—
We get to Kongor by night, after six days going around the forest and one more day to get to the riverside. Take the bend around the Darklands and you arrive at the narrowest point in the river and the shortest ferry from coastline to island, which is what the people call Kongor even though the city get cut off for only four moons in the rain season. This river is something to see, for I remember when water was the enemy of Kongor. Never a place for much rain, certainly no flood, and not much of a river. First the ferryman charge us more because of the horse. Then he add another charge for the time of night, saying he risking never seeing his children again for landing this late at the rough and illegal Gallunkobe/Matyube port. We not going there, I say, but he ignore me. I already resolve that we will either take this raft all the way up to that quarter and then take the border roads to where we were going, or force him to let us off at the Nimbe canal. But before I can cuss, we land ashore and he push off. Maybe he see the scowl on my face in the dark, for the short trip across must mean that he leave us at bank of the Tarobe quarter. Illegal is right, I can’t imagine the good people of Tarobe being comfortable with some no name raft depositing any sort of person in their midst, even under night cover. I try not to think of it, how many years pass since I last see Kongor. Tens of tens.
Bunshi and the slaver give instructions to head east along the border road, take the second road right, then left and left again to get to this master’s house, a man in the Nyembe merchant quarter. This man she long know to be southern griot, but now he deny it with such ire that she doubt herself. Along the way to his house, I keep looking across to Tarobe quarter and not recognizing what I see. Why would any place hold on to its looks over so many years, is a question I didn’t need to ask. But too many things striking me as uncanny. Torchlights few and far between in a quarter that used to be so bright you would confuse night with day. At one point I leave the border road to go south and almost ride into the river. But it is not the river, not really, it is still Tarobe, an entire street with houses third-way, halfway, and full-way underwater. We so tired when we get to the man’s house that I barely bid him good night or check where to lay my head before I fall asleep.
No sign of the Ogo, the Leopard, the archer, or the Tracker. It supposed to take only one day through the Darklands, two at the most, if nothing rumored about this place was true. But with the seven nights before I land in Kongor and the three nights since, ten days done gone and none of the four Bunshi hire yet to appear. No Bunshi either, not because she don’t know the way, but that she know I will declare them and this mission dead. From the lies she tell the men, to this first stop in Kongor to pick up clues that any informant could find, Bunshi already blighting a mission she think is pure and righteous. Her desperation to hide that they looking for the future King lead her to wasting people’s time and killing off four men. And yet I still find myself lingering in Kongor, an itch telling me that this place will yet have use.
Kongor. Once in this place I was a runaway, then a whore, then a gift. One I remember more than the others. The shape of the land now smaller, and I never once see so much water. There are places I supposed to know, names to remember if not faces, but nothing will come back to me, because of this Aesi. As for this house. I wake up in a room hiding from morning light, the girl snuggling up to me like a pet, even though she have her own bed. So many tall statues in the rooms that I imagine Venin waking up screaming that a chamber full of men set to take her. I leave the bed and step on a dirt floor somebody pound down to a shine. A love for tapestries this man have, a love that come from going beyond the sand sea and liking all he see. They seem to be in talks with one another, these red and brown tapestries running from ceiling to floor, with patterns of lions, cobras, beasts unknown, and lovers. Arch windows big as doors. Archways instead of doors. From the window I see the street creeping up then snaking around, also that my window was on a floor six floors up, with open shutters. Other windows sport platforms with hanging plants. I am at the window wondering who would wake up first, the girl in my bed or the street. As for the man, there he is in some sort of cookroom, even though I don’t see no cook. She soon come to start the coffee, he say, though I didn’t ask for it. I really want to ask what his use is to Bunshi, but figure one should at first be polite.
“People call me Sogolon.”
“What you call yourself?” he say.
“Clever.”
“One of the nicer things somebody me call this quartermoon. Nine days ago it was old, blaspheming, cocksucking man whore, so the sun is definitely shining on me today.”
My laughter surprise me.
“Bunshi tell me much about you,” he say.
“Uncanny, for she tell me nothing about you.”
“Nothing to tell. I am a simple man given to the cause. Also an old man with nothing much to do and not much living left to do it. I figure we be the same age?”
“You figure wrong.”
“Oh. What bring you to the cause?”
“Money.”
Here he remember that there is another room to build to the rear of the house so he need to get on with building it, meaning get the strapping young men, so proud of their muscles, to build it.
“Before you go. Rain season still many moons away. So what happen to Tarobe quarter?”
“Tarobe? What you mean?” he ask.
“I nearly drown my horse last night just heading south. Some houses the river claim full.”
With the look on his face, I might as well be talking about the sand sea.
“Why go south to Tarobe, when it is north?”
“North?”
“That I say. If you was riding south, that was the slave and servant quarter.”
“Gallunkobe? How? When?”
“Tarobe being north and Gallunkobe being south? Is so I born and come see it.”
“This place about to drive me mad.”
“I don’t—”
“Is not a question.”
“I . . . I mean I don’t trouble my head with what come to pass, but there was great and terrible rains many years ago, either before or right as I born, that flood out Tarobe so bad that one-third of the quarter drown. The rest move north.”
“To the one people they could drive out easy.”