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Adisu the leather-worker and Tamair mingled their praise-chants with those of the rest of the crowd as the gharris passed and the music played. Other members of the dissident group were scattered throughout the throng on both sides of the street. All of them strove to conceal their knife-edged anticipation, as well as the apprehension that drew sweat from their palms. There was no part for them to play in what they expected to happen at any moment. Only afterward would they act, and they would do so with no blame attached to them at all ... if Sehaye’s scheme worked. And if that strange, taciturn man was not as insane as he appeared to be ...
The gharri carrying the foreign Leba, Kyroun, passed by the two dissidents. The white-bearded man stared straight ahead, barely acknowledging the praise the Matile were giving him – adulation that, in the minds of the dissidents, he did not deserve.
“Look at him,” Adisu muttered beneath his breath. “He cares nothing for us at all. He ...”
Tamair gave him a sharp jab with her elbow even as she sang a verse from a praise-song that was almost as old as Khambawe itself. Adisu understood the message she imparted, painful though it was. He joined the chorus of reverence for the Emperor Gebrem as his gharri passed. In contrast to Kyroun, the Emperor smiled broadly and raised his hand from time to time, as though the gesture was a benison to the crowd. With a slight nod to Tamair, Adisu struggled mightily to prevent his true feelings from surfacing again.
Neither bothered to look for Jass Kebessa. The leader of the dissidents would be far to the rear of the procession, as befitting his lowly status among the Degen Jassi. He would be safe from what was to come.
Now the gharri that conveyed Tiyana and Keshu was passing. For the briefest of moments, Adisu’s anger receded as he looked at her. Gebrem’s daughter possessed the beauty and courage of a goddess. And Keshu had risen high from the ranks of the common classes, people like Adisu himself.
The respite lasted only for a moment before Adisu once again hardened his heart at the realization that even these two had fallen irrevocably under the insidious control of the foreigners.
Mounted soldiers accompanied the procession as it wound its way through the city. They, too, were resplendent in their polished armor and lion-mane decorations. Their weapons remained sheathed, for no one was expecting any trouble ... no one other than the dissidents.
Sehaye, where are they? Adisu demanded silently. Where?
A moment later, his unvoiced question was answered.
They struck with the quickness of cobras. The crowd had concealed them well; they had mimicked those who surrounded them with chameleon-like ease. The soldiers had no time to react; neither did the Adepts, for all their skill and power and preternatural awareness. So completely had the attackers hidden themselves that Adisu was oblivious to the fact that one of them had been standing at his other side all this time. He didn’t know until the chamma-clad figure hurled itself at a passing gharri, rushing beneath the rearing hooves of the soldier-escort’s startled quagga.
The music faltered, then stopped completely, to be supplanted by shouts, screams, the neighing of quaggas and the crash of overturned gharris. Sunlight glinted from the weapons the assailants wielded. Tirss ... the chosen weapon of the tsotsis ...
Even as the press of the panicking crowd pulled him one way, then the other, ultimately separating him from Tamair, Adisu exulted inside.
He did it! That crazy man Sehaye did it! No one will blame us for what has happened! They will blame the tsotsis! The cursed tsotsis have freed us from the foreigners!
Even as Adisu celebrated, his foot caught on a raised stone in the street, and he went down. The fear-maddened crowd around him did not notice as he flailed about in a desperate attempt to get back to his feet. But the feet of others pounded him like a hailstorm and kept him down. Some of the people in the crowd were running toward the procession to try to aid the Jassi and the Almovaads. Others were simply running away.
Collisions abounded. Others besides Adisu fell and were trampled. Some managed to rise and escape further injury; others were not so fortunate. Adisu was not among the fortunate ones. Even as he died beneath the pounding feet of the people he had plotted to save from the foreigners, he heard the cry of the tsotsis rising above the clamor of the crowd:
“This be for your shadows!”