Kill Baxter (20 page)

Malachi smiles, showing very white teeth in the black forest of his beard. ‘The first act, and what happened in the second? You fell into the gutter and had to be rescued by that cock-loving failure of a dwarf.’

‘Baresh was the best battle shaman the Legion ever had,’ Ronin says, his eyes burning. ‘You’re not fit to bow in front of his memory.’

The Samnite clasps his hands behind his back and leans in to Ronin’s ear. ‘Soon it’s time for the third act, Ronin. You might not like how the story ends.’

He turns and walks away and Ronin lets out a low breath. ‘There are only two people I’ve ever thought had a chance of taking me in a fight,’ he says. ‘One of them is your combatives teacher, the Shadow Boer. The other is that homophobic, xenophobic motherfucker walking away from us.’

Malachi and the Witch ascend the platform again. The Witch is clenching her jaw and staring daggers at anyone who looks at her, but she nods for the Samnite to speak.

‘We are entering a new era,’ he says. ‘You are not children. You are soldiers in a war and it is time that you had a chance to fight.’ He gestures to the Witch, who steps forward.

‘We would obviously have preferred to give you all more training before this. But with things as they are, we are drastically undermanned, so we will be fast-tracking your education. Some of our agents will now give short talks about what it’ll be like out there in the field. Consider this a final lesson, and listen well.’

Agents take to the gallows one by one to give words of advice. Most keep it short and simple: always check your weapons, the importance of making your contacts trust you, the value of knowing something of the cultural specifics of different Hidden communities.

Malachi snorts at that last one. Rule with an iron fist seems to be his approach to diplomacy.

When his turn comes, Ronin clambers up on to the platform and stands looking over the assembled students like a dog deciding which tree to piss on. ‘I once saw an agent suck on an assault rifle and pull the trigger,’ he starts. ‘At the time I thought he was an idiot, but I wonder daily whether he was, in fact, the smart one.’ He rubs his face. ‘There’s a particular blend of antidepressants and Jack Daniel’s that’ll get you through the first year. I’ll post the recipe on Google or whatever. OK, over and out.’

He stumbles back down and nudges me with his shoulder. ‘Always had a natural gift for public speaking,’ he says.

The Witch calls us to her apartment later that day.

‘Jackie Ronin,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘The last time you were here, you were suspended for stealing hallucinogenics from the test lab.’

I sit on the floor – it’s traditional – but Ronin’s an agent so he sits on the couch.

‘Actually I was tripping on hallucinogenics,’ he says. ‘Has anyone ever told you that you’re not the most calming influence for someone who is high?’

‘You were here when Ronin was here,
ma?’
I ask. ‘Wow, you must be really—’

Ronin kicks my foot and gives a quick shake of his head.

‘I mean … never mind.’

She stares hard at both of us, and even Ronin averts his eyes.

‘We’re apprenticing students tonight,’ the Witch says. ‘I know you two have a certain amount of history together. Will you be bonding? I need to make sure each student is matched with an appropriate master, and I can’t think of any more matched than you two.’

‘Thanks,
ma.
I think.’

‘Right,’ she says. ‘That’s settled. Next is your assignment. The Legion is insisting on sending out agents to shake down the Hidden communities and flush out the Bone Kraal.’

‘You think that’s the best strategy?’ Ronin asks.

‘I don’t think anything,’ she says with a snarl. ‘The Legion thinks it, says it, and I obey.’

‘Not really your style,’ Ronin says.

The Witch slams her fist into the couch next to him. ‘What’s not my style is losing everything I’ve worked so hard for in this school to a bunch of dwarves,’ she barks. ‘What’s not my style is burying twenty-two students, twenty-two more than have ever died at Hexpoort on my watch. That’s not my style.’

Ronin nods meekly like he’s back at school. ‘Yes,
ma.’

‘I’m divvying up assignments. You get the Obayifo.’

‘Really? Obayifo patrol? You know I hate those little bastards and their fat Slugmothers.’

She gives him another hard stare. ‘We’ve contacted the cartel. One of the Obayifo families has gone rogue and cut off all communication.’

Which one?’

‘Squirrelskull.’

‘Of course it’s Squirrelskull,’ Ronin says. ‘Why wouldn’t it be the most bloodthirsty?’

‘They’ve moved their hive. So you’re going to have to find them.’

‘I’m not happy about this,’ Ronin says.

‘My heart breaks for you,’ the Witch replies. ‘Now get the fuck out of my apartment.’

Later that night, we’re led into the depths of Hexpoort, a procession of agents and students carrying flaming torches. Hekka gives me a shove, but I can feel his heart is not in it. The students are all subdued and nervous, each recovering from the attack in their own way and coming to terms with the agent that the Witch has paired them with.

‘It’s bullshit,’ Chastity whispers as we walk. ‘Faith and I are two people but we’re paired with one agent, some fucking dude whose cover is as a middle-level manager.’

‘It’s logistics,’ Faith hisses, but Chastity rolls her eyes. ‘Who’d you get?’

‘Ronin,’ I whisper. ‘The—’

‘The homeless guy.’ Chastity nods. ‘What an inspiration. OK, I take it back. You got the worst deal.’

I laugh.

The stairs lead down into what used to be the dungeons. We walk past old cells with rusting bars and dark stains on the walls. The dungeons open out into a massive circular space. It’s cold and dank and the flickering torches make sinister shadow-play. A massive bonfire has been built in the centre of the room and the Boer throws his torch on to it. We stand around it in a circle and it becomes pleasantly warm, then hot, then like an unbearable furnace.

‘Strip down to your underwear,’ the Witch calls out. I curse the fact that I decided to wear yellow Y-fronts today. I have a horrible vest tan from digging in the sun and the bandage around my ribs is stained with blood. Sweat pours down my body. It feels like we’re in hell.

We’re given white beads to wear as a headdress. ‘The apprentice ceremony is where you are bonded to your master,’ the Witch shouts over the roar of the fire. ‘It is a sacred bond that will last throughout your life. You will honour. You will obey. This is a bond of blood. There are no half-measures.’

The Boer leads a chilled-looking goat into the centre of the circle. It chews lazily on a stalk and looks around curiously. The Boer cuts its throat with a large knife. It drops to the floor, still gazing around with a bemused expression on its face.

The Witch lights a bundle of
imphepho
, African sage, and the pungent smell fills my nostrils. The bonding begins. Students step forward one by one with their masters, and the Witch facilitates the ritual between them. Their faces are smeared with white clay from a bucket, their arms are tied together with raw-hide, and the Witch fills her mouth with goat blood and spits it on to them.

The smell and the heat are too much for me, and in the flickering light I think I can see Grandpa Zev and Klara, my great grandmother, smiling at me. The flag of the Sieners flaps in the wind behind them, planted in the dusty landscape. A storm rolls across the land. I can see stones shaped by ancient sculptors; symbols of the Mantis abound, carved into the rock. The place hums and clicks with energy. I find a rooibos-coloured pool. A waterfall plummets into it. I dive in. The hallucinatory quality of it surrounds me, bubbles rising, fractalised rainbows. The brown lake seems to hum with natural minerals and a godless, unconscious, ancient power – a pool of glistening life force. I dive down, the icy water causing an instant headache that travels through my skull into my jaw and the nerves in my teeth. There is the swishing almost-silence of my limbs, and then I surface, breaking the water with a gasp.

Words form in my mind. A poem in Afrikaans:

O koud is die windjie

en skraal.

En blink in die dof-lig

en kaal,

so wyd as die Heer se genade,

lê die velde in sterlig en skade

En hoog in die rande,

versprei in die brande,

is die grassaad aan roere

soos winkende hande.

O treurig die wysie

op die ooswind se maat,

soos die lied van ’n meisie

in haar liefde verlaat.

In elk’ grashalm se vou

blink ’n druppel van dou,

en vinnig verbleek dit

tot ryp in die kou!

The words rattle through me. A deep melancholy. Loss and ache. A thousand whispering fissures of ancestors’ voices. The beloved country not only cries but whispers, moans, aches, dreams, giggles, laughs, wiggles, shakes and dances. The Siener part of me strafes the sky with a light show of temporal lobe insight. Poetry is just magic without the dressing up.

I see strange black pillars scratched with symbols. A young Crow child undergoing his first transformation into Crow form. His first hunt. The fear, the blood, the power; I understand it.

I find myself standing in front of the Witch, my arms bound to Ronin’s. I feel the connection between me and Ronin and between Ronin and his master Baresh and between Baresh and his master Elmat and between Elmat and his master Gremos. Stretching back into prehistory.

My small individual ego washes away like dirt in the shower. I see Ronin when he was younger: the portrait of the bounty hunter as a young man. He is at art school, his hair pulled back into a neat ponytail and wearing a clean denim shirt. I see him attending class, going to poetry recitals, sit-ins, protests against the apartheid government. It’s weird seeing him like this. He looks almost … happy.

I see him with the tiny microdots of LSD, sitting up on a hillside, ready to feign madness to get out of the draft. He takes them, and his drug-fuelled trance and my magic-fuelled one become intertwined, our consciousness splashing together like paint on a canvas.

I see him still messed up from a bad trip and going through the brutal boot camp of Basson’s Special Weapons Unit. I see him on the Border with rage in his eyes and killing, and I see more of the darkness in him than I’ve ever known.

I watch in horrified fascination as Ronin is transformed from an idealistic young artist into a stone-cold killer. He was a mediocre artist, but he is a genius killer.

I see his face change. The alcohol and drugs claw at his skin and leave ragged marks. Countless fights contort and twist his features, his nose broken and reset.

At his best he is a warrior and at his worst he is a monster. I see him drinking and drinking and drinking until the monster subsides into the murky, muddy recesses of his unconscious.

I see Baresh finding him and helping him, putting him back together, still massively cracked, still massively flawed, but in one piece. I see Ronin finding the pieces in his mojo bag and finally becoming a battle shaman in his own right.

I see the pressures of being an agent forming the dark, hard diamond of personality that is Ronin today, and in that moment I see that he is the most dangerous man I’ve ever met. A shiver runs down my spine. Ronin and I are stuck together, bonded by the power of magic, and I’m not exactly sure how I feel about that.

I look at him, both of us bloody, our hands bound together by a rawhide cord so tight that it’s cutting off my circulation. His eye twitches and I can see him clenching his jaw.

That awkward moment when you’ve been magically bonded as an apprentice to a lethal alcoholic who is trying to get clean.

THE ZIGGURAT IS
directly in our path, an angular pyramid made of a strange fungal material; spongy turquoise, red and yellow.

I stand with the funk band and look up at the stairs that zigzag to the top.

‘Is this it?’

‘Nope,’ Tyrone says. ‘This is the Ziggurat of the False Ego. Read the sign.’

Sure enough, there at the base is a rotten old sign that says FALSE EGO. WATCH YOUR STEP.

I shade my eyes and look towards the top of the ziggurat. ‘Don’t suppose there’s an elevator?’

‘Typical Conscious Self,’ Richard says, as he puts a booted foot on to the first step. ‘Always looking for short cuts.’

I grab Chester and follow the glinting procession of pastels and rhinestones up the stairs. The little bow-tied dog licks my face and then snuggles down into my arms. I know I’m supposed to find my True Self. In fact, the Witch made it plain that it’s more important than ever now that I’m going out into the field with Ronin. It doesn’t make walking up a ziggurat with a funk band seem like any less of a crazy waste of time.

‘Beware the Boomslang,’ I read from a sign on the stairs halfway up. ‘There are snakes here?’