He came for Mossi’s balls and Mossi jumped. Meanwhile in all this Sogolon said nothing.
“Just as dark? Yes, it is strange, chancellor.”
“It is strange, Most Excellent.”
“Are you a man made up of other men? Your arms darker than your shoulders, your neck darker than your chest, your buttocks whiter than your legs, and your, your …” Then, to the chancellor, “What do your courtesans call it?”
Truth, I laughed.
“I am not one for the company of courtesans, Most Excellent,” said the chancellor.
“Of course you are, they walk on four legs and cannot speak but they are yours. Enough of this talk. I will know why it is so darker than the rest of him. Is that how all men are in other lands? Is this what I would have seen had I married one of the Kalindar princes? East man, why is it the colour of that man standing with Sogolon?”
The chancellor said only that it was curious that a man with such light skin had such dark balls.
Mossi saw me covering a laugh and he frowned. “The gods had some play with me, my Queen,” he said.
The chancellor told the Queen what Mossi said, almost as he said it.
“Which man were they playing with when they took it from him to give it to this man? I will know these things. Right now.”
Mossi looked perplexed again, but watched the people watching him. Still he said nothing.
Sogolon cleared her throat. “Most excellent Queen, remember why we come to Dolingo.”
“I am not one for forgetting, Sogolon. Especially when it was a favor. Especially the way you begged for it.”
Mossi looked at them with the shock I hid.
“Look at your stunned lips. And why would I, the wisest of queens, not speak that savage North tongue—especially when I constantly have to deal with savages? A child could learn it in a day …. Why does my court not ooh and aah?”
The chancellor translated for the court, which erupted in oohs and aahs and shouts to the gods.
She waved her hand and the guards poked at Mossi with their spears. He grabbed his clothes and walked back to us. I looked at him the whole time but he only looked ahead.
“You share with me your cause because you think we are sisters. But I am Queen, and you are less than a flame’s moth.”
“Yes, Most Excellent,” Sogolon said, and bowed.
“I did agree to help you because Lissisolo and I should be queens together. And because your King gives even demons pause. How he wishes Dolingo was there for the conquering. I know what he thinks at night. That one day he will forget that Dolingo remains neutral and take the citadel for himself. And one day he will try. But not today, and not while I am Queen. I am also very bored. Your patched-up man come the closest to something worth my eye in moons. At least since I cut one of those princes of Mitu in half to see if he was as empty as he sounded. You, the one with marks, did you see our sky caravans?”
She spoke to me.
“Only on the way up to you, most excellent Queen,” I said.
“Many still wonder what craft or spell keeps them in the sky. It’s neither spell nor craft, it is iron and rope. I don’t have magicians, I have masters of steel and masters of glass and masters of wood. Because in our palace of wisdom are people who are actually wise. I hate men who accept things as they are and never question, never fix, never make better, or do better. Tell me, do I frighten you?”
“No, my Queen.”
“I will. Guards, take these two to Mungunga. The Ogo and the girl can head to their rooms. Leave us women to talk heavy matters. And feed the buffalo some elephant ear grass. Must have been moons since anyone give him food worthy of him. Leave now, all of you. Except this woman who thinks she is a sister.”
You should teach me such words, prefect,” I said, laughing. Mossi had been cursing and cursing in his home tongue, pacing up and down the caravan, stomping so hard it swung a little. He distracted me from the fact that we were hanging at a great height, being pulled across the great trees by gears. The more he cursed, the less I imagined a rope bursting and us falling to death. The more he cursed, the less I imagined that the Queen sent us up so high in the sky and so far from the ground to kill us.
“Any higher and we could kiss the moon,” I said.
“Fuck the moon and all who worship her,” he said.
He still paced. Up and down, to the window and back; at least by following him I could see this caravan. This high, the moon shone so bright that green was green and blue was blue and his skin was almost white, now that he had tied his torn clothes at the waist and left his chest bare. What a caravan was this; at first I thought they flipped a wagon upside down so that the wheels were on top and then had the wheels along tight bands of rope. Then looking at how the caravan swelled like the fat belly of a big fish, I thought it was a boat that sailed on sky. It had a bow and stern just like a boat, was fattest in the middle just like a boat, but with house windows going all around and a roof of trunks slatted together with tar. The floor, flat and smooth, and wet with dew, almost slippery. Also this, the air blew cold this high, and whoever traveled on this thing last was bleeding. Mossi kept pacing and cussing and as he passed me I grabbed his arm. He tried to move, tried to push away my hand, tried to push me off, but I held on until he stopped huffing and cussing.
“What?”
“Stop.”
“She did not humiliate you.”
“You were without clothes only a few nights ago. You were not angry then.”
“I knew where I was and who I was with. Just because I live with you all does not mean I am not still a man of the East.”
“You all?”
He sighed, and went over to the side to look out the window. A cloud so silver and so thin it would break away into nothing, and another caravan passing us much farther away, theirs lit by firelight.
“Who do you think they are? Why would anyone have business traveling at night? Where do they go?”
“Thinking like a prefect?”
He smiled. “Their guards did not follow us.”
“This Queen does not see men as much of a threat. Or they will cut this loose before we make it to the other side. And we will plunge to our deaths.”
“Neither of those brings a smile to my face, Tracker. Maybe with us both up here alone, they think we will talk, and maybe they have discovered some form of magic to listen.”
“Dolingon are advanced for this age, but no one is that advanced.”
“Maybe we should make as if we are fucking like violent sharks, to give them something to listen to. Uncock me at once, with that battering ram of yours! My hole, a chasm now it is!”
“How learned you, the ways that sharks fuck?”
“God, he knows. Was the first beast I could think of. God’s words, Tracker, do you never smile?”
“What is there to smile about?”
“The lightness of my company, to begin with. The magnificence of this place. I tell you, gods come to lie here.”
“I thought you worship only one god.”
“Does not mean I do not see the others. What are these lands known for?”
“Gold and silver, and glass rock loved by lands far away. I think the citadel is on high because they have ruined the ground.”
“Do you think these great trees are alive?”
“I think everything here is alive, by whatever keeps them living.”
“Why does that mean?”
“Where are the slaves? And what do they look like?”
“Wise question. I—”
The shouting came upon us before the caravan, passing so close this time that we could smell spirits and smoke, so close that the drumming beat right into our ears and chest, while some plucked kora and lute as if about to pull the strings apart. The caravan passed until we faced each other. The drumming was not just the drum but also the feet of men and women jumping and stomping like the Ku or Gangatom in mating dance. A man, his face painted red and shiny, held a torch to his mouth and blew out fire like a dragon, fire that burst right between us. I jumped out of the way, Mossi stood still. The caravan, which had not stopped, kept on until the drumming felt like the memory of beat. We were going to the branch away from the palace. The third one.
“Someone’s blood was in this caravan, someone young,” I said.
“Men and women seem very loose here. Maybe they killed a child for sport.”
“What is loose? I have heard from men like you before.”
“Men like me?”
“Men with one sad god. You act like old women who forgot that they were young women. Your one god, who thinks pleasure is a lesser thing.”
“Can we talk about something else? We are almost on the other side. Tracker, what is our plan?”
“I’m not the one declaring herself ruler over us.”
“If I wanted to know from her, I would have asked her. Tell me this. Is there a plan?”
“I don’t know of any.”
“That is madness. So the plan, as I see it, is we wait until you smell this magic boy close and when bloodsuckers or whatever they are manifest, we do what? Fight? Grab the child? Spin like dancing men? Do we just wait? Is there no cunning to this?”