“Three nights,” he said.
Two guards rushed in with swords. One swung wide at Venin, who ducked and then swung around with her club and took his face off. My shock got lost in the sweep of Sadogo picking me up and throwing me over his left shoulder. Everything moved so slow. Three more guards ran in, maybe four or five, but this time they ran into the prisoners, men and women not from Dolingo, skin not blue, bodies not slim and withered. They picked up weapons, pieces of weapons, and bars that Sadogo pulled out, all scattered on the floor. My head bounced off Sadogo’s back, making it swirl worse. Then he swung around and I saw the prisoners run over the guards like a wave over sand. They shouted, and rallied, and ran past us in the cell, all of them squeezing through the small door, sand through the time glass.
“The boy, I know where he is. I know where …” I said.
I couldn’t tell where we were going until we passed through it. Then the sun touched my back and we stopped. I was flying through the air, I was on grass and the buffalo’s snout was on my forehead. Mossi crouched beside me.
“The boy, I know where he is.”
“We must forget the boy, Tracker. Dolingo is bleeding. Slaves have cut their ropes and attacked guards in the third and fourth trees. It will only spread.”
“The boy is in the fifth tree,” I said.
“Mwaliganza,” Sadogo said.
“The boy is nothing to us,” Mossi said.
“The boy is everything.”
Noise ran in and out of me. Booms and bams and crackles and shouts and screams.
“You say that after what Sogolon did to you. To us.”
“Is the boy blameless or not, Mossi?”
He looked away.
“Mossi, I would kill her for what she did, but this, this takes nothing from why she did it.”
“Fucking nonsense about divine children. Who shall rise, who shall rule. I come from lands reeking with prophecies of child saviors, and nothing ever came out of them but war. We are not knights. We are not dukes. We are hunters, killers, and mercenaries. Why should we care about the fate of kings? Let them take care of their own.”
“When kings fall they fall on top of us.”
Mossi grabbed my chin. I knocked his hand away.
“Who is this that now lives in your head? Are you like her?” he said, pointing to Venin.
“Him.”
“As you like. The Tracker helping the witch—”
“We are not helping her. I tell you true, if I see one of them taking her for the kill, I will watch it. Then I will kill him. And I … I … and even if I didn’t care about rightful kings and queens, or what is wicked in the North, and what is just, I will take a son back to his mother,” I said.
The sun mocked me. Smoke rose from a tower in the second tree and drums sounded as a warning. None of the caravans moved, for the slaves stopped moving them. Some swung midway with people inside them shouting and screaming. Every sound startled Sadogo; he darted left, right, and left again, squeezing his knuckles so hard the joints popped. A crash roused the buffalo, who snorted, telling us we had to leave. As I sat up, pushing away Mossi’s help, Venin approached me, still gripping the club like a toy.
“I will go. I have unfinished business with Sogolon.”
“Venin?” Mossi said.
“Who is that?” Venin said.
“What? You are who. Venin is what you go by since I met you. Who else would you be if not her?”
“It is not her,” I said.
The him in her looked at me.
“You been thinking so a long time,” they said.
“Yes but I could not be sure. You are one of the spirits Sogolon write runes to bind, but you broke from her.”
“My name is Jakwu, white guard for the King Batuta who sits in Omororo.”
“Batuta? He died over a hundred years ago. You are … no matter. Leave the old woman to the bloodsuckers. She is like them in company,” Mossi said.
“Do all the spirits want what you want?” I asked.
“Revenge against the Moon Witch? Yes. Some want more. Not all of us died by her hand, but in all our deaths she is responsible. She drove me out of my body to appease an angry spirit, and now she thinks she has appeased me.”
His voice was still Venin’s but I have seen this in possession. The voice remains, but the tone, the pitch, the words he chooses are all so different that it sounds like another voice. Venin’s voice went hoarse. It came out like a rumble, like the voice of a man long gone in years.
“Where is Venin?”
“Venin. She the girl. She gone. She will never be back in this body. Call her dead. It is not what she is, but it will do. Now she is doing what I did, roam the underworld until she remembers how she came by that place. And then she will seek out Sogolon, like all of us.”
“She could barely ride a horse and now he wields a club. And you? You can barely stand,” Mossi said.
At the end of the road, round the bend came yells. Noblemen and noblewomen of Dolingo walking swift, thinking that was enough. Looking back, walking faster, the men and women at the front not yet seeing the people behind them, then running, and the running crowd, maybe twenty, maybe more, pushing some out of the way, knocking down some, trampling some, as they ran this way. Behind them came the rumble. Mossi and Sadogo and Venin took places all around me and we readied our weapons. The screaming nobles ran around us like two rivers. Behind them, with bats, sticks, and clubs, and swords and spears, slaves, who ran and staggered like the zombi but were gaining. Eighty or more, chasing the nobles. A spearhead went through a noblewoman’s back and out her belly, and she fell to the ground. The rebels stayed clear of us as they ran around us, save for one who ran too close and was kicked in two by Sadogo’s boot, and one that ran into Mossi’s sword, and two whose heads met Venin’s swinging club. The rest ran past us, and soon swarmed the nobles. Flesh flew. Sadogo in front, we ran back the way they had all come, and one battle cry from Sadogo kept trailing rebels out of our way.
The caravans had all been stopped, many with people trapped inside, but the platforms took us down, those slaves not infected with freedom yet. On the ground, as we scrambled off the platform with me still swaying and tripping and Mossi still holding me up with his hand, Mungunga broke out in explosion and fire. Fire bit into some of the ropes and ran across to one of the caravans and coated it in flame. The people inside, some already on fire, jumped. At the foot of Mungunga a door the height of three men and ten strides wide broke at the hinges and fell down, shooting up dust. Naked slaves running out slowed to a stagger, some with sticks and rods and metals, all hobbling at first, blinking and holding up their arms to block the light. Cut ropes around necks and limbs, and carrying whatever they could hold. I could not tell men from women. The guards and the masters, so used to no resistance, forgot how to fight. They ran through us and past us, so many of them, some dragging whole bodies of masters, others carrying hands, feet, and heads.
Slaves still ran when from above fell elegant bodies. From terraces above ropes fell, and slaves pushed masters off. Noble bodies fell on slave bodies. Both killed. And more fell on top of them.
At Mwaliganza, the platform took us to the eighth floor. Quiet all around, it seemed, as if nothing had spread this far. I rode the buffalo, though I was lying on him, holding on to his horns so I did not fall off.
“This is the floor,” I said.
“How are you sure?” Mossi asked.
“This is where my nose is taking us.”
But I did not say my eyes, and that when the Bad Ibeji pushed his claws up through my nose, I could see the unit where the old woman lived, the gray walls wearing away to show orange underneath, and the small windows near the top of her roof. They followed me and the buffalo, as nobles and slaves jumped out of the way. We turned left and ran over a bridge to a dry road. The boy was in my nose. But also a living dead smell that I knew, well enough for me to jump in horror and such total disgust that I thought I was sick. But I could not name it. Smell sometimes did not open memory, only that I should remember it.