Long time I pondering what I was going to say when I finally meet one like you, one who betray his own brothers. No? You not a betrayer? You just a man who leave right before the purge. Chance of the gods, coincidence, them white scientists call it. No warning come to your window by whisper or pigeon, then. One day you gone, next day ax come for the griot head. I know one man who survive, but the guilt of not dying make him take his own life. But here you come, alive, for now.
You think this is about setting aright what is askew, disorder back into order. That is the shit men think, to make any wicked action right in their eyes. No, fool, this is about revenge. I just done say that I don’t call a hawk a crow. And even revenge is not about revenge, not really. The planning too long and the execution too quick. What really fire up revenge is desire. You want to know why it take five years to do what would take another person five moons, when the answer right in front of you. Is the desire. Desire is what rush under your skin, through your bones, flowing where blood used to flow. Wanting to kill a man, living to kill a man, sharpening my whole life to the fine point of being nothing more than a tool to kill, that give me more reason to wake up every dawn than killing him for real. You grow it, you nurture it, you prune like a plant, bend and twist it as well. Plus, it is something to do and a woman need work. You want to know who is on my list so you can tie their death to me.
The Mweru. She is the one I hunt first. She and him, two targets that I would chop to death in the height of my rage or invade their hearts and let them explode. The King Sister post sentries from her rebel army on the skirt of the Mweru. To stop enemy approach, go the thinking. Who stand guard once inside the Mweru is a mystery. No man know for sure that if a man enter, he never leave, but few been foolish enough to test it. I wait until night and slip through on foot, hopping over potholes deeper than chasms and creeping around pools and springs more foul than a burning dog, with shooting steam that would burn my flesh off. It mystify me how she live here, since nothing here is ever green, nothing here ever grow. No trees, so no cover, but I wear black and this night have no moon. So much strangeness in these lands that nobody going notice a moving shadow. The ten nameless tunnels of the Mweru. People say they look like overturned urns of the gods. People also say that each go in a different direction, one of them to a lake of fire, another to the otherworld. All I know is that compared to their height I was an ant. The one I choose wider than a causeway but something was glowing at the end of it. The skin of the palace, for skin is what you call the walls of something that look like a whale in death stretch. Sails too, as if this was a ship in another age, or mockery for any who think they going leave this place. I see myself in a puddle and stomp in it.
The guards see me. My wind (not wind) kick two far off into the sky and slam two against the corridor walls. One I throw up in the high ceiling and he don’t come down, one try to grab me but below his neck reach me before above. I slice, stab, slam, and throw my way into the great hall, but nowhere to be seen is this Queen. In the throne room, two women stand guard by the empty seat. The women raise their spears. I tell them that I try within my power not to kill women but push me beyond the edge of my temper and I will dispatch a bitch.
“I know you.”
“Is Sogolon,” I say.
“No you’re not. I know her.”
I don’t tell her that she both right and wrong. Instead I let her think that I’m just some woman who infiltrate her throne room. Savior or executioner, she don’t care. I come to see.
“Some days I think he take him. Some days I think he leave.”
The voice is so weak that first I thought it’s one of my own, coming back. He didn’t raise no alarm, didn’t scream, or shout, or even weep, she say. She, Lissisolo, stumbling onto the black throne, sleep controlling her and liquor the cause. I smell the herb and know it from the Sunk City. Two tusks rise from the foot of throne right into the ceiling. Her headdress on the floor, her gown open at the top with her breasts falling out. His hunger for the milk never quit, even though no milk was going to come, she say. First she think he a strange boy who miss being close to his mother. Soon she think he a strange boy always wanting to lick his mother’s nipple. Later she think he strange after he stop licking her breast and bite it, deep enough to draw the blood that he lick. No, suck.
“He didn’t even cry, you understand? He didn’t even cry.”
This is how it go. One of the vampire who run with Ishologu, the one they didn’t kill, come for the boy. This boy who displeased with everything, who fall asleep in the position of one murdered, who stab one servant, kick another, and nearly gouge the eyes out of one more, he didn’t say nothing when the monster come for him. Instead he crawl up to the monster chest and let it cradle him. This boy, long pass when you could call him infant. Of course she whip the women who swear he go willingly. Her son was stolen. But from the beginning I never have hopes for this boy, I say to her.
“Shut up.”
“Your little boy drinking from monster teat from the day he move with Ishologu.”
“I say shut up, you.”
“Thinking he was your boy. He was never your boy. Now he not Ipundulu or Ishologu, but worse.”
“No.”
“Among the living, but he drinking blood anyway. Drinking vampire blood the way some man take opium. Kidnapping? He couldn’t wait to flee from you. And why would he need you? He already have a mother.”
“Kill her!”
The women guard both throw spears, one I dodge, one I let the wind (not wind) halt midair, flip and hurl right back at them, bursting through the neck of one and pinning her to the wall. The other pull her sword. I put away my knives and leave her perplexed.
“Is true. I had to call the healers the last time he set on my breasts.”
“He no longer your boy.”
“Stop talking about my son.”
“What you name him?”
“Liongo, after his ancestor.”
“What he answer to?”
“I . . .”
“What he answer to?”
“He have a name!”
“What he answer to?”
“He is the future of the North,” Lissisolo say.
“He don’t have no future,” I say.
“Wh-who are you, eh? Who she think she is that she can speak evil to me? I have my own army.”
She willed her son to be unharmed and unspoiled for so many years that the will is what she have in place of him. I can imagine when she finally see him for who he was, and choosing the son of her longing instead. Trying every day to will that son into being from the mass of flesh and bone before her. And this army. Her rebel army. I see them, not even two thousand strong, they join forces with the South so that if they defeat the North, then she would be crowned Queen. Regent, of course, she just holding the place for true King of the true North. Then the South King suddenly dead, his forces banished farther south than in any war before, and all she have to show for it is a scattered force.
“Where the water sprite keep herself?”
“Who are you to want news of the water sprite?”
I just look at her.