The Sirangori Fey Market

You

The tents and stalls are alive, and so is the ground beneath your feet. They rotate, shift, and spin, like chess pieces on a chessboard moved by invisible hands, until once again, you are thrust into unfamiliar territory. You grit your teeth in frustration. Seconds ago, you had found the Shaman’s tent, now it is gone, transported to yet another location in the market. In its place is a stall bursting with brightly coloured fabrics that make you scrunch your nose in distaste. A faery woman attends to the fabrics, her wings a blur as they beat viciously behind her. Her hair is held up in a bun, and her orange skin, spotted with rosettes of blue, shimmers with iridescence. As though sensing your stare, she turns. You are experienced enough to know not to look away. Her black eyes, like twin orbs, glint in excitement and her face spreads into a smile that almost convinces you she is harmless.

“Mayhap I can interest you in the finest fabrics across the realm, a fine fabric for a fine young man such as yourself?”

You do not know whether to be insulted or amused at her misgendering you. You lift your right arm and pull down the sleeve of your shirt, showing off the blue tattoo intricately drawn around your wrist. Her eyes widen momentarily, then a frown, accompanied by a hiss, her skin turning completely blue and erupting with sharp thorns all over. She turns away from you, notices two young boys coming down the muddied road, calls them in a cloying, too-friendly voice. The boys, dressed in black cloaks and boots that slush in the mud——probably young wizards playing at truancy—-scoff and ignore her. Smart boys.

You wipe the beads of sweat congregating across your forehead——the air is hot even though there is no sun——and begin your search all over again. Twice now, you have lost the Shaman’s tent. The previous times you’d found it, you’d barely taken a few steps towards it when the tents, stalls, and ground came alive, rumbling as the entire market rearranged itself, shoving you deeper and deeper into its treacherous depths.

You hate this mission, hate this stupid market and its strangeness.

Like most Fey markets, the Sirangori Fey Market is almost eerily silent, save for the calls of sellers who showcase their goods. The buyers here conceal themselves with cloaks to hide their faces. Anyone who visits a Fey Market is either up to no good or is too desperate to damn the consequences. In Kalimdar, there are strict rules against meddling with Fey folk and their sinister magic. The penalty is public execution without trial. And it is for good reason, too. Even now, walking past stalls and tents, you feel the unsettling presence of the strange magic in the air, a foul, polluted thing that has long since been outlawed in the country. The market is not a place to get lost. The market is a place that wants you to get lost. Here, the lost is never found. Here, the market is a predator on the hunt, goading and taunting its prey until they end up on the wrong side of it, where their screams will not be heard as they are hacked limb from limb or devoured by one of its many monstrosities.

But you are not a novice; you have been to places like this before. The rules are simple: stay alert, keep your weapons within reach, buy nothing, speak to no one, and do not trust what your eyes tell you, for the fey folk are masters of illusion. And as you walk, the market tries to lure you with the kind eyes of those women who sell fine, glistening seashells a few stalls away. But you know they are not women; you see it in how purposefully they try to imitate the gestures of human women when they call you to buy from them, jiggling their bare breasts, thinking you are a man, hoping lust, if not feigned kindness, will lure you. You suck your teeth and keep moving. The women hurl curses at you.

There, wandering aimlessly through the market, a scrawny child with skin almost the colour of stone, caked in filth. There are many others like it loitering the market. Do not ask if he is lost, why he is crying, where his mother is, if he is hungry. That thing is no child. Its cries are not one of distress. It is a trap. Many bodies have been found with their hearts ripped out a few moments after they made the foolish error of coming too close to the child.

There, in another stall, are flowers glistening with bursts of many weeping colours. They are beautiful, those flowers, and for a flicker of a second, you think about how Imelda would have liked them if she were here. But you shove the thought aside immediately because with it comes an ache you have been trying to ignore for months now. And because some of those flowers are venomous, some are hungry for blood, and some will shoot seeds into your flesh that will dig deep, locate your bones, and grind it to dust, growing branches and spraying leaves in your flesh while keeping you alive. The florist tending them is no woodland faery——woodland faeries never come to the Fey market; they know better.

The loquacious man waving jewellery in your face, smelling of too-sweet perfume, is a djinn that grants no wish but brings to life your worst nightmares. And if he finds out you are a woman under that hooded jacket, he will try to possess and make you his wife, cursed with immortality, to bear abominable djinn children forever. The jewellery he sells is also cursed; the necklace will strangle you in your sleep, the bangles will sever your arm, and the rings will chop off your fingers. You can easily guess what the waist beads will do.

There are elves here, too, but these are nothing like the highborn elves you have seen in the golden cities of Cyra. These ones have either meddled with power that now has them in its clutches or have been lured here by the promise of intoxicating bliss granted by dahk, a purple powder that pleasures the mind while destroying the body. Avoid these elves, too. They are desperate and will not hesitate to cut your throat with poison daggers just to steal your pouch of coins to purchase more dahk. There are stalls lined up along the road, selling dahk at outrageous prices. It is around these stalls that the elves cluster like flies around feces, starved, stinking, filthy, stretching out scrawny arms, pleading for a taste to sate their raging addiction.

Changelings scuttle about, looking for unsuspecting women with children they can steal and replace, although what human woman will bring her child to a place like this, you do not know. There are demons lurking in discreet corners, holding contracts, trying to lure passersby into signing one of those contracts in exchange for servitude or power. The contracts are always tricky; you have seen men and women sign into things they never bargained for. There are wraiths manning a tent the colour of blood. You wonder who is in the tent and what they sell. Lurking around the stalls, peeking through the shadows, are tibicines, their red eyes glowing with hunger.

This is a place your order, The Order of Pyrusan, should have raided months ago if not years. But Pyrusan is only concerned with matters involving humans, and this Shaman, the one you are here to terminate, has been dealing in some dirty human business lately.

You had almost vomited when you saw the holographic image of the butchered girl. She’d been only fifteen——barely two years younger than Imelda. You had rejected the job immediately, your insides flaring with rage and grief that was not your own. But Obiora, in her tender, soothing manner, had talked you into reconsidering.

“It’s been almost a year, my love. Perhaps you need a little distraction. It is okay to heal, Bisi,” she said, wrapping her arms around you and doing that thing where she inhaled the smell of your hair and kissed your neck.

Obiora was wise and always gave the best advice. You took her word for it, though you knew it wasn’t exactly distraction you were looking for. What you sought was vengeance, the head of a certain angel dangling from your fist. Oh, how you’d imagined it in those days when your grief was fresh and threatened to rip your mind apart. But The Order of Pyrusan had forbidden you from hunting down the archangel. Your mentor, Idris, having attended the council meeting held on your behalf, had said the council considered you too emotional and unstable, hence denying your demand for a licensed mission to go after the demon, Azimaroth. It’s suicide, Bisi; an Archangel will obliterate you before you can so much as draw your breath. Please trust us on this one and let us handle it. I promise we have agents working on your case.

His words had done nothing to ease the fire in your bones, but you’d seen the wisdom in them. Going after an angel alone was certain death; you and Obiora had already lost a child, she did not need to lose you, too.

You are thinking about this when you make a turn to your left, and there, standing before you is the tent, its black flaps churning softly as though alive. You suck your teeth, glaring warily at the sigil of the White god, Syriunus, crested over the tent. It makes sense that this shaman worships a god known for his deception and cruelty. You long to sever his head from his shoulders when you find him. This time, you do not hesitate.

You rush into the tent before it can move again.

 

A Girl

A girl grows up without a mother to teach her to stay away from strangers, especially strange men. When a girl asks a father where her mother is, he says she is in a faraway land without pain, sadness, or hunger. A girl knows pain, sadness, and hunger. She wants to go to this place with neither of these things, to be with her mother.

A father, the one a girl calls Papa, is a carpenter. His days are coloured with sawing, nailing, measuring, and sketching within his small workshop. Alone in that humid workshop where the sun-scorched zinc roofing makes it hard to breathe, sweat travels from his forehead to his beard, armpit, and waist, making his skin itch. His hands are rough and calloused, his arms streaked with bulging veins from overused muscles. Vam, vam, vam, he saws. Kpah, kpah, kpah, he nails. Snip, snip, snip, snaps the measuring tape.

Day and night, he labours. He knows no rest. If a man must eat, a man must work. His hopes and dreams for a girl is to go to the University of Nyserus in the capital city of Khalimda, where she will learn to speak the language of the elite like those women he listens to on the radio so she can one day make enough money to take care of him. Perhaps even marry a nobleman, or should the goddess, Shanim, smile upon her with luck, a prince!

But education in the capital city is not cheap, so a man must work hard if he is to save enough money to send a girl to school.

Now, keep in mind this first telling of ‘a girl.’

A girl grows up without a mother to teach her to stay away from strangers, especially strange men.

It is important to this story of a girl.

 

You

The interior of the tent is strange. Outside, its flaps are black, like shadows dancing lazily in the soft breeze. Inside, it looks twice its size. You feel the enormity of the tent as you walk down what looks like a short passage. The walls on both sides are made of churning flaps. At the end of the passage, you emerge into a room, almost running into a short bald man who scuttles past you. When you make eye contact, he averts his gaze, concealing an object in his chubby hands.

The room is wide and smells of incense and burning candles. The walls are made of red cloth. Figurines of old gods are placed in several corners, their large ogling eyes seeming to follow you as you enter. There is a small table, and a man sits on the other side of the table. There are no chairs but a mat in front of the table. You slowly settle on it. Candles of several colours flicker, casting shadows. You imagine the flames that will greedily eat this place up should one of those candles topple over. But you also imagine the shaman will snap his fingers and the flames will blink out.

You lift your gaze to the shaman’s, and you are stunned to see he is not as old as you’d expected but a young boy, barely sixteen. His dreads are decorated with cowries and tiny turtle shells, and in his mouth is a pipe that oozes purple sweet-smelling smoke—dhak. His skin is oily and black, glistening in the glow of flickering candlelight, marred by streaks of black tattoos that seem to dance with the flames. His arms are thin but muscled. Two white lines run above his eyes to his jaw. He is shirtless, and the rest of his body is not visible under the table. He stares at you through eyes that belie his seeming youth. For all you know, his appearance is a glamour meant to deceive.

“I do not recall giving you an appointment. ” He squints at you suspiciously.

His voice is that of a boy’s, too.

“I-I am sorry, great one, I was desperate and could not wait. The matter I bring to you is one of urgency,” you say, applying enough wobble in your voice to give the illusion of a desperate, distressed woman.

“Hmm…” He inspects you with those ageless eyes as though trying to pierce the layers of your being.

“What is it you want? A child? The return of a husband who loves you no more. Perhaps a charm that draws men or women to you?” He winks at this. “Rich men to blindly spend silver coins on you? Though you do not look like the sort to seek such frivolities.”

“Oh no, that is not——”

“Or perhaps you came seeking for the one who, rather cruelly, tore your daughter to shreds.”

For a moment, the room suddenly feels small, pressing in on you. You blink; you could not have heard him correctly. But he grins, a slow, deliberate thing stretching over his face into something sinister. Maybe it is a trick of the flickering candlelight, but he suddenly looks older, more man than a boy.

“H-how did you…” you trail off, words trapped in your throat.

“I am no fool, Bisola Ahur. I know you have come to kill me.”

 

A girl

A girl’s name is Kasiemobi, which means ‘comfort my heart’ in Papa’s native tongue. He gave her that name after her mother passed, and since then, he has lived through life’s difficulties because in Kasiemobi, he finds comfort.

Papa refuses Kasiemobi from having too many friends. Friends are a distraction; you must stay focused on your studies, he says.

Her weekdays are spent in school, and her weekends are spent cooking for Papa, tidying the house, tending the small garden Mama used to tend before she died. Then reading, doing schoolwork, and some more reading until her head throbs and the words on the page dance around like drunk ants.

Kasiemobi is tired of living like this. She wants to be normal like other girls at her school who have friends, gossip about boys, and plait their hair. But Papa says only foolish girls seek the advances and approval of men by plaiting their hair. Also, hair takes too long to plait and too much tending to maintain. Her future is too big to waste on hair. So, hers is cut low, and it makes her feel ugly.

Then one day it rains heavily, and Kasiemobi is stranded at a bus stop where she waits to board a wagon home. The wagon does not come along, perhaps stuck in the muddy road, held off by the rain. She is stunned speechless when she sees a car humming down the road, its sleek black body floating inches off the ground, looking like a majestic metal beast. A girl has never seen a car in real life before, only in books, and is awestruck at the sight. It does not occur to her how odd it is that a car is here, in these wretched parts of the country where there are only horses and donkeys and thick-muscled men who demand pay to pull carts and wagons. The car stops in front of her, and its tanned window slides down to reveal the face of a beautiful man with the kindest eyes she has ever seen. The man invites her in.

‘Let me take you home, sweetling,’ he says, ‘this rain is too heavy, and a beautiful lady such as yourself should not be out here alone.’

Kasiemobi has never been called sweetling, beautiful, or a lady by anyone before. The words make her heart flutter, and, at that moment, she forgets that she thinks she is ugly.

Also, remember that a girl never had a mother to teach her to stay away from strangers, especially strange men with the kindest eyes.

Kasiemobi says yes, grateful for his kindness, mesmerised by his sweet words. But she warns that he must drop her a few paces away from her house so Papa will not see.

‘Papa does not like me with other people.’

‘Not a problem, my lady,’ says the man, smiling warmly. And if Kasiemobi had taken a closer look, she would have seen the wolf behind the smile before entering his car.

 

You

The shaman is not a boy. He is an old man with wrinkles slithering across his face, thin arms sagging with tired skin, dreadlocks that turn grey before your eyes, and all you can do is stare. You have seen the workings of powers beyond human logic too many times: witches with a head where a belly should be, children made of shadows with a hunger for babies, a woman whose breast milk makes one excrete gold. Yet somehow, the shaman’s transformation takes you by surprise.

Just as he ages before your eyes, he grows young again, shrinking in size until he is a boy of about eight years old. You have never seen such mad workings of juju before. You stay your hands on your weapon, a JK69, designed to pulverise an enemy.

“You knew I was coming,” you say. You hate that he has caught you off guard with his allusion to knowing who you are and of Imelda’s passing. This is a dangerous turn of events; you are treading a dangerous path and must be cautious.

The shaman chuckles. He now looks twelve. It is unnerving how he ages and grows young within a few breaths.

“That much was not hard to predict, especially since the one who sent you was once a client of mine, a very displeased one, I might add.”

You frown. What is he talking about?

“Ah…you don’t know, do you?” he says, noticing the look on your face——he looks sixteen now.

“Don’t know what? What are you talking about?” You are doing this all wrong. You should not be speaking with him, but curiosity and confusion override reason.

“That is not of much importance at the moment, my dear. More pressing matters lie heavy in your heart, and it weighs you down,” he says. He looks twenty-one. “What you seek will not be found in my blood staining this fine carpet. ” He runs a slender hand over the carpet. “It is the demon, Azimaroth you want; his severed head as vengeance for the life he took.”

“How…how did you…”

He grins. He reminds you of a snake, coiled and still, poised to attack.

“I am Baba Ohun Ijinlẹ, father of the mysteries, the one who walked through lands long before the trees were felled. I am he who speaks with forces of darkness too great for feeble minds to handle. Some call me Asiwere Olupe, the mad invoker; others say I am a devil wearing the skin of a man. I say I am he who brings the desires of the heart into being. I see your heart’s desire; I see your pain, Bisola.”

He is an adult man.

“I can tell you where you can find the demon; he still roams this realm freely. Justice for precious Imelda… ”

Her name on his lips is like a perversion, striking a chord in your heart. Young, vibrant Imelda who loved the dark arts despite your warnings and had meddled with powers too great until it became her undoing. You were her mother; you should have protected her. You had failed. You shake your head, pushing the thought aside.

“You don’t want me to kill you,” you say, realising he is making an offer in exchange for his life.

The shaman grins.

“Smart woman,” he says. He is an old man now, his skin sagging like a deflated balloon before your eyes.

 

A Man

A man has a boss, and a boss must win the upcoming elections to become the next Prime Minister of Khalimda. But what is a politician without an extra sprinkle of luck in his favour?

A Shaman, powerful and known for his mastery of the forces of darkness, demands the heart of a virgin girl in exchange for luck. A boss sends a man to do his dirty work. A man meets a girl, young, not beautiful in a way that overwhelms, but beautiful in a way that will mature into something unique. Surely, no boy has taken interest in her yet. Seeing her in the rain, alone, drenched, he offers her a ride. She accepts.

 

You

You consider his offer. You should not, but you do because it is the first time someone has hinted at giving you exactly what you have been searching for since Imelda’s passing. This goes against everything you have been taught. A shaman as powerful as this one cannot be trusted. He is biding his time, waiting for the perfect moment to strike, and you know it. You are ready for anything and will blow his brains out if he so much as blinks wrong. But something else he had said earlier troubles you.

“You said you knew who sent me, said they were a displeased client of yours. Tell me, who is this client?”

The shaman grins. His teeth have rotted, and his face is so far gone in age that it has the semblance of decay. But you know he will shrink and become young again within a few moments.

“Like I said, that is not of any concern to you. Worry about your own matter. Tell me, do you not want justice?”

You stare at him. He holds your gaze. You think of the girl, the grotesque image of her butchered body. You think of the father, so heartbroken and consumed by grief he had wrangled his own neck, only to be found rotting away in his shed by a snooping journalist weeks later.

“She was only fifteen,” you say, “just a child, the only thing her father held dear to his tired heart, and you took her from him, all for what? A few charms, a spell? A higher price for a bargain you made with the White god?”

The shaman sucks his teeth in distaste.

“Don’t be foolish,” he snaps, “tell me, did Imelda not call you the day she died? You saw the call, but in your petty anger, you ignored it. You wanted her to feel how angry you were, did you not?”

“Shut up!” You bark.

He giggles. He is a child again.

“That is why you truly crave vengeance. You tell yourself that perhaps you can right this wrong by taking Azimaroth’s head, that if you do this, you will not have failed as a m—”

“Shut up!”

You pull out your JK 69 and fire two shots. The shaman, nimble on his feet, leaps out of the way, cackling. You fire more shots, but he is swift, dodging every bullet. Smoke and the smell of acid fills the air. You are on your feet, enraged. You fire blindly, missing every time until your ears ring with the crackle of your gun. You stop to catch your breath and aim properly. The shaman lands nimbly on the other end of the room. He is growing once again, getting bigger by the second. Good, it will make him easier to hit.

“Your Obiora blames you, you know; she looks at you, and all she sees is the lover who, out of spite, let her own daughter die.”

“Keep her name out of your mo—”

The shaman opens his palm, and a serpent bursts from the flesh, gaping mouth coming at you. Reflexively, you spin out of the way and shoot the thing. But something knocks the JK 69 out of your hand. A smack whips your head to the side, and you crash into the wall that is not a wall. It rips, and you fall into darkness.

You struggle to your feet, but all around you, black billowing fabric hangs from a ceiling you cannot see. You shove them out of the way, heading for the room where you can see the shaman cackling and speaking incantations. But the fabrics come alive, thickening around you, wrapping around your wrists, your neck, pulling. Panicked, you reach for a knife in your back pocket and hack blindly at them. They hiss as the bite of the knife rips them apart.

You stumble back into the room and lunge for the shaman. He runs into another opening in the tent. You follow, throwing caution to the wind.

 

A Girl’s Father Whom She Called Papa

A girl was Papa’s hopes and dreams. She was all he had, all that kept him going in a world of loss and loneliness. Now, a girl is dead, and Papa has nothing to live for. The body was so violently ruined that it was hardly a body anymore, barely recognisable. The blood had dried and turned shades darker, maggots and flies had festered, feasting on her like she was nothing more than a dead dog by the road.

Papa wails into the soulless silence that drapes his home, wails for all the world to hear of his pain. But who cares about a poor, widowed carpenter? What is the worth of his daughter’s life when he has no money or influence? Sure, there will be a few outrages at inns and taverns in the village, but it would end there; no news reporters from the big cities would bother making the case public knowledge. There will be posters of his daughter on poles around the village, with reports of her death scribbled in all five languages of Khalimda nationals. There will be relevance-hungry inquisitors who will pepper him with questions, indifferent to the distant, hollow gaze in his eyes.

If a man is lucky, the village will donate coins to support him. But the coins will go to the wrong pocket because a man is just a carpenter, and a carpenter is a nobody. In a few weeks, a daughter will be forgotten, the weight of her death, left for a man to bear alone.

And that weight is what snaps a man’s neck when he jumps from a stool with a noose tied around his neck. He dangles from the wooden ceiling of his workshop, his tools and half-finished projects, silent spectators.

 

You

“Pa awọn ọta mi run,” the shaman chants as he weaves through the thick folds of black fabric. “Ṣe rẹ asiwere.”

You slash the fabric away, frustration and anger making you reckless. You can hardly see his form ahead of you as he slips through the folds with ease. You hack and hack. Yet they are everywhere, coming at your face, wrapping around your arms, your neck, your legs, strangling and pulling like vines.

You scream in outrage. He cackles in response. You stumble and fall, shaking with anger and exhaustion.

You’d fought that day. You remember it. Imelda, dressed in a white flowing dress imprinted with flowers, her eyes lined with black powder, making her look more mature than she was, accusing you of being an overbearing mother.

‘I am an adult, I can take care of myself, I don’t need you constantly playing mother over me,’ She had snarled.

Obiora had been there too, hunched over a book, pretending not to hear anything. You had glanced at her for support, but she knew better than to get in the middle of an angry mother and a rebellious daughter.

‘I am your mother, Imelda, and it is my job to protect you. T-these new friends you say you hang out with, I don’t trust them, and this ritual or whatever you call it, sounds dangerous. Listen, I know you are grown and can make your own decisions, but as a mother, I will always worry,’ you’d said, trying to keep your voice levelled despite the anger coiling in your chest.

Imelda had scoffed and said.

‘If you are so desperate to mother me, maybe it is high time you had another child—oh wait, you can’t!”

The room had gone still. Obiora had whirled. Imelda had gone still, too, her eyes bulging as if realising what she’d just said.

‘Mom, I’m—’

Your hands found her cheek, a slap that sent her reeling, blood flying from her mouth.

Obiora had lunged to her feet and stepped between you. When she righted herself, Imelda glared at you with such hatred in her eyes, her lips swelling, and blood blooming.

‘Fuck you!’ She’d screamed and stormed out.

For three days, she did not come home. On the fourth day, your phone rang, but you ignored it. She left you a voice message that you never listened to, you were too angry——you still haven’t listened to it, though for a different reason. A week later, reports of seven teenagers battered to death in a basement were abuzz, and as you casually stared at the faces of the teenagers on the TV screen, thinking how stupid they were to have meddled with forces bigger than them, you saw her face. It was a photo she had taken when she’d first gotten accepted into the Aysriax College for Mages, smiling and looking proud. Your world had imploded. To this very moment, the thought of what Imelda might have said in that voice message haunts you. You dread what it bears.

And now you weep, your body quaking from the force of it. Then he is there, the shaman. You cannot see him but smell and feel him above you, dangling from the fabric like a spider.

“I can make it all go away,” he coos. “I can bargain with the gates of the great beyond and return Imelda to you as a reincarnated child if that is what you wish. I can bring Azimaroth to your feet. All you need do is say the word. It is needless for you to suffer this way. Atonement is at the tip of my fingers, from mine to yours.”

You swing the dagger. You feel the satisfying pressure as it bites flesh. The shaman shrieks and tries to leap away. But your training kicks in. You move with practised grace, weaving through the fabrics with ease. Your dagger finds his flesh with every swing.

“Please, wait, abeg, abeg, jowo!” He cries. But you are feral, you stab at his arms, his shoulder, slash a line across his chest and his thighs. Your body spins and bends with ease, evading the fabrics, moving too fast for him to cast any spells. Your foot finds his jaw, and you hear the satisfying crack of bone. He crashes to the floor. You loom over him, breathing hard.

“P-pl—”

You slam the dagger into his left shoulder, and he shrieks.

“Now tell me, shaman, who was your client?”

He blinks at you through eyes so black, they are like twin pits. In his face, you see the vileness of his true nature, a selfish, inhumane thing that will go to abominable lengths for power. He is an old man once again, feeble and trembling.

“Speak!”

“Noble Olumide Ajayi,”

You bristle.

“Noble Olumide Ajayi, as in, former candidate of the Prime Minister election?”

He nods shakily.

You do not care much for Khalimda’s politics, but you followed the Prime Minister elections two months ago. Noble Olumide Ajayi had lost to the now Prime Minister, Sanusi Lakere, which wasn’t much of a surprise considering his questionable reputation. So, the bastard had tried to cheat. Now, it all made sense. Khalimda is a city whose foundation, down to the dust in the air, is rooted in magic and technology. Cheating the system requires complex technical and magical prowess, yet subtle enough that it will go unnoticed. The death of an innocent, the grief of an already broken soul, leading to yet another death, is fuel enough for whatever magic the shaman had tried to use against Khalimda’s technology and magic system. A bold stupid move. Apparently, it had not worked, and somehow, no one had found out; if not, Noble Olumide would be rotting on a pike for the whole of Khalimda to see.

“What does he have to do with the Order of Pyrusan, how is he connected?”

The shaman leers at you.

“Idiot, who do you think sponsors your precious little cult? All the huge boxes of coins you receive every month’s end, whose pocket do you think vomits it? Hypocrite!”

You slap him hard enough to wrench loose a tooth.

“But he didn’t win,” you say.

“Luck is a powerful, tricky thing to manipulate. Even with a blood sacrifice, it is not predictable what outcomes might fol—”

You yank the dagger from his shoulder and jam it into his mouth before he can scream.

 

***

Outside the tent, the surroundings look unfamiliar to you. The market must have moved while you were inside. None of the inhabitants of the market so much as glance in your direction even though you are bathed in blood and dangling from your fist is the rambling severed head of the shaman——beheading did not kill him. You will have to burn the head later.

You keep walking till you appear at the edge of the market, where your bike is parked across the road. You step out into bright sunlight——a contrast to the dark, cloudy haze that looms over the Fey Market. The road is deserted, and behind you, the market fades into nothing, like mist after sunrise. You fling the rambling Shaman’s head into a sack and mount your bike. Noble Olumide Ajayi lives in the district of Kholi, Kaja. That is your next destination.