Salo is about to fall on his knees and beg for the boy’s life when, hanging from a bitumen-coated pole behind a wagon nearby, a gray banner flutters in the breeze, flattening out just enough for him to make out the rather unsettling web of curves and circles printed onto it. Then the shapes reach out and twist his eyes into seeing a black sphere with a glaring corona.
Time stops.
Tikoloshe. The smell of compost and Monti’s blood in the air. Monti died in his arms because a witch came to their kraal to kill in her lord’s name, and her lord is the same man who owns this Seal.
The same man who owns this town.
This town belongs to Monti’s murderer.
These men are about to sacrifice this boy to Monti’s murderer.
A red mist settles around Salo, and he sets his shards ablaze with raw essence. Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s reaching forward with his left hand, reaching forward and unleashing his power.
The air pressure abruptly changes in a pocket of space surrounding the executioner. A powerful whirlwind rises in response, a serpent of dust and Storm craft coiling itself around him and lifting him yards off the ground, where it holds him prisoner. His machete careers away as his hands fly to his throat. He wheezes, desperate to draw in breath, but the air will not obey him. His eyes bulge as he suffocates, veins appearing on his temples like they’re about to pop.
“Murderers!” Salo’s voice sucks every other sound right out of the air. His heart’s beating so hard he can feel it at the base of his tongue. “I should kill you all!”
It would be so easy. He could command the air and starve them of breath, steal it right out of their lungs—the least these people deserve for what they did to Monti.
A woman screams. Her screams beget more screams. The floating executioner is still choking helplessly, inching ever closer to death, and the sight of him in this state hammers a wedge of sobriety into Salo’s mind.
What am I doing? Am I really going to kill this man?
He aborts the spell, letting the executioner plummet to the ground in a cloud of dust. He didn’t really think through his actions, so he’s not sure what to expect—he’s not sure of anything right now—but it’s probably not for the executioner to struggle onto his hands and knees, coughing, while he lifts a shaking finger at Salo. “Kill him!” he wheezes at his comrades, who were up until now patently dumbstruck. “In the name of our lord, kill him!”
The two men trade looks, perhaps to bolster each other’s confidence, and then together they charge with their machetes raised high.
They don’t get far. Earth and red light erupt on the road, bringing them to an alarmed stop. Another such explosion close to their feet makes them jump back with cries of surprise.
Salo looks to his side and sees Tuksaad pointing a silver gauntlet at the guards, his fist clenched and his palm facing downward. A slender barrel has appeared above the wrist by some telescoping mechanism, and the inside of it throbs with a nefarious nimbus of red light.
Gasps and murmurs come from those still watching. One of the guards looks like he wants to charge again, so Tuksaad releases another blast of energy at the man’s feet from his gauntlet, making him dance back. He shies away, gawking at the strangely powerful weapon.
“How about we leave it at that, my friends?” Tuksaad says to them. “Let’s not interrupt business any further. What do you say?”
The three guards exchange wide-eyed looks with each other, then turn around and flee, leaving the Faraswa boy cowering on the ground.
The rush is already underway. Surprisingly quiet but hasty. Vendors near the meat market are packing their wares. Customers have forgotten their purchases on the stalls. An anxious tattoo of pattering feet spreading outward like the shock waves of an earthquake, with Salo and Tuksaad at the epicenter. What was once a bustling marketplace quickly becomes desolate, save for the living ghosts trapped in the cages around them, as well as their slavers, standing stiffly, stubbornly next to their wares.
And the boy, the terrified Faraswa thief, who presses his forehead into the earth when Salo looks at him, seemingly more terrified now than he was when the guards were about to butcher him. “Mercy, my lord! Mercy!”
Salo walks closer and crouches in front of him. “What’s your name, friend?”
“Mhaddisu, my lord,” the boy says without lifting his face.
Salo’s skin crawls unpleasantly to see someone so terrified of him. He grabs the boy by his shoulders and helps him up to his feet. “Come on, Mhaddisu, get up. I won’t have anyone groveling in the mud on my account.” The boy flinches and cowers, but Salo is insistent.
“Mercy, my lord!”
“Relax. I won’t hurt you.” A residual flicker of indignation compels Salo to add, “But why did you steal from me?”
The boy’s eyes dart back and forth, and he stammers, “I . . . I just saw the purse, and . . . I’m just really hungry. I . . . oh, mercy!”
“You reek of kindness and naivety,” says the brown-eyed stranger named Tuksaad—and yes, his eyes are now a light shade of brown as they search the market for further threats. “Do you even know the danger you’ve drawn to yourself by saving this thief? A Faraswa, no less.”
“Stay here, Mhaddisu,” Salo says to the boy. “And you . . .” Salo frowns at Tuksaad as he takes a good look at him. “What are you exactly, Tuksaad?”
He says what and not who because now that he’s paying attention to his shards, he senses an unusual energy surrounding this stranger. He looks like a man, but he feels . . . made to Salo, in the same way a machine or a weapon feels made. His bones pulsate with the signatures of steel, copper, moongold, and several other mysterious metals. And his eyes—
His eyes! They were brown not a moment ago, but Salo sees them acquire a greenish hue that brightens considerably over the next heartbeat.
“Please, call me Tuk,” the young man says, “and what I am is the man who just saved your life.” He looks around again. “But it is unwise for us to linger here. We must go.”
“We? What makes you think I’m going anywhere with you?”
Tuk smiles, and there’s far too much guile in his eyes. “Because you owe me. And because you’re a Yerezi mystic in the flesh. I would be foolish to let you out of my sight now, after being so lucky.”
Salo frowns at the stranger; he’s not about to be taken advantage of again. “Whatever you think you’ll get from me, I assure you, you won’t.”
“You misunderstand,” Tuk says. “You are walking the Bloodway, are you not? You must be. A mystic of your tribe would not be out here otherwise.”
“What of it?”
“I can make sure you reach the Jungle City in one piece.”
“Why?”
“For your blessing, of course. I know of your people’s ancestral gift. I know the strength you could give me if you chose to. I am exceptional as I am, but with your blessing I’d be magnificent. Transcendent, complete.”
Salo flounders, temporarily speechless. Then he shakes his head. “That’s definitely not going to happen. For one, I don’t know who the devil you are. For another, you are not Yerezi. Blessing you would get me into all sorts of trouble back home.”