city manners, asking the young women to step aside, and he saw his daughter.
She had ripped her fingers through her fresh braids and left behind shooting wires of jagged red and black. She pulled them hard as she cried.
"Malaika…" he tried, tapping her small shoulder with a finger.
The little girl screeched and sobbed all over again.
Bhekizitha straightened up as much as he could. He backed away like the proud warrior his father had raised. It was always his cue when he started to feel that ball in his throat.
"Fine," he whispered.
He marched back inside.
As the old man settled into his bunk, the slaves watched. Time had pilfered the memory, but now it was clear. Many noticed, for the first time in their lives, the deep scar that folded Bhek's face over his ruined eye. Indeed, they remembered— that the Ts'itibe Bhekizitha Ngubane had survived fifty years in Shujaa Mkubwa's Encampment.
Faraji gently took the Scindreux blades from Nandi. Temptation was a cruel game, and she was so rarely strong.
He bundled the three of them up, and with that great green glow, Merek thought in all his heart that he had seen a god.
"What…" the Orosian finally said, and the whole room turned their heads. "What are your plans for the…weapons?"
It wasn't his intention to stay in the Encampment for long.
Faraji laughed a little and shook his head.
Merek's face reddened.
"These? No, my friend. These, they care about."
Merek jumped down and ran after him, but before he arrived, Faraji tossed them over the edge of the balcony.
They rang like speaking as they fell.
The man wailed. "What are you—! Fuhrawzi, why not take the chance?!"
The man shrugged. He could only half hear him over the sight of his young niece curled in tears under the moonlight. "Merek…" he sighed. "You don't think anyone's tried? The Superiors have Scindreux, too. And they use it better."
Merek opened his mouth and then stopped.
Nothing to say, he realized.
There are no magistrates. There is no Church.
There is Faraji Ngubane, and rock.
The Orosian leaned over the balcony.
He watched those bright swords twinkle in the stone for a long time.
Atiena got up, sniffled, and walked out the carved hole at their entrance. Fortus followed his little sister.
One of her dolls was still on the outcropping from earlier. She wrapped herself around it and cried. It was everything there was. She imagined the moonlight breaking through the ceiling was cool ice, and let her mind feel a nice bath of quiet blue. She cried.
"Atiena—" Fortus tried.
"No!" she whined, and cried.
"Are you—"
"No!" she whined, and cried.
"Do you want—"
"No!"
Fortus nodded. He got down and lay next to her, at first on his back. The little girl grabbed his arm and pulled him close to her.
He hugged her as hard as he could and cupped her in his chest. He patted down her ruined hair and shushed her.
They stayed that way for a long time.
In the small hours of the night, she woke Fortus up. Atiena's big, sleepy, drooping eyes were glossed by the moon.
"Fortus…Baba told me that at nighttime, the Sun goes away because the fire goes back into the ground. He says it goes home, takes off its hat, and starts to cook for its daughter."
Fortus scoffed. "...That's stupid."
"Yeah," she whispered.