The Queen say something to her head maiden, who clap twice. Her doors open and in march two guards in front, two at the back, Mossi between them, fascinated, confused, wearing that grin that might be a mask. They dress him in the long robes I see the old men wear. I can’t imagine him speaking Dolingon and when the maiden start talking he look at her dumbstruck. I try to push myself into the dark of the window, but this white scientist is still trying to slip mice into his mouth. I would go over and say he not one for woman flesh, but then they might ask how I know. The Queen shout at him three times to remove it, and when he don’t the guards grab him. He try to fight and punch two before they hold him down. A handmaiden slap them away and touch his face. He don’t resist when she lift the caftan off him.
And there he stand by the bed, still bewildered, but liking the women’s hands rubbing oil over him. At least this is gentler than the bath, he say, and they rub his chest, arms, back, and lower. He is something to behold, his limbs dark as sand and his chest and thighs almost as white as a white scientist. His lips like an open wound, she say. This Queen really don’t know anything about intimacy and refuse to hear counsel. Then again, who here would be able to give it to her? An old man, not a scientist, whisper something to a woman, who whisper to another, who whisper to the head maiden, who whisper to the Queen. She slap the head maiden and shout, You think I don’t know that? and raise her hand so that they can pull off her gown. Him, naked and white, she naked and blue, and room of people who don’t know what to do next.
A guard push Mossi to the bed, but they all stare at his cock, waiting for the moment when it will wake up. A twitch and they all gasp, but that is all. They fumble, they ponder, the women shake their head and the men stroke their chins. And the Queen, she is standing on the bed asking, Why is this not happening? What else is there to the barbarian way? She was told by her elders that there would be a change in penis. This would go on all night if nothing change. Her handmaiden suggest she rub her breasts together and smile at him. Another takes off her own clothes and stroke it, but the most she get is a shy smile. Harder, but not hard enough, and gone before they could push him into the bed.
“He need a boy,” I say in their tongue. Mossi look up to see me through the veil. I turn away before his eyes ask questions. In come two Dolingon boys about Venin’s age, whatever that was, and they remove caftans before being asked. Something tell me that all these Dolingons thinking the same thing, What great science! What great science! The boys are eager. One from behind start to work his tongue on Mossi’s neck. The other use his mouth to wake his cock up finally, and behold the wakeness. The Queen applaud as both boys pull him to bed. Is looking beyond them when I first see it, a golden cage and in it two pigeons. All white, not like mine. Is around the time when Mossi stop hiding how much he enjoying himself that the head handmaiden tell us to leave. Us, the white scientist and me.
“Barbaric, yes, but if she conceive it she won’t have to carry it,” he say, as if I ask him a question. “You want to see how we reproduce? How generation beget generation?” he ask me.
* * *
—
The next day. Afternoon already. Is only when you get what you think you want that you realize you don’t want it. The Queen is getting what she want. Lissisolo, even. Maybe. I want to save the child more out of still lingering malice to Bunshi than anything else. To say, Here is your child, so go fuck yourself a thousand times for saying that my child’s death is my fault. The voice that sound like me say that is not what she said. That it is folly to think lives are not tied to the fate of kings, for your family’s fate and yours have been because of kings. The wrong kings. Not that the right kings would be better, but that the evil that visited my house would never have visited. It still sound like she blaming what happen to my family on me letting a King rule, as if I am the Aesi.
The Tracker. I tell him not to sleep, neither him nor the magistrate. Yet the Aesi is following us, and also moving leagues ahead of us, which means he must be following him, them, one of them, in dreams. Venin is gone, Jakwu he has never seen, and the Ogo is the Ogo. That leave them two, and the Tracker is the one who call him by his name. Bunshi is the one who believe in him. Nyka is the one who send him to his death, only the Bultungi didn’t kill him. I don’t know him much, and the little I know I don’t like. I ask myself over and over why this Tracker would betray, and answer myself with that he care so little for this mission, this rescue, that to save him comes down to the coin. What to expect of a mercenary but the mercenary?
* * *
—
Dolingon constables tell them that it’s because of the falling boy, but they know that story will change. But two things I know: He fall from the Tracker’s balcony, and he is a rope slave. I don’t have another word for him. The great pull that move everything in Dolingo is slavery. The power behind the gears was a riddle somebody did have, somebody I don’t remember. This realm solve it with the hands and feet of slaves. At the caravan platform and it is all everyone is talking about how nothing is working. My chair refusing to seat me this morning, say one. My bathwater run cold when I said hot, say another. My door refused to open—can you imagine opening one’s own door? and No, there was no fan when I said fan, so I just stood there and watch it still—are our houses getting testy with us? Talk of the boy is gone in a blink. I come to realize these people don’t know what make their houses work. They don’t know a single thing, because they never have to. They don’t know that a chair that hesitate is actually hesitating, and a fan unwilling is actually unwilling. I would do as they do, sit and ponder long on these things, except there is a chancellor at my door who take me to where they keep the Tracker.
“I will speak to neither you nor your Queen. Only the witch. Those were his exact words. Filth just to say them,” this chancellor say to me.
“Ah, the Sogolon smell,” the Tracker say.
“It pleasing to you?”
“No. They going arrest us for murdering that slave boy?”
“Perhaps.”
“That poor boy jump to what he thought was freedom. You knew the workings of this place.”
For a place so forward in its ways, their cell look more backward than black holes of Juba. Dirt floor, and stone walls, a thick wood door with a slot big enough for his head but nothing else. Nowhere to shit, for shit is all that one smell.
“Some loose tongue spread word that metals fear me,” he say.
“How long you working with the Aesi?”
“I at least finish the job with someone before I start working for their enemy.”
“You do something to get his attention. Kill a spy? A witch? He would notice the killing of a witch.”
“Don’t think there’s much my dead can tell him.”
“He follow you in dreams.”
“Best you ask my dreams.”
“I tell you not to sleep that night.”
“And while I don’t take orders from you, the one thing I didn’t do was sleep. You would know since you watch the magistrate fuck me all the way into morning,” the Tracker say.
“Didn’t stay till you finish.”
“Was one for the gods, that finish.”
“And yet even a god do only one thing after . . . if he’s a man.”
“I say no sleep come for me.”
“The Aesi already sending a troop to Dolingo,” I say.
“So somebody did betray you? Bunshi? She’s been missing for a long time, but I just assumed you two had words.”
“He not the one coming. Just the troops.”