“More interested in questions where the answer is the boy,” I said.
“You said you know him? Tell me what you know,” Sogolon said.
I turned to Mossi, who was looking at us, back and forth, like somebody who had not yet decided who to believe, who to follow. He rubbed his young beard, longer and redder than I remembered it, and looked at the papers he held in his hand.
“Mossi, read it.”
“Gods of sky—no, lords of sky. They no longer speak to spirits of the ground. The voice of kings is becoming the new voice of the gods. Break the silence of the gods. Mark the god butcher, for he marks the killer of kings. The god butcher in black wings. And the rest?”
“Please.”
“Take him to Mitu, to the guided hand of the one-eyed one, walk through Mweru and let it eat your trail. Take no rest till Go.”
Sogolon shook her head. She had never read or heard this before, and knew that I knew it.
“So Fumanguru say take the boy to the one-eyed one in Mitu, walk through the Mweru, and then head to Go, a city that only live in dreams. And the Aesi is the butcher of gods? Maybe I choose a wrong man in Basu,” Sogolon said.
“You dare say that now? It was your choosing that led to his death,” I said.
“Watch your tongue,” said the girl.
“Did I hold a knife to his neck and say, Fumanguru, do this? No.”
“Mark the god butcher, for he marks the killer of kings,” I said.
“And?”
“Leave playing the fool to the girl, Sogolon. The god butcher is the Aesi. The killer of kings is the boy.”
Sogolon laughed, soft like a grin at first, then a loud howl.
“They are prophecies, are they not? Of some child—”
“What kind of prophecy rest hope on a child? Which prophet so fool? Witch bitches from the Ku? On a little thing that not going live ten years? Your pretty prefect come from a place where people never stop with the talk of magic children. Children of fate, people put all hope in them. All hope in a thing that stick a finger in he nose and eat what he pull out.”
“And yet that prophecy makes more sense than the horseshit you and the fish keep selling,” I said. “I took this road with you because I thought it would go somewhere. This boy is as much proof the King killed Fumanguru as a cut on a donkey’s ass. You still clutch it in the breast, the truth. I know what you put in my way to not find, Sogolon, including that you were at Fumanguru’s house and tried to use a spell to hide it. That you have been looking for ways to find the boy yourself so that you would not need me. You even had one whole moon to do it, and yet here we are. You are right, Bunshi is not your master. But she is not used to lying to men. She nearly went mad when I caught her double-tongue. And what is this girl anyway? You go off in some secret door and make her play with spears and knives and now she calls herself warrior? Is this another person who will die while you watch? I see that too, witch, for that you can also blame the Sangoma. She’s more powerful dead than alive.”
“I tell only truth.”
“So either you are a liar or you have been lied to. I sniffed you out every step of the way, Sogolon. The night Bunshi told me Fumanguru ran afoul of his own elders, I went to see an elder. Then I killed him when he tried to kill me. He also wanted to know about the writs. He even knew about Omoluzu. Your fish told me the boy was Fumanguru’s son, but he had six sons, none of them the boy. The day before we met you, the Leopard and I followed the slaver to a tower in Malakal, where he kept a woman with the lightning sickness inside her. Bibi was there too, and Nsaka Ne Vampi. So either you were dropping nuts like a trail for the bird to pick and follow, or your mask of control is just that, and you control nothing.”
“Watch your mouth. Do you think I need a man? I need you is what you thinking? I know the ten and nine doors.”
“And you still couldn’t find him.”
Mossi went to stand behind me. Sogolon stared, frowned for a blink, then smiled.
“What is his use, you said to me when you saw the Leopard’s boy. A woman like you keeps the grains and burns the chaff,” I said.
“Give me the meat and not the fat, then.”
“You need me. Or you would have been rid of me a moon ago. Not only do you need me, you waited a whole moon for me. Because I can find this boy; your door only makes it more quick.”
“He is with you?”
“Mossi is his own man. We have come a long way, Sogolon. Longer than I would have ever gone on half-truths and lies, but something about this story … no, that’s not it. Something about you and the fish shaping this story, controlling so hard how each of us reads it, that turned into the only reason I came. Now it will be the only reason I leave.”
I turned to walk away. Mossi paused for a second, looking at Sogolon, then turned.
“It right there. Read it. Everything right there. Now you waiting on me to put it together for you like your name is child.”
“Be a mother, then.”
“Pretty prefect, read that line again.”
Mossi pulled the papers out of his pouch again.
“Lords of sky. They no longer speak to—”
“Jump over that.”
“As you wish. Mark the god butcher, for he marks the killer of kings.”
“Stop.”
Sogolon looked at me as if she’d just made everything plain. I almost nodded, thinking I must be a fool to still not see it. I would have left it there too.
“Your little boy is a prophesied assassin who will kill the King?” Mossi said before I could say it. “You want us to find the boy fated by some fool to commit the worst crime one could ever commit. Even this talk right now is treason.”
He was still a man following his uniform, even now.
“No. That would take least ten more years, if it was true. A bad slave and terrible mistress? Why you think it say take him to the Mweru, where no man come back from alive? And to Go, which no people ever see? Killer of kings mean killer of the depraved line, rejected by the gods, or else why would the Spider King join so close to the god butcher? The boy not here to kill no King. He is the King.”
Both Mossi and I stood silent, the prefect more stunned than me. I said to Sogolon, “You trusted this prince to a woman who sold him as soon as she had the chance.”
Sogolon turned back to the window.
“People are deceitful above all things. What can one do?”
“Give us word on this boy. We will have it.”
This is what Sogolon told us in the room. The girl was standing at the door, as if guarding it. And then the old man was in the room, though neither I nor Mossi remembered when he stepped past the girl. Sogolon told this story:
When the ewe drummer want to send you tidings good or bad, he pull the drum strings tight to the body and pitch the voice high or pitch the voice low. Through the pluck, through the pitch, through the beat, lie the message that only you can hear if it meant for you. So when Basu Fumanguru write the writ, and decide he going to send the first to the marketplace, the second to the palace of wisdom, the third to the hall of grand elders, and the fourth to the King, he fashion a fifth, to send to who? Nobody know. But nobody even get send the writs and nobody know what they say. Not even those he tell he was going to write. All we know is that we the sisters who serve the King sister was going to the western hall to pour libation to the earth gods since where we live was in the earth, and the gods of sky was deaf to we. And coming up to us was the sound of the drum.
Mantha. The mountain seven days west of Fasisi and north of Juba. From afar, to the eye of warriors, and travelers, and land pirates, Mantha be a mountain and that is all it be. It rise high like a mountain, have rocks like a mountain, and wild bush like a mountain. Cliff, and rock, and bush, and stone, and dirt, all with no plan. You have to go behind the mountain, and to get behind the mountain take one more day, climb for another half day to see the eight hundred and eight steps, cut out of the rock as if gods make them for the gods to walk. In a time older than now, Mantha be the fortress from where the army could see enemy coming close without the enemy knowing they being watched. That way nobody ever take the lands by surprise and nobody ever invade. Over nine hundred years Mantha gone from being the place to watch enemies, to the place to hide one. Kwash Likud, of the old house Nehu, before the house of this King, would send an old wife to Mantha as soon as he married a new one, or if she produce no boy child, or if the children ugly. Right before the Akum dynasty, the King, once they crown him, would banish all brother and man cousin there, a royal prison where they would die, or become the new King if the King die first. Then come the Akum dynasty, and kings who do as the father do before. And Kwash Dara no different from Kwash Netu. And Netu no different from his great-grandfather, who made it a royal decree that the firstborn sister must join the divine sisterhood, in service of the goddess of security and plenty. And so it be again, that kings all follow the way of Kwash Moki, and violate the true line of kings and give the crown to the son.