Nze felt a sudden swish of air, glimpsed the bright sun-sparkle of the rising machete blade. He was already screaming when it came down on him with a quick sweeping motion, his cries loud enough to startle a drove of birds from their perches in the hemming brush. Cold pain sledged up from his wrists as the machete carved into them, penetrating deep, momentarily snagging on something, a resistant knot of muscle or bone. It was wobbled from side to side, and then pushed through with a sickening wet crunch. An instant later the coldness turned to pulsing heat.

Nze howled at the top of his lungs, his blood soaking into the thirsty blackened ground. The shadow of the khat chewer, the machete wielder, the butcher who had maimed him, folded and unfolded as he crouched behind Nze, and rose again, and then dropped both severed hands in front of him, let them fall together inches from his knees, crimson streaming from them, tatters of meat flapping wetly around the stubs of his wrist bones, the second and third fingers of one hand twitching like the legs of a dying crab.

Through a haze of suffering and weakness, Nze watched Fáton slide a fist from his right gusset pocket and hold it out before him like a sideshow magician engaged in an amusing bit of hocus pocus. Then he spread open his fingers to display the wooden matchbox in his palm.

“Allumettes,” he said. Again with that even, satisfied calm. “Here is some humane advice, mon ami. As the diesel oil inside the tire bursts into flame, it might be desirable for you to take good, deep breaths of smoke. This goes against involuntary reflex, I know. The fumes will be quite hot, and are apt to sear your throat and lungs. But if you do manage to control yourself—deep breaths, I remind you—they will render you unconscious before the melted tire rubber and burning fuel start to run over your body. They cling to the flesh, you see. And I imagine it must be quite agonizing when flesh cooks.”

Fáton’s left hand appeared from inside his jacket, produced a match from the box, and flicked it against the striker.

Its head budded orange and he moved to within arm’s reach of Nze.

Nze looked at him, tears streaming down his cheeks, his nose and throat clogged with mucus.

“Please, I beg you—” he began.

Fáton frowned with disapproval, touched his flickering match head to the wad of cloth.

“Here, at least, my labor has not been in vain,” he said, and stepped backward as the makeshift fuse ignited with an audible whoosh.

The fuel inside the tire caught almost at once, fire gushing out the large hole in its sidewall, then gnawing through in other places, rapidly tracing its way around the circumference.