Strong winds blew into the sails and pushed the dhow. This was the fastest I ever see it go, save for a storm, the captain said, but claimed it was sake of neither river nor wind goddess. He wasn’t sure which, even though the answer showed itself clear to anybody who went belowdecks. We boarded the dhow to Kongor a day ago, and here is why it made sense. We could not go through Dolingo, for no one had word on whether the rebellion had spread or if the Queen’s men doused it. Dolingo’s mountains rose higher than Malakal and would have taken five nights to cross, followed by four through Mitu, before we reached Kongor. But a boat on the river took three nights and half a day. The last I sailed on a dhow, the boat was less than ten and six paces long, not even seven paces wide, and carried five of us. This boat was half the walk of a sorghum field and wider than twenty paces, and had two sails, one as wide as the ship and just as high, the other half that size, both cut like shark fins. Three floors belowdecks, all empty, made the ship sail faster, but also made it easier to capsize. A slave ship.
“That ship, have you ever seen the like?” Mossi said when I pointed it out docked by the river.
A half day’s walk led us to a clearing and the river, which ran from far south of Dolingo, snuck past it on the left, snaked around Mitu, and split to surround Kongor. On the other side of the river, the giant trees and thick mists hid the Mweru.
“I have seen the like,” I said to him about the ship.
We were all tired, even the buffalo and the Ogo. We were all sore, and the first night the Ogo’s fingers were so stiff he swatted three mugs of beer away trying to pick them up. I couldn’t remember what hit me in my back for it to smart so, and when I dipped in the river, every wound, scratch, and sore screamed. Mossi was sore as well and he tried to hide his limp, but winced when he stepped with his left foot. The night before, the cut above his forehead opened again, and blood streaked down the middle of his face. I cut another piece of his tunic, pounded wild bush into a paste, and rubbed it in his wound. He grabbed my hand and cursed at the sting, then eased his grip and dropped his hands to my waist. I wrapped his forehead.
“Then you know why it would dock here, on the outskirts of Dolingo.”
“Mossi, Dolingo buys slaves, not sells them.”
“What does that mean, that the ship is empty? Not after what’s coming to pass in the citadel.”
I turned to him, looking over at the buffalo, who snorted at the sight of the river.
“Look how it floats above the water. It’s empty.”
“I don’t trust slavers. We could turn from guest to cargo in the course of one night.”
“And how would a slaver do that with the likes of us? We need passage to Kongor, and this ship is going to either Kongor or Mitu, which is still closer than where we are now.”
I hailed the captain, a fat slaver with a bald head he painted blue, and asked if he minded some fellow travelers. They all stood from the port, looking down on us, ragged and covered in bruises and dust, but with all the weapons we took from the Dolingons. Mossi was right, the captain looked us over, and so did his thirty-man crew. But Sadogo never took off his gloves, and one look from him made the captain charge us nothing. But you take that cow to the shed with the rest of the dumb beasts, he said, and the Ogo had to grab the buffalo’s horn to stop him from charging. The buffalo took an empty stall beside two pigs who should have been fatter.
The second level had windows, and the Ogo took that one, and frowned when it looked like we would join him. He has nightmares and wishes that nobody knows, I said to Mossi when he complained. The captain said to me that he sold his cargo that night to a thin blue noble who pointed with his chin the whole time, only two nights before the god of anarchy let loose in Dolingo.
The ship would dock in Kongor. None of the crew slept below. One, whose face I didn’t see, said something about slave ghosts, furious about dying on the ship for they were still chained to it and could not enter the underworld. Ghosts, masters of malice and longing, spent all their days and nights thinking of the men who wronged them, and sharpening those thoughts into a knife. So they would have no quarrel with us. And if they wanted ears to hear of their injustice, I have heard worse from the dead.
I went down the stairs to the first deck, the stairway so steep that by the time I reached the bottom, the steps behind me vanished into the dark. I couldn’t see much in the dark but my nose took me over to where Mossi lay, the myrrh on his skin gone to everyone but me. He rolled rags from an old sail into a pillow and put it right against the bulkhead, so that he could hear the river. I went to sleep beside him, except I couldn’t sleep. I turned on my side, facing him, watching him for such a long time that I jumped when I saw that he was looking at me, eye-to-eye. He reached over and touched my face before I could move. It seemed as if he wasn’t even blinking, and his eyes were too bright in the dark, almost silver. And his hand had not left my face. He rubbed my cheek and moved up to my forehead, traced one brow, then the other, and went back down to my cheek like a blind woman reading my face. Then he put his thumb on my lip, then my chin, while his fingers caressed my neck. And lying there, I already forgot when I closed my eyes. Then I felt him on my lips. There is no such kiss among the Ku, and none with the Gangatom either. And nobody in Kongor or Malakal would do such gentle tongue play. His kiss made me want another. And then he pushed his tongue in my mouth and my eyes went wide open. But he did it again, and my tongue did it back to him. When his hand gripped me I was already hard. It made me jump again and my palm brushed his forehead. He winced, then grinned. Night vision made him out in the dark, gray and silver. He sat up, pulled his tunic over his head. I just looked at him, his bruised chest purple in spots. I wanted to touch him but was afraid he would wince again. He straddled my lap and grabbed my arms, to which I hissed. Sore. He said something about us being poor old injured men who have no business doing … I did not hear the rest, for he then bent down and sucked my right nipple. I moaned so loud, I waited for some sailor upstairs to cuss or whisper that something is afoot with those two. His knees against my own bruised ribs made me breathe heavy. I rubbed his chest and he sucked in air and moaned it back out. I was frightened that I hurt him, but he took my hand away and placed it on the floor. He blew on my navel, then moved lower between my legs and did precious art. I begged him to stop in the most feeble whisper. He climbed back on me. The floorboards, looser than they should have been, creaked with each jerk. I let everything out through gnashed teeth and grabbed his ass. I went on top. He grabbed my left ass cheek right on a raw bruise and I shouted. He laughed, pulling me deeper into him, my lips down on his. Both of us failing to not make a sound, then both thinking fuck the gods for we will have sound.
In the morning, when I woke, a boy looked down on me. Not surprised at all, I was waiting for him, and for more like him. He raised his eyebrows, curious, and scratched at the shackle around his neck. Mossi grunted, frightening him, and the boy faded into the wood.
“You have saved children before,” Mossi said.
“I didn’t see you were awake.”
“You are different when you think no one watches you. I always thought that what made one a man was that he takes up so much space. I sit here, my sword is there, my water pouch there, tunic there, chair over there, and legs spread wide because, well, I love it so. But you, you make yourself smaller. I wondered if it was because of your eye.”
“Which one?”
“Fool,” he said.
He sat across from me, leaning against the wood planks. I rubbed his hairy legs.
“That would be the one I speak of,” he said. “My father had two different eyes. Both were gray, until his enemy from childhood punched one brown.”
“What did your father do to his enemy?”
“He calls him Sultan, Your Great Eminence, now.”
I laughed.
“There are children of great importance to you. I have thought of such things, of children, but … well. Why think of flight when one can never be the bird? We are of strange passions in the East. My father—well my father is my father and just like the one before him. It was not that I … for I was not the first … not even the first carrying his name … and besides, my wife was chosen from a noble house before I was born, and so it would have gone, for such is the way of things. The thing is not what I did, the thing is the prophet allowed men to discover us and he was poor so he … I … they sent me away and told me never to sail back to their shores or it would be death.”
“A wife? And a child?”