The boy, his head on Nsaka Ne Vampi’s shoulder, looked like he was asleep, but when she turned around, his eyes were open, and staring.
“Popele,” Aesi said, whispering to Bunshi in the way of people who want to be overheard. “Your life for the child. I think you are the one who should beg for it. For these brave men and women plus one fool are war-eager and will not listen to me. Popele, you of a thousand years and more, shall we let them see that you too can die? Their ears go deaf at my voice, goddess, and this dagger is so hungry.”
Aesi looked at me.
“Such was a time when I could have used a tracker. Many a time, many a place. Especially one so good at killing.”
“I am not a killer.”
“Yet your road from Malakal to Dolingo to Kongor is paved with corpses. Who am I, do you know?”
“You tried to kill me in a dream once,” I said.
“Are you sure it was me you met in dreams? You still live.”
“You are the extra four limbs of the Spider King.”
He laughed. “Yes, I have heard that is the way you call your King behind his eye. The King is his own, entire. I have no stake.”
“Never met a king who does his own thinking,” Mossi said.
“You do not hail from these lands.”
“I do not.”
“Of course, eastern light. The people who believe in one god, and everything else is either a slave to the god or an evil spirit. Every belief comes in two, which leads to a god two-sided. Vengeful and mad in his ways and takes his fury out on womenfolk. Yours is the silliest of all the gods. No art to his thoughts, no craft to his deeds. I’ve heard that you think men in the constant visitation of ancestors to be mad.”
“Or possessed.”
“What a land. Possession you call bad, spirits you call evil, and love? Love, as your heart calls it, makes men force you to leave. I sniff you and get a whiff of Tracker. More than a whiff, indeed a funk. What shall your father think?”
“I go by my own thoughts,” Mossi said.
“You must be a king. As for him, this little fly, your little king, the one who drools at this woman’s neck, even though he is six years gone in age. Tracker, it has been said you have a nose. Is the shit we smell not his?”
“There is a big piece of black shit in this room, no doubt of that,” I said.
“If you’re going to tell them who you are, tell them who you are,” the King sister said.
She still sat on the floor, still looking weak, as if drained. She finally looked at us.
“This, this Aesi, these four limbs of the Spider King. Tell them about your prophecy. Tell them about how you just appeared in our hearts and minds as someone who was there all along, but no woman or man can remember when you first came,” the King sister said.
“I want what is best for the King,” Aesi said.
“You want what is best for you. For now that is the same as what the King wants. Meanwhile nobody notices that you the same today as you was twenty years ago, and even before that. Call yourself by your name, necromancer. Man of sorcery and wicked art. You are what you are. You build nothing, disrupt everything, destroy everything. You know what he does? He waits until all are asleep, then he jumps through the air or runs under the ground. He goes to covens in caves and rapes babies offered up by mothers. Breeds children with sister upon sister and brother, but they all die. Eater of human flesh. I saw you, Aesi. I saw you as the wild boar, and the crocodile, and the pigeon, and the vulture, and the crow. Your evil will soon eat itself.”
Just out of her reach lay a bag made of rags, tied at the neck with a carving sticking out. A phuungu. A charm, like a nkisi, to protect against witchcraft. She tried to grab it, but her head slammed into the ground and the charm rolled away.
“I want what goes best for the King,” the Aesi said.
“You should want what goes best for the kingdom. Not the same thing,” I said.
“Look at you, noble men and women, and one fool. None of you bear any stake in this room. Some of you have been wounded, some of you have died, but this boy means nothing more than coin to you. Truly, I wondered how women and men could risk limb for a child not their own, but such is money in this age. But now I am bidding you all farewell, for this is a family argument.”
The King sister laughed. “Family? You dare to call yourself family? Did you marry one of my slow cousins in some cave? Will you not tell them your grand plan, king kisser? God butcher. Oh, that one moves you. God butcher. Butcher of gods. Sogolon knew. She told my servant. She said, I go to the temple of Wakadishu. I go to the steps of Mantha. I go north, and east, and west, and I have not felt the presence of the gods. Not one. But that is another of your tricks, is it not, God butcher? Nobody knows what they lost because nobody remembers what they have had. Is this the night where you stop the King just as you have stopped the gods? Is it? Is it?”
A flap of huge wings, we heard it.
“Leave the child and go. Don’t hesitate and set him down gently. Just drop him and go,” the Aesi said.
He locked his eyes on Nsaka Ne Vampi.
“He is your King,” the King sister said.
They saw nothing. But the nothing grabbed the King sister and slapped her left and right. Leopard ran to her, but the nothing kicked him away. He rolled and caught himself right beside me. He crouched again to pounce, but I bent down and touched the back of his neck. The nothing pulled up the King sister and shoved her down on a stool.
“King? This is the King. Have you seen his face? Do you know the taste in his mouth? It is fouler than the swordsman’s shit. This is your King? Shall we call him Khosi, our lion? Get him a kaphoonda for his royal head. Three brass rings for his ankle. We should call players of moondu and matuumba, and all drums. Shall we call xylophone? Shall we call all earth chiefs to come and bow down in red dirt? Shall I pluck a hair from my head and stick it in his? And what is your stake in this, river nymph? Did the false queen seek you? Did you seek the false queen? Did she tell you of how glorious it will be when the King returns to the glorious line of mothers? Oh Mama, I beat my slit drum so that he will tell a secret to my big vagina nkooku maama, kangwaana phenya mbuta. You believed in a bad oracle, King sister. Your ngaanga ngoombu lied to you. Filled your head with wicked gold. You should have called a diviner. Instead you surrounded yourself with women even women have forgotten. Look at him, who you would have as King. He is lower than an it.”
The Aesi pointed the green knife at me.
“My boy will be king,” the King sister said.
“The North already has a King. Have you looked upon your son? How could you, you have never even known your son. Put your gaze on him now. If a demon beast bared a nipple, he would grab it and suck it. You, Tracker, and the pale one, you promised to deliver the boy and you have delivered. What do you wish? Coin? Cowrie shells the weight of your body? This woman and her little river nymph deceived you, how many times? Even now, tell the room true. Do you believe any of their stories? No. Or you would have at least tried to throw that ax. The knife at her neck—if I were to kill her right now you would not even look me in the eye. Sogolon knew not to trust men who had nothing to lose. A pity how she died. I wish I had seen it.”
I heard marching outside, marching that knocked down the doors and came in the house. Mossi could hear it too. He looked up at me and I nodded, hoping it said what I did not know.
“Leave the child here, then go, and I promise when I meet you next, it will be over some dolo, some good soup, and there shall be mirth,” the Aesi said.
“I scarce think there is any mirth in you,” Mossi said.
“I would have loved to talk to you about your belief in your one god some more. I have met so many gods.”
“Met and killed them, God butcher,” the King sister said.
The Aesi laughed. “Your friend the Tracker, he said he did not believe in belief; I saw that too. You think he believes in a butcher of the gods? He would have to believe in gods first. Did you notice, Tracker, that nobody worships anymore? I know you do not believe in gods but you know many who do. Have you not noticed that more and more, the men of the lands are like you, and the women too? You have been around witchmen and fetish priests, but when have you last seen an offering? A sacrifice? A shrine? Women gathered in praise? Fuck the gods, you say. I have heard you. And yes fuck them, this is the age of kings. You don’t believe in belief. I butcher belief. We are the same.”
“I will tell my mother she has one more son. She will laugh,” I said.
“Not with your grandfather’s cock in her mouth she will not.”
My head went red. I grabbed my ax from the Leopard, who growled.
“You must be sad, then, with Sogolon dead and nobody to see through you,” I said.
“Sogolon? What good are the eyes of an old moon witch when the eyes of a hundred angry spirits are upon her? You did not sleep the night you rode from Kongor, so someone must have told you that I visit dreams.”
“I did not sleep.”