Back to the master’s house. As soon as I step into my room I can tell, even though I am not the one with the nose, that this Tracker been in here. She leave her smell here as well, Bunshi. I gathering my thing to go when Venin start to fuss. “First here is a gift from a precious musk merchant,” I say, which delight her. Then I tell her that where we going there are wonders, like water that run upward, wagons that travel through the sky, and dresses that dress you. We setting to leave when the smell of that damn sprite, only trace up to now, suddenly come on pungent, present. She shaking so bad that she shifting in and out of her self.
“Hall of records . . . something happening . . . Tracker!”
Bunshi don’t have time for more words, and is shaking too hard to utter them. I say we take the Ogo and she scream that we need a blade not a battering ram, which he don’t take offense to. She say she will lead Sadogo and the girl to a road heading to Mitu. And a crossroads.
“You and your damn doors. This go to Dolingo?”
“You know that’s where it go.”
“If they using the doors, maybe we wait until they get to Kongor.”
“No. We can’t stay in Kongor. Not anymore. Go!”
“Maybe the Tracker should save himself. You the one who need him.”
“And if they decide to stay in the Blood Swamp how would you know? If they come to Dolingo, how you going to find them in a place that take three days to cover? Guess? Write a rune? Maybe ask market women until somebody say yes, I did see a white gentleman over there buying magic berry.”
“Now you think you cute.”
“Go help him, or just go!”
* * *
—
Is the faces we see first, me and the housemaster, faces orange and flickering, the crowd watching the hall of records on fire. Kongori make note of everything, even of things not Kongori, so I can feel it with them, the sight of everything that make them who they are going up in flames. The great hall of records now like some great bonfire of a wicked god, blazing so tall that it light up the whole quarter. I wonder if the whispering books are screaming. Just as my mind run on him, somebody in the crowd shout, No man, no! The bookkeeper. As if to say, No your help won’t do, the roof collapse and embers explode. Tears, sweat, or both, faces are wet. While everything in that place could catch fire, fire don’t catch itself. The Tracker, I am sure, will have a lot of explaining to do. Or maybe he in the blaze.
And the people.
People crying.
People screaming.
People quiet.
Just so, not quieting down, no hush, whispering, just all of a sudden quiet. Fire will entrance, that I know, but the face nearest to me is looking past the blaze, past everything, even past himself. He and everyone near him not only quiet but still. Stiff. Sweat run into his eye and he don’t blink. Every man, woman, and child in the street stiff like wood until their heads all turn left. No other limb, not even a finger. Then a woman yell from two streets over, and all of them take to their heels, running like they fleeing an actual fire, all of them, even the very old and the very young, turning into a stampede that knock down and trample whoever can’t run as fast. Nobody saying nothing and nothing to do but go with them. They all dash for this lane, where I see the Tracker just as he elbow a woman rushing at him in the face while a man, dressed like a magistrate, slapping people away with the flat side of his sword. A mother drop her own child and attack the Tracker while another boy leap onto his back. The magistrate pull him off. Then the crowd swarm them, people they trying not to kill, who have no such thought of the two of them. Who don’t have any thought. It take me too long to realize who is doing the thinking, and before I realize that it is him at the other end of the lane, he vanish. The hair like flame topping his head. His hair short and red. His earplugs, his black cape with the red underneath. The cape flying even though it is a hot, dry night.
The Aesi. In Kongor.
Which mean he following us, maybe by himself or with an army. Which mean he follow us from Malakal. Which mean he know us, for he have no other reason to attack the Tracker. Which mean somebody spying for him. I spend so long trying to cut this mission loose so I can trail him that it never even come to me that he would be trailing us. Many things he can’t do. He can’t fly, he can’t disappear, he can’t blow himself away like a wish. If I hunt him down I will find him, and I am one of the few, maybe the only one, who ever kill him. I can kill him. He will kill them. I don’t know them, or care. But still he will kill them, and also these people will wake up tomorrow missing a sister, a brother, a child, maybe just a limb, but even hand is one limb too much. Anger rising and I can’t control it—for the only one losing here is me. The people on top of them now, the Tracker and the magistrate, and soon they will have no choice but to kill their way out. And despite knowing all that I still make a step in his direction before I stop myself.
“You not one of them woman with secret craft?” the housemaster ask, and jolt me back.
“Is not a secret,” I say.
I jump off the horse just as my skin ripple. Wind (not wind) push up the dust first, then knock off all the torches, rip off loose windows, and before anybody notice, start throwing people against the wall and up in the air. As I walk it run ahead of me, barreling down or flinging up every woman, man, child, and beast. My force plow down right up to them two.
“He own every mind in this alley,” I say as we ride up to the magistrate and Tracker.
“I know,” the Tracker say.
“But yours.”
“Who are these people?” the magistrate say to me. His light skin startle both me and the housemaster. I don’t see such skin since I was too far north.
“We should leave now,” I say.
Some of the people start to rise and stare.
“I don’t need saving from them.”
“But they will soon need saving from you,” I say. More man, woman, and child rise.
While I take too long to get to my horse, the people start to gather. And run. The wind (not wind) don’t wait. It sweep everyone and everything down alley, all the way down to the end.
“This man coming?” I ask the Tracker.
“I’m not the commander of his movements.”
“Oh will you shut up,” the magistrate say and mount the housemaster’s horse.
“Where’s Sadogo?”
“Waiting with the girl.”
We leave the housemaster back at his house, and find the most shallow part of the river, where one could still cross to the shore by horse. The Tracker can’t stop whining that I am trying to drown him, while the magistrate ask if he is always like this? On the other side is the long road to Mitu. We coming to a crossroad when Sadogo come out with the girl. The Tracker shout his name. The Ogo do the closest thing to a smile I was ever going see. But the sight of the magistrate distract him.
“So who you?” I ask.
“He is one of the Kongori chieftain army—”
“His mouth, it’s like a loose bowel. Mossi is my name.”
I am trying to see this man in the night, but only his big hoop earrings, his silver necklace, and his long hair are clear to me.
“This is not your business,” I say.
“A thought you all should have had before you broke into Basu Fumanguru’s house. Did this Tracker tell you where he spent the night?”
With whores, I don’t say.
“Late of this night, wherever I go you seem to follow. High time you quit that,” say the Tracker.