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