“Thieving little bitch!”
I drop the meat and run. This big goat seller chase after me and all I could think as I jump on cart, and tumble, and fall to the ground, and run, is Who minding the fire with him running me down? I skid under horse, run around donkey, kick away pigeons, and dash down one narrow alley that lead to one more narrow, and one more narrow than that. Still the goat seller after me. He get so close that I can hear him screaming that I will be the last one. He strike a wall with his cleaver, which make me turn around while running and stumble. The goat seller knock down an old man and push two women out of the way. I take off, turning down the first alley I see, and now I am knocking down old men and pushing women out of the way. Stalls of fruit and vegetables and meat, I pass them in a blur when they all flip over one by one and flood the street with red, green, and yellow. My wind finally, I think. People pounce, beggars grab, two sellers pull knives and one a whip. And still I run, and still the goat seller, jumping over fruit and kicking away vegetables, follow me. I turn around once to see two boys join him in the chase. I hear them screaming for a magistrate. As I run right into a line of sheet and tear the whole thing down, and scramble to get up while the fabric seller take a switch and start to whip me. All I do is look at her and my wind knock her off her feet, and I curse it for how random its ways. The three men right behind me, I can hear them. But a horse galloping above me, this I can hear too. I don’t dare look, for no horse can ride on sky. Then the back of my head explode in pain and I fall. The ground feel hard, but it moving like waves. The three upon me, but their faces stretch and shrink and swirl, and I can’t hear what they say. Then just so, each back away and scatter, quicker than roaches in the light. The ground still feel like it is spinning, and tilting so low that I spread my arms to not roll off. Under my neck is warm and wet and I know what will be on my fingertips if I touch it. I lie there thinking there is nothing to do but gaze at the sky and wait for the warm wetness to run out of me, or I run out of sky to see. They dismount, which I can tell because hitting the ground rattle their armor. I stay on the ground, feeling my shoulders getting warm, and watching sky, when the riders three all bend down and block my view. I can’t make out any faces, but I know they are Red Army.
* * *
—
I thought you hail from Fasisi,” he say.
“I never say where I hail.”
He and his men giggle at me like little boys. Here is truth, I’ve never seen no lion or hyena or giant lay waste to a whole loaf of bread and a quarter of fowl like this one, a soldier say, but not to me. The whole room giggle again and annoy me so much that I almost shout that they should at least laugh like men, and not like some damn hyena. But then it run across my mind that one or two of them might actually be hyena, so I stuff my mouth with more fowl. The back of my head pound when I think about it, but one of the men say it was just a bump. We at a giant table in a room of a fort made of stone. No doors, just archways. Cut stone, each one bigger than a wagon wheel, and mortar that still smell wet. I want to say how surprising it is that it’s not cold, but not a single face look like one you say loose words to.
“Then why stay in a place you don’t know? Have you no people here?”
“No.”
“Nobody?”
“Why would a slave have somebody?”
Two of the officers mark my tone.
“Of course. What is your name again?” Keme ask.
“Sogolon.”
“Well, Sogolon, as warm as these walls be, you cannot stay here either. Our . . . accommodations can’t hold the likes of you.”
“Man don’t frighten me.”
“Men down there don’t care that you have no fear.”
That is when I gulp. He notice. What to do with her? he ask the others, but the lion ignore him, one man say he don’t run no almshouse, another say that the wife wouldn’t believe him even if he say she was a new slave, while the others just nod and leave. He about to leave when a soldier from Green Army enter and stand still. I recognize the black fur trim on his cape. Royal guardhouse.
“Yes, soldier,” Keme say, which surprise the guard, who don’t look like many people call him soldier.
“From the palace, Marshal. Orders to escort the Queen Mother—”
“The Queen.”
“Uh . . . yes, the Queen. A personal escort to the lake temples so she can pay tribute to her gods. You go by boat.”
“Escorting is for the Green Army, I should know. Why bring it here?”
“The Queen is leaving the enclosure, Marshal. This come direct from the Aesi, sir.”
“The Aesi requesting marshals as bodyguards now?”
“Is not a request, Marshal,” the guard say. He say other things too, and I see his mouth move, then Keme’s, then the guard again, but I not hearing anything they say. The Aesi. The first I am hearing his name from somebody else’s mouth since before we head to Mantha. I am watching these two men, hoping they don’t turn and look at me trying to gather my head before it fall apart. I am watching them but I’m seeing Emini’s face smiling, sweating, screaming, bursting into flames.
Later that night, on the way back to his house, with him on a horse and me riding behind him, he say to me, “Sogolon, eh? You called yourself Chibundu only four days ago.”
“I . . .”
“Best you settle on a name before you meet my wife.”
They live in the Ibiku district, above Ugliko and east of Taha. They don’t keep a lock on the door. Keme dismount and walk in, leaving it to me to tie the horses, which make me cuss silent.
Voices inside, voices I don’t know. A woman’s. I turn around and see only an open door, and inside a shelf full of lamps, fabrics on the walls, and a nkisi nkondi bigger than a small child. “Welcome.”
She is shorter than her voice would make one believe, with a blue-pattern headdress almost as big as the nkisi nkondi, and the same fabric wrapped around her body and tied at her breast. Arms strong and bare.