They, the Sangomin.
So, Ugliko. A district that is no district, according to the people who live in this district. Prefecture, they call it, to make you know that it is more than just some other place in Fasisi. But it is nothing more than the place to smell the fart of the King. No house more magnificent than anywhere in Baganda, no garden as beautiful as the hill gardens in Ibiku, but it is the backside of the royal enclosure, and the home of all in service to and in the favor of the King. But it is evening, and I am here in a street I don’t know, three streets over from where I tie the horse. My feet take me to the center, and a garden that make me feel too unmasked to stay. Nobody here would know me any more than they would know Emini, but the fear still creep up and push me back into an alley. Is not like the men at the donga promise me anything, since none even talk to me, but I take their word as promise anyway. The drum in my chest pound until there is nothing left, then start pounding again. The Ugliko is a different place after dark, Keme say to Mistress Komwono once. Right now I counting on it. The alley too quiet for me to just stand, so I start walking up another, down the next, cutting across three, to trail up two, to go back up to the first, then do the whole thing again. I wait for the wind to send me some distress, anyone, probably a woman suffering at the hands of one of them. Or two, I add, and the thought make me almost grin.
Quick as you think it a cry come on wind, down a street, not even an alley. They do their deeds in the dark with no reason to hide, these children. In the time since going to the donga I stop counting off the nights, then quartermoons, then moons since they murder the caravan to Mantha. Soon I will start counting summers, and Emini’s cry going turn into a whimper, then a whisper, then nothing, say the voice in my head. But it don’t know that this is not even about Emini. She never was my friend, and even her trying to know me was only because she see the fruit of things coming to pass that she didn’t know.
In the time since I stop counting night, I go back to the Ibiku woods and chop down the straightest branch a tree would give me. Then I strip it, paint it with stolen ochre, sharpen one edge to an arrowpoint, and whisper to the gods that it is a spear now, a spear that I plan to throw only once. The cry come again, three streets over, maybe four, as do a big laugh and a small one. I run. A long, dark street with carts but no horse, stalls but no sellers, doors but all shut, and no light but the green smoke coming from one of them. They stand over two people, one a crying boy and the other someone bigger on the ground and not moving. First all I could think was Watch this come to pass, for this is not what you want. What you want is for them to lead you to the royal enclosure. To him. But then the boy scream.
Any man would call this spear a good weight, even if it bend and twist a little. Between the two of them come a green smoke that light up the alley. I move back five step, then run as fast as I ever run, then sixty paces or so, dig my heels, and my whole body, not just my arm, throw the spear, which burst right through the taller one’s neck and kill his laugh. I don’t see his face. I want to see his face right then more than I want to live, and to have the darkness take the sight from me make me so mad that I don’t even see the other one until he upon me. Little, but he running along the wall as if it is the road. I turn to run just as he knock me down harder than a battering ram. A mask covering his nose and mouth. I try to get up, feeling wet on my chest but not knowing what it be, but it not warm so is not blood. Then he pull the mask and green vapor blow from what is neither mouth nor nose, from what is nothing. Green vapor bright like lightning. He blow and blow and the wild bush all round me shrivel to nothing, and an owl flying low drop from the sky. But his eyes going wild. This not supposed to happen. More weeds die and more bird and bugs drop, and the skin on my arms start to dry out, but around my face the wind (not wind) blocking the smoke. I reach up and grab him, since he still but a child, poke the dagger right to his chest and press the sides. He jerk and fall, smoke still coming from the lower half of his face, but now he coughing up blood. He say something, that he could never get the smoke to stop, but stop it do, only one little wisp coming through a hole that was no mouth and two holes that were no nostrils. Then he die. Just like that, and it come over me like a massive weight that this don’t feel like nothing. I don’t know what it is, the something I was looking for, but this is not it. This is worse than the donga, for at least there I earn the victory. I did want a fight. I did want a punch, a scrape, a stab, or a stomp, something that make me fight for my life and come within a blink of losing it. But Sangomin when you take away their gifts and their wickedness is just children. Nothing about killing them feed the hunger. Hunger for what, I don’t know, but is that thing that feel fed when I kill in the donga. But the feeling never last, and the hunger won’t go. It come when the children say something stupid or wicked, and I yell at them so loud that they run squealing like pigs, which make me feel like I am a mean woman who deserve no kindness. Sometimes the hunger last for many moons, and I lapse into forgetting, but it always come back, as if such a thing would ever quit a woman. Which lead me to Ugliko, because a Sangomin, no matter who, is a Sangomin responsible, but the hunger is saying to me that if you think an arm is the same as a finger or a head the same as a nose, then you are a fool. Dogs run loose because somebody let slip the leash. Now you acting like rage causing your hunger when you did have anger from long before. This hunger only come after you pick up the taste for blood.
I didn’t even look back at the boy or his mother.
THIRTEEN