“No? But still. Sound like you need to find this child quick. How you plan to do so?”
“I never understand why she need any of you. Any five or six warriors and a hound would do. You, perhaps since you closer to dog even before the Wolf Eye. And yet the first thing you do is set off for the Darklands for no other reason than it burn you to take wisdom from a woman.”
“Wisdom? You ride all the way around the forest because you were a coward, not because you wise. Same reason you stay away from all things enchanted. Same reason you hate those doors,” he say.
“You sure whatever fall on you in that forest not still in you?”
“What you want, Sogolon?”
“What I want?”
“Yes, you. Or the King Sister, or Bunshi or whoever.”
“Tell us where the boy is.”
“Who is us? Because I know it’s not what this Queen wants. Mossi already gave her some of what she is looking for. So if this is where you tell me how I can free myself from the prison, then this is where I tell you to take a shit stick and fuck yourself with it.”
“Who say I promising you freedom?”
“Then what you promising, everlasting inner peace? Where they get you from? You still don’t tell me what you want.”
“The child you going still help me find,” I say.
“You been around royals too long. Say one thing and mean something else, for a woman who don’t have a thing you certainly have their ways. In the royal enclosure but having none of their power. And you can quit this shit about the child. You mentioned him less than five times since we set out. The Aesi, on the other hand, him you mention plenty. Including just now. Didn’t you just hear yourself? Before you even ask me where is the child, what did you say? Repeat it for me,” the Tracker say.
“The one thing about devils. They don’t need acknowledgment in their ways.”
“Your head is just all over the fucking place tonight, woman.”
“He can’t win again, you hear me? Not a third time, and you not going to help him. I kill you first.”
“Finally. I been waiting for the real Sogolon for over a moon now. So this is a game between you and the Aesi.”
“Not a game. I don’t play.”
“Play is exactly what you’re doing. So what is the play here? Sadogo in on the game? Mossi?”
“I don’t play.”
“You mean you don’t enjoy it,” the Tracker say. “But it is a game. You’re not a true believer like the girl Nyka is fucking. Not a zealot like the water goddess—”
“Sprite.”
“Whatever. In fact you’re more indifferent than a lizard in a cockfight. Except for the Aesi. What did he take from you?”
“You the one with answers, not me.”
“They still talk to you, the spirits he took from you?”
“No.”
“That is a shame. You look like you could use a kind word from dead kin. Unless . . . Of course.”
“What now?”
“Word from dead kin is the last thing you want. You’re responsible. Fuck the gods, Sogolon.”
“Done talk?”
“Now you want silence?”
“Tell me where the boy is.”
“Now it’s me. Just a blink ago you said us. In exchange for what, freedom?”
“Look through that slot behind and you will see the prison and torture chamber.”
“Between you me and the gods? A fist up my asshole is not torture.”
“No, fool, out there is the prison. You not in the prison.”
I been waiting for that smirk to leave his face this whole time.
“I know you wonder it, how come you never see a single child in Dolingo? Some cities rear cattle, other cities grow wheat. Dolingo grow men, and not in no natural way. You don’t need explanation and your head can’t swell to take it. So know this. For moon after moon, year after year, a cluster of years after cluster of years, the seed and the wombs of the Dolingon become useless.”
“The white scientists?” Tracker ask.
“That is misadventure, not breeding. What is not barren breeds monsters unspeakable in look. Bad seed going into bad wombs, the same families over and over, and the Dolingon go from the most wise of children to the most foolish. It take them fifty years to say to one another, Look at us, we need new seed and new wombs.”
“Tell me there will be monsters soon,” he say.
“It greater than magic. If she conceive—she, the Queen, that is a man like no other. He will live like no other except that he fathering hundreds upon hundreds. He is the tap and they drain him. Other men they drain for the rest of the people. Even your Ogo, whose seed useless, their scientist and witchman can make it sow and breed.”
“What happen when they done draining?”
“You live life as full as any other life.”
“Of course. All they want for me is a full life. I’m taken with this draining. A tube? I would far prefer a mouth. This don’t answer why there are no children,” the Tracker say.
“The hall outside your window. They call it the great womb. They suspend them in womb juice. Feed them and grow them, until they as big as you. Only then they hatch. But they healthy and they live long.”
From him a smart line will come. Is coming. But not yet.
“This is the great Dolingo.”
“Three days done pass, counting today. Where is the boy?”
“No children, no slaves, no travelers either.”
“Nobody get safe passage in Dolingo,” I say. “They use anyone who they find at the foot of the trunks for breeding and kill whoever they can’t put to use. You at least have use. Even in this, is the man who have use.”
“Go fuck a lame god with that logic. You sold us off.”
“The Queen will treat you, the prefect, and the Ogo better than concubines.”
“Will she give us each a palace that she never visits?” the Tracker ask.
“All my life men telling me this would be the life above all lives. Well, here come the Queen of Dolingo saying, That is all you have to be for however long you live. From how man talk, this should be the greatest gift.”
“I’d rather a choice then a gift.”
“So now you is like a woman in all things. Tell me how it feel one day.”
“Thought I was just a nose.”
“A nose with some use. The rest of you just in the way. And when we get the boy, know that you help restore the natural rule to the North.”
“Like you care about the natural rule of the North. Now you sound like Bunshi. You will use the child to draw him out. The Aesi. Does Bunshi know?
“Tell them what they need to know. These scientists, I hear they like finding new ways to make you talk,” I say and turn to leave.
“One thing, Moon Witch. You don’t know me well but you know enough. By the time I kill half the guards in this room, they will have to kill me. So my question is this. How many runes will you have to write each night to stop me coming for you?”
I turn from him to the shadow. He is in the cell but I am the one who feel the wall just close in on me. But just in the corner of my eye, so in the quick that I almost miss it, he jerk his head. Like somebody call him name.