weapons, pieces of weapons, and bars that Sadogo pulled out, all scattered on the floor. My head bounced off Sadogo’s back, making it swirl worse. Then he swung around and I saw the prisoners run over the guards like a wave over sand. They shouted, and rallied, and ran past us in the cell, all of them squeezing through the small door, sand through the time glass.
“The boy, I know where he is. I know where …” I said.
I couldn’t tell where we were going until we passed through it. Then the sun touched my back and we stopped. I was flying through the air, I was on grass and the buffalo’s snout was on my forehead. Mossi crouched beside me.
“The boy, I know where he is.”
“We must forget the boy, Tracker. Dolingo is bleeding. Slaves have cut their ropes and attacked guards in the third and fourth trees. It will only spread.”
“The boy is in the fifth tree,” I said.
“Mwaliganza,” Sadogo said.
“The boy is nothing to us,” Mossi said.
“The boy is everything.”
Noise ran in and out of me. Booms and bams and crackles and shouts and screams.
“You say that after what Sogolon did to you. To us.”
“Is the boy blameless or not, Mossi?”
He looked away.
“Mossi, I would kill her for what she did, but this, this takes nothing from why she did it.”
“Fucking nonsense about divine children. Who shall rise, who shall rule. I come from lands reeking with prophecies of child saviors, and nothing ever came out of them but war. We are not knights. We are not dukes. We are hunters, killers, and mercenaries. Why should we care about the fate of kings? Let them take care of their own.”
“When kings fall they fall on top of us.”
Mossi grabbed my chin. I knocked his hand away.
“Who is this that now lives in your head? Are you like her?” he said, pointing to Venin.
“Him.”
“As you like. The Tracker helping the witch—”
“We are not helping her. I tell you true, if I see one of them taking her for the kill, I will watch it. Then I will kill him. And I … I … and even if I didn’t care about rightful kings and queens, or what is wicked in the North, and what is just, I will take a son back to his mother,” I said.
The sun mocked me. Smoke rose from a tower in the second tree and drums sounded as a warning. None of the caravans moved, for the slaves stopped moving them. Some swung midway with people inside them shouting and screaming. Every sound startled Sadogo; he darted left, right, and left again, squeezing his knuckles so hard the joints popped. A crash roused the buffalo, who snorted, telling us we had to leave. As I sat up, pushing away Mossi’s help, Venin approached me, still gripping the club like a toy.
“I will go. I have unfinished business with Sogolon.”
“Venin?” Mossi said.
“Who is that?” Venin said.
“What? You are who. Venin is what you go by since I met you. Who else would you be if not her?”
“It is not her,” I said.
The him in her looked at me.
“You been thinking so a long time,” they said.
“Yes but I could not be sure. You are one of the spirits Sogolon write runes to bind, but you broke from her.”
“My name is Jakwu, white guard for the King Batuta who sits in Omororo.”
“Batuta? He died over a hundred years ago. You are … no matter. Leave the old woman to the bloodsuckers. She is like them in company,” Mossi said.
“Do all the spirits want what you want?” I asked.
“Revenge against the Moon Witch? Yes. Some want more. Not all of us died by her hand, but in all our deaths she is responsible. She drove me out of my body to appease an angry spirit, and now she thinks she has appeased me.”
His voice was still Venin’s but I have seen this in possession. The voice remains, but the tone, the pitch, the words he chooses are all so different that it sounds like another voice. Venin’s voice went hoarse. It came out like a rumble, like the voice of a man long gone in years.
“Where is Venin?”
“Venin. She the girl. She gone. She will never be back in this body. Call her dead. It is not what she is, but it will do. Now she is doing what I did, roam the underworld until she remembers how she came by that place. And then she