Black Leopard, Red Wolf (Dark Star Trilogy)

EIGHTEEN

We are in the great gourd of the world, where the God Mother holds everything in her hands, so that which is at the bottom of the round never falls away. And yet the world is also flat on paper, with lands that shape themselves like blots of blood seeping through linen, of uneven shape, that sometimes look like the skulls of ill-born men.

I traced the rivers of the map until my finger took me to Ku, which lit nothing in me. I wondered about it, that once I wanted more than anything to be Ku, but now I don’t even remember why. My finger took me across the river to Gangatom, and as soon as I touched that symbol of their huts I heard a giggle from my memory. No, not a memory but that thing where I cannot tell what I remember from what I dream. The giggle had no sound, but was blue and smoky.

The day was going, and we were setting to leave at night. I went to the other window. Outside, the prefect ran up to a mound, making himself black against the sunset. He pulled off a long djellaba I had never seen him wear, and stood on a rock in a loincloth. He bent down and took up two swords. He squeezed the handles in his hands, looked at one, then the other, rolled them around his fingers, until he had a firm grip. He raised his left hand, holding the sword in blocking position, dropped on one knee, and swung the right so swift it was if he was swinging light. He let the swing throw him up in the air, where he spun and sliced and landed on his left knee. He jumped up again and charged with the right and blocked with the left, sliced his left sword to the right side and right to left, stabbed both in the ground and flipped over, landing in a crouch like a cat. Then he went back up on the rock. He stopped and looked this way. I could see his chest heaving. He could not have seen me.

The old man shuffled again. He took out a kora, larger than I thought it would look. The base a round, fat half of a gourd that he steadied between his legs. The great neck tall as a young boy, and strings to the right and to the left. He took it by the bulukalos, the two horns, and sat by the window. From his pocket he pulled what looked like a large silver tongue rimmed with earrings.

“Great musicians from the midlands, they stick the nyenyemo to the bridge so the music leaps buildings and pierces through walls, but who needs house jumper and wall piercer in open sky?”

He tossed the nyenyemo to the ground.

Eleven strings to the left hand, ten strings to the right, he plucked on and it hummed deep into the floor. I have not been this close to music such as this in many years. Like a harp in the many notes rising at once, but not a harp. Like a lute, but not sharp with melody like a lute, and not so quiet.

Outside Sogolon and the girl, she on a horse, the girl on the buffalo, rode out west. Footsteps shaking the floor above us meant the Ogo was moving around. I could feel the floor shake under him until I heard a door slam open. The roof, maybe. I went back to the maps. The old man built a rhythm with his right fingers and a melody with his left. He cleared his throat. His voice came out higher than when he spoke. High like a cried alarm, still higher, with the top of his tongue clicking the top of his mouth to make rhythm.

I it is who is speaking

I am a southern griot

We now few we was once all

Hide in dark I come out of

The wilderness, I come out of

The cave, I come out and see

I was looking for

A lover

I want get

A lover

I did lose

Another

I want get

Time make every man a widow

And every woman too

Inside him

Black like him

Black that suck through the hole in the world

And the biggest hole in the world

Be the hole of loneliness

The man lose him soul give it ’way

For he was looking for

A lover

He want get

A lover

He did lose

Another

He want get

A man when he eat like glutton

Look like a man when he starve

Tell me can you tell one from two

You glutting by day

Then you starving by night, yeah

Look at you, fooling you

You want find

A lover

You want get

A lover

You did lose

Another

You did lose

A lover

You did lose

A lover

You did lose

Another

You did lose

Then he plucked the strings and let the kora alone speak, and I left before he sang more. I ran outside because I was a man, and string and song should never affect me so. Outside, where nothing could suck all the air out of one place. And where I could say it was wind that made my eyes wet, truth it was wind. Out on the rock the prefect stood, wind running past him, whipping his hair. The kora was still playing, riding air, sending sadness all the way down the trail we came. I hated this place, I hated that music, and I hated this wind, and I hated thinking about mingi children, for what were children to me and what use was I to children? And that was not it, that was not it at all, for I never think of children, and they never think of me, but why would they forget me and why would I care that they forget? For what good it be that they remember and why did I remember, and why did I remember now? And I tried to stop it. I felt it coming up, and I said, No, I will not think of my brother who is dead, and my father who is dead and my father who was my grandfather, and why should anybody want anybody? Just have nothing, just need nothing. Fuck the gods of all things. And I wanted day to go and night to come, and day to come again new and cut off from everything before, like a shit stain on cotton that comes out in the wash. Mossi was still standing there. Still not looking at me.

Sadogo, you go to sleep? The sun is not even done with the day.”

He smiled. On the roof, he made a space, with rugs and rags and cloths, with several cushions for a pillow. “I witness only nightmares these few days,” he said. “Best I lie here and not punch a hole through a wall and bring the house down.” I nodded.

“The nights grow cold in these lands, Ogo.”

“The old man found me rugs and rags, besides I feel little of it. What do you think of Venin?”

“Venin?”

“The girl. She rides with Sogolon.”

“I know who she is. I think we found the boy.”

“What? Where is he? Your nose—”

“Not through my nose. Not yet. There is much distance between us and him. Right now he is too far away for me to guess. They might be in Nigiki, on the way to Wakadishu.”

“Both are half a moon away. And it will take days to get from one to the next. I may not be smart as Sogolon, but even I know.”

“Who questions your mind, Ogo?”

“Venin called me simple.”

“That little girl who was never more proud when she was Zogbanu meat?”

“She is different. Different from only three days ago. Before she never spoke, now she grunts like a jackal and is always sour. And she listens not to Sogolon. Have you seen it?”

“No. And you are not simple.”

I went over beside him and crouched down.

“Deep in skill he is,” the Ogo said.

“Who?” I asked.

“The prefect. I watch him train. He is master of some art.”

“Master at arresting people and harassing beggars, yes.”

“You do not like him.”

“I have no feelings for him, like or dislike.”

“Oh.”

“Sadogo, I wish you to know what was spoken. The boy, he is with men not of this place, or any place of good men.”

He looked at me, his eyebrows raised but his eyes blank.

“Men who are not men, but not demons, though they may be monsters. One is the lightning bird.”

“Ipundulu.”

“You know him?”

“He is not a real him,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“This Ipundulu, long years ago, he tried to cut my heart out. I worked for a woman in Kongor. Seven nights he spent, seven nights seducing her.”

“So you have lived in Kongor. You never told me.”

“It was ten and four days’ work. But Ipundulu. Those days plenty joy he found in taking slow. He had her every night, but this night I heard only sounds from him. When I walked in he already killed her, and was eating her heart. This is what he says—What a bigger meal you shall be—so he flies and jumps on me, and takes his claw and cuts through my skin. But my skin is thick, Tracker, his claw got stuck. I grab his neck. Squeeze, I did, until it started to crack. Indeed I would pop his head off, but his witch was outside the window. She threw a spell and it blinded me for ten and six blinks. Then she helped him escape. I saw him off in the sky, his wings white, his hanging neck loose, but still carrying her.”

“He is no longer bound to that witch, or any witch. She left no heir, so now he is his own master.”

“Tracker, this is no good thing. He would rip out a child’s throat and that was when he was under her. What will he do now?”

“The boy is still alive.”

“Not even I myself am that simple.”

“If he is using the boy, then the boy is alive. You saw the ones with lightning blood. They could never hide it. And they have gone mad.”

“You speak a true thing.”

“There is more. He moves with others, four or five. We’ve heard accounts. All of them bloodsuckers, it seems they go to houses with many children. The boy knocks first, saying he ran away from monsters, and they let him in. Then deep in the night he lets them in to feed on everyone.”

“But the boy is not one of them?”

“No, but you know the Ipundulu, he must have bewitched the boy.”

“We in these lands know of him bewitching girls, but never a boy. His head I will smash myself, before he can whip his wings. Those wings bring thunder, do you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“He flaps his wings and a storm blows with lightning and thunder, harder and wickeder than the wind Sogolon makes with magic.”

“Then we shall clip his wings. I will tell you of the others later.”

“And of wings, what of the man with black wings?”

“The Aesi? He also seeks for the child, and he will not rest till he finds him. But he knows neither where we are, who has the boy, nor of the ten and nine doors, or he would have used them. This is simple. We save the child and hand him back to his mother, who lives in a mountain fortress.”

“Why?”

“She is the sister of the King.”

“Confusing, is what this is.”

“I make it simple.”

“Like me?”

“No. No, Sadogo. You are not simple. Listen to me, this is not about being simple. There are things I have been told that I have no words how to tell you, that is all. But know, this child is part of a bigger thing. A truly bigger thing, and when we find him, if we keep him safe, it will echo through all the kingdoms. But we must find him before these men do kill him. And we must find him before the Aesi, for he too will kill him.”

“You said it was foolish to believe in magic boys. I remember.”

“And I still believe it to be foolish.”

I stood up and looked over the wall. The prefect was gone.

“Sadogo, I like simple. I like knowing this is what I will eat, this is what I will earn, this is where I shall go, and this is who I shall fuck. And that is still how I choose to move in this world. But this boy. It is not even that I care so much as it is we are in so deep. Let us finish it.”

“Is that all that drives you?”

“Should there be more?”

“I don’t know. But I am tired of my hands called to fight when I don’t know what to fight for. The Ogo is not the elephant, or the rhinoceros.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. There is the money. And there is something I suspect, that this child, this boy, has something to do with what is right in this world. And as much as I don’t care for this boy or even this world, yet still I move in it.”

“You care for nothing in this world?”

“No, I do not. Yes, I do. I do not know. My heart jumps and skips and plays with me. Shall I tell you something, dear Ogo?”

He nodded.

“I am no father and yet I have children. I have no child here, yet they are around me. And I know them less than I know you, but I see them in dreams and I miss them. There is one, a girl, I know she hates me, and it bothers me, because I see with her eyes and she is right.”

“Children?”

“They live with the Gangatom, one of the river tribes, at war with my own.”

“You have this girl and others?”

“Yes, others, one as tall as a giraffe.”

“You have them live with the Gangatom, though you are Ku and they war with the Ku. The Ku will kill you.”

“As you say it, yes.”

“You make me think, this ‘man is simple’ is no bad thing.”

I laughed.

“You may be speaking truth there, dear Ogo.”

“You said the boy might be in Nigiki or Wakadishu.”

“They use the same doors we used to escape the Darklands, but they use them in reverse. We had word of an attack on a household at the foot of the Hills of Enchantment that beat even their sacred magics. Twenty and four days ago, almost a moon. They spend seven to eight days in one place, killing and feeding, which means they have used the door to Nigiki. From Nigiki they kill and go to Wakadishu.”

“They’re almost there.”

“They are there already. It takes five days to get to Wakadishu on foot, maybe six, and they are on foot. My guess is that no beast can stomach the filth of them, so no horses. If they are in Wakadishu they will only be there for another two days, maybe three. Then they walk to the next door, the one we came through on the way to Dolingo.”

“Shall we not meet them there?”

“They will go through the citadel. They will want to feed, and who can resist such noble stock as the Dolingon? Besides, Sadogo, our numbers are few. We might need help.”

“So we cut them off?”

“Yes, we cut them off.”

He clapped his hands and it echoed across the sky. Then he spread them and I walked right to him as if to embrace. He flinched a little, not sure what I was doing. I wrapped my arms around him, my head in his armpit, and inhaled deep and long.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“Trying to remember you,” I said.

Sadogo then asked me if I thought the girl was pretty.

“Venin, I told you her name,” he said.

“She is pretty as girls go, I think, but her lips are too thin as is her hair, and she is only a little darker than the prefect, whose skin is hideous. Do you think her pretty?”

“I feel like half of an Ogo. My mother died when she had me, which is fine for she would have lived to curse me and my birth. But I feel like not the Ogo in many things.”

“You are right and you are true, dear Ogo. And yes she is pretty.”

The rest of my words I left to my own head, which might have been a crude joke. He nodded and pressed his lips together, satisfied with my answer, and lowered his head on his rugs.

Downstairs, I passed the room with the prefect. “It is yet early, but good night, Tracker,” he said as I walked by.

“Night,” was all that came out of my mouth.

I only then noticed the old man had stopped playing and was in the room, staring at darkness, maybe. I went down to the ground floor and waited for Sogolon.

Your old man, he was singing.”

The girl had come in first, huffing and panting. Sogolon grabbed her hand and the girl pushed her away and pinned her against the wall. I jumped up but the girl let go, growled, and started up the stairs. Sogolon closed the door.

“Venin,” she said.

The girl cursed back in that language I did not know. Sogolon replied in the same tongue. I knew that Sogolon tone: I am here to speak and you are here to listen. I imagined the girl wishing her a thousand fucks from a man covered in warts, or something just as vicious. She cursed all the way up two flights and slammed the door shut.

“Nobody in this house know what night is for,” Sogolon said.

“Fucking? Or working witch magic? Sleep is for the old gods and who follow him, Sogolon. Your old man was singing.”

“A lie.”

“No great stake in lying to you, old woman.”

“But great sport, maybe. You was right there in the room when only today he refuse to sing. The songs stay inside him mouth and none come out since Kwash Netu was King.”

“I know what I heard.”

“He don’t sing in thirty years, maybe more, but he sing in front of you?”

“Truth, his back was to me.”

“A silent griot don’t just open him mouth.”

“Maybe he was biding time for you to leave.”

“Your sting already duller than a moon ago. Maybe somebody giving him something new to sing about.”

“He was not singing about me.”

“How you know that?”

“Because I am nothing. Do you not agree?”

“I speaking to him when he wake.”

“Maybe he sung about himself? Ask him that.”

“He not answering that.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“A griot never going explain a song, only repeat it, maybe with something new, otherwise he would give the explaining not the song. Nothing about the King?”

“No.”

“Or the boy?”

“No.”

“Then for what else he be singing?”

“Maybe what all men sing about. Love.”

She laughed.

“Maybe some people in this world still need it.”

“Do you?” she said.

“Nobody loves no one.”

“The King before this one, Kwash Netu, was never one for learning. Why he would need to? This be something most people don’t know about kings and queens. Even back in many an age, learning was for something. I learn the black arts to use for and against. You learn from the palace of wisdom, so that you rest in a better place than your father. You learn a weapon to protect yourself. You learn a map so that you is master of the journey. In everything, learning is to take from where you be to where you like to go. But a king already there. That be why the King and the Queen can be the most ignorant in the kingdom. And this King mind as blank as sky until somebody told him that some griots sing songs older than when he was a boy. Can you think it? He never believe that any man would put to memory anything that happen before he born, for that is how kings raise their boys.

“But this King didn’t know there was griots who sing songs of King before him. Who they be. What they do. Everything from the wicked work of Kwash Moki. The King didn’t even hear a song. The man at him side say, Most Excellent Majesty, there is a song that can rise against you. Then they round up nearly every man of song with verse from before Kwash Moki’s time and kill them. And who they couldn’t find to kill, they kill wife and son and daughter. Kill them and burn down they house and order all to forget that any song sing that way. Kill everyone in this man family, they do. He escape but even now he wondering why they didn’t kill him. They could have silence him without killing nine people to do it. But such is the way with these kings of North. I speak to him when he wake, that I know.”

Sobs woke me up before sun. First I thought it was wind, or something hanging on from a dream, but there he was across from the bed I slept in, the Ogo crouched in a corner by the south window, crying.

“Sadogo, what is—”

“It is like he thought if he walk on it he could ride it. That is how he looked. Could he ride it? Why didn’t he ride it?”

“Ride what, dear Ogo? And who?”

“The griot. Why didn’t he ride it?”

“Ride what?”

“The wind.”

I ran to my north window, looked out for a blink, then ran to the south window, which Sadogo crouched beside. I saw Sogolon and went down. She wore white this morning, not the brown leather dress she was always in. The griot was at her feet, limbs twisted like a burned spider’s, broken in too many places, dead. Her back was to me, and her robes flapped.

“Everybody still sleep?” she said.

“Except the Ogo.”

“He said he just walk past him and off the roof like he go down the road.”

“Maybe he walked on that road to the gods.”

“This look like a time for mockery to you?”

“No.”

“What he sing to you? In the day now gone, what he sing?”

“Truth? Love. That was all of his singing. Love looking. Love losing. Love like how poets from where Mossi come from talk about love. Love he did lose. That is all he was singing, love he did lose.”

Sogolon looked up, past the house up into the sky.

“He spirit still walking on wind.”

“Of course.”

“I don’t care if you agree or no, you hear m—”

“We agree, woman.”

“No good for the others to know. Not even the buffalo; let him eat grass otherwhere.”

“You want to drag the old man out into deep bush? You want him to be food for hyena and crow?”

“And then the worm and the beetle. It don’t matter now. He with the ancestors. Trust the gods.”

The Ogo came out to join us, his eyes still red. Poor Ogo, it was not that he was gentle. But something about someone else bringing his own self such violence shook him.

“We take him out to the bush, Sadogo.”

This was still savannah. Not many trees, but yellow grass reaching my nose. Sadogo had picked him up and was cradling him like a baby, despite his bloody head. The two of us went out to taller grass.

“Death remains king over us, does he not? He still wants to choose when to take us. Sometimes even before our ancestors have made a place. Maybe he was a man in defiance of the final King, Ogo. Maybe he just said, Fuck the gods, I choose when to be with my own ancestors.”

“Maybe,” he said.

“I wish I had better words, words like he used to sing. But he must have thought that whatever was his purpose, he fulfilled it. After that there was nothing to—”

“You believe in purpose?” Sadogo asked.

“I believe people when they say they believe in it.”

“Ogo has no use for gods of sky or place of the dead. When he is dead he is meat for crows.”

“I like how the Ogo think. And if—”

It flew past my face so fast I thought it was a trick. Then another flew right past my head. The third came straight at my face and as if coming for my eyes, but I blocked it and its claws scratched my hand. One came for the Ogo’s shoulder and he swatted it so quick and hard that it exploded in a cloud of blood. Birds. Two went for his face and he dropped the griot. He swatted away one and grabbed the other, crushing it whole. One scraped the back of my neck. I grabbed it from behind and tried to snap its neck but it was stiff, it flapped and clawed and snapped at my finger. I let go and it flew around and came right back at me. Sadogo jumped in my way and swatted it. On the ground I saw what they were, hornbills, white head with a black streak of feather on top, a long gray tail, and a huge red beak that curved down, bigger than his head, for the red meant male. Another landed on the griot and flapped his wings. The Ogo moved in to grab him when I looked up.

“Sadogo, look.”

Right above us, swirling, screeching, a black cloud of hornbills. Three dived after us, then four, then more and more.

“Run!”

The Ogo stood and fought, punching and swatting and crushing in his knuckles and tearing wings, but they kept coming. Two heading for my head crashed into each other and fought on my scalp. I ran, my hand blocking my face, them scratching my fingers. The Ogo, tired of fighting, ran as well. Near the door of the house, they stopped following. Sogolon came back out and we turned around to see the swarm of birds—hundreds, if not more—clasp the griot with their claws, lifting him up slow and low above the ground, and flying him away. We said nothing.

We gathered our things, with Sogolon telling the others that the man is gone into deep wilderness to speak to spirits, which was not exactly a lie, and said we should take as much as we could carry. I said, Why would we need to, if we are less than a day to Dolingo citadel? She frowned and told the girl to grab more food. The girl hissed and said, If you want more food, go get it yourself. I wondered if Mossi was thinking as I did, and that this was not something I wanted to ask about right now. He grabbed a cloth and wrapped it around my neck for the scratch. Sogolon took one horse, the girl climbed up Sadogo’s back and sat on his right shoulder. Mossi climbed on the buffalo and they both turned and looked at me when I started walking.

“Don’t be foolish, Tracker, you will slow us down,” Mossi said.

He held out his hand and pulled me up.

Day reddened, then blackened, and we were nowhere near the Dolingo citadel. I nodded off, fell asleep on Mossi’s shoulder, jumped back in horror, and fell asleep again, this time not caring, only to wake up finding that we were still not there. Dolingo must have been one of those lands that seemed small but took two lifetimes to travel. The first time I woke up I was hard. Truth, that is why I jumped back. It must have been a dream that vanished as soon as I woke. As dreams always do. Yes, as they always do. I shifted as far away from him as I could, for to tell truth, I could smell him. Yes, I could smell everyone, but everyone wasn’t breathing much slower than everyone else. And with me cursing myself for sleeping on Mossi’s shoulder, hoping I didn’t drool or poke his back, though I shoot up when hard, not out. Of course hoping that I wasn’t hard when I was asleep only made me grow hard awake, and I thought of hornbills, and night skies, and foul water, anything.

“Good buffalo, if you tire of us, we can walk,” Mossi said.

The buffalo grunted, which Mossi took to mean stay as you are, though I wanted to climb off. But I also wished I wore thick, heavy robes this once. Not that robes hid any man’s desire. But it was not desire, it was my body holding on to a dream that my head had long let go. We were climbing slightly, into cooler night air, and passing small hills and great rocks.

“Sogolon, you said we are in Dolingo. Then where is it?” I asked.

“Silly, stupid, tracking idiot. Do you think we pass mountains? Look up.”

Dolingo. Not much had passed since we left the griot’s house, but as the bush grew thick with trees, I thought we were swerving around great rocks to avoid climbing them. I would have fallen off the buffalo, had Mossi not grabbed my hand.

Dolingo. These were not great rocks, even though they were as wide as mountains—a thousand, six thousand, maybe even ten thousand paces all around—but the trunks of trees with little branches sprouting low. Trees as tall as the world itself. At first, looking up, all I could see were lights and ropes, something reaching taller than the clouds. We came upon a clearing wide as a battlefield, enough for me to see two of them. The first spread as far as the field; the second, smaller. Both trunks rose through clouds and beyond. Mossi grabbed my knee, I am sure without thinking. The first had an edifice, maybe of wood or mortar or both that wrapped around the base of the trunk, and rising five floors, each floor maybe eighty to a hundred paces high. Light flickered from some windows and blazed bold from others. The trunk rose dark, and continued even higher, past more clouds, where it split like a fork. On the left, what looked like a massive fort, huge plain walls with high windows and doors, another floor on top, and another floor on top of that, going on and on for six floors, with a deck on the fifth and a platform hanging off, held by four ropes that must have been as thick as a horse’s neck. At the very top, a compound with the magnificent towers and roofs of a grand hall. On the right, the branch went unadorned as high as the forts, with a one palace on top, but even that palace had many floors, planks, decks, and roofs of gold. Clouds shifted, the moon shone brighter, and I noticed that the fork had three necks, not two. A third branch, thick as the other two, and dressed with buildings finished and buildings being built. And a deck that stretched longer than all others, so far that I thought it would soon break off. From the deck hung several platforms, pulled up and down by ropes. What number of slaves did it take to pull them? And what kind of now was this, what kind of future, where people built high and not wide? On top of, but not beside each other? Where were the farms and where were the cattle, and without them what did such people eat? Farther out in the great expanse, seven more towering trees stood high, including one with massive shiny planks that looked like wings, and a tower shaped like a dhow sail. The other, the trunk pointed slightly west, but the structures shifted slightly east, as if all the buildings were sliding off the base. From branch to branch, building to building, ropes and pulleys, platforms, and suspended wagons moving to and from, above and below.

“What is this place?” Mossi said.

“Dolingo.”

“I have never seen such magnificence. Do gods live here? Is this home of gods?”

“No. It is the home of people.”

“I don’t know if I want to meet such people,” Mossi said.

“The women might like your myrrh musk.”

Metal crunched, gears locked. Iron hit iron, and the platform lowered. The ropes all around tightened, and pulleys began to spin. The platform, above and coming down, blocked the moon and covered us in shadow. It was as long and wide as a ship, and when it landed it shook the ground.

Mossi’s hand still grabbed my knee. Sogolon and the girl galloped ahead, expecting us to follow. The platform was already rising and the buffalo leapt up on it, sliding a little. Mossi’s hand left my knee. He hopped off and wobbled a little, with the rising platform. From a tower on high, someone turned a giant glass or silver circle, perhaps a dish, that caught the moonlight, and shone it down on the platform. We could hear cogs, and gears, and wheels. We rose higher, and as we moved closer, I could see patterns along the walls, diamond after diamond, up, down, and crossways, and balls in the same pattern, and ancient glyphs and stripes and wild lines that looked as if they still moved, as if an art master had painted with wind. We rose higher, past the trunk, taller than any bridge or road, to the three branches. On the side of the right branch, someone had painted the black head of a woman, so tall it rose higher than four floors, and on her head a wrap rose even higher.

The platform leveled with a plank and all movement stopped. Sogolon stepped off first and Venin followed, walking without looking right or left, or above, which had several orbs of light, but no string or source. So did Sadogo and the buffalo. They had been here before, but I had not. Mossi was still in shock. Sogolon and Venin left the horse standing to the side. This was the right-side branch, the branch of the palace, and on the nearest wall, a sign in a language like one I knew, with letters as tall as any man.

“This is Mkololo, the first tree and seat of the Queen,” Sadogo said.

The moon moved in so close she eavesdropped on us. We walked on a wide stone bridge that curved over a river and met a road that had no bend. I wanted to ask what kind of science makes a river flow from so high, but the palace stood before us, as if it only now rose from the ground, as if we were mice beholding trees. The moon made all the walls white. On the lowest level, a high wall and a bridge to the left above a waterfall. On the next level, something I have only seen in lands of the sand sea. An aqueduct. Above that, the first floor, with lit windows and two towers. And above that still more chambers and rooms, and halls, and towers and grand roofs, some like the dome of a calabash, some like the pointed tip of an arrow. Rising to the right, a long platform with people, throwing shadow beneath us, as we came to a double door about three men high. And standing guard, two sentries in green armour, with neck gorgets that rose right below the nose, and long lances in one arm. They grabbed the handles and pulled the door open. We walked past them, but my hands were on my axes and Mossi grabbed his sword.

“Don’t insult the Queen’s hospitality,” Sogolon said.

Twenty paces in flowed a moat, with a bridge no wider than three men aside, taking us over to the other side. Sogolon went first, then the Ogo, Venin, the buffalo, Mossi, then me. I watched Mossi look around him, jumping at the slightest splash, or gasping from a bird above, or the crank of gears from the platforms outside. I watched him more than I did where we were going, and besides, Sogolon clearly knew. Heat came off the water, but fish and fish-beasts swam in it. We crossed the bridge and walked towards steps, watching men, women, standing beasts, and creatures I have never seen, dressed in iron plates and chain mail, and robes, and capes, and headdresses with long feathers. The men and women had skin the darkest I have ever seen. On each step stood two guards. At the top step, the entrance rose taller than I could measure.

Here is truth. I have been to magnificent dominions across the lands and under the seas, but where would one start with this court? Mossi stood still, struck with wonder, as I too stood still. The halls reached so high I expected the women and men to be as tall. In the great hall stood guards at positions along the walls, twenty plus ten more, and other guards, six, who stood facing us. They all had two swords and one spear and showed their faces, which were all a dark black-blue. Their hands as well. And the people who moved about the great hall, even those covered in colourful robes, still had the darkest skin I have seen since the Leopard when he moved like a cat. Guards stood on our landing as well, two of them. I wanted to see the make of their swords. This hall had gold on every pillar, and running through the trim of every armour, but gold would have been a terrible metal for a sword. The hall floor sunk lower than our platform, but the throne floor rose the highest, a pyramid that was all imperial seat, with a ledge or step all around on which several women sat, and above them, the actual throne and the actual Queen.

Her skin, like her men, a black that came from the deepest blue. Her crown, like a gold bird had landed on her head and wrapped her wings around her face. Gold also lined her eyes and glimmered from a small spot on both lips. A vest of gold straps hung loose from her neck and her nipples peeked out when she leaned back.

“Listen to me now,” she said. Her voice was deeper than the hum of monks. “Rumors I already hear them. Rumors of men the colour of sand, some even the colour of milk, but I am Queen and I believe what I wish. So I did not believe they lived. But look at the one before us.” The Dolingon tongue sounded like Malakal’s. Sharp sounds spoken in the quick, and long sounds that linger on purpose. Mossi already furrowed his brow.

He nudged me. “What does she say?”

“You don’t speak the Dolingon tongue?”

“Certainly. A fat eunuch taught me at four. Of course I don’t speak it. What does she say?”

“She talks of men she has never seen. You. I am almost sure of it.”

“Should I call him sandman?” she said. “I shall call him sandman, for I find this a funny thing …. I did say I find this a funny thing.”

The entire hall broke into laughter, clapping, whistling, and shouts to the gods. She flashed a hand and they quit in a blink. She waved Mossi over, but he did not understand.

“Tracker, they laugh. Why do they laugh?”

“She just called you sand boy or sand person.”

“This amuses them?”

“Is he deaf? I had bid him come over,” the Queen said.

“Mossi, she speaks of you.”

“But she said nothing.”

“She is Queen, if she said she spoke, she spoke.”

“But she said nothing.”

“Fuck the gods. Go!”

“No.”

Two spears poked him in the back. The guards started walking and had Mossi not moved, their blades would have pierced his skin. They went down the steps of our platform, crossed the vast floor and the women, men, and beasts of the court, and stopped at the foot of the throne floor. She beckoned him to come up, and the two guards blocking the steps shifted away.

“Chancellor, you already go to more territories than they write in all the great books. Tell me, have you ever see such a man as this?”

A tall slender man with long and thin hair stepped out of the floor, to speak to the Queen. He bowed first.

“Most excellent Queen, many time and here is the thing. He—”

“How come you never purchase one for me?”

“Forgive me, my Queen.”

“Are men even lighter than this?”

“Yes, Most Magnificent.”

“How frightening, and how delicious.” Then, to Mossi, “What is your name?”

Mossi stared at her blankly, like he truly was deaf. Sogolon said he did not know their tongue.

A guard came forward and gave the chancellor Mossi’s sword. The chancellor looked at the blade, examined the handle, and said in Kongori tongue, “How come you by such a sword?”

“’Tis from a strange land,” Mossi said.

“Which land?”

“Home.”

“And that is not Kongor?”

The chancellor, facing the Queen, said to Mossi, “Clearly somebody did name you. What is it? The name, the name.”

“Mossi.”

“Hmm?”

“Mossi.”

“Hmm?”

The chancellor nodded and a spear poked Mossi’s side.

“Mossi, most excellent Queen,” Mossi said.

The chancellor repeated to the queen.

“Mossi? Just Mossi. Men like you fall from sky and just pick up names? Where do you hail, master Mossi? What house?” the chancellor asked.

“Mossi from the house of Azar, from the lands of the eastern light.”

Chancellor repeated in Dolingo tongue and the Queen bleated out a laugh.

“Why would a man east of the sea live in these lands? And what is this disease that burned all the colour from your skin? Tell me now, since nobody in this court likes when you annoy their Queen …. I said, nobody in this court like if you annoy the Queen.”

The court erupted in nos and uh-uhs, and shouts to the gods.

“And yet his hair is black as coal. Lift that sleeve …. Yes, yes, yes, but how is this? Your shoulder is lighter than your arm? I can see it right there, did they sew arms onto you? My wise counsel had better start counseling.”

I was looking at all this and wondering if only the South had mad kings and queens. Sogolon stood back when I expected her to say something. I tried to read her face but hers was not mine. If you disgusted me, you knew as soon as I bid you morning greetings. The Queen was playing and what was play to her? The Ogo stood still but his knuckles cracked from him squeezing too hard. I touched his arm. Mossi was no better at hiding his mind from his face. And Mossi standing there, looking at everything, understanding nothing.

He saw my face, and his fell into worry. What? he mouthed to me, but I did not know how to say anything to him.

“I will see more. Remove it,” the Queen said.

“Remove your robes,” said the chancellor to Mossi.

“What?” Mossi said. “No.”

“No?” the Queen said. That she understood despite the Kongori tongue. “Shall a queen wait for consent from a man?”

She nodded and two of her guards grabbed Mossi. He punched one straight on the cheek but the other pushed a knife against his throat. He turned to me and I mouthed, Peace. Peace, prefect. The guard used the same knife, lodged between the garment and his shoulders, and cut it off. The other guard pulled his belt and everything dropped on the floor.

“No gasps? I hear no gasping?” the Queen said, and the room erupted in gasps, coughs, wheezes, and shouts to the gods.

Mossi, thinking, These are the things that must happen to me, straightened his back, raised his head, and stood. The women and men and eunuchs, who sat at the foot of the Queen, all crawled closer to look. What was the mystery, I did not know.

“Strange, strange thing. Chancellor, why is it darker than the rest of him? Lift it, I will see the sac.”

He came for Mossi’s balls and Mossi jumped. Meanwhile in all this Sogolon said nothing.

“Just as dark? Yes, it is strange, chancellor.”

“It is strange, Most Excellent.”

“Are you a man made up of other men? Your arms darker than your shoulders, your neck darker than your chest, your buttocks whiter than your legs, and your, your …” Then, to the chancellor, “What do your courtesans call it?”

Truth, I laughed.

“I am not one for the company of courtesans, Most Excellent,” said the chancellor.

“Of course you are, they walk on four legs and cannot speak but they are yours. Enough of this talk. I will know why it is so darker than the rest of him. Is that how all men are in other lands? Is this what I would have seen had I married one of the Kalindar princes? East man, why is it the colour of that man standing with Sogolon?”

The chancellor said only that it was curious that a man with such light skin had such dark balls.

Mossi saw me covering a laugh and he frowned. “The gods had some play with me, my Queen,” he said.

The chancellor told the Queen what Mossi said, almost as he said it.

“Which man were they playing with when they took it from him to give it to this man? I will know these things. Right now.”

Mossi looked perplexed again, but watched the people watching him. Still he said nothing.

Sogolon cleared her throat. “Most excellent Queen, remember why we come to Dolingo.”

“I am not one for forgetting, Sogolon. Especially when it was a favor. Especially the way you begged for it.”

Mossi looked at them with the shock I hid.

“Look at your stunned lips. And why would I, the wisest of queens, not speak that savage North tongue—especially when I constantly have to deal with savages? A child could learn it in a day …. Why does my court not ooh and aah?”

The chancellor translated for the court, which erupted in oohs and aahs and shouts to the gods.

She waved her hand and the guards poked at Mossi with their spears. He grabbed his clothes and walked back to us. I looked at him the whole time but he only looked ahead.

“You share with me your cause because you think we are sisters. But I am Queen, and you are less than a flame’s moth.”

“Yes, Most Excellent,” Sogolon said, and bowed.

“I did agree to help you because Lissisolo and I should be queens together. And because your King gives even demons pause. How he wishes Dolingo was there for the conquering. I know what he thinks at night. That one day he will forget that Dolingo remains neutral and take the citadel for himself. And one day he will try. But not today, and not while I am Queen. I am also very bored. Your patched-up man come the closest to something worth my eye in moons. At least since I cut one of those princes of Mitu in half to see if he was as empty as he sounded. You, the one with marks, did you see our sky caravans?”

She spoke to me.

“Only on the way up to you, most excellent Queen,” I said.

“Many still wonder what craft or spell keeps them in the sky. It’s neither spell nor craft, it is iron and rope. I don’t have magicians, I have masters of steel and masters of glass and masters of wood. Because in our palace of wisdom are people who are actually wise. I hate men who accept things as they are and never question, never fix, never make better, or do better. Tell me, do I frighten you?”

“No, my Queen.”

“I will. Guards, take these two to Mungunga. The Ogo and the girl can head to their rooms. Leave us women to talk heavy matters. And feed the buffalo some elephant ear grass. Must have been moons since anyone give him food worthy of him. Leave now, all of you. Except this woman who thinks she is a sister.”

You should teach me such words, prefect,” I said, laughing. Mossi had been cursing and cursing in his home tongue, pacing up and down the caravan, stomping so hard it swung a little. He distracted me from the fact that we were hanging at a great height, being pulled across the great trees by gears. The more he cursed, the less I imagined a rope bursting and us falling to death. The more he cursed, the less I imagined that the Queen sent us up so high in the sky and so far from the ground to kill us.

“Any higher and we could kiss the moon,” I said.

“Fuck the moon and all who worship her,” he said.

He still paced. Up and down, to the window and back; at least by following him I could see this caravan. This high, the moon shone so bright that green was green and blue was blue and his skin was almost white, now that he had tied his torn clothes at the waist and left his chest bare. What a caravan was this; at first I thought they flipped a wagon upside down so that the wheels were on top and then had the wheels along tight bands of rope. Then looking at how the caravan swelled like the fat belly of a big fish, I thought it was a boat that sailed on sky. It had a bow and stern just like a boat, was fattest in the middle just like a boat, but with house windows going all around and a roof of trunks slatted together with tar. The floor, flat and smooth, and wet with dew, almost slippery. Also this, the air blew cold this high, and whoever traveled on this thing last was bleeding. Mossi kept pacing and cussing and as he passed me I grabbed his arm. He tried to move, tried to push away my hand, tried to push me off, but I held on until he stopped huffing and cussing.

“What?”

“Stop.”

“She did not humiliate you.”

“You were without clothes only a few nights ago. You were not angry then.”

“I knew where I was and who I was with. Just because I live with you all does not mean I am not still a man of the East.”

“You all?”

He sighed, and went over to the side to look out the window. A cloud so silver and so thin it would break away into nothing, and another caravan passing us much farther away, theirs lit by firelight.

“Who do you think they are? Why would anyone have business traveling at night? Where do they go?”

“Thinking like a prefect?”

He smiled. “Their guards did not follow us.”

“This Queen does not see men as much of a threat. Or they will cut this loose before we make it to the other side. And we will plunge to our deaths.”

“Neither of those brings a smile to my face, Tracker. Maybe with us both up here alone, they think we will talk, and maybe they have discovered some form of magic to listen.”

“Dolingon are advanced for this age, but no one is that advanced.”

“Maybe we should make as if we are fucking like violent sharks, to give them something to listen to. Uncock me at once, with that battering ram of yours! My hole, a chasm now it is!”

“How learned you, the ways that sharks fuck?”

“God, he knows. Was the first beast I could think of. God’s words, Tracker, do you never smile?”

“What is there to smile about?”

“The lightness of my company, to begin with. The magnificence of this place. I tell you, gods come to lie here.”

“I thought you worship only one god.”

“Does not mean I do not see the others. What are these lands known for?”

“Gold and silver, and glass rock loved by lands far away. I think the citadel is on high because they have ruined the ground.”

“Do you think these great trees are alive?”

“I think everything here is alive, by whatever keeps them living.”

“Why does that mean?”

“Where are the slaves? And what do they look like?”

“Wise question. I—”

The shouting came upon us before the caravan, passing so close this time that we could smell spirits and smoke, so close that the drumming beat right into our ears and chest, while some plucked kora and lute as if about to pull the strings apart. The caravan passed until we faced each other. The drumming was not just the drum but also the feet of men and women jumping and stomping like the Ku or Gangatom in mating dance. A man, his face painted red and shiny, held a torch to his mouth and blew out fire like a dragon, fire that burst right between us. I jumped out of the way, Mossi stood still. The caravan, which had not stopped, kept on until the drumming felt like the memory of beat. We were going to the branch away from the palace. The third one.

“Someone’s blood was in this caravan, someone young,” I said.

“Men and women seem very loose here. Maybe they killed a child for sport.”

“What is loose? I have heard from men like you before.”

“Men like me?”

“Men with one sad god. You act like old women who forgot that they were young women. Your one god, who thinks pleasure is a lesser thing.”

“Can we talk about something else? We are almost on the other side. Tracker, what is our plan?”

“I’m not the one declaring herself ruler over us.”

“If I wanted to know from her, I would have asked her. Tell me this. Is there a plan?”

“I don’t know of any.”

“That is madness. So the plan, as I see it, is we wait until you smell this magic boy close and when bloodsuckers or whatever they are manifest, we do what? Fight? Grab the child? Spin like dancing men? Do we just wait? Is there no cunning to this?”

“You ask me things I do not know.”

“How are we to save this child from whatever evil guards him? And if we do save him, what then?”

“Maybe we should make a plan now,” I said.

“Maybe you should leave proving you’re smart tongued to Sogolon.”

“Truth?”

“That would be the preferred thing, if you can manage it.”

“There was never a plan, other than fight whoever has the child and take him back. Kill if you have to. But no craft, so strategy, no subterfuge, no plan, as you said it. But that’s not full truth. I think there is a plan.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. But Sogolon knows.”

“Then why does she need us? Especially since she acts as if she does not.”

I looked around. We were being watched, listened to, or our lips read.

“Move with me to the dark,” I said, and he stepped into shadow with me.

“I think Sogolon has a plan,” I said. “I don’t know it, nor does the Ogo, or anybody else who journeyed with us before. But that’s the plan too.”

“What do you mean?”

“There is no plan for us because there will be no us. Send us to fight the bloodsuckers, maybe even be killed by them, while she and the girl save the boy.”

“Is that not the pact you bound yourself to?”

“Yes, but something changed with Sogolon when she knew we were to head to Dolingo. I don’t know what, but I know I won’t like it.”

“You don’t trust her,” Mossi said.

“She sent two pigeons out when we left the old man’s house. Pigeons to the Queen.”

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

“I …”

“Your heart searches for an answer. Good.”

He smiled, and I tried to not smile but show a warm face.

“Why not just put a blade to her neck and demand to know?” he said.

“That how one gets a woman to obey in the East? She will not be threatened, that Sogolon. You have seen it, she can just blow you away.”

“What I see is that someone hunts her,” Mossi said.

“Someone hunts all of us.”

“But her hunter is only after her. And he or she is without cease.”

“I thought you only believe in one god and one devil,” I said.

“I think you repeat that to the point of annoyance. I have seen many a thing, Tracker. Her enemies have gathered mass. Maybe all of them with causes just. Other side.”

The caravan bumped something and shook. It threw the prefect right at me and I caught him as his head hit my chest. He grasped my shoulder and pulled himself up. I wanted to say something about myrrh. Or his breath in my face. He stood straight, but the caravan swung again and he grabbed my arm.

Five guards met us at the platform and said you land in Mungunga, the second tree. They took us over a steep stone bridge, with lookouts on both sides of the road, first to my room where they left me, and then, I presumed, to Mossi’s. Mine looked like it hung off the great tree itself, and was hanging by rope. I don’t know where they took the prefect. This was another room with a bed, something I was beginning to get used to, though why anyone would want a soft bed I didn’t know. The more your bed felt like clouds, the less you would be alert if trouble roused you from sleep. But what a grand thought, sleeping in a bed. There was water to wash, and a jug of milk to drink. I stepped to the door and it opened without my touch. That made me stop and look around, twice.

The balcony outside was a thin platform, maybe two footsteps wide, and loose, with rope as high as the chest to stop drunk men from falling to their ancestors. Behind this tree, two trees stood, and behind them several more. My head was scrambling for a bigger word than vast, something for a city as large as Juba or Fasisi, but with everything stacked on top and growing into the sky instead of beside each other and spreading wide. Did these trees still grow? Many windows flickered with firelight. Music came from some windows, and loose sounds running on wind: eating, a man and woman in quarrel, fucking, weeping, voices on top of voices creating noise, and nobody sleeping.

Also this, a closed tower with no windows, but where all the ropes carrying caravans came in and out. The Queen was right when she said Dolingo did not run on magic. But it ran on something. Night was going, leaving us, leaving people who would not sleep, leaving me wondering what Sogolon spoke of to the Queen, and where she was right now. Maybe that was why it took me longer than it should to smell it on me. Myrrh. I rubbed my chest, cupped my nose, and breathed in as one would drink in.

In the dream jungle monkeys swung on vines, but the trees grew so tall that I could not see sky. It was day and night like it always is in the Darklands. I heard sounds, laughter that sometimes sounded like tears. I was hoping to see the prefect, expecting to see him, but a monkey walking on two legs pulled at my right hand, let go, and jumped off, and I followed him, and I was on a road, and I walked, then ran, then walked, and it was so very cold. I feared hearing black wings but did not hear them. And then fire broke out in the west, and elephants, and lions, and many beasts, and beasts with forgotten names ran past me. And a warthog with his tail on fire squealed, Is the boy, is the boy, is the boy.

A smell woke me up.

“Welcome to Dolingo the magnificent, Dolingo the unconquerable, Dolingo that make the gods of sky come down on earth for nothing in the sky was anything like Dolingo.”

He stood over me, short, fat, and blue in day as the Dolingons were in night, and I almost told him that had I slept the way I usually do, with my ax under my pillow, he would be a headless man right now. Instead I rubbed my eyes and sat up. He leaned in so close that I almost bumped his head.

“First you wash, no? Yes? Then you eat the rise meal, no? Yes? But first you wash, no? Yes?”

He wore a metal helmet that lacked the nose guard of a warrior. But it was trimmed in gold, and he looked like a man who would soon tell me such.

“Magnificent helmet,” I said to him.

“Do you love it? No? Yes? Gold mined from the southern mines made its way to my head. This is no bronze that you see, only gold and iron.”

“Did you fight in any wars?”

“Wars? Nobody wars with the Dolingon, but yes, you should know that I am indeed a very brave man.”

“I can see it from what you wear.”

Indeed, he wore the thick quilted tunic of warriors, but his belly poked through like a pregnant woman. Two things. “Wash” meant him summoning two servants to the room. Two doors to the side opened without a hand, and the servant pulled out a wood-and-tar tub full of water and spices. That was the first I knew there were doors there. They scrubbed me with stones, my back, my face, even scrubbed my balls with the same roughness that they scrubbed the bottoms of my feet. “Eat” meant a flat plank of wood pushing itself out of the wall, where no slot was before, and the man pointing me to the stool already there, then feeding me with those things beloved of flighty men from Wakadishu, knives and spoons, and making me feel like a child. I asked if he was a slave, and he laughed. The plank pulled itself back into the wall.

“In our radiant Queen is all wisdom and all answers,” he said.

They left me and after going outside and walking ten paces in the cold, I went back in and dressed in the robes they left out. If anything these rare moments in robes made me hate them all the more. At the door, I heard a scuffle in the room, scurrying feet and huff. Charge in or sneak in, I wasn’t sure, and when I did choose to swing the door open, the room was empty. Spies, I expected. What they could be looking for, I didn’t know. Over by the balcony the door opened before I reached it. I pulled back a few steps and it closed. I stepped forward a few steps and it opened.

I left again and walked down to a path running along the edge of this floor. Dirt and stone as if cut from a mountain. This is what happened. I walked until I came to a break in the boundary, and attached to the break and hanging off the edge was a platform of wood slats, held by rope at the four corners. Without my word, and with no sight of anyone, the platform lowered a long drop to the floor below. I left the platform and walked down this new path, which was a road, wide as two. Across I could see the palace and the first tree. At the lowest level of this one, a small house with three dark windows and a blue roof, which seemed cut off from everything else. Indeed, no steps or road led to it. It stood in the huge shadow of the lookout platform, a shelf as wide as a battlefield, on which guards marched. The floors looked patched together, the lowest with a drawbridge and the wall a red colour, like savannah earth. The next floor a retaining wall that went half around. The third, high with massive arches underneath and trees, wild and scattered, and still another floor with the tallest walls, taller than seven, maybe eight times taller than the door and windows. This floor boasted towers with gold roofs, and still two more floors climbed higher. Across on the right to yet another tree, and level with my eyes, were wide steps leading up to a great hall. On the steps men in twos, in fives, and in larger, wearing blue, gray, and black coats sweeping the floor; sitting, standing, and looking like they were talking of serious things.

“I thought my poor balls would bleed the way those fucking eunuchs went at it,” Mossi said when I saw him. They had put him on this floor. It came to me: Why would they scatter us so?

“I said, Sirs, I am not the one who clipped you both, don’t take your anger out on my poor little knight. So that’s what makes you laugh, tales of my suffering,” Mossi said.

I didn’t notice that I had laughed. He broke into a wide grin. Then his face went grave.

“Let us walk, I must speak with you,” he said.

I was curious how roads worked in a city that went up instead of wide. What did that waterfall fall into?

“How sorry I am for you, Tracker. In a crowd you would have been lost to me.”

“What?”

He pointed at what I was wearing, the same as he, and as many of the men and boys who passed us, a long tunic and a cloak clasped only at the neck. But only in the colours I saw before: gray, black, and blue. Some men, all older, wore red or green caps over their bald heads, and red and green sashes at the waist. The few women passed by on carts and open caravans, some in white gowns with wide sleeves like wings, the tops split open to plump up breasts, and head wraps in several colours pointing to peaks like a high tower.

“I have never seen you so dressed,” he said.

A cart pulled by two donkeys passed us, with an old man and a boy in it. They went to the edge as far as I could see, then vanished. At first I thought the man rode the cart off to his death.

“The road spirals around, sometimes in and sometimes out of the tree. But at some point, if they want to leave the citadel, one of those bridges that pulled us up must take them down,” Mossi said.

“One night and you are guide to all things Dolingo.”

“You learn much in one night when you miss sleep. Like this. The Dolingon build on high because of an ancient prophecy that the great flood will one day return, which many still believe. An old man told me this, though he might have gone mad from walking the streets and not sleeping. The great flood that consumed all lands, even the Hills of Enchantment and the unnamed mountains beyond Kongor. The great flood that killed the great beasts that roamed the land. Know this, I have been to many lands and one thing they all seem to share is this great flood that came to pass and another that will one day come true.”

“Seems what all lands do share are gods so petty and jealous that they would rather destroy all the worlds than have one that moves on without them. You said we must speak.”

“Yes.”

He took my arm and started walking faster. “I think we should assume we are being watched, if not followed,” he said. We went over the bridge and under a wide tower, with a blue stone archway taller than ten men. We continued walking, his hand still grabbing my arm.

“No children,” I said.

“What?”

“I have seen no children. None last night, but I thought that was because it was night. But so far into this day, none I have seen.”

“And your complaint is?”

“Have you seen even one?”

“No, but there is something else I must tell you.”

“And slaves. Dolingo is not Dolingo because of magic. Where are the slaves?”

“Tracker.”

“First I think the servants who scrubbed me are the slaves, but they seem like masters of their craft, even if the craft was back scrubbing and balls scraping.”

“Tracker, I—”

“But something is not ri—”

“Fuck the gods, Tracker!”

“What?”

“This night gone. I was in the Queen’s chambers. When the guards took you to your room, they took me to mine only to wash me and take me back.”

“Why did she call you back?”

“The Dolingon are a very direct people, Tracker. She is a very direct queen. Don’t ask questions where you know the answer.”

“But I do not know.”

“They took me back to her chambers, on the same caravan that we came over. This time four guards went with me. I would draw a sword but then I remembered they took our weapons. The Queen would see me again. I mystified her, it seems. She still thought my skin was magic and my hair and my lips, which she said looked like an open wound. She had me lie with her.”

“I did not ask.”

“You should know.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know! I do not know why I feel you must know, since it means nothing to you. Curse this. And she was cold, Tracker. I do not mean she was distant, or that she showed no feeling, not even pleasure, but that she felt cold, her skin colder than northern wind.”

“What did she have you do?”

“This is what you are asking me?”

“What do you expect me to ask, prefect, how did it make you feel? There are many women I could ask that question.”

“I am not a woman.”

“Of course not. Woman is supposed to look at this as a natural course of events. Man, he falls on his knees and screams what a horror, what a debasing.”

“How you have no friends mystifies me,” Mossi said.

He walked away. I had to skip to catch him.

“You asked for my ears and I gave you a fist,” I said.

He walked several steps before he stopped and turned around. “I accept your apology, such as it is.”

“Tell me all,” I said.

Mungunga was waking up. Men dressed like elders on their way to where elders go. Jugs held by no hands, at windows throwing out the slop of last night into gutters that ran inside the trunk of the tree. Men in robes and caps passing by on foot with books and scrolls, men in cloaks and pants, passing by on carts driven by donkeys and mules, without bridles. Women pushing carts overflowing with silk, fruits, and trinkets. People hanging off the retaining walls, with dyes, and sticks, and brushes, back to painting the mural of the Queen on the side of the right-hand branch. Everywhere and nowhere, the sweet reek of chicken fat popping over flame, and bread baking in ovens. Also this, so everywhere that the noise of it became a new quiet: gears running, ropes creaking, and the beat and boom of big wheels turning, though nothing for the eye to put such sounds to.

“They would not even let me wash myself, saying that the Queen has a nose for filth and sneezes like a storm at even a hint of it. I said, Then like many in these lands you must be nose-blind to the funk under your arms. Then they rubbed me in a fragrance they said would be most pleasing to the Queen, which made me wince for the smell was like shit at the feet of growing crops. In my hair, in my nose, do you not smell it still on me?”

“No.”

“Morning bathers scraped it off with all my skin and most of my hair then. Sogolon was there, Tracker.”

“Sogolon? Watching?”

“They were all watching. No queen fucks alone, nor king either. Her handmaidens, her witchmen, two men who looked like counselors, a man of medicine, Sogolon, and all the Queen’s guards.”

“Something ill is in this kingdom. Did you—how does one—”

“Yes, yes, curse it. I think the old bitch promised this Queen something from me, and didn’t ask me.”

“What did she have you do?”

“What?”

“No children anywhere and the Queen has you lie with her the first night you are here. Did you—”

“Yes, if that is what you wish to know. I left my seed in her. You act if as arousal means anything. It does not even mean consent.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Your eyes asked. And they judged.”

“My eyes don’t care.”

“Fine. Then I shall not care either. Then her witchmen and night nurses said it was so, that my seed was in her. The witchman made sure.”

“Why does a queen bed a foreigner she had only just met to have him leave his seed in her? And why is that a matter for the whole court? I tell you, Mossi, something is wrong about these lands.”

“And the Queen was cold as a mountaintop. She said nothing, and they warned me not to look straight at her. She didn’t look as if she was breathing. And everyone watched as if I was there to patch a hole in the floor.”

“Who warned you?”

“The guards who washed me.”

“Did they look like her? Skin so black it’s blue?”

“Isn’t that everyone we see?”

“We have seen neither slaves nor children.”

“You said that. She had a cage, Tracker. A cage with two pigeons. Strange pet.”

“Nobody keeps that disgusting animal as a pet. The Aesi uses pigeons. So does Sogolon. She said she was sending word to the Dolingon queen when I asked her.”

“Twice they made me spill inside her.”

“What did Sogolon say to you?”

“Nothing.”

“We should find the others.”

I grabbed his hand and pulled him quick into a doorway and held him.

“Tracker, what in all the fucks—”

“Men, two in number, following us.”

“Oh, the two men a hundred paces behind me, one in a blue cape and white robes, the other, open vest and white trousers like a horseman? Trying to look as if not in league with each other, but clearly walking together? I think, Tracker, they are following me.”

“We could lead them to that plank, and throw them off.”

“Are all your forms of fun this quick?”

I pushed him away. We kept on walking, past a number of steps I could not count, but I did notice the path took us right around the trunk, covered in little roofs, towers, and great halls, twice. And at almost every turn there was a new tree in the distance. And at every turn I was getting angry with Mossi and couldn’t explain why.

“A city with no children, and a queen hungry to get one, even from you. There is some honor in that, is there not?”

“No honor to such lowly customs.”

“And yet you dropped your robes, and rose to meet it.”

“What is burning you?” he said.

I looked at him. “I feel lost and I do not know what to do here.”

“How could you be lost? I am following you, so I am lost too.”

The men stopped waiting on us and were approaching.

“Maybe what you’re looking for is not a reason to fight, or to save the boy, but just a reason,” Mossi said.

“Fuck the gods if I know what that means.”

“I’ve spent my life on the chase for men. People are either running to, or running from, but you just seem to be cut loose. You have no stakes in this and why should you? But have you a stake in anything? In anyone?”

At this I wished for nothing more than to punch the next remark back into his mouth.

He looked at me, his eyes sharp, waiting for an answer. I said, “How shall we deal with these men? We have no weapons, but we do have fists. And feet.”

“Are they—”

“Do not turn around, they are upon us.”

The two men looked like monks, tall and very thin, one with the long hair and the cultivated face of a eunuch. The other, not as tall but still thin, looked at us for less than a blink before looking past us. Mossi clutched at his sword but there was no sword. They walked past us. Both smelled heavy of spices.

On the way back to my room not even the thought of the gods at peace could stop me from cursing.

“I cannot believe you fucked her.”

He spun around to me. “What?”

I stopped and turned back. Only one cart passed us. The street stayed empty, but you could hear buying, selling, and yelling down the bazaars in the lanes.

“You heard what I said. Thank the gods, I am just a low jungle boy,” I said. “She must think you’re an eastern prince.”

“You think that’s how it is, that you’re too low to be used and killed,” Mossi said.

“If she conceives you can thank the gods you are a father of multitudes. Like a rat.”

“Listen, you bush-fucker. Don’t judge me for something you would have done. Was there any choice? Do you think I even wanted to? What would you do, insult the Queen the night she gives you hospitality? What would have happened to us?”

“This is new waters for me. Never had I had a man fuck somebody else for my benefit. If she conceives they will come for you.”

“If she conceives they will come for everyone,” Mossi said.

“No, you.”

“Then let them come. They will learn there is one man who is not a coward in Dolingo.”

“I could strike you so hard right now.”

“You, the hound on two legs, thinks he can strike a warrior? I wish you would.”

I walked right up to him, my fists clenched tight, just as several men in the gowns of scholars came out of an alley and walked past us. Three turned around, walking with their group, but backward to look at us. I turned away and walked to my room. I didn’t want or expect Mossi to follow me, but he did and as soon as he came through the door I pushed him hard against the wall. He tried to push me off but could not, so he kneed me in the ribs, and they shifted like he broke one. The pain hit my chest and ran up to my shoulder. He pushed me off hard. I staggered, tripped, and fell.

“Fuck the gods,” he said, and sighed.

He offered a hand to pull me up, but I pulled him down, punching him in the stomach. He fell, yelling, and I jumped on him trying to punch him, but he grabbed my hands. I pulled, and we rolled and hit the wall, rolled to the terrace door, which opened and we almost fell out. I rolled on top again and grabbed his neck. He swung his two legs up from behind me, crossed them at my shoulder, and pushed me off, then jumped on me when I slammed into the floor. He punched but I dodged and he hit the wood and yelled. I jumped on him again, wrapping my arm around his neck, and he flipped backward, slamming hard into the floor with me underneath him, and the air pushed right out of my nose and mouth. I couldn’t move or see. He flipped under me, choking me with one arm and locking down my legs with his legs. I swung my one free arm and he caught it.

“Stop,” he said.

“Go fuck the prickle palm.”

“Stop.”

“I will kill—”

“Stop or I start breaking fingers. Are you going to stop? Tracker. Tracker.”

“Yes, fucking whorseson.”

“Apologize for calling my mother a whore.”

“I call your mother and your fath—”

I screamed the rest of the word out. He had pulled my middle finger so far back I could feel the skin about to pop.

“I apologize. Get off me.”

“I’m under you,” he said.

“Let go.”

“By the gods, Tracker. Flush this fury from you. We have bigger fusses than this. Will you stop? Please.”

“Yes. Yes. Yes.”

“Give me your word.”

“You have my fucking word!”

He let go. I wanted to turn around and punch him, or slap him if I couldn’t punch, or kick him if I couldn’t slap, or head-butt him if I couldn’t kick, or bite him if he caught my head. But I stood up and squeezed my finger.

“It is broken. You have broken it.”

He sat on the floor, refusing to get up.

“Your finger is no more broken than your ribs. Fingers are spiteful, though. If it is sprained it will stay sprained for a year.”

“I will not forget this.”

“Yes you will. You picked this fight because another deceived you long before I even met you. Or because I fucked a woman.”

“I am the biggest fool. You all look at me, the fool with the nose. I am just a hound, as you say.”

“I spoke harsh. In the middle of a fight, Tracker.”

“I am the hound from the river lands, where we build huts from shit, so I am nothing but the beast to all of you. And everybody had two plans, or three, or four, plans so they win, and everybody else lose. What is your second plan, prefect?”

“My second plan? My first plan was to find out who murdered an elder and his family, until I came across some people who would not leave their bodies alone. My second was not to follow a suspect to the library that got burned down. My second plan was not to kill my own prefects. My second plan was not to be on the run with a bunch of bastards who can’t even cross a road together, all because my brothers would kill me on sight. My second plan, believe it or not, was not to be stuck with such a sorry bunch of fellows because I have nowhere else to go.”

He stood up.

“Fuck yourself and your self-pity,” I said.

“My second plan is to save this boy.”

“You have no stake in this boy.”

“You are wrong. One night. It took one night to lose everything. But maybe everything was nothing if it could be lost so fast. This boy is now the only thing that will make my life seem as if the past few days have any sense to them. If I am going to lose everything, then fuck the gods and the devils if my life will not mean something. This boy is the only thing I have left.”

“Sogolon wants to save the boy herself. Maybe the girl and the buffalo as well to protect them on the way back to Mantha.”

“A thousand fucks for what Sogolon wants. She still needs you to find the boy. Here is a simple thing, Tracker. Give her no news.”

“I don’t—”

He looked at me and put a finger to his lips. Then he nodded over his shoulder. He stepped to me quiet until his lips touched my ear and whispered, “What do you smell?”

“Everything, nothing. Wood, skin, arm funk, body smells. Why?”

“Both of us have been scrubbed clean.”

“What do you smell that you don’t know?”

I switched places with him, backing slow to the other end of the room. My calf hit the stool and I moved it out of the way. Following me slow, Mossi picked up the stool, by the leg. Right before the side wall, the same wall that a table came out of, I stopped and turned around. Porridge, wood oil, dried grass rope, and sweat, and again the stink of an unwashed body. Behind the wall? In the wall? I pointed to the planks of wood and the look on Mossi’s face asked the same questions. I slapped the wood and something scurried like a rat.

“I think it’s a rat,” Mossi whispered.

I moved my fingers along the top of the wood, and stopped at a slot about the size of three fingers. My fingers gripped the wood and yanked. I yanked again and the wood broke from the wall. My hand gripped the space and tore out the plank.

“Mossi, by the gods.”

He looked in, and sucked in his breath. We stood there, staring. We grabbed planks and ripped them away, planks as tall as us, and what would not move we kicked in, and kicked away. Mossi grabbed at the boards almost in a panic, as if we were running out of time. We yanked and tore and kicked out a hole in the wall as wide as the buffalo.

The boy was neither standing nor lying, but leaning against a bed of dry grass. His eyes were wide open, seeing terror. He was scared but could not speak, tried to scamper but couldn’t. The boy couldn’t scream because of something like the innards of an animal pushed through his mouth and down his throat. He couldn’t move because of the ropes. Every limb—legs, feet, toes, arms, hands, neck, and each finger—was tied to, and pulled, a rope. His eyes, wide open and wet, looked river blind, the black circles as gray as moody sky. He looked blind but he could see us, so terrified at us moving in closer that he pulled and yelped and grabbed and tried to shield his face from a blow. It made the room go mad, with the table pushing out and in, the door swinging open and shut, the balcony ropes loosening and tightening, the shit bucket emptying. Rope wrapped around his waist to keep him there, but one of the planks had a hole wide enough for his eye, so yes, he could see.

“Boy, we will not hurt you,” Mossi said. He reached in with his hand to the boy’s face and the boy banged his head against the grass over and over, turning away, expecting a blow, his eyes running tears. Mossi touched his cheek and he screamed into the innard.

“He does not know our tongue,” I said.

“Look at us, we are no one blue. We are no one blue,” he said, and stroked the boy’s cheek long and slow. He was still pulling and kicking and the tables, windows, and doors were still opening and closing, pushing out and slamming in. Mossi kept stroking his cheek until he slowed and then stopped.

“They must have tied these ropes with magic,” I said.

I could not untie the knots. Mossi stuck his finger in a slot on his right sandal and pulled out a small knife.

“Sentries are less likely to search when you step in shit,” he said.

We cut every rope away from the boy, but he stood there, leaning against the dry grass, naked and covered in sweat, his eyes wide open as if he was never anything but shocked. Mossi grabbed the tube going down his mouth, looked at him with all sadness, and said, “I am so, so sorry.”

And he pulled it out not fast, but vigorously, and did not stop until it was all out. The boy vomited. With all the ropes cut, the door and all the windows closed shut. The boy looked at us, his body skinned by rope burns, his mouth quivering, as if about to speak. I did not say to Mossi that they might have cut his tongue out. Mossi, a prefect for one of the most unruly cities in the North, had seen everything but cruelty such as this.

“Mossi, every house, every room, those caravans, they are all like this.”

“I know. I know.”

“Everywhere I go to find this boy, to save this boy, I run into something worse than what we are saving him from.”

“Tracker.”

“No. These monsters won’t kill him. No harm has come to the boy. None. I smell him; he is alive, no decay or death on him. Look at this boy you are holding up, he cannot even stand. How many moons was he behind that wall? From birth? Look at this nasty dream of a place. How are bloodsuckers any worse?”

“Tracker.”

“How? You and I are the same, Mossi. When people call on us, we know we are about to meet evil. Lying, cheating, beating, wounding, murdering. My stomach is strong. But we still think monsters are the ones with claws, and scales and skin.”

The boy looked at him as Mossi rubbed his shoulders. He stopped trembling, but looked past the balcony doors as if outside was something he had never seen. Mossi placed him on the stool and turned to me.

“You are thinking what can you do,” he said.

“If you say nothing.”

“I would never tell you what to think. Only … Tracker, listen. We come here for the boy. We are two against a nation and even those who came with us might be against us.”

“Every person I have met says to me, Tracker, you have nothing to live for or die for. You are a man who if he were to vanish this night, nobody’s life would be any worse. Maybe this is the kind of thing to die for …. Say it.”

“Say what?”

“Say that this is bigger than me and us, that this is not our fight, that is the way of the foolish and not the wise, this will make no difference …. Well, what are you going to say?”

“Which of these mangy sons of bitches do we kill first?”

My eyes popped wide open.

“Consider this, Tracker: The plan is to never let us leave. So then let us stay. These cowards have lived without an enemy so long they probably think swords are jewelry.”

“They have men in the hundreds upon hundreds. And hundreds more.”

“We need not care about hundreds. Just the few at court. Beginning with that hideous Queen. Follow for now, play the fool. They will summon us to court soon, tonight. Right now we should really feed this—”

“Mossi!”

The stool sat empty. The terrace door swung back and forth. The boy was not in the room. Mossi ran so fast to the balcony that I had to grab his cloak so he wouldn’t fall. No sound came out of Mossi’s mouth but he was screaming. I pulled him back into the room but still he pushed forward. I wrapped my arms around him tighter and tighter. He stopped fighting and let me.

We waited until dark to set out for the Ogo. That idiot who fed me came to the door to tell me of dinner at court, though not with the Queen. I should go to the docks and wait for the caravan when the drums begin to sound. No? Yes? Mossi held back behind the door with his knife. Someone must have seen the boy jump to his death, even if the poor child said nothing all the way down. Or maybe a slave falling to his death was not a new thing in Dolingo. This is what I was thinking while the man kept trying to stick his head in my door until I said, Sir, if you come in I shall fuck you too, and his blue skin went green. He said he would return for a glorious breakfast tomorrow, no? Yes.

I sensed Sadogo in MLuma, the third tree, the one more like a pole with massive wings to trap sunlight. Mossi worried that guards would be watching us, but such was the arrogance of Dolingo that nobody looked at two future seed pods as much of a threat. I said to him, How quaint our weapons must have seemed to them, not just our weapons, but all weapons. They were like those plants with no thorns that have never known an animal to eat them. When the men and women staring at us made Mossi reach for the knife hidden in his coat, I touched his shoulder and whispered, How many men with skin such as yours have they seen? He nodded and kept his peace.

At MLuma, the caravan stopped at the fifth floor. Sadogo was on the eighth.

“I do not know why she is so sour. Sour before we even got to this city,” Sadogo said.

“Who, Venin?” I asked.

“Stop calling me that foul name. That is what she said. But it is her name, what else should I call her? You were there when she said, My name is Venin, were you not?”

“Well she was always sour to me, so I—”

“Sour, she never was. I was never sour to her when I let her sit on my shoulder.”

“Sadogo, there are more crucial things, and we need to have words.”

“Why did they put us away from the others, Venin? That is all I said and she says that is not her name, and yells to take my monster arms and my monster face away, you will never get anywhere near me, for I am a fearsome warrior who wants to burn the world. And then she called me shoga. She is different.”

“Maybe she did not see things the way you saw things, Sadogo,” Mossi said. “Who knows the ways of women?”

“No, she is different and—”

“Do not say Sogolon. Her scrawny hand is in far too many bowls for us to talk about them all. There is a plot, Sadogo. And the girl might be in league with Sogolon.”

“But she spat when I said her name.”

“Who knows why they bicker? We have more serious issues, Ogo.”

“All these ropes, coming from nowhere and pulling everything. Foul magic.”

“Slaves, Ogo,” Mossi said.

“I do not understand.”

“Let that rest for another day, Sadogo. The witch had other plans.”

“She does not want the boy?”

“That is still her plan. We are just not a part of it. She intends to get the boy herself after I find him, and with this Queen’s help. I think the Queen and her struck a bargain. Maybe when Sogolon rescues the boy the Queen will give safe passage to the Mweru.”

“But that is what we do. Why the deceit?”

“I don’t know. This Queen gets to have us for their wicked science, maybe.”

“Is that why everybody is blue? Wicked science?”

“I don’t know.”

“Venin, she pushed me out the door with one hand. How I must disgust her.”

“She pushed you out? With one hand?” I asked.

“That is what I said.”

“I have seen an enraged woman turn over a wagon full of metal and spices. It might have been my wagon, or I might have enraged her,” Mossi said.

“Sadogo,” I said, louder, to shut Mossi up. “We need to be on guard, we need weapons, we need to get off this citadel. How do you feel about the boy? Should we rescue him as well?”

He looked at both of us, then out the door, furrowing his brow. “We should save the boy. No blame is on him.”

“Then that is what we shall do,” Mossi said. “We wait for them to arrive in Dolingo. We take them on ourselves, not telling the witch.”

“We need weapons,” I said.

“I know where they keep them,” said Sadogo. “No man could lift my gloves, so I took them to the swords keeper.”

“Where?”

“On this tree, the lowest level.”

“And Sogolon?” Mossi said.

“There,” he said, and pointed behind us. The palace.

“Good. We go when the bloodsuckers come. Till then—”

“Tracker, what is that?” Mossi said.

“What is what?”

“Do you have a nose or no? That sweet scent on the air.”

As he said so, I smelled it. The smell grew sweeter and stronger. In the red room nobody saw the orange mist coming from the floor. Mossi fell first. I staggered, fell to my knees, and saw Sadogo run to the door, punching the wall out of anger, fall back on his bottom, then full on his back, and shaking the room, before everything in the room went white.