“Don’t lose faith.” Tembe closed green-flecked black eyes and chanted. “This cannot be real. A demon conjure show.” Good citizens closed their eyes and whispered with her. In a few moments the whole mob refused to look.

Hezram stood up. “We fight with nobody and pay Empire taxes. We are free lands.” He leaned close. “For the secret of the Dream Gates, Emperor Azizi has offered—”

“All the People and the Weeds and Wild Things are free?” Djola said. “No. You lie inside your Dream Gates.”

The Vévés rendered in Lahesh metal-mesh on the gates sparked and shuddered. Hezram clutched a necklace of poison snake heads. His spirit body got sucked to the borders of Smokeland. Djola watched him tumble through jellyfish spitting toxic barbs and fiends sucking heart spirit. Hezram jabbed viper fangs into his own breast. In a spurt of fire, his spirit body escaped the borderlands, but his heart stopped in the everyday. Wheezing one last breath, Hezram passed out at Djola’s feet.

“What have you done, fiend?” Tembe hovered at the edge of the plaza, not willing to desecrate the stone altar square with female flesh even for love.

“Mercy!” Priests and acolytes pleaded with the mountain god to grant their leader sense again. The god was crumbling. No time for mortal woes.

10

Transgressor Carnival

Djola hovered over Hezram’s glassy eyes and motionless chest. Many would die this day. Why save a scoundrel? Samina would never forgive Djola if he let Hezram die for revenge. She’d be furious about Tembe’s mountain crumbling, no matter that Tembe was deluded, a curse to the mountain she served. No matter that bringing down the mountain was an accident.

Djola thrust a cloth soaked in aromatic salts in Hezram’s mouth and pounded his chest until his heart found a steady beat in the everyday. The witchdoctor coughed, spit out the sharp medicine, and stood up. The lie had singed his beard and left a cataract in one eye. Hezram blinked and gestured at Djola’s healing cloth. Even witchdoctors were obliged to pay spirit debts, but no man wanted to be beholden to his enemy. Reluctant gratitude twisted on Hezram’s burnt lips and got mired in a curse.

“I’m already cursed.” Djola tramped across what had been a temple to the sooty flanks of the mountain. Using a diamond-tipped blade from his boot, he sliced chains and kicked in the doors of hovels that had been concealed behind temple walls. Transgressors cowered in the dark, some ancient and white-haired, others not yet full-grown. All were bloodless and feral. Djola bashed doors until his muscles trembled and blood soaked the inside of his boots.

“Stop!” Hezram chased behind him, careful to dodge sparking dust demons from Djola’s bring-down-the-temple spell.

“How much transgressor blood do you drink?” Djola pressed his staff against Hezram’s racing heart.

The witchdoctor sputtered and froze.