The Blessed & The Basic

Sāfil and its newborn twin slid through the low entrance of the slaves' room. Faraji crawled in behind them, clutching an old friend's tunic. 

Merek's pointed boot tapped an inch from the Mchangan's eyes. The Orosian was leaning in the corner, waiting for his escort. Fortus had ignored him. 

By the balcony at the other end of the room, Atiena was playing dolls with some of the other little girls. Some couldn't talk yet, others were enduring periods. 

Their black-skinned bead dolls were relics. 

Women made them generations earlier, from the colored fabrics and bracelets still on their bodies when they arrived. 

Those first women had made them for their daughters. 

They were all gone, now. 

Faraji handed the tunic to his foreign guest. "Here. It'll be painful and scratchy until the burn leaves, but you won't get another."

Merek threw down the hat he'd been fanning his face with. "This is covered in blood!" 

"Then don't wear it," Faraji sighed, dropping it on his toes. 

The slave took up his shovels. 

That little slit-door room housed just twenty of the top floor's two thousand people, ten bunks on each side. Across the other fourteen rooms of 29F, there were eighty-five candles. Faraji's room alone used twenty-seven. 

The other groups went right to bed, maybe waited quietly for dinner. The room with the little slit-door blazed bright as Kazkazani deserts, and louder than the parties of Sa Ibabaw. 

The girls and their pretty dolls staged stories of political assassination, beast-slaying, and infidelity. The boys envied. The men gambled and tried to ferment millet pancakes into alcohol. The women told stories. The faithful practiced rituals.

You had to half shout to hear someone next to you. 

Hamisi's bunk was empty. Just in time for the new shipment. 

Samir was cross-legged on the floor, laughing into Nandi's bunk. "On what planet are Mchangans and Orosians the same people?!" 

His lady lay on her back, her head dangling over the edge. 

"Well, look at yourself! If you lined up next to people from Paradiso…"

Nandi's elaborate braids were finally loosed from their bun, clean as they were in the morning. They hung long and brushed the stony ground with every passionate movement. 

The woman was strong and clean, though the Encampment had touched her. She had big eyes, a loud laugh, and rich skin from deep in the central jungles. 

The pair had met working on their rest days.

"Samir," Faraji interrupted. "Sorry, Nandi." He smiled at the woman. He stood the shovels on their ends and waited with his eyes cast down. 

Just when the northern Sahari had cracked his mouth to reply, his brother burst out, "Samir! Your nose is already blacker than mine! Why would you take off your turban? You worked ground-level, Kaka! Sun! All day! 

"Ehh, yaani…" Faraji shook his head like the man was his young son. 

Bright red Samir laughed and stood up. "You're not the only smuggler, Akhi." He winked and pulled a makeshift black purse— his former turban— off his arm and unraveled it. Muddy red clay, by the handfuls. He shrugged and dared Faraji to criticize. 

The Easterner shook his head and almost smiled, but swallowed it alive when he felt the old shovel nick his palm. 

"Samir," he returned. He handed him the newborn tool from the day's work. "I started another one. Should bite." 

The Northman looked at pretty Nandi and then back at Faraji. He wanted her to run off, stumble down the stairs, leap the wall, and swim to Kāpura. He ground his teeth when he remembered he wanted her beside him through every night he'd ever sleep. 

"A…Sāfil?" he sighed. He ran a hand up and down Nandi's back. Faraji raised that rotten old blade for his answer. 

Samir nodded and looked at Atiena, running in circles from a mob of young girls and protecting her rogue nation-toppling doll. She tripped, and the girls piled onto her with giggles and fake punches. 

The Sahari let out staggered breaths. "Th…Thank you, Faraji." 

He took the new shovel and helped slide Nandi out of her bunk. He spoke incredibly softly as he came to her ear. 

Nandi sucked in a sharp breath and pushed him away, as if to ask his eyes if his mouth were a liar. It wasn't. She shot a look at Faraji, then back to her partner. 

Samir tried to grab her hand, but she ran out of the room and into the maze. 

The men locked eyes. 

"Play me!" 

Fortus shoved an old wood-scratched gameboard in Atiena's face. He held it by his pinkies, the rest of his hands filled with game pieces made from pebbles and bits of metal. 

"Nuh-uh!" she sang.

Atiena stuck out her tongue and put a finger to her forehead. Fortus was sure the girl who taught her that was fooling her. 

Fortus nudged her with his foot, and she yelped. "Why not?" 

"You are a cheater!" 

"What? I'm a cheetah? What does that—"

Atiena kicked him back. "A cheetah!" 

"What?"

"Fortus! A—"

The boy dropped the game pieces and flicked her on the nose, erupting into chittering laughter. "I can't even understand you! Your accent is so bad, Atiena! Just speak Mchangan," he said, switching to their native tongue. 

"Baba! Baba! Baba, Fortus said I have a accent!" Old Bhekizitha crushed his pillow over his ears and growled. 

"Hush," Samir interrupted. "You both have accents. Atiena, look—" The man bent down and laid bare his sandy red gold. "Clay," he said, filling his eyes with meteors and peaks. 

Atiena started screeching wildly and flapping her hands. She didn't even know what it was. 

"I met a Ng'ombani woman today when I was packing the rocks. We worked the whole day; she prays to Oshun. 

"I told her that we had a little girl, and she recommended this clay for a style from her people. Talaya said it would keep your hair clean, safe, and out of the way." He placed it in front of her carefully and pinched her cheek. "You like it, qalbi?"

Atiena smiled until her tongue was pinched between her teeth and her chin touched her collar. She jumped up and hugged his legs hard as she could, then yanked down his calloused hand and kissed it. 

The little girl smoothed out the corners of her treasure's display mat and lined it up with the gameboard. She started filling in the pieces and called Fortus to sit. 

When Nandi slid back in, everyone whipped their faces towards her. Scindreux had a certain ring. 

The young woman held a chunk of shovel-handle, trembling in her fist. A bright shard of Scindreux gemstone was shoved into its center. One green edge was sharp as it was when she found it, sharp as it was when it formed a billion and a half years ago. The other was the shattered side, and had its sharpness on a hundred and one faces. 

Once, a slave had managed to rend a Scindreux weapon from a Superior's hand, cut him down, and when faced with another, hold that blade proudly in front of him. When the Scindreux weapons clashed, the swords shattered, and the shrapnel killed them both. 

That day, Nandi was charged with cleaning corpses.

They'd forgotten a chunk lodged in his armpit. 

Samir's eyes wouldn't leave it. "Nandi—"

"They're not taking me again." Her proud voice was breaking, and she shook her head over and over. She looked at Atiena. "Anyone."

It was not for the man to say anything more. 

Everyone stared, and most of all, Merek.

It wasn't his intention to stay in the Encampment for long. 

Faraji's heart drummed upon his ribs; a sickly marimba. 

"Ndugu zangu!" he called to the room, and everyone listened with lowered heads. 

"Nandi is one of us. We will take care of her and protect her actions." Sweat carved across the wrinkles of his forehead.

His eyes kept darting to Merek. 

"Aye," Bhekizitha added, leaning out of his bunk to catch every single neighbor in his one good eye. None looked back.

Everyone yanked back the breath they'd just released when barked orders and crashing crates echoed from outside. 

"Dinner," Faraji said, clapping his hands and forcing the soul back into the room. "Let's go."

The twenty hurried down in a frantic train of their own. 

Faraji made Fortus run back up to get Atiena's clay. 

On floor thirty-one, they entered a dark room. Cobwebs and gossamer slept in the bunks. 

Their assigned room. 

The slaves placed down a couple of candles and began their act— pretending to have been in a raucous conversation for hours. 

"Quiet!" boomed into the room. This particular Superior looked like he might've been a god himself, the irony— closer to seven than six feet, and three slaves wide. Everyone scurried towards the back wall and looked away. 

"You may be misinformed: We buy you to slam rock on wood and sometimes wood on rock. You may discuss your great philosophies some other time. Mkubwa requires that you eat. Go." He threw up a lazy hand to direct the train of young cargo slaves like one might ask a dog to fetch. 

Bhekizitha teetered to his feet as everyone else studied the floor, took up his plate, and marched up to the Superior. Like bamboo, the soldier grew by the second with every step, until Bhek's hunch hid the green demon in all but his shoes. The elder raised his hands over his head and poked his plate into the bull's chest. 

"I like when you shred the goat, not slice it. What have you made for me?" 

The man looked down his body at the balding head of the wild old man. He ran his eyes across his exposed vertebrae. His bewildered smile broke with a chuckle. 

"My name is Bala Magaji, Mzee."

Magaji took off his kufi and bumped the old man on the shoulder. "Give this one double." He placed his hat back on and ducked out of the room. 

The room watched. 

A series of teenage slaves rushed in like an assembly line, one after another. They placed and pried open crates of horned kiwano melon and shredded goat. Like ants, they traded off perfectly: Another few set down and unlocked a barrel of drinking water, and then another of a thicker spout for the samp and beans.

Bhek got a plateful, and when he saw his goat just the way he liked it, he called out the door, "Thank you, Bala!" and the man mumbled something back with a laugh. 

Merek grabbed a second horned melon after he saw the foreign samp, and was met with the back of a server's club smashing into his forehead. 

When Faraji walked up with his plate, last of the room, his eyes were nailed to a teenage boy whose bones he could count. 

"Habari, chef!" he called. The boy didn't lift his eyes. His ears and mouth were long dead and dried. "Do you speak Kāpuran?"

The boy nodded. 

"That's good. Do you eat in the mornings? If you wake up early enough, they bring biltong." 

"..."

"Come now, that man isn't here anymore. Speak to me, Dogo." 

"...I cannot eat goat, Bwana." 

Faraji laughed, and the boy looked over his shoulder. "The goat is dry, dogo, but you can eat it." 

The boy cracked a little bit of a smile at the very corners of his mouth. "No, Bwana—" he pinched his throat. "I can't. I can't breathe."

Faraji's mouth opened a little, and his charming eyes fell as he thought. He finally nodded. "At all?"

"Just the millet and the samp." 

Faraji shook his head. "You haven't been here long?"

"Why do you say that?"

"You would've died. Meat is essential."

Neither said a word. 

"Here," Faraji pushed his bowl of samp and beans into the boy's hands. 

He panicked and spoke from over his shoulder, eyes never leaving Magaji. "No, Bwana—"

"You will die,  dogo wangu."

"I will anyway. They weigh the boxes, we cannot take extra."

Faraji shoved his bowl hard into the boy's sternum. "It is not extra. I'm not asking for anything more, eat what is on my plate. I can eat goat." 

"Bwana—"

"You will eat it or I will tell that beast that you stole a kiwano." He gestured to the peel by his feet and threatened with his eyes. 

The boy hesitated, then raised the bowl to his lips. Faraji nudged it higher, "Hurry, hurry!" 

When he finished, Faraji brought the boy's head to his and whispered, "I know how it sounds, dogo wangu…But insects. Insects, or— or ravens. Even…It will keep you alive."

The boy nodded and took his hand. "Nashukuru sana." 

"Hey!" Faraji screamed, and the whole room looked. "What are you doing?!" The boy's heart plopped onto the cold floor. The man switched his and his son's bowls. "Give me more! I'm forty-one years old, give me more!" 

Magaji rushed back in, "Stop with your barking! What is it?!" 

"This kibaka is trying to short me on portions!" Bala leaned over and looked at the full bowl, then back at the server, then at Faraji.

He ripped a back-handed slap across the aging man's face. "Greed. Good work, boy. Be off, slave." 

Faraji winked at the server as he pretended to lick his wounds.

He finally sat to join his family for dinner.

"Baba—" Fortus sighed, in that winding tone that promises trouble.

"Fortus," he hissed, holding up his hand. 

"You always do this, Baba." 

"God forbid," Faraji sighed, wanting to enjoy the third of his portion left. 

"Do you really think they would do it for you?"

"Fortus."

"If you were hungry? Or me? Or Amu? Babu, have they?" 

Bhek shook his head and grunted to shoo the boy away. 

Faraji finally answered, "What if that were us, mwana?" 

"It isn't."

"It will be."

"Not yet! You're getting older, Baba! How many old men do you see around the Barracks? You can't do this, Baba, you'll starve— and if not, you'll die." 

Faraji's eyes had never grown so hard.

He shoved his fingers into his son's bowl of samp and beans and gobbled up a scoop. Then he yanked up the bowl, and swallowed two more. He tossed it onto his son's lap.

"There, I'm fed." 

Old Bhekizitha flew into howling laughter, slamming his son on the back again and again. 

Fortus grew red and hot. Atiena tried to mock him, and he flicked her on the ear.

Merek was awkward. Not socially inept, but cumbersome and obtuse. He sat too close to everyone to act so distant. It was just as well to the slaves; they spent their whole dinner speaking of him, instead of to him. 

Finally, when he was nibbling at his samp, Atiena reached over and grabbed one of his chunks of shredded goat.

"Look, Bwana, if you dip the goat in—"

Merek slapped her hand away and his meat scattered onto the floor. "Get your hands out of my food, you pest! You're like an insect." 

Bhek crawled over, fast like an alligator. He stuck his whole palm in the Orosian's beans. He stared right in his blue eyes as he did it, and chewed with his mouth open. 

"Don't offend me again," he warned, corn on his gums. 

Merek set his porridge aside and said nothing. 

The Orosian started slamming his kiwano into the rocky ground, bending its orange spikes and bruising the hard fruit. 

Faraji leapt over to him, "Merek, wait! You'll spill it, look—" 

He offered a hand, and the magistrate gave him his kiwano. 

Faraji hooked his tooth over the hard tip at one of the poles and dug in, making a slit to peel from.

"Disss-Gusting!" Merek wailed, ripping the kiwano back. 

Before Faraji could manage a desperate plea, the Orosian slammed his melon hard into the ground, and its bottom burst, spilling its green pulpy guts across the floor.

"See?" Merek beamed. 

Faraji sighed out his nose. "Yes, Merek, great work.

 "You know, you're very pale. You could use the kiwano meat to—"

"Right, and what's so wrong with that?!" he huffed. 

Faraji blinked at him and breathed in. "It's just— You're extremely red, if you don't do something—"

"Only because your dull-witted plan—"

"Merek!" he barked, trying to cage it behind his teeth. The whole room snapped their heads up to eavesdrop, most of all his own family. "What is your problem?! I've done nothing but help you, Merek! These people— You think anybody here would do so much to help you? An Orosian, a Trinitarian?! 

"Your people don't last a month here! I am the only thing keeping you alive! I'm trying to tell you that if you don't rub some of the kiwano pulp on your burns, you'll blister so much it'll kill you! You need to soothe it— mjinga!" 

Merek's face twisted around his nose and he chewed his cheeks. "I should be grateful?" he whispered. Biting, sour. 

"Grateful you people didn't kill me when I walked up? Grateful to work, to burn?

 "Grateful there's one— one of you that would even speak to me?" His breath was unsteady, and the fire of his eyes had a pitiful sheen. He shook his head and chucked his kiwano at the wall. 

"I won't get on my knees for these portions like a dog. I have fat enough on my bones. 

"…

"...

"...It'll drive you mad, this place."

In that short moment, before everything, every Mchangan in the room could understand his accented Kāpuran. 

They looked him in the eyes, and saw him. 

Faraji put a hand on the man's shoulder, and he didn't push it off. He offered the other half of his own kiwano. 

"Here. For the ointment, I mean. It'll keep you alive."

Merek exploded and punched that melon out of his hands. "What?!" The pulp spilled. "To work tomorrow?! And the day after?! What do you know of Orosians, you naïve mudstain—"

Faraji punched through Merek's nose with so much strength he could taste it in his throat. Every Mchangan in the room jumped to their feet, and the Orosian's body clapped as it plopped onto the ground.

Every selfish thought stopped swimming through Merek's padded skull. When his vision finally floated up from that static black sea, he smacked his lips and grimaced at the bitter taste in his mouth. 

"Oy! You—"

Faraji yanked him up by the vest and raised another fist. Merek's eyes ran to beg the others, and Faraji followed. Every single person held their breath and watched him. 

They were glued to his fist, most of all Fortus.

The man's hand shook as he primed it. He could feel his nails cut his palm and his knuckles strain their skin. Bhekizitha was nigh salivating under his wild eye. 

Faraji dropped the man to the ground, and the room could breathe again. 

"Please," he begged, "lather it on." 

Merek didn't say a word, but his face softened. 

Though pride had its foot on his throat, his eyes promised some strange kernel of reconciliation to Faraji. 

He grabbed his scattered slices and bundled them up. The magistrate scooped up what he could to give Faraji back his own kiwano. Wordlessly, he went back upstairs with his melon.

"Fat white cloud," Bhekizitha mumbled, as he chomped onto the skin of his kiwano. He was convinced by an old myth that it would make his teeth grow back.

"Fara," he called. "Sit down and eat, stop moving so much!" he raised his hand like he might strike him. 

"You know," Bhek switched, 

"today, when me and Atiena were walking back up, someone fell. Stairs, again." Another bite at a spot he hadn't yet sucked dry.

"Who? Is he alright?" Faraji threw down his handful of goat right as he was about to bite it.

"Weeeh, he hurt his legs. But I worked with the boy before, I think, some months ago. Strong boy. Western, if you can believe it."

Faraji nodded and took his first bite. "They'll take anyone," he said, gesturing towards the door Merek had left from, "doesn't matter how far. Even their own, right out of their pretty beach villas." 

Bhek cursed and spat on the ground. "A dog that bites both rabbit and bear fears nothing but lack of prey," he quoted. 

"'Dogs' is right," Faraji answered. Bhek laughed. 

Fortus slurped up the rest of his kiwano. "When are they going to learn how to build something that doesn't fall apart every twelve hours?" 

Faraji sighed, "Who is 'they,' mwana. 'They' is us, we have no servants. 

"Three of us die every time they order a new room! At least!" 

He rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. "Weeeh, never wish for more work, mwana."

Fortus shook his head, but he knew better than to talk.

"You cannot speak that way, mtukutu!" Old Bhekizitha added, testing the teen's humility. "Risky, it is, boy. Amarupachaq listens. She'll write it down in your soul." Between the phlegm and the peel, Fortus only caught every other word. 

The boy chained his eyes so they wouldn't roll. "With respect, Babu, Amaru is the one who put us here—"

"Amarupachaq," Faraji corrected.

" —She could've made us be born in some big tower in the capital, like everyone else! I think she forgot to write our fates."

Bhekizitha shook his head. "No. No. You misunderstand the foreign gods, boy. She is not ours. She cradles the Raphians much better. Their whole land is fruit and water."

"So, where's Mbombo, then? I don't see any kind of creation in a giant pit that kills Mchangans by— by the hundreds—- or…" A nervous stammer had crept up and swiped his legs out from under him. It was a thin line between lying and getting knocked across the face.

Faraji glared at his son. "The West is Mbombo's too, Fortus. All of us are his children. Even more— all of Ihlok: Orosians, Kāpurans…It is complex. So many wants." By the end he was running his nail across the wood of his bowl, and speaking under his breath.

"Your mother," Bhek started, and Fortus dropped his melon. The boy nailed his eyes to the floor. "A very good girl, Asha. Wasn't she, Fara?"

Faraji mimed for his father to stop. 

"Bah!

 "I didn't teach Asha about Amarupachaq, Fortus. Or Máti. Kanaloa…whoever…I taught her Bahari, mtwana wami." 

Fortus groaned. "Not the ocean again, Babu."

Bhekizitha knocked him on his head like he was scaring off a curse. "Tlaloc made her for us, Fortus. Us. Her waves ebb and they flow, in and out. Cycles, boy. Talking like that, you push something into the water. Bahari will make sure it always bounces right back up.

"What if now, you are charged with building some new room tomorrow? In and out, Fortus, always. Umjikelezo. In and out. She is fair." 

Fortus scratched his fingers together until they blistered. He was shaking his head like he was arguing with himself. He lost.

"So Asha deserved it? A cycle, that's what it was? That was umjikelezo? That was Bahari?!" 

The boy spat a scornful laugh and threw himself into prostration, undulating in the old ways he'd seen Bhekizitha do on especially hard days. "Ohhh, Aquatic Mother, thank you for all our many, endless blessings—"

Bhekizitha brought his fist down over the back of Fortus' head, and the boy's face slammed into the rocky floor with a crack. His nose broke and he bled. 

The boy shot up bewildered, clutching his red face in his hands. 

Old Bhek shook his head and took the boy's hand. "That was the in, Fortus. You're too impatient." 

Patience. Fortus laughed in his chest. Your fifty years, Babu, still too short?

"What…" Fortus started, rubbing his face. "What was Mama's out, Babu?"  Questions like that made him feel like Atiena. 

Bhek stood up and cradled Fortus' chin in his wrinkled hands. He lifted the boy's face to meet his eyes, and smiled. 

He almost laughed when he said it. "You, mtwana wami." 

The boy tore his face away and secured it to the ground. Bhek yanked it back, and rubbed his thumb over Fortus' cheek. "You have her black eyes," he croaked. His gargled voice cracked, and his pinched eye glistened like rain. 

He threw his head back and laughed.

What else?

"She uses them. I see it sometimes, mtwana wami.

"Watch the sea, now and then, Fortus. For Asha." 

Bhek's eyes were closed for a moment, and he just stood. 

"I'm up," he finally said, and hobbled out the door back upstairs. 

Fortus swallowed hard. He hated to cry in front of his family. 

So he didn't.

Fortus shoved a handful of shredded goat into his mouth. The whole time he chewed that rough meat, he stared ahead with Asha's eyes— at the gnarled rocky wall in front of him, with his back to the ocean.

* * *

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 and started kneading it in her hands, sitting 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 children and hurt men crowded with Zuberi 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.