“The boy.”
He turned to look. Ipundulu tried to push himself up on his elbows, but Mossi pressed his sword into his neck.
“What is his name?” Mossi asked.
“He has none.”
“Then what do we call him? Boy?”
Venin-Jakwu and Sadogo came up behind me. Sogolon was still on the floor.
“If she does not wake soon, all her spirits will know she is weak,” I said.
“What should we do with this one?” Mossi said.
“Kill him,” Venin said behind me. “Kill him, get the witch, and get the b—”
He burst through the window, blasting off a chunk of the wall that shattered into rocks, hitting Sadogo in the head and neck. Right behind me, his long black wing slammed Venin-Jakwu, sending them flying into the wall.
The smell, I knew the smell. I spun around and his wing knocked me off my feet, swung back and hit me square in the face. He stepped into the room, and Mossi charged him with both swords. Mossi’s sword struck his wing and got stuck. He slapped the other sword out of Mossi’s hands and charged him.
Flapping his black bat wings to lift his body, he swung both feet up and kicked him in the chest. Mossi slammed into the wall, and he slammed into him. Then he dug his clawed finger into Mossi’s head, cutting from the top of his forehead down, slicing through the brow and still moving down.
“Sasabonsam!” I said. He smelled like his brother.
He slapped Mossi away and faced me.
My head still moved slower than my feet. He came after me just as Sogolon stirred and whipped a wind that knocked him off his feet and pushed me to the ground. He fought against the wind, and Sogolon was losing strength. He staggered, but got close enough to cut into her raised hands with his claws. I tried to get up but fell to one knee. Mossi was still on the ground. I did not know where Venin-Jakwu was. And by the time Sadogo rose and remembered his rage enough to stomp to the room, Sasabonsam grabbed Ipundulu’s leg with his iron claw hand wrapping around the leg like a snake, scooped the boy with the other hand, after the boy crawled out from under the chair, and ran straight to the window, blasting out the frame, the glass, and chunks of the wall. One of the guards, lightning coursing through him, ran after his new master and fell where Sasabonsam flew. I staggered in after Sadogo and saw Sasabonsam in the sky with his bat wings, dipping twice from Ipundulu’s weight, then flapping harder, louder, and climbing high.
So. Sadogo, Venin-Jakwu, Mossi, and I stood in the room, surrounding Sogolon. She tried to stand up, darting at all of us. Outside, overturned carts, slaughtered bodies, and broken sticks and clubs littered the streets. Smoke from the two rebellious trees streaked the sky. Farther off, not far away, the rumble of a fight. And what fight? Dolingon guards were not made for any fight, much less a war. Over in the Queen’s tree, the palace stood still. All ropes to and from appeared to be cut off. I saw the Queen in my mind-eye, crouched in her throne like a child, ordering her court to believe when she said that the rebellion would be smashed and smote in a blink, and them hollering, screaming, and shouting to the gods.
We stepped towards her, and Sogolon, not sure what to do, shifted back and forth, then skipped clear of us. She raised her left hand but stopped when it made her chest bleed. She kept darting at each of us, her eyes wide one blink, hazy the next, almost asleep, then stunned awake. She turned to Mossi.
“Consort, she was going treat you like. Keep her womb full and she wouldn’t care.”
“Until she turned tired and sent him to the trunk,” I said.
“She treat the pretty ones better than a king be treating he concubines. That is truth.”
“Not the truth you told me. Not in words, not in meaning, not even in rhyme.”
We moved in closer. Sadogo squeezed his left knuckles, his right hand bloody and loose. Venin-Jakwu pulled a wrap around their leg wound and grabbed a dagger, Mossi, half his face covered in blood, pointed his two swords. Sogolon turned to me, the one without a weapon.
“From me could come a tempest to blow everybody out that window.”
“Then you would be too weak to stop the blood leaking out of you, and the others coming after you. Just like the one in Venin,” I said.
She backed into the wall. “All of you too fool. None of you ready. You think I was going leave the true fate of the North to all of you? No skill, no brain, no plan, all of you here for the coin, nobody here care about the fate of the very land you shit on. What a bliss, what a gift to be so ignorant or foolish.”
“Nobody here was lacking skill, Sogolon. Or brain. You just had other plans,” Mossi said.
“I tell you, I tell all of you, don’t go through the Darklands. Stop walking in the room crotch first, and walk headfirst. Or step back and be led. You think I goin’ trust the boy to people like you?”
“And where is your boy, Sogolon? Do you nest him so tight to your bosom we can’t see him?” Mossi said.
“No skill, no brain, no plan, yet were it not for us, you would be dead,” I said.
“Goddess of flow and overflow, listen to your daughter. Goddess of flow and overflow.”
“Sogolon,” I said.
“Goddess of flow and overflow.”
“You still call to that slithering bitch?” Venin-Jakwu said.
“Bunshi. You calling for your goddess?”
“Don’t speak of Bunshi,” Sogolon said.
“Still there thinking you get to give orders,” said Venin-Jakwu. “She don’t change in a hundred years, this Moon Witch. I tell you true. Woman in Mantha still calling you prophet, or they finally see you just a thief.”
“We need to save the boy, you know where they heading,” she said to me.
Venin-Jakwu, the wrap around their leg almost full red, started circling her slow, like a lion, and began to talk.
“So what this Moon Witch be telling you about herself? For the only one who tell tales about Sogolon is Sogolon. She tell you she come from the Watangi warriors south of Mitu? Or that she was river priestess in Wakadishu? That she was the bodyguard and adviser to the sister of the King when she was just a water maid, who step over many heads to get to her chamber? Look at her, on a mission again. Save the royal sister’s boy. She tell you that nobody ask her? She set off on mission to find boy, so that she no longer the joke of Mantha. And what a joke. The Moon Witch with one hundred runes but only one spell, finally get to show her quality. Maybe she going tell you later. Listen to me, I tell you this. The moon witch sure be three hundred, ten and five, I tell you true. I meet her when she was just two hundred. She tell you how she live that long? No? That one she keep close to her lanky bosom. Two hundred years ago I was still a knight and have only one hole, not two. You know who me be? Me be the one who knock her off her horse when she forget to write a rune strong enough to bind me.”
Sogolon kept looking at me.
“And her little goddess, you meet it? It come sliming down the wall as of late? If she is a goddess then me is the divine elephant snake. That little river jengu, claiming she fight Omoluzu, when you could kill her with just seawater. Her goddess is an imp.”
“None of you deserved to live, not a single one of you,” Sogolon said, still looking at me.
“That is between we and the gods, not you, body thief,” Venin-Jakwu said.
“You was always an ungrateful, stinking piece of dog shit, Jakwu. Killer and raper of women. Why you think I give you that body? One day all of that you do will happen to you.”
“The body had an owner,” I said.
“Every day before sun come, she running out to go back to the bush so Zogbanu can eat her. No matter where me take her and how me train her. Far better use of she body than she ever go use it,” Sogolon said.
“You just wanted me to stop knocking you off your horse,” Venin-Jakwu said. “Just like you been knocking people out of they body for a long, long time.”
“How?” Mossi said.
“Don’t ask me, ask she.”
“Time running and passing, and they still have the boy. You know where they going, Tracker.”
Sogolon looked around, at all of us, speaking to everybody, convincing no one.
“She didn’t try to kill us,” Sadogo said.
“Speak for yourself,” Venin-Jakwu said.
“We agreed to save the boy,” Mossi said, and walked over to me.
“You don’t know her. I know her two hundred years, what she do more than anything else is plot how a person can be of use. She never ask you what is your use? I didn’t agree to nothing with none of you,” Venin-Jakwu said.
“Maybe not. But we go to save the boy, and we might need the deceiving Moon Witch.”
“A dead Moon Witch not going to be any use to you.”
“Nor a dead girl who tried to go through three of us to kill her.”
Now Venin-Jakwu darted from face to face. They pushed a foot under the sword of a fallen guard and kicked it up in hand. They gripped it, liking the feel, and smiled.