Everfair (33 page)

Lettow-Vorbeck inspected each bomb separately, with an almost proprietary air. That was understandable; he'd been largely responsible for procuring them.

At last the Germans left. Not one word had been exchanged about Thomas's unconventional clothing. Maybe they thought it was some sort of priestly garb. Which, in a way, it was.

Twilight gathered starboard, to the east. Thomas sought his hammock, hung for him in his private enclosure. Worryingly, the drummer going off watch had received no message from
Amazing Grace
. But anxiety didn't stop Thomas from falling asleep; it merely seemed to darken the colors of his dreams.

The slopes he climbed were cloaked in grey mist. They always had been since that first time. When he became aware of himself, he was walking. He kept going in the same direction he found himself headed. This had proved the easiest course over time. It was always best to go somewhat voluntarily wherever he'd been sent.

Noises of fighting grew loud enough to hear, then louder. Gunshots. Screams of fright and agony. Then the smell of death: blood and explosions and emptied bowels and bladders. The mist cleared and he looked down on a shallow, bowl-shaped depression in the ground, filled with struggling bodies.

Some of them shone. Some lay still. He recognized faces: men and women of Everfair formed a cluster on the side of the bowl nearest him. They were greatly outnumbered. They shot their weapons steadily, in rotation, on command, rifles and shonguns keeping the British soldiers at bay—Thomas couldn't see their enemies that plainly, but who else would it be? Leopold's men were vanquished.

He had learned over the course of many such expeditions what to do. Reaching up without looking, he filled his hands with fire. Since his branding, nothing burned him, though he was thankful, when awake, for the oil. When the bolt's weight felt right, he hurled it at the soldiers below.
Boom!
Thunder followed in the wake of Thomas's lightning.
Boom! Boom!
Again and again he struck. Wailing, the white men died.

Now Everfair's fighters rallied. He saw them looking up between bursts. Many could tell where he was.
Boom!
The odds evened.
Boom! Boom!
Over the ozone came the stink of seared meat.

He met Tink's eyes. The engineer asked, “You are dead? A ghost?”

He shook his head no and opened his mouth to explain—but what could he say? This wasn't the time, anyway. Ammunition had run out. The fighters dropped their useless guns and drew shongos, clubs—whatever they'd brought.

Where was the ship? “West of here, on the water,” Tink answered him, though Thomas was sure he'd done no more than think the question. “We mean to win through to the lake. It's not far now—” A break in the line of soldiers caught his attention. In quick succession, Thomas threw six more lightning bolts in the opposite direction. The distraction worked: Tink and his fighters slipped away into the scrubby palms surrounding them.

Thomas moved in parallel to them. Downhill. He wouldn't be able to summon fire so effectively from lower elevations. Too bad. But then came a ridge, and at its top a family of giants huddled together—no, they were only big stones; boulders, in fact, stacked and leaning upon one another in mimicry of human forms. And, past them, Lake Victoria.

Thomas looked upward. There was no sign of
Amazing Grace
in the dull heavens. Tink and the crew seemed unconcerned. They pressed onward to the shore, rousing a huge flock of pale, long-legged birds. Hundreds, then thousands flew off into the dusk as he followed the fighters down to the high-grassed shore.

A steamer sat at anchor perhaps eighty feet out. A pair of British soldiers guarded three beached canoes. A woman and boy ran in front of the group from Everfair and tackled the soldiers before they could take aim. The next wave of fighters drowned them in kicks and punches. Leaving them lying unconscious or dead, the fighters launched the canoes in seconds. One they towed, since only two were needed for the twelve fighters. But
Amazing Grace
's crew had been much larger—twice that many. Where were the rest of them? Where was the aircanoe itself? Had it crashed? Was the secret of the Littlest Heater safe?

Thomas wanted to stay with Tink and find out these things and more. Instead, he felt himself pulled irresistibly back to the family of boulders on the high ridge he'd just left. Taking steps forward brought him backward against his will. Sounds faded. Colors washed away. Thomas stared at the boulders as hard as he could. The smallest
twitched,
and startled him awake.

He
was
awake. But still staring at the stones. He lay in his hammock. The tops of the boulders from the ridge were visible over the mat walls surrounding him. The new day's sun would soon rise behind them.

Thomas got out of bed and dressed. He walked the short distance to the aircanoe's stern. The oddly anthropomorphic boulders were definitely the same as those he'd seen in his dreams. And yesterday they had not been anywhere near this place. The boundary between Thomas's nocturnal expeditions and the real world continued to erode. The heat of his lightning chapped his hands; those he slew in his sleep truly died. Now these stones from the field of battle had been transported here to meet his waking eyes.

He swore at what he saw, taking, from habit, his former god's name in vain. How had these huge, distinctive rocks arrived so impossibly this morning to Mwanza?

 

Mombasa, Kenya, September 1915

Should she tell Matty? Fwendi had never explained to anyone how she rode the cats. Grandmother's Brother Mkoi knew—he'd protected her secret. But he'd always known; her parents must have told him. Her parents, or at least one of them, must have been the same as she was.

She sighed and rolled gently to the hotel bed's edge. Matty barely stirred—he'd grown used to her leaving him in the middle of the night like this. Her shift and robe lay where she'd left them, carefully folded and stacked on the chest at the bed's foot. She dressed in the dark and felt her way to the window.

This was her room as much as his; they'd given up pretenses months ago. Fwendi was sure the hotel staff and others thought her no more than a glorified prostitute. She wanted not to care, but sometimes their mutterings and sideways glances overwhelmed her indifference.

She pushed open the shutters. For a moment the only light she saw came through the few high windows of the Colonial Administration Building across Kisumu Road, indicating rooms where an official worked late hours—for Everfair's downfall, perhaps? Then clouds parted and the white moon shone invitingly. She stepped onto the room's balcony as a soft wind swept her cheeks, drying tears she hadn't known she shed.

Closing the shutters behind her, she began softly to sing. The carved stone railing felt cool against her arms as she leaned forward. Crooning, calling—soon the first cat came out onto the pavement below. Then three more. Then another three. That should be enough.

Fwendi changed her song, her voice lowering, deepening. Up the vine clinging to the hotel's walls they climbed. She sank back into the rattan chair she kept waiting there as the gathering cats perched one by one on the balustrade. The lamplight spilling from the far building helped her see their coloring: two ginger and two grey tabbies, a black, a black-and-white, and one poor, thin animal darkly mottled like Lisette's treasured tortoiseshell powder compact.

Her singing dropped to a whisper. To hear her better, it seemed, the cats came forward and nestled around her feet, on the chair's back, even on her lap. Stroking their dirty fur she saw fleas leap before her fingers. She would have to bathe in the morning, as always.

The song stilled, became nothing but breath. The cats' breathing matched Fwendi's. She let her eyelids flutter shut. The pleasant drowsiness filled her.

As tempting as the idea of resting in this place all night was, her work beckoned. She entered the cats' heads.

When Fwendi was little she'd only ridden a single cat at a time. Partly this was because wildcats lived more solitary lives than their domesticated counterparts. By the time they reached Alexandria she'd graduated to prides of up to eleven. Lisette smiled indulgently and helped feed her “strays,” noting almost casually that all limped slightly and most seemed to be queens rather than toms.

Her mounts lowered themselves back down the creeping vine. With practice Fwendi had become proficient in maintaining multiple viewpoints, though this was easier when dipping only lightly into the senses of all but a very few. So the spinning panorama of leaves and stucco and shadows, the dew-slick cobbles and sweet-smelling sewers underpaw passed almost unnoted by Fwendi as she herded her pride toward her goal: the British Administration's offices on the other side of the road.

She was her country's best spy. It was she who'd stolen that patent application for an automatically firing weapon.

All the building's doors were locked and guarded. That didn't matter in the least. Fwendi sent her mounts to the building's back. She let them take turns licking oily puddles and tipping over lidded baskets filled with tasty refuse while she surveyed the scene.

Of course, to anyone ignorant of her abilities Fwendi would appear to be asleep on the hotel balcony, and Matty could testify innocently to that effect if the question arose. She'd left this nearest target till late in their visit here, though, just in case.

No plants had been allowed to gain purchase on the pale, smooth walls, naturally—the royal governor was not that sort of fool. And neighboring trees had been trimmed back so not even a boy could use them to gain access. But she could see a branch that would bear a lesser weight.

She left the black-and-white to act as sentry, reinforcing its appetite and playing up the attractions of the feast of scraps. The others she took up the tree. The flexing limb-end deposited each in turn on the deep sill of a third-floor window, which soon became crowded. The room was dark behind the ill-fitting shutters. Fwendi had the tortoiseshell pry these apart far enough to slip in. With its nose she searched for and found the latch: a hook, which she had it lift away.

Cats and moonlight poured into the abandoned office. Through wide irises Fwendi saw a desk piled with stacks of paper. She leapt the youngest tabbies up to where she could have them read any document of interest. Ah! Orders for the touring company's detention, and the arrest of herself, Lisette, Rima—Matty, a citizen of the Crown, to be simply interviewed … Dated for tomorrow—no, today! She could wake the others to pack and escape on her return, but it would be best to offer them proof of what would seem unfounded fears. With claws and teeth she made the orders into a neat scroll and sent them off to her human body in the mouth of the young grey.

Five cats left to explore with. None of the other documents that had been left unsecured were of interest. She had to make the most of this sole excursion; she hurried her mounts to the door and successfully coordinated their efforts to turn its knob.

The lighted and no doubt occupied room she'd noticed earlier lay down the corridor to the left and around a corner—she remembered where it should be, and heard the low, steady murmur of men in discussion. Three of them? Too many. Heading to the right inside the tortoiseshell and remaining tabbies, she bade the black stay behind to watch over their path of retreat. But she returned within minutes, having drawn a blank in that direction: in every room the desks were bare, the cabinets locked or more difficult to open than her mounts could handle in the time Fwendi felt remained to her.

She released the tabbies with an urging to join the black-and-white below. They left. The rest of the building was silent. Empty, she was sure. Riding only the tortoiseshell and the black, she crept toward the conversing men. The cats' ears heard what was said long before there was any danger of being seen.

“—don't take our efforts seriously. That experimental gun that brought down a dirigible over Lake Victoria? Not being replaced. They as much as admit Europe is all the bloody government cares about!”

“If Portugal would declare for the Entente—”

“Or America! That would finish things off.”

Fwendi recognized only one of the speakers: “Lord” Delamere, the lion killer. Before she could stop herself, she hissed with hatred.

“What was that?”

“What do you mean—”

“That sound!” Footsteps, a door opening, louder now—Fwendi ran the cats back toward the room they'd entered through. Too late—gunfire! Her ears! A second shot—she reached the empty room, but in only one body. She'd lost control of the tortoiseshell. It must be dead.

The shutters hung invitingly open, but Fwendi cowered safely beneath the desk. The door slammed back and the men rushed in with a lamp. Her irises turned to slits.

“Did you miss?” This was said in a high, boyish voice.

“Not I!” That was Delamere. “But I thought there was another. Black. Bad luck buggers. Search the room.”

“What d'you want to kill cats for? Mightn't they be someone's pets?” the third man asked.

“Didn't mean to do more than frighten either one. But when I saw them, it gave me a funny feeling.”

“Superstitious?” asked the boyish-voiced man.

“Superstition's nothing to laugh at in Africa,” asserted the third man.

Fwendi had to decide how to distract them from searching the room. They'd find out the arrest orders were missing. There was only one horrible solution.

Maybe it wouldn't work out so badly. It was only a few feet from the window to her hiding place.

She dashed for freedom, pausing only an instant at the windowsill to calculate her jump onto the thin, thin branch. Taken by surprise, Delamere had no time to aim well. He missed.

Unfortunately, so did Fwendi. The branches she encountered on her way to the ground broke not her fall, but her bones.