Chapter 3

The dirt road didn’t so much end as it dissolved into a series of jagged rutted dirt, at the village of Zimbaku. Vincent steered the Jeep through a thicket of skeletal acacia trees, the engine idling with a low, guttural thrum that seemed to irritate the oppressive silence of the valley. He had seen the settlement from a ridge, a cluster of mud-brick dwellings huddled together like frightened animals, their thatch roofs grayed by rot and neglect. There was no sound of livestock, no shouting children, only the rhythmic, metallic clink-clink of a single loose piece of corrugated iron flapping in the wind. A few crops struggled to grow without fertilizer and little water in the near desolate fields.

He stepped out of the Jeep, his boots sinking into a fine, powdery dust that tasted of old ash. The air felt stagnant, as if the village had been exhaling for decades and had finally run out of breath. A few figures shifted in the shadows of sagging doorways, hollowed-out men with eyes like scorched pits and women whose colorful wraps had faded into the color of the dirt. They didn’t approach him; they simply watched him with a curated indifference, the look of people who had already seen everything they had to lose be carried away by thugs.

“What happened here?” Vincent asked, his voice sounding unnervingly loud in the vacuum of the village.

An old man, his skin like cracked parchment, spat a glob of brown tobacco into the dust. “Bandits,” he croaked. “They came first for the goats, then the grain, then the gold we didn’t even have. They took the spirit of the place, too. Most of the young ones ran for the city. Those who stayed ... we thirty are the leftovers.” That was about one person per building.

Among the few remaining, a girl stood slightly apart from the others. Safana. She was a sliver of a thing, her frame barely holding up a dress of faded indigo. Her collarbones were two sharp ridges of obsidian, and her eyes held a predatory alertness that the others had lost. She didn’t look at Vincent with fear, but with a calculating curiosity, her gaze lingering on the polished leather of his shoes and the heavy watch on his wrist.

“They still come,” Safana said, her voice a low, melodic rasp that cut through the old man’s lament. “Once a month, like a clock. Five or six of them. They bring their machetes and their clubs to remind us that we are still owned. Only one has a gun, but they are strong young men and we have nothing.”

Vincent felt a familiar, dark heat stir in his gut. He looked at Safana, at the way her thin chest heaved under the indigo cloth, the way her hipbones created a sharp, tantalizing angle against the fabric. She was a survivor in a graveyard, a fragile piece of onyx polished by hardship. He didn’t care about the bandits, nor the tragedy of the village. He only cared about the way the light caught the hollow of her throat.

Suddenly, he stepped closer, invading her personal space with the confidence of a man who knew his wealth was the only law that mattered here. “Once a month, you say?” he murmured, his eyes dragging slowly from her eyes down to her narrow waist. “That sounds like a very lonely kind of schedule.”

He reached into his pocket and produced a small, shimmering stack of bills, fanning them out like a hand of cards. The sight of the money caused a ripple of hunger in the air, but Safana didn’t flinch. Vincent’s voice dropped to a low, transactional hum. “How about a better deal? I have food, and I have enough of this to make you a queen in this graveyard. All you have to do is climb into the back seat and show me how much you want it.”

Safana’s expression didn’t soften; it hardened into a mask of cold obsidian. She didn’t reach for the money. Instead, she let out a short, sharp laugh that sounded like breaking glass. Her kind was very rare in the area, a woman with more pride than survival instinct. “You think we the same as the city whores?” she spat, her voice dripping with a sudden, fierce dignity. “I very hungry, but not dog to buy with scraps of paper! Go away, sweaty old izingu!” She turned her back on him with a fluid, insulting grace, leaving him standing in the dust of her indifference.