“Hold your weapons. My friends jump at the flash of iron,” Djola said. “Pezarrat wanted to assure the arrival of his booty, so, you have orders not to skewer me before I set foot on deck.” Four behemoths circled the boats. “My large friends would be sad if you spilled my blood, so I’ll stay in this canoe.” A cloud broke apart and ice fell from the sky, stabbing everyone but Djola. One pirate bled from his eyes. The others cursed Djola for the storm. “Take the booty. Tell Pezarrat, I keep my word. Our last raid. I’ll find my own way in the storm.”

The pirates shook slush from their hair and scuttled up the ladder onto the flagship. Djola felt blank. Xhalan Xhala had hollowed him out. He bobbed in the water, free yet dazed, like the captives in the square. He’d found what he sought, but perhaps lost everyone he loved.

The behemoths ferried him up a river of ice to Bog-Town’s docks. Nobody pursued him. Instead, pirates celebrated victory with music, wine, and the bodies of slaves. If Orca was dead, at least he wouldn’t have to endure the victory party.

In the night, a high tide of hot seawater melted the ice in the Bog River. Djola paddled back to open sea. Seeing his canoe, captives jumped from the flagship and swam to shore. Nobody knew what had happened to Vandana and Orca. The women from Pezarrat’s cabin insisted, “If he cut off Orca’s head, he’d put it on display. If Vandana wanted to go to home, who could stop her?”

Djola wanted to imagine escape or a quick death for his friends. Not knowing was worse than seeing a body. Haints and restless spirits wandered the fortress he had made of his mind and heart.

Samina said: End torture in the huts, on the sea, in the woods and fields.

“Captain, I come to pay my debt,” Djola shouted in Anawanama.

Pezarrat opened a porthole. “What jumba jabba are you talking? Have you come to kill me?” He was sober. Good. “Trickster, I don’t know why I didn’t kill you long ago.”

“Greed,” Djola said. The years on the pirate ship were vivid in his memory:

Buildings and ships dissolved into sludge.

Young boys drowned in their own blood.

Battered captives and pirates begged for a miracle in this life or mercy in the next.

On barren shores, old women pulled out hair and wailed over the bones of the future.