Free Heart of Light by Sarah A. Hoyt Page A

smiled spontaneously, without seeming to think of how it projected. She might have thought he was laughing at her and be offended, but it was clear this was not so. He was smiling at himself.
    “I am Kitwana,” he said. “It means Pledged to Live.”
    Just that. No people, no village, no parents' name attached to that singular name. He seemed to think that Kitwana alone meant everything. Good thing he was pledged to live, since, doubtlessly, many people had probably often felt like killing him.
    She frowned at him. With an air of confidence he wore an Englishman's suit, well cut, well fitted.
    “You answered my summons,” she said. “My mind summons.”
    He nodded. His hair was cut so short you could almost see his scalp beneath. A fine-looking man, if one could see him in his natural element, without the trappings of the white man about him. She wondered what he looked like in the native dress of his people, and what that would be.
    Even among the Masai, dress standards differed. The clothing of the Il-Purco left most of their bodies uncovered and used cloth and beads strictly as ornamentation. The Il-Sungo, the Masai subgroup to which Nassira belonged, found this scandalous. They covered up in shoulder-to-knee wraps and accused the Il-Purco of going around naked, like cows.
    What attire would Kitwana favor, and how much of his broad-shouldered, long-legged body would it leave uncovered? Nassira banished the thought forcefully. She was not here to allow herself to be seduced by a non-Masai, an arrogant son of people to whom Engai had refused cattle.
    “I am a member of those who work in the night and stalk the mighty,” she said, using the Hyena Men's description of themselves.
    He raised his eyebrows and said nothing in return. For a moment, she wondered whether he understood her, or if she'd somehow come to the wrong place altogether. Then Kitwana narrowed his eyes. “Like calls to like,” he said. “Water to water, blood to blood.”
    As he spoke, he unfastened the white cuff of his shirt, beneath his suit coat. Then he pulled it up just a little. At the point at his wrist where the vein divided into a delta of life, a small half-moon-shaped scar marred his flawless skin.
    Nassira understood.
    She lifted her own wrist, displaying the twin of his scar—a scar so small and unremarkable that it would pass unnoticed to the uninitiated.
    When close to one another, both scars glowed momentarily with a bright brilliance, like a pinprick of sunlight beneath their skins.
    “Lion to lion, and hyena to hyena,” Kitwana said, and threw the door open.
    The scars were the magical remainders and marks of their initiations into the Hyena Men, and linked to one another by the collective magical power of the group.
    Though Kitwana spoke as good English as Nassira did herself, it seemed to her that she detected in his pronunciation a hint of an accent. A man she'd met early on in the Hyena Men had spoken with a similar tinge in his voice. And that accent sounded Zulu, but Kitwana's features were like no other Zulu Nassira had met. Yet what did she know about the Zulus? They lived many months away, in the western end of Africa. As for his giving her neither name of parents nor of tribe, that, too, would fit in with the Zulus, the proudest—some said the maddest—people in Africa. Not so long ago, they had terrorized the British with their strength, their warlike ways.
    They still erupted into sudden violence now and then and remained an empire within an empire, a confederacy within the greater confederacy. There were several of them in the Hyena Men, and looking at this tall, dark man with his expressive dark eyes and his broad shoulders, Nassira wondered if perhaps he wasn't the power behind the Hyena Men. He looked strong enough to carry the organization. Besides, the magical power she felt in him—strong, shapeless and immense—had an unexpected quality that was like an unknown taste on the tongue, a name she couldn't