“This not the Mituti. Nor robbers, for they didn’t take a thing, not the silver, civet, or even the myrrh. Only the boy. And something else.”
The dead look like the oldest of the old, was what she first say to me, until she look at me and remember that I am what old look like, at least in this room. What she wanted to say was they look like somebody wither them down to a husk, so “Like a husk?” is what I ask her. She shake her head. Like somebody pierce a hole at the chest and suck everything out. Every tear, blood, bile, juice, marrow, suck out every single thing that power whatever one call life, leaving skin and bone. And even that skin go from coffee to ash. And all of them with eyes gone gray and hazy, like the war-stunned. Maybe that was why though everybody was dead, some didn’t carry a death stink. The mercenaries say the whole place smell like heavy rain about to fall.
“You wasting time not telling me the entire truth.”
“What you think I not telling you?”
“Ipundulu never move alone. They just don’t move with other Ipundulu.”
“I never said it was Ipundulu.”
“I never ask. Ipundulu, if he travel with others, is leading them, all except his witch. She beckon when he have use, but up to his own mischief when she don’t. Not all bodies accounted for, including the boy. The only reason that boy alive is that make for good bait.”
I can tell she don’t believe me.
“You ever cross one?” I say.
“N—”
“No. For if you and him ever meet, you would not be here right now.”
“But not you, Sogolon the baddest woman alive.”
“Never meet one to take the claim from me.”
“We not getting anywhere. So what so wicked about this Ipundulu and why you think some bodies unaccounted for?”
“The lightning bird, he go by also. A vampire to shame vampires. Handsome white man, hair stringy like a horse, you have to be close to see that it’s not hair but feathers. White like a cloud, whiter than an albino who still have blood coursing close to skin. They not from one region because they love to move and hide tracks. And so they do, from one place to the next, always looking for the next heart to cut out of chest, and next body to drink blood. From when he see you, he work your mind against you, so much that night is day and only you don’t know that the white gown he wearing is wings. Woman mostly but children and men too. Some he kill, some he change, all he rape. Worst is when he get filled with rage and turn to full bird, for one flap of those wings loosen enough thunder to knock down a wall and lightning to kill everybody behind it.”
“You ever kill one?”
“No, I never kill one. But I kill his witch.”
“And that end him. Easy then.”
“No. It free him. He terrorize a little village between Masi and Nigiki every night for a moon until he try to pull a little boy by the foot from his mother’s hut, and she grab the first thing she could throw at him, a lamp. He burst into flame and run away. The next morning they find dead man right at the edge of the river. Body burned black with two wings, but no feathers. All these years I hear of twenty, but there must be more. And not all of them under command of a witch.”
“Not every victim have their heart cut out.”
“I say he don’t move alone. Just not with other Ipundulu. Obayifo, who leave his own body to attack, was but bad blood come between the two. Also, not everybody the Ipundulu kill. Some of them, he change.”
“You cross one before?”
“And live to tell you about it.”
“Nobody bad like Miss Sogolon.”
“He did already drink his full, so he didn’t have no need to attack me. But a little girl walk travel with him. She is the one that get woman to open her door. A girl her mother pay me to find.”
Let us make this quick. That Ipundulu poison that girl’s mind in barely a quartermoon, and this boy in their clutches for three years. I don’t tell Nsaka that whatever we find at the end of this search will not be a child, won’t be a son and will certainly never be King. I saw a little daughter who in five nights done know desire, done know lust, barely a girl yet coming to the vampire like a lover. No return to the true line of kings is going to happen for Lissisolo, and the last time I face an Ipundulu, all I do was make him laugh. Yet I ask Nsaka where and when we meeting next, which she take as a yes. Which it is, not for this child, but for he who I know is searching for him too. The Aesi. Only one use that child have left, which is to smoke out this scheming son of a jackal bitch, who don’t seem to know much about the vampire or he would know the work he seeking to do was already done. None of this I tell Nsaka Ne Vampi.
“You should know, the Aesi and his royal guard searching for him too,” Nsaka say. I don’t feign indifference, and she wouldn’t believe it anyway.
“Then he already ahead,” I say. The thought of Bunshi and Ne Vampi grabbing the boy in a race for throne, the Aesi at their heels make me laugh.