“We should talk on this more sometime,” I say and he nod.
The last time I was close to this river, I fall into it. A lot of this, the wide stone bridge, the straight road that disappear at the end, even the parts where the river flow upward, I forget because in Dolingo there is too much to remember. Mostly I just watch the shock of those with me. Around heights so high, we look like bugs. Two sentries in green armor rising all the way to their nose let us through the door. All of them, including Jakwu, reach for their weapons again.
“Don’t insult the Queen’s hospitality,” I say.
I do remember that the Dolingo court out-magnificent magnificence. Woman, man, and beast as courtiers. Too many bald men in expensive wool, too many women with fabric towers on their heads, shapeshifting lions, leopards, hyenas. Mighty guards with ceremonial swords and spears not mighty, for nobody in neutral Dolingo ever need to use them. The Tracker look taken with the gold pillars. Mossi and Venin with everything else. So much to look at with amazement that one can almost miss the Queen. But there is no missing the Queen of Dolingo. She will make sure of it. The golden bird perched on her head—her crown, of course—the gold dots on her eyelids and lips, the frowning face of somebody who done hear all there is to hear, the towering height, the gold running along the seams of her dress that make it seem as if the metal is pouring out of her. This Queen she stand more than she sit, hands on her hips, and looking down as she hold her chin high.
“Sogolon, this is a surprise. When the sentries describe who approach, I say it can only be the Moon Witch. Put no obstacle between our meeting. Friends, how tired you must be from your journey. First you rest, and then we will have words,” she say.
“But there is—” I say.
She cut me off. “Matters of state that I must attend to. Be off with you and expect the greatest care,” she say as two fat men with robes scraping the ground approach us.
“Needing a bath, no, yes? And some scrumptious food, no, yes? Yes!” they say at the same time.
“Most Excellent Queen, remember we on urgent business,” I say.
“Urgent is what I say is urgent.”
Later that night she call me back to court. Only about a third of the people stand and sit with her now—her chancellors, handmaidens, the four sentries of the throne room.
“The warrior with the horsehair, I have never seen such skin. Is it a disease?”
“It is how most men who live beyond the sea look, Majesty.”
“What? How frightening. And how delicious. Sit,” she say, but as usual she prefer to stand. Two men rush a stool under me and push me down to sit.
“And the King Sister? Where is Lissisolo?” she ask.
“Your guess good as mine, Majesty. I only hear from Bunshi and that was days ago.”
“So after all the trouble to produce an heir, and in gods know what barbaric fashion, they lose the boy? I will hear this story.”
I am thinking she know the story, but I tell her what I know.
“And she trusted this decision to the water sprite.”
“She pick a woman devoted to the cause, Majesty. But a husband not so.”
“No. She didn’t choose a woman devoted to the cause, she chose one devoted to her. These sprites thinking they are gods, when nobody want to be gods. I don’t wait for devotion, Sogolon. I enforce obedience. Simpler. But given how short me and Lissisolo’s sisterhood lasted I am surprised you are here. How is she managing in the Mweru?”
“She the one to answer that question, Majesty.”
I surprised she is surprised but don’t know yet if this is one of her games, only that it is already afoot and I have no choice but to play.
“I tell you most of this in the note, Queen.”
“Note? Don’t remember any note.”
Of course you don’t, I think but don’t say. Why bother your imperial head with a matter fit for the chancellors?
“They find a portal, somewhere in Dolingo. We believe they been using it for years.”
“Who?”
“Majesty?”
“Who?”
“Ipund— Ishologu and his others. Vampires, if you want to call them that. They move with the boy. We think they use him as a lure.”
“What horrible luck, is it not, to escape one set of monsters to somehow land in with another?”
“It is a dangerous road,” I say, but I really don’t know. Yet something else is missing here, but I don’t know if I would ever find out. But I think as she do, that something here is at once too neat and too awry.
“And now you believe that this little band, the baby and the bloodsuckers, are on their way here? To Dolingo. And that they have been here before? Madness. The dead don’t just disappear in Dolingo. There are records, attendances. Requirements. Obligations. Even a dead scribe would be missed.”
“They smart enough to not leave much trace, Majesty. So they might not be killing in Dolingo, only using here for passage. Or they killing slaves.”
“We don’t have slaves.”
I know she see me blink the frown off my face. “One have the power of persuasion and one can make himself invisible, Majesty,” I say. They totally killing slaves. Dolingon just don’t know how to treat a slave killing as a death.
She turn to her chancellors, but they look as blank as her. That something might be happening, something so insidious without her knowing, is making her angry and them afraid. Somebody will pay for this ignorance, I can already see this on her face. I don’t want to tell her of the ten and nine doors, even though it is nothing to me if she use them. But if it is nothing to me, why don’t I tell her? say the voice, annoying me.
“I will know more of this portal,” she say.
“It in Dolingo, but not in the citadel. Three days away by horse.”
I tell her what I know of the ten and nine doors. First she promise to whip all her chancellors and science men this coming dawn, for they are supposed to be the great repositories of knowledge and they didn’t know a thing. I want to say that they are rumored to be the pathways of gods, but Dolingo has no use for gods, so why would they know, but I quiet myself. This Queen is acting even stranger than the last time I see her.
“With permission, Majesty, is everything in place?”
“Is what in place? This bush lady has so many requests of this Queen. Did we switch positions?”
The court whisper and hush out a No, could not be, Majesty.
“The prince will need the protection of your troops, first to deliver him from Ishologu, then safe passage to the Mweru. And from there up to his mother, the King Sister.”
“I thought no man who enter the Mweru ever leave,” the Queen say.
“I didn’t make the plan, Majesty.”
“But you have no problem enforcing it. You always struck me as your own woman. Also that you are long tired of royal affairs. How did they convince you?”
“Good coin, Majesty.”
“But you are the Moon Witch. You already make good coin. Is this golden boy the fish or the bait?”
Right there I tell myself that this is not about the Aesi, this is something else.
“Majesty?”