The Last Testimony

The valve-door contracted slowly, allowing a flap to lower just enough for an eye to peer outside. Nyko stared in terror at the man before him: young, barely out of adolescence, but with a gaze as hard and intense as petroclast. His first instinct was to seal the valve-door immediately, but the man smiled at him with genial courtesy.

"Are you Nyko?" he asked, revealing serrated teeth. He observed the three scars on each of the artist's cheeks and nodded with satisfaction. "Nyko the artist. My name is Sibon."

Nyko swallowed, opening the door with reluctance.

"What do you want, guardian?" he asked, nervously tapping his foot against the pulsing floor.

Sibon lifted a sack he held under his arm. The container shifted slightly, as if breathing.

"To talk." He tossed the sack with a casual gesture. "Nothing more."

Nyko caught it by instinct. The weight pulled him down, buckling his knees.

"May I come in?" Sibon asked, already crossing the threshold.

The interior of the dwelling was modest but full of life. Colored membranes decorated the walls with slowly shifting patterns. In one corner, a worried-looking woman watched the guardian while helping two children get dressed. A third child, a girl of about seven, sat on a small mushroom-chair, playing with a scrap of membrane.

The artist hurried over to the girl and slapped her. "Nolitha, get down this instant," he hissed.

The girl ran to the woman, hiding behind her legs.

Sibon observed the scene in silence, then pointed to the vacated chair. "May I?"

"Of course, guardian," Nyko replied, with a half-bow that betrayed his nervousness.

Sibon detached from his belt the vesicular baton hanging at his side and sat down, resting the weapon across his legs and relaxing his shoulders. "Is she your daughter?" he asked, gesturing toward Nolitha, who stared at him with frightened eyes.

Nyko shook his head. "She's my sister's niece. I've had her since my sister died last year." He indicated the other two children. "Those are my real children."

The guardian nodded his understanding, then shifted his gaze to the sack Nyko still clutched. "Open it."

Nyko untied the knot. He gasped, and his wife drew closer to look, leaving the girl alone among her stepbrothers. Nyko spread the sack open for her, revealing numerous loaves of greenbread, dried mushrooms, roots, and protein filaments.

"The Mother doesn't see us!" the woman exclaimed, bringing a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide.

Nyko turned back to the guardian. "Is this... all for us?" he asked, suspicion threading his voice as he tightened his grip on the sack.

Sibon made an open gesture with his palms, then glanced at the children and motioned toward the food. "Help yourselves," he said, smiling.

The children lunged for the sack, but Nyko lifted it quickly. "Stop!" he snapped. "This needs to be rationed!"

Sibon watched the girl, who had remained motionless and showed no sign of moving. "There's enough for weeks," he said to Nyko. "You can afford a proper meal now, to celebrate."

"We'll celebrate later," the artist replied, looking at the rest of his family. He addressed the woman. "Go out and take the children with you."

The woman started to speak, her eyes on the sack, but Nyko stepped closer with a threatening expression. "Go," he hissed.

The woman quickly gathered the few scattered belongings and pushed the two boys toward the valve-door. The children left immediately, eager to return to their games, but Nolitha paused at the threshold. Her eyes rested on Sibon for a long moment, studying him. Then she ran toward the exit.

Left alone, Nyko exhaled deeply and walked to a protrusion in the wall. He set the food sack there and picked up a bluish sphere. He offered it to Sibon, who grasped it and sucked a sip. Then the guardian passed it back to Nyko, who drank in turn, letting out a satisfied sound and settling into the mushroom-chair.

"The food needs to be rationed carefully," he continued, making himself comfortable against the backrest. "Not everyone will eat."

"You mean the girl won't eat?" the guardian asked. "I gather you don't want her around. Why didn't you let her be selected?"

Nyko's expression soured. "My wife," he said, "thought maybe she could help around the house, but she's completely useless. All she does is cry and hide. She's just another mouth to feed."

The guardian gave a nod of understanding, and Nyko went on: "Only my second-born will eat."

"The one who shows the most promise as a future artist?" Sibon asked.

"The healthiest one," Nyko replied, rolling the sphere between his hands. "If the Mother wills it, he won't die before the Stagnation ends. With him, we might have a chance of carrying on the profess—"

He stopped abruptly, looking at the guardian with fear, but Sibon smiled placidly.

"Don't worry," he said. "I have no interest in politics. Fallen or not, you're still artists."

Nyko relaxed, but only for an instant. He resumed studying the guardian with suspicion. "Why are you here?"

"I need information," Sibon said, gesturing toward the sphere in the artist's hand. Nyko tossed it to him, and Sibon caught it with a swift motion. "I need to know where I can find someone."

"Who?" the artist asked.

Sibon sucked the cheap winefluid from the sphere with a faint slurping sound, holding Nyko's gaze. He finished and smacked his lips.

"Kamva."

The artist went rigid. His hands clenched into fists on the armrests of the mushroom-chair. He cast an involuntary glance at the food, then looked back at the guardian.

"What do you want to know?" he asked.

"Where she is, first of all. And when was the last time you saw her."

"I have no idea where she is," the other replied, his voice betraying anxiety. "I think I last saw her at the unveiling of the portraits of Lord Mthunzi and his son, at the public fountain in the weavers' quarter. You could ask Mkhize and Jabu—they might know..."

"I've already asked your colleagues," the guardian interrupted. He took the baton in hand and began stroking it with the other, sliding it slowly along its surface. "The food I gave you and your family came from their homes."

Nyko went pale. The blood drained from his face as if someone had opened a valve. He glanced nervously at the food sack. "What happened to them?"

"Ah," Sibon said, with a mournful smile, "the right question would have been: how did they come to have all that food?" He looked at Nyko, no longer smiling. "But you already know, don't you?"

He rose and approached Nyko, who stood as well and backed away, stumbling against a bed-protrusion and falling to the ground.

"No, please, no," he whimpered.

Sibon stopped over him and shook his head. "Please maintain your dignity, artist. I only need information. Then I'll kill you quickly and be on my way."

Nyko began to scream, dropped to all fours, and tried to crawl away. Sibon, behind him, struck him with the vesicular baton on his right thigh.

The burn exploded as if he'd pressed his leg against a heat-fungus. Nyko felt his skin dissolve and bubble. A cluster of blisters swelled rapidly. The pain was alive, devouring. The skin around the blisters grew hot and lifted, red and glossy as molten petroclast.

Nyko collapsed onto his side, writhing and letting out a strangled scream that dissolved into a desperate sob. The blisters kept swelling, some as large as a thumb, pulsing rhythmically.

Sibon crouched beside the man's head and clamped a hand over his mouth as he moaned. "You're thirty-eight. You're one step from Selection and will leave nothing behind but your children. You have the chance—" He paused and gave the man a sharp shake; he was struggling too much. "As I was saying: you have the chance to do the right thing for them. All the food they need. I promise I'll leave it here for them. Now I'm going to remove my hand, and you're going to talk." He brought the vesicular baton close, and one of the pulsing blisters stopped a finger's width from Nyko's eye.

The man stopped moaning and nodded. Sibon removed his hand, and the artist let out a shudder.

"So," said Sibon, rising, "where is Kamva?"

Nyko breathed with difficulty, staring at his wounded thigh. "I don't know, I really don't. The last time I saw her was in the weavers' quarter, during the Mhondo unveiling."

Sibon drew from his robe a grayish nodule veined with thin orange lines and set it on the floor between them.

"Let's start over," he said evenly. "Your name is Nyko?"

"Yes."

Sibon glanced at the nodule, which pulsed slowly.

"Do you really want to keep feeding only one of your children?"

Nyko hesitated. "I have to, because—"

"Answer only yes or no."

"Yes."

Again, Sibon watched the nodule.

"Have you ever taken part in stealing food from the carts?"

"No," Nyko answered quickly.

The veins flared bright orange.

Sibon observed the reaction without comment, then continued. "Let's talk about Kutha. Why did he take the two sisters as apprentices?"

Nyko looked at him in confusion. "I don't understand the point of these questions."

"It's to better understand Kamva's past," Sibon replied patiently. "It may help anticipate her moves today. Why did Kutha adopt them?"

"I have no idea," the artist snapped, rubbing his wounded leg. "Maybe he was lonely. Maybe he saw the rest of us with apprentices and wanted some too. He'd been drinking nonstop for years. All I know is that once he adopted them, he started drinking less. Let's say two days on, one day off."

"Did he love them?"

Nyko stared at the guardian in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Never mind. And when he died, how did Kamva react?"

"She got drunk for three days straight. Then she never spoke of it again."

The valve-door opened with a hiss, and both men turned sharply. Nolitha slipped inside at a run.

She saw Nyko on the ground and froze. Her eyes widened, but she didn't scream.

Sibon smiled at her. "Did you forget something?"

The girl looked at him in silence, then pointed to the membrane scrap lying near the mushroom-chair.

Sibon gave her a nod, and she ran to retrieve her toy. She paused again, looking at her stepfather.

"Is he going to die?" she asked, clutching the scrap tightly.

Sibon replied with a slight movement of his head. He took a loaf from the sack and tossed it to her. The girl tried to catch it, dropping both the bread and the scrap. She picked up both and took a deep bite of the greenbread.

"Now go back outside and play," Sibon said.

Nolitha smiled briefly and ran off.

Sibon waited for the valve-door to close, then turned back to Nyko. "Where is Kamva hiding?"

"I already told you I don't know," Nyko replied, his voice rough with pain. "I haven't seen her in weeks."

The nodule flared bright orange.

Sibon shook his head in disappointment. "Lying is dishonorable, especially in the face of death." He approached the artist and slowly traced the tip of the vesicular baton in front of Nyko's eyes. "I'd like us to have a dialogue between mature individuals."

Nyko began to cry, staring at the weapon. Tears carved rivulets through the scars on his cheeks.

Sibon leaned toward him. "Having to resort to physical threats again makes me feel inadequate." He sat cross-legged and rested the baton across his knees. "Food trafficking is a serious crime. I understand the desire to protect Kamva. She's your leader, isn't she? I respect that. At last I see a quality in you: loyalty. It makes you human."

"She's not just my leader," Nyko murmured. "Kamva doesn't keep everything for herself. She shares the food with those who need it. I've seen entire families who would have died without her. I would have starved if not for Kamva."

"That's a problem," Sibon said with a bitter smile. "She's building a following. The noble clans can't tolerate someone trying to elevate herself to their rank." He tilted his head toward the artist's. "But now loyalty must give way to altruism. If I don't find Kamva and stop her, many people will die." He pointed toward the valve-door. "Starting with your family. None of your children will become an artist. Your legacy will end here, with you."

As the guardian spoke, Nyko slowly stopped crying. The sobs died away one by one as he watched his tormentor. In those eyes, he saw no joy, no satisfaction. Only determination.

He understood it was truly over.

"She's in the back room at Nhira's," he whispered at last. "The distiller."

"The distillery in the haulers' quarter?" Sibon asked.

Nyko nodded.

"Is Nhira part of your gang?"

"No," Nyko said, then corrected himself. "I don't know. Kamva never tells us more than necessary."

Sibon bowed his head in respect. "She's an intelligent person. I admire her greatly."

"So do I," Nyko replied. "When you find her, tell her that I—"

Sibon's hands shot forward in a firm grip at the base of his neck, which twisted in a swift, unnatural motion. A dry snap of breaking bone echoed through the room.

Nyko's body went limp immediately. Sibon lowered him to the ground with gentleness, then bent to close the eyes that had remained open in a look of surprise.

"It's an honorable death," he said to the artist, resting a hand on his chest for a moment.

He rose, retrieved the nodule from the floor, and tucked it back into his robe. He cast one last glance around the room, at the sack of food he had promised to leave behind.

Then he walked to the valve-door and stepped outside. A short distance ahead, Nyko's wife waited with the two boys. The children played with each other while the woman kept her gaze fixed on the door the guardian had just exited.

"Where's the girl?" Sibon asked.

The woman shrugged. "Who cares?"

"I do," the guardian said. "Find her and take care of her. I'll come back to check."

He gave a nod of farewell and walked away into the dark street.