through the night, or I could point out mighty hunters and wild beasts in the stars. You could also say, Fuck the witch and her old beliefs, I am a man of science and mathematics.”
“Mockery is cheap.”
“Fear is cheap. Courage costs.”
“So I am now the coward for not sleeping. What say you?”
“A strange night this is. Are we near the noon of the dead?”
“It has come and passed, I think.”
“Oh.”
He was quiet for a while.
“You men from the eastern light worship only one god,” I said.
“What is meant by ‘eastern light’? The light which falls on that place falls on this also. There is only one god. Vengeful in humor, merciful too,” he said.
“How do you know you picked the right god?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“If you can only have one, how did you make the right choice?”
He laughed. “Choosing a lord would be like choosing wind. He chose to make us.”
“All gods make. No reason to worship them. My mother and father made me. I don’t owe them worship for it.”
“So you raised yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Really.”
“Yes.”
“Hard for a child to grow with no parents, East or West.”
“They are not dead.”
“Oh.”
“How do you know your god is even good?”
“Because he is. He says he is,” Mossi said.
“So the only proof you have that he is good is his own word for it. Have I told you? I am the mother of twenty and nine children. And I am sixty years old.”
“You make no sense.”
“I make too much sense. If he says, I am good, there is no proof, only that he said so.”
“Maybe you should sleep.”
“Sleep if you wish,” I said.
“So that you can watch me in slumber?”
I shook my head. “If we are in Dolingo, you are ten days’ ride from Kongor.”
“There is nothing to ride back to, in Kongor.”
“No wife, no children, no sisters or brothers you traveled with? No home with two trees and your own little granary with millet and sorghum to return to?”
“No, no, no, no, no, and no. A few of those I fled to come here. And what do I go back to? A room that I owe in rent. A city where people grabbed at my hair so much that I cut it off. Brothers in the chieftain army I have killed. Brothers who now want to kill me.”
“There is nothing to ride forward to in Dolingo.”
“There is adventure. There is this boy you search for. There are uses for my skilled sword yet. And there is your back, which clearly needs watching, since nobody else does such.”
I did not laugh long.
“When I was young, my mother said that we sleep because the shy moon did not like when we watched her undress,” I said.
“Don’t close your eyes.”
“They are not closed. Yours are, right now.”
“But I never sleep.”
“Never?”
“A little, sometimes never. Night comes and goes like a flash and I may have slept for two flips of a sandglass. Since I never tire in the morning, I assume I slept according to need.”
“What do you see at night?”
“Stars. In my lands night is where people do the evil to enemies they call friends in the day. It’s when sihrs and jinns come play, and people scheme and plot. Children grow to fear it because they think there be monsters. They build a whole thing about it, about night and dark and even the colour black, which is not even a colour here. Not here. Here evil has no qualm with striking at noon. But it leaves night beautiful in look and cool of feel.”
“That was almost verse.”
“I am a poet among prefects.”
I thought to say something about wind rippling on the river.
“This boy, what is his name?” he whispered.
“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone bothered to name him. He is Boy. Precious to many.”
“And yet nobody named him? Not his mother? Who has him now?”
I told him the story up to the perfume and silver merchant. He raised himself up on his elbows.
“Not this Omoluzu?”
“No. It wasn’t the boy’s blood they followed. These were different. The merchant, his two wives and three sons all had their lives sucked out of them. Just like Fumanguru. You saw the bodies. Whoever they are, they leave you worse alive than dead. Did not believe it until I saw a woman like a zombi with lightning coursing through her like blood. I came to Kongor to find the boy’s scent.”
“I see why you need me.”
I knew he smirked, even if I didn’t see it.
“All you have