“Where you learn such skill with a lance?” I ask.
“Skill? I been playing with spears since I stop sucking my mother’s teat.”
“What?”
“I will have a sword. Maybe two, like the pale one. Tell me, which of those two is the fucker and who is getting fucked? They both walk like somebody gave their assholes some brutal business.”
“Venin?”
“You know better, moon bitch.”
“Jakwu.”
“I love it when you say my name. Say it again.”
* * *
—
This road is not the only one to Dolingo. We come upon a fork where the way left would be quicker, under cover of trees, some of them with fruit. But I stay on the right and don’t answer the Tracker when he question why. Nobody take the route on the right because the rumor is that you can’t travel one league without running into devils. No devil live on this road, but the man who start the rumor do. He and his kind scattered north and south out of fear. He, the southern griot.
Ikede.
Yet it surprise me when I first see his house. We approach it slow. Who know what else await us? The voice that sound like me say. Jakwu try to grab my waist again and I elbow him.
“I can’t wait to try out being a woman. Tell me true, how you don’t just stay under the sheets and play with your breasts all day?” he ask.
“Do anything to Venin and I swear—”
“It done, moon bitch. It already done.”
“Venin, if you hearing me, fight this.”
“Stinking cunt bitch, you not hearing me? She gone and she not coming back. Don’t worry, you soon hear her whispering, although she don’t know much words.”
“How you make this come to pass? Talk.”
“Me? You do most of it, going through a door you shouldn’t go through. Some of the other men do the rest. Fight you down enough, where you too weak to rein in every spirit. And we do it too, but then they get too strong. You think it was Venin marking nsibidi in the dirt to lock them off? It was me. What me to say? Of all my mother’s children I love me best. And this girl so blank that anybody could slip in her head and find enough space. But here is truth. Not going lie. I always wondered what it feel like to take a cock like mine. And this Venin look like a virgin. Can’t wait, and I wasn’t even a man lover. Them peaks and valleys that no man get to have. Can’t wait. Should I try the Ogo? Him taking more than a fancy, but I don’t want to kill the girl.”
“I kill you before that happen.”
“Look who have words. Venin not going need words. Her mouth will be full with something else.”
“If you—”
“You keep using if like we not done past if. All of this is when, woman. Learn that.”
“You think I won’t kill her to save her?”
“You can try.”
And so we go to Ikede’s house, almost as tall as the master’s house in Kongor, but nowhere as wide. It so thin you might as well call it a tower, which is what I say to Ikede when we arrive to see him sitting outside his door, chewing khat, expecting us.
“You have them ready?” he ask. “Bunshi—”
“Yes, I hear from the water sprite. They ready.”
The Tracker look at me like he about to ask a question I not about to answer. Jakwu size up the southern griot and follow the rest of them into the house.
“I leaving soon. And I taking the horse,” Jakwu say. “But this game you playing. I like it. They know they hunting the next King yet? How much that secret worth to you?”
“Is not my secret, fool.”
He laugh. I will never call him she. The pigeons are in a cage, ready to go to Dolingo, with a note written by the griot that I check twice because the time for trusting long pass. On the second pigeon I tie another note. I am in a house with one man who witches don’t touch, one man that is all might and no head, one man who cheat a woman out of her own body, and one man who up to a few days ago I didn’t even know, an arm of the chief who is the arm of the King. In the house of a man who once hold my whole past over me. I might not fall asleep this night. The Tracker is at my door as I set the second pigeon loose, arguing with Jakwu and trying to slip past him, and not knowing that in the girl is a man who has killed tens upon tens of men like him. But Jakwu let him through because he know that will annoy me.
“A message for the Queen of Dolingo to expect us,” I say.
“Wasn’t asking.”
“They don’t show kind to people who come with no announcement.”
“If you say so. But we shall have words, woman,” the Tracker say.
“Oh we going have words now?”
“Words, yes. On this boy, for one. Your Aesi is after him. And since he only acts in interest of the King, then Kwash Dara is after him.”
“You find out much in that library.”
“Admit it. You’re surprised I read.”
“You don’t have to read to know the Aesi act for the King, or even think for him. Even children call Kwash Dara the Spider King.”
“Everything about the boy was in the writs.”
“Look at you, the reader. You and the pretty magistrate.”
“If you say he is.”
“How you two escape such a blaze? Either you too hard to kill or he not trying hard to kill you.”
I go over to the door to show him out.
“We two not done,” he say.
“Lovely, because I’m just starting,” Mossi say, and walk in the room.
“How many women either of you know that would just walk into a man room like that?” I say.
The magistrate look taken aback. Unlike the Tracker, he have good breeding. He motion to go but then stand his ground.
“Magistrate,” I say.
“My friends call me Mossi.”
“Magistrate, this not for you. Best thing to do is go back.”
“Too late for that. You have all left me with nothing to go back to. The chieftain army will think I killed my own men on that roof.”
“You two was out killing magistrates when the hall burn?”
“They tried to kill us first. Besides, a few were already dead. Some the Aesi controlled,” the Tracker say.
“And some he bought,” Mossi say, and sit down on the floor and pull a batch of paper out of his satchel.”
“Fuck the gods, you took the writs?” the Tracker ask.
“They had an air of importance. Or maybe just sour milk,” he say and laugh.
The papers are drawing me closer. I can’t help it. All I know of the writs is what Fumanguru write on the wall. But this is it, a sign that people of the empire was thinking for themselves and not believing that every thought must be in lockstep with the King.
“Glyphs,” say the Tracker. “Northern-style in the first two lines, coastal below. He wrote them down in sheep milk.”
“Your nose.”
The papers draw in even Jakwu.
“Fumanguru’s great new idea for empire was a return to old. There, I sum it up for all of you,” I say.
“You read the whole writ?” the Tracker ask.
“Was around when he write them. Boring once he stop talking about the King. Then he just turn into one more man telling woman what to do. But for what he say about the King, he might have been of great use.”
“But did you read it?”
“What you think?”