They left me and after going outside and walking ten paces in the cold, I went back in and dressed in the robes they left out. If anything these rare moments in robes made me hate them all the more. At the door, I heard a scuffle in the room, scurrying feet and huff. Charge in or sneak in, I wasn’t sure, and when I did choose to swing the door open, the room was empty. Spies, I expected. What they could be looking for, I didn’t know. Over by the balcony the door opened before I reached it. I pulled back a few steps and it closed. I stepped forward a few steps and it opened.
I left again and walked down to a path running along the edge of this floor. Dirt and stone as if cut from a mountain. This is what happened. I walked until I came to a break in the boundary, and attached to the break and hanging off the edge was a platform of wood slats, held by rope at the four corners. Without my word, and with no sight of anyone, the platform lowered a long drop to the floor below. I left the platform and walked down this new path, which was a road, wide as two. Across I could see the palace and the first tree. At the lowest level of this one, a small house with three dark windows and a blue roof, which seemed cut off from everything else. Indeed, no steps or road led to it. It stood in the huge shadow of the lookout platform, a shelf as wide as a battlefield, on which guards marched. The floors looked patched together, the lowest with a drawbridge and the wall a red colour, like savannah earth. The next floor a retaining wall that went half around. The third, high with massive arches underneath and trees, wild and scattered, and still another floor with the tallest walls, taller than seven, maybe eight times taller than the door and windows. This floor boasted towers with gold roofs, and still two more floors climbed higher. Across on the right to yet another tree, and level with my eyes, were wide steps leading up to a great hall. On the steps men in twos, in fives, and in larger, wearing blue, gray, and black coats sweeping the floor; sitting, standing, and looking like they were talking of serious things.
“I thought my poor balls would bleed the way those fucking eunuchs went at it,” Mossi said when I saw him. They had put him on this floor. It came to me: Why would they scatter us so?
“I said, Sirs, I am not the one who clipped you both, don’t take your anger out on my poor little knight. So that’s what makes you laugh, tales of my suffering,” Mossi said.
I didn’t notice that I had laughed. He broke into a wide grin. Then his face went grave.
“Let us walk, I must speak with you,” he said.
I was curious how roads worked in a city that went up instead of wide. What did that waterfall fall into?
“How sorry I am for you, Tracker. In a crowd you would have been lost to me.”
“What?”
He pointed at what I was wearing, the same as he, and as many of the men and boys who passed us, a long tunic and a cloak clasped only at the neck. But only in the colours I saw before: gray, black, and blue. Some men, all older, wore red or green caps over their bald heads, and red and green sashes at the waist. The few women passed by on carts and open caravans, some in white gowns with wide sleeves like wings, the tops split open to plump up breasts, and head wraps in several colours pointing to peaks like a high tower.
“I have never seen you so dressed,” he said.
A cart pulled by two donkeys passed us, with an old man and a boy in it. They went to the edge as far as I could see, then vanished. At first I thought the man rode the cart off to his death.
“The road spirals around, sometimes in and sometimes out of the tree. But at some point, if they want to leave the citadel, one of those bridges that pulled us up must take them down,” Mossi said.
“One night and you are guide to all things Dolingo.”
“You learn much in one night when you miss sleep. Like this. The Dolingon build on high because of an ancient prophecy that the great flood will one day return, which many still believe. An old man told me this, though he might have gone mad from walking the streets and not sleeping. The great flood that consumed all lands, even the Hills of Enchantment and the unnamed mountains beyond Kongor. The great flood that killed the great beasts that roamed the land. Know this, I have been to many lands and one thing they all seem to share is this great flood that came to pass and another that will one day come true.”
“Seems what all lands do share are gods so petty and jealous that they would rather destroy all the worlds than have one that moves on without them. You said we must speak.”
“Yes.”
He took my arm and started walking faster. “I think we should assume we are being watched, if not followed,” he said. We went over the bridge and under a wide tower, with a blue stone archway taller than ten men. We continued walking, his hand still grabbing my arm.
“No children,” I said.
“What?”
“I have seen no children. None last night, but I thought that was because it was night. But so far into this day, none I have seen.”
“And your complaint is?”
“Have you seen even one?”
“No, but there is something else I must tell you.”
“And slaves. Dolingo is not Dolingo because of magic. Where are the slaves?”
“Tracker.”
“First I think the servants who scrubbed me are the slaves, but they seem like masters of their craft, even if the craft was back scrubbing and balls scraping.”
“Tracker, I—”
“But something is not ri—”
“Fuck the gods, Tracker!”
“What?”
“This night gone. I was in the Queen’s chambers. When the guards took you to your room, they took me to mine only to wash me and take me back.”
“Why did she call you back?”
“The Dolingon are a very direct people, Tracker. She is a very direct queen. Don’t ask questions where you know the answer.”
“But I do not know.”
“They took me back to her chambers, on the same caravan that we came over. This time four guards went with me. I would draw a sword but then I remembered they took our weapons. The Queen would see me again. I mystified her, it seems. She still thought my skin was magic and my hair and my lips, which she said looked like an open wound. She had me lie with her.”
“I did not ask.”
“You should know.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know! I do not know why I feel you must know, since it means nothing to you. Curse this. And she was cold, Tracker. I do not mean she was distant, or that she showed no feeling, not even pleasure, but that she felt cold, her skin colder than northern wind.”
“What did she have you do?”
“This is what you are asking me?”
“What do you expect me to ask, prefect, how did it make you feel? There are many women I could ask that question.”
“I am not a woman.”
“Of course not. Woman is supposed to look at this as a natural course of events. Man, he falls on his knees and screams what a horror, what a debasing.”
“How you have no friends mystifies me,” Mossi said.
He walked away. I had to skip to catch him.
“You asked for my ears and I gave you a fist,” I said.
He walked several steps before he stopped and turned around. “I accept your apology, such as it is.”
“Tell me all,” I said.
Mungunga was waking up. Men dressed like elders on their way to where elders go. Jugs held by no hands, at windows throwing out the slop of last night into gutters that ran inside the trunk of the tree. Men in robes and caps passing by on foot with books and scrolls, men in cloaks and pants, passing by on carts driven by donkeys and mules, without bridles. Women pushing carts overflowing with silk, fruits, and trinkets. People hanging off the retaining walls, with dyes, and sticks, and brushes, back to painting the mural of the Queen on the side of the right-hand branch. Everywhere and nowhere, the sweet reek of chicken fat popping over flame, and bread baking in ovens. Also this, so everywhere that the noise of it became a new quiet: gears running, ropes creaking, and the beat and boom of big wheels turning, though nothing for the eye to put such sounds to.
“They would not even let me wash myself, saying that the Queen has a nose for filth and sneezes like a storm at even a hint of it. I said, Then like many in these lands you must be nose-blind to the funk under your arms. Then they rubbed me in a fragrance they said would be most pleasing to the Queen, which made me wince for the smell was like shit at the feet of growing crops. In my hair, in my nose, do you not smell it still on me?”
“No.”
“Morning bathers scraped it off with all my skin and most of my hair then. Sogolon was there, Tracker.”
“Sogolon? Watching?”
“They were all watching. No queen fucks alone, nor king either. Her handmaidens, her witchmen, two men who looked like counselors, a man of medicine, Sogolon, and all the Queen’s guards.”
“Something ill is in this kingdom. Did you—how does one—”
“Yes, yes, curse it. I think the old bitch promised this Queen something from me, and didn’t ask me.”
“What did she have you do?”
“What?”
“No children anywhere and the Queen has you lie with her the first night you are here. Did you—”
“Yes, if that is what you wish to know. I left my seed in her. You act if as arousal means anything. It does not even mean consent.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Your eyes asked. And they judged.”
“My eyes don’t care.”