18°41'34.2"N 12°55'10.6"E

  Bilma, Niger

  27.05.2024 – 05:30 UTC +01.00

  Breathing in and breathing out. My left ear felt heavy; a tug from my pulse and a second one as well. And then the bus shook, breaking my focus. I was on a bus ride in the north of Bilma, thinking that travelling while Hearing could cast a wider net.

  Breathing in again and holding my breath. I shouldn’t close my eyes; that was what Yahaya had suggested a couple of days ago.

  It is good, what you hear. Nabd is more than blood. Nabd flows and passes through all of us. And it leaves traces in all of us.

  I kept holding my breath. My eyes were open, and I was trying to convince myself that the scenes were not distracting me. They were letting Nabd in. The engine’s shaking at the back of the bus didn’t reach me, nor did the clutter and chatter of the passengers. A sixty-year-old man with a limp and sun-shriveled skin lingered by the entrance. A woman wearing a slick abaya and a long blue dress chatted over the phone. A kid held her hand next to her, tugging it to ask a question.

  Perhaps I was just like that kid, constantly tugging my Cursed senses for direction.

  I looked out the window and searched for traces, whatever those could be. I finally exhaled and inhaled again. Instead of ignoring the surroundings, I started pinpointing details as the bus passed by. A sickly tamarind tree on the side of the pavement, a young man swearing and cursing on the phone, and two girls running and chasing a shepherd dog.

  “This is pointless,” I said to myself as I closed my eyes again, trying what I knew should work best. I brought the image of the man in Aisa’s mailed photo right to the front center of my mind, my left hand holding the bloodied photo in my pocket.

  The Nabd was there, a third pulse between my heart and the swallowed Baobab’s flower. I tried to forget about the third one – no good would come from pursuing this as long as my Calling didn’t force me. My brother would argue that nothing good would come from chasing Aisa’s task either, but a few million francs would beg to differ.

  Hence, my early morning bus ride. I would find him, lead him to Yahaya, and be done by noon.

  My thoughts had led me astray again. I pushed back my own and the Baobab’s Nabd and focused on the blood of the photographed man.

  There it was. Was it moving north? Or was it me changing direction?

  I opened my eyes as someone was patting my shoulder next to me. A woman’s voice spoke to me in a variation of Tamahaq, but not quite, checking if I was okay or asleep. The Tuareg in Libya spoke a similar tongue, and it was no wonder that someone spoke it here, but I was never a fluent speaker myself, only speaking Arabic. Her voice was worried, and her expression did not need interpretation.

  “I okay,” I responded to the middle-aged woman, a bit startled, but I decided to take this as a sign to leave the bus. I exited at the next stop.

  I had never tried to track someone in a town like this. Back home, anyone Cursed in our village trained their sense of the Nabd and focused on finding people lost in the desert. I had learned to be quite successful in that, and the trick was to listen to the desert’s silence and find who wanted to be found. They mostly wanted to be found.

  I had only once really hunted for a man, a criminal who had stolen and raped in our town. My senses were keen, so my father had included me in the search party. That man did not want to be found, but he had also escaped into the desert, where sensing came as second nature to me. Once I had pinpointed the location, my father sent me back with a couple of men to escort me back to our village, but soon enough, I couldn’t hear the criminal’s pulse anymore.

  Was there any lesson from that story? Could I lure that man somehow to a desolate location, hoping that I would be more successful?

  I walked to a small park with a tiny pond covered in green algae, date trees lining the park, offering much-needed shade. I sat on a bench looking at the small pond, while the occasional passerby startled a frog or two and rippled the pond.

  I thought Yahaya’s comment about traces. Perhaps that’s how her senses worked; maybe she could see some occult trace where others couldn’t. But that’s not how my Nabd felt. I could feel fear, passion, lying, or anxiety. I could sense others’ Nabd by their emotions. Not the ripple in the pond, but the frog fleeing scared.

  I was alone enough in that small park, so I pulled the photograph out again. I felt like a hitman, and perhaps I was, but seventy million francs was fifteen times our initial budget and our ticket to moving on.

  And there was a thrill in what I was doing, a thrill that I could not really admit to. My left hand was holding the back of the card, right where the blood was, and I caressed the photo of the man with my right hand.

  He was stepping out of a car, speaking on the phone. But his expression was relaxed, even with a hint of a smile, maybe? Could that help, maybe – if he was unaware of being hunted, I had to tune into positive and relaxed emotions?

  A frog darted across the pond, and another one as well, catching my attention. A white flower had landed on the pond nearby, startling them. One frog scaring the next.

  “Maybe the traces are how he made others feel,” I said to myself.

  A flood of Nabd rushed through my ears. Not his Nabd anymore, that was not possible. All the blood he made boil in anger or freeze in fear, men and women in the town, all the pulses rushed in.

  I held my breath, afraid I would lose them. I discerned them one by one, by importance and distance. So many emotions. So much fear. I took careful breaths; the sense did not stop. I had unlocked something new.

  “Thanks,” I said to the frogs hiding in the pond, waiting for the next flower to land.

  ? ? ?

  I waited for a long time. My phone said it was almost eleven, meaning I was on the hunt for at least five hours. But for the past two hours, I was sitting at a coffee shop’s terrace, huge electrical fans blowing their breeze and drops of refreshing water. Large tropical plants were planted all around the coffee shop’s terrace, and a young man had brought me the best coffee I had tasted in weeks. And I waited.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Across the balcony, gallons of scared and nervous blood curled. There was a tall office building across the street, and from where I sat in the coffee shop, I could surveil the entrance. Finally, after the third coffee cup, the fearful Nabd started subsiding, but now his Nabd etched closer.

  And there he was, exiting the building and on the phone. Two huge bodyguards walked behind him. All three of them looked like northerners like me. I guessed Egyptians.

  “It does not matter,” I said, and for a moment, I lavished the complete sense of power I had.

  I simply stared at him and sipped my coffee. I caressed the picture and breathed in; his heart was mine now.

  He hung up his phone and turned to his bodyguards. One seemed to argue with him and got yelled at. The second one happily grabbed his colleague and left. Five minutes passed, and the man stood across the street looking down at the ground.

  Oh, that was interesting. He was resisting. Sweating even as he tried to decline the call, while I was sipping the last drop of coffee.

  I was not even straining myself, but I wanted to be covert. Around me, the coffee shop was half full of people, most of them working on laptops. I did not have the luxury of dramatic theatrics like when I had barged into Dáwù Fált??.

  “Enough,” I said, leaving the coffee cup on the table as if I was scolding someone across the table.

  The man crossed the street without even caring about the traffic. Within two minutes, he had walked to me and was sitting across the table.

  He was in his mid-thirties, with clean shaven head and beard, except for a mustache. His build was imposing, although I could tell it was from working out and not actual manual labor. He was dressed in a beige tuxedo, further enhancing my feeling that he was here for business and not vacation.

  Sweat dripped from his forehead.

  “Why?” He said as he sat. That was all I let him say before tightening my grip over his heart. There was no need for free will at this point.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Nassor.” Looked and sounded Egyptian. My interest was piqued; why did Aisa care about an Egyptian businessman? Paying way more than all the other people I had hunted for her, as well.

  “What are you doing here, Nassor?”

  “I came to attend some business.”

  Still resisting. That man had training against Curses, but that would prove insufficient. He continued, as I willed him to.

  “I have to meet an envoy of the Kanem. We are divesting. My employer is no longer interested.”

  Ah, that should do it. Money. Aisa wanted money and paid me for it. He kept talking:

  “The leader of the Ngam Kúrà. Local gang, serving under the interests of the Empire. We no longer want to be associated.”

  I exhaled. My grasp over his heart loosened momentarily, and he stood up.

  “Ah, ah, ah!” I said, and he sat again. “Why do you not want to be associated?”

  “Because of your kind,” he answered immediately. I needed no command; he wanted to reveal this to me. “God-forsaken Cursed. Your filth has started another war in N’Djamena. The Kanem never picked a side. But suddenly there is a shift, an interest in that war. They asked to fund a battalion of Cursed. A new direction. I am here to divest of that gang.”

  Divest, he meant not. He meant disposed of. He was here to dismantle the gang and their leader. I diverted my gaze from Nassor, who was turning paler by the minute. He would faint soon if I did not release my hold of him. He was resisting, and that was straining his heart.

  I stared right into the empty coffee cup in front of me. I had him. My mission was complete; all I had to do was hand him over and cash in the seventy million francs.

  FIND US AT THE TERRASSE

  I texted Yahaya’s number and then sent the address of the café. There was no chance I would walk to her hidden warded Inside Cliff again. My job was done, and she could come pick up the goods.

  I left my phone on the table. My Calling had not intervened, yet it felt satiated. But my mind was restless. Something else bothered me. Nassor’s story about his business divesting from an empire I had not heard of before, because of a Cursed war in N’Djamena, had somehow shaken me. Something bigger was at play. And I was not asking the right questions.

  I stared at my phone. My message was sent but not read yet.

  Nassor, not moving beyond breathing, sat across the table, his eyes begging me about his fate.

  Three different memories, all very recent and intertwined, echoed one after the other, alarming me.

  After our latest visit to N’Djamena, she was unpredictable.

  Yahaya had told me about Tiwalade. After that, she tried to teach me how to seek people, the way I sought Nassor. Her words were loud, as if she were just here next to us.

  Please. The manypath hasn’t ended, I think we need to keep going.

  Tiwalade, the girl I had found in the Inside Cliff, that I had controlled and enhanced, had begged me to keep heading on the Cursed paths she had opened. I did not follow her but listened to my Calling instead. She ended up dead.

  Others got a Calling, sister, but not like this.

  Qadir had told me early in our trip, before we even left Libya, when we had decided to heed its summons.

  To N’Djamena.

  Could I really blindly trust my Curse?

  Nassor breathed in heavily.

  Surprisingly, holding a non-Cursed man’s heart took a heavier toll on them. I had only captured Tiwalade and Yahaya like that for such an extended time, and none of them had shown such signs of wearing down. And although I was sure his being non-Cursed played a role, I could feel that somewhere behind his words of disgust and hate towards me, there was a hint of jealousy and lust, in a way that only a man was capable of.

  He suddenly found the energy to speak. “You warned Kabiru now, I guess. I am done.”

  Kabiru? A name I did not recognize – but he thought I would. His eyes looked like those of a man who had surrendered to a fate.

  Wait. I did recognize the name. The man I had commanded to drink poison, the first time I had met Aisa, that man was Kabiru. When my Calling had led me to her club.

  That made no sense. Wait, no. If Nassor was looking for Aisa and the Lions, why did Aisa need Yahaya and me to find him first? If they were bound to meet?

  I strangled Nassor’s heart.

  “How do you know Kabiru?”

  “Jibrin Kabiru. I told you, I am here to meet the envoy of the Kanem. He is the leader of the Ngam Kúrà.”

  I do not know if my expression betrayed my surprise, my ignorance. My eyes perhaps did betray, and he saw it. He smiled; he understood I was tricked, or mistaken at the very least. I willed the smile off his face.

  I looked back at my phone. My message to Yahaya was read. She was on her way. My heart pounded fast.