“Two gold pieces. You climb the ladder.”
“I only have silver.”
“Five pieces of silver,” he say.
“Curse you and your five pieces of silver. You don’t want to know what happen between me and the last thief.”
“Suit yourself, for I not the one needing you,” he say.
The city bound up again. I throw him three coins and he let down a rope. When he turn to me and demand the rest, I pull my sword and dagger and say, “Come and take it.”
He back off, and run to some other place he hear somebody shouting for a ladder.
Here is truth. You never really believe that a city will fly until you stand and feel it rise. Sometimes the whole place shudder and throw off your balance. I look around and see nobody losing step, nobody tripping, nobody acting as if the ground they standing and walking on will rise above the clouds. I don’t know what quarter I am in, but the men and women here wear the clothes of those who never think about protection, robes that look like they spend too much time pondering deep things. Go was like Marabanga, with towers reaching too high. Why reach for the sky when you already floating all the way up to it, I am thinking until I see the shrine and remember why a house built by a man always reaching up. This shrine look like an obelisk toppling down but refusing to hit the ground. I hear they call it the leaning cock. Unlike Marabanga, Go pack itself tight, with roads small as lanes, and lanes small as paths, and paths not big enough for a cat to pass. Running out of space this city, with all the enchanted earth supporting some shit that man make. Last time I was here, it was over a man stealing a deed to a widow’s property, not some cruelty he deal to a woman.
Look for a white house with a red roof, the note say, but didn’t say that most houses in this quarter look white, and in the dark the black patterns on every wall glow like a red fire. I’ve seen this before. By now Go floating higher than the thickest cloud and I am cursing, for the air is wet as rain and there be nowhere to go until the city sink back down. Not even a tavern, for the citizens of Go look and sound like the pious sort. I cut loose the thought that the other kind of Go people must be the ones who ages ago take themselves north to Fasisi. I soon grasp it that while every place on this street is white, with black marks that turn red in the dark and a red roof as well, none but one is a house. Only one is burning a light within, and from this house smoke is leaving from the top. Wind (not wind) feel like helping me tonight. She lift me right up to the window, which was open and ready. Too ready. Too easy. For all I have is a note, which could have come from anybody, including a man with a grudge who beat my secret out of some woman and lure me into a trap. I pull three arrows between my fingers and load one. Somebody is brewing tea in the next room, from where the light is coming. In this room, two stools, a large carving of either a leopard or a woman lion, and cushions all around for people to kneel. A house of worship then, this place, blazing up my suspicion that Go is one big cult. A woman start talking and I follow the voice.
“This woman look ready to kill, oh,” she say before I see her.
“Unless you is one of those fancy men, point to who supposed to get dead,” I say, still in the dark. The woman laugh.
“No man among us. Well, alas, there is one, but I doubt any person ever call him a man, not true? Present yourself, Moon Witch.”
“You present yourself first,” I say.
“Very well,” the voice say, but I jump, for the voice now come from behind me.
Movement in the dark. The black turn restless with a quiet rumble. I spin and fire an arrow that enter the dark like a stick entering honey. From the restless black come two hands and a head, that climb out of the thickness as one would from a lake. A black shape, twisting, bending, and shaping itself into woman form, a long neck, one breast, then another, hip swaying, a knee rising and a leg stepping out, or so it look when black separating itself from dark and bounce off the dim yellow of the lamp.
“You a god?” I ask, as if gods making themselves known was common to me.
“Gods don’t call me god, but some people call me Popele.”
“I don’t need to call you nothing.”
“Anybody ever call you polite?”
“I must be in the wrong house.”
“You come killing, and pick the wrong house? Pity the man who get kill by mistake. But your feet take you to the right place, Moon Witch.”
“This a house of games,” I say and turn to leave.
“Sogolon,” Popele say. “Yes, I know your name. I also know that it must be a hundred thirty and six or seven years since anybody call you so.”
“If this is a trap, you taking a long time trapping me.”
“Not a trap, just a lure,” say a voice in the next room. Another woman. Popele head there, nodding at me to follow. Truth, the woman was all shadow, or all tar, and at the top of her head, a fin going all the way down her back. Also this, when she walk through the space, through air, it sound like when I walk through water.
“So, what get credit for your long life? Magic?”
“I stop counting years.”
“Just like so? Tell me which magic, which enchantment.”
“You taking this Moon Witch thing too far.”
“Not an enchantment, then surely a curse.”
“Why, because long life is a curse to you?”
She don’t answer. I watch the question pierce her and she try to hide it.
“Like I say, years stop mattering when I stop counting. One day is just like the one gone and the one coming. Man’s nature don’t change in one hundred years and not going change in five,” I say.
“You stop counting, but you still waiting,” Popele say.
“For who?”
“I didn’t call a who. Maybe you forget.”
“You see yourself as somebody who know me.”
“I know enough.”
“Good. Then you know why I walking out the door,” I say as I head to it. The air around grow thick, then wet like mist, then like rain, then like sea with me drowning in it.
“I told you either she come willing or we leave her alone, sprite,” say the other voice in the room. The water turn to vapor, then vanish. Popele retreat to the back like some child who get scold. The woman is in the room, an old man scuttling behind her. Tall she is, and thin with her hair plait in wild directions like a mad tree. Her gown close on her body with a split in the middle almost up to her koo, and black. The old man follow, carrying an oil lamp, which light up the copper dust covering his face below the nose. A sack on his back with eight or nine scrolls sticking out. River tribe, Luala Luala, or Gangatom, I would guess.
“The dust know you or you know the dust?” I ask. The old man smile.
“You know our ways,” he say, not as a question.
“I come here to kill a man and collect the rest of my pay. I doing one even if I don’t do the other.”
The woman with mad tree hair laugh.