“No, she is different and—”
“Do not say Sogolon. Her scrawny hand is in far too many bowls for us to talk about them all. There is a plot, Sadogo. And the girl might be in league with Sogolon.”
“But she spat when I said her name.”
“Who knows why they bicker? We have more serious issues, Ogo.”
“All these ropes, coming from nowhere and pulling everything. Foul magic.”
“Slaves, Ogo,” Mossi said.
“I do not understand.”
“Let that rest for another day, Sadogo. The witch had other plans.”
“She does not want the boy?”
“That is still her plan. We are just not a part of it. She intends to get the boy herself after I find him, and with this Queen’s help. I think the Queen and her struck a bargain. Maybe when Sogolon rescues the boy the Queen will give safe passage to the Mweru.”
“But that is what we do. Why the deceit?”
“I don’t know. This Queen gets to have us for their wicked science, maybe.”
“Is that why everybody is blue? Wicked science?”
“I don’t know.”
“Venin, she pushed me out the door with one hand. How I must disgust her.”
“She pushed you out? With one hand?” I asked.
“That is what I said.”
“I have seen an enraged woman turn over a wagon full of metal and spices. It might have been my wagon, or I might have enraged her,” Mossi said.
“Sadogo,” I said, louder, to shut Mossi up. “We need to be on guard, we need weapons, we need to get off this citadel. How do you feel about the boy? Should we rescue him as well?”
He looked at both of us, then out the door, furrowing his brow. “We should save the boy. No blame is on him.”
“Then that is what we shall do,” Mossi said. “We wait for them to arrive in Dolingo. We take them on ourselves, not telling the witch.”
“We need weapons,” I said.
“I know where they keep them,” said Sadogo. “No man could lift my gloves, so I took them to the swords keeper.”
“Where?”
“On this tree, the lowest level.”
“And Sogolon?” Mossi said.
“There,” he said, and pointed behind us. The palace.
“Good. We go when the bloodsuckers come. Till then—”
“Tracker, what is that?” Mossi said.
“What is what?”
“Do you have a nose or no? That sweet scent on the air.”
As he said so, I smelled it. The smell grew sweeter and stronger. In the red room nobody saw the orange mist coming from the floor. Mossi fell first. I staggered, fell to my knees, and saw Sadogo run to the door, punching the wall out of anger, fall back on his bottom, then full on his back, and shaking the room, before everything in the room went white.
NINETEEN
I knew it was seven days since we left Kongor. And forty and three days since we set off on this journey. And in one whole moon. I knew because counting numbers was all that kept my feet on the ground. I knew we were in the trunk of one of the trees. One big shackle around my neck, attached to a long, heavy chain. My arms chained behind my back. My clothes gone. I had to turn to see the ball the chain was bolted to. Both were stone. Someone told them of me and metals. Sogolon.
“I say, tell us where is the boy,” he said.
The chancellor. The Queen must be upstairs waiting for the news. No, not the Queen.
“If Sogolon wants news of the boy, tell the witch to come for it herself,” I said.
“Boy, boy, boy it will be good to tell me of your nose. If I go other men will come with instruments, yes.”
The last time I was in a dark room, shape-shifting women came at me out of the dark. The memory made me wince, which this fool thought was because of his threat of torture.
“Do you yet sniff the boy?”
“I will talk to the witch.”
“No, no, no, that is a no. Do you—”
“I smell something. I smell goat, the liver of a goat.”
“How good you are, man of the Ku. Breakfast was indeed breakfast of liver, and sorghum from my own fields, and coffee from the merchants of the North, very exquisite, yes.”
“But the goat liver I smell is raw, and why does the reek come from your crotch, chancellor? Your Queen knows that you practice white science?”
“Our glorious Queen allows all craft.”
“As long as it is not in your glorious Queen’s court. See now, you will have to torture me, chancellor, or at least kill me. You know this is true, nothing will stop me from telling anyone who should hear.”
“Not if I cut out that tongue.”
“Like you do your slaves? Does your Queen not want us, traveling men sound and whole?”
“Our Queen only needs one part of you, sound and whole.”
I squeezed my legs together, without thinking, and he laughed loud.
“Where the boy is?”
“The boy is nowhere. He still travels from Wakadishu and does that not take days? You can meet him in Wakadishu.”
“You are here to meet him in Dolingo.”
“And he is not in Dolingo. Where is the witch? Does she listen? Does she have your ear, or are you just the fat echo of more important voices?”
He hissed.
“Yes it is said I have a nose, but nobody told you I also have a mouth,” I said.
“If I go, I will return with—”
“With your instruments. Your words scared me more the first time.”
I stood up. Even with the chain on my neck, and me having nowhere to go, the chancellor jumped a little.
“I will speak to neither you nor your Queen. Only the witch.”
“I have the authority—”
“Only the witch, or start your torture.”
He hiked his agbada off his feet and left me alone.
Though I smelled her coming, she still took me by surprise. The door across from my cell opened and she came through. Two guards followed, several paces behind. The one with keys, he opened the gate and gave her wide space. Guards trying to not show fear for the Moon Witch. She sat in the dark.
“I know you wonder it,” she said. “You wonder why you never see a single child in Dolingo.”
“I wonder why I never killed you when I had the chance.”
“Some cities rear cattle, other cities grow wheat. Dolingo grow men, and not in no natural way. You do not need an explanation and it would take years to tell you. This is what you should know, for moon after moon, year after year, a cluster of years after cluster of years, the seed and the wombs of the Dolingon become useless. What is not barren breeds monsters unspeakable in look. Bad seed going into bad wombs, the same families, over and over, and the Dolingon go from the most wise of children to the most foolish. It take them fifty years to say to one another, Look at us, we need new seed and new wombs.”
“Tell me there will be monsters in this boring tale.”
“It greater than magic. If she conceive, they snatch him, take him into the trunk. He is the tap and they drain the tap. Drain him until he is dead. But that is only for who will be in the royal line. Other men they catch, and drain and kill for the rest of the people. Even your Ogo, whose seed useless, their scientist and witchman can make it sow and breed.”
“So the citadel should be infested with children, then. They’re hiding them?”
“Then they take the child before it born and store them in the great womb, and feed them and grow them, until they as big as you. Only then, they born. But they healthy and they live long.”
“A man as old as me saying babababa and shitting himself twice a day. This is the great Dolingo.”
“It be two days now. Where the boy?”
“No children, no slaves, no travelers either. You knew this. You knew this ever since the map showed that the next door led to Dolingo.”
“Nobody get safe passage in Dolingo,” she said. “You see how their head full of nothing but thinking. It take many beggings, papers, and a treaty just to pass through the main street. Look at the magnificence of the citadel. You think they get that by allowing anybody to pass through and steal their secrets? No, fool. They use anyone who come down their streets for breeding, and kill whoever they can’t put to use.”
“You sent those pigeons to tell her you were coming. With gifts.”
“Why they so long in Wakadishu?”
“Me and the prefect and the Ogo.”
“Why they don’t come?” she asked.
“Maybe Wakadishu women have more meat and more blood. Are you not a southern woman?”
“The Aesi is already on caravan to Dolingo.”
“Somebody betrayed you? What say you to that, Sogolon?”
“You do nothing but joke.”