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?”