smote in a blink, and them hollering, screaming, and shouting to the gods.
We stepped towards her, and Sogolon, not sure what to do, shifted back and forth, then skipped clear of us. She raised her left hand but stopped when it made her chest bleed. She kept darting at each of us, her eyes wide one blink, hazy the next, almost asleep, then stunned awake. She turned to Mossi.
“Consort, she was going treat you like. Keep her womb full and she wouldn’t care.”
“Until she turned tired and sent him to the trunk,” I said.
“She treat the pretty ones better than a king be treating he concubines. That is truth.”
“Not the truth you told me. Not in words, not in meaning, not even in rhyme.”
We moved in closer. Sadogo squeezed his left knuckles, his right hand bloody and loose. Venin-Jakwu pulled a wrap around their leg wound and grabbed a dagger, Mossi, half his face covered in blood, pointed his two swords. Sogolon turned to me, the one without a weapon.
“From me could come a tempest to blow everybody out that window.”
“Then you would be too weak to stop the blood leaking out of you, and the others coming after you. Just like the one in Venin,” I said.
She backed into the wall. “All of you too fool. None of you ready. You think I was going leave the true fate of the North to all of you? No skill, no brain, no plan, all of you here for the coin, nobody here care about the fate of the very land you shit on. What a bliss, what a gift to be so ignorant or foolish.”
“Nobody here was lacking skill, Sogolon. Or brain. You just had other plans,” Mossi said.
“I tell you, I tell all of you, don’t go through the Darklands. Stop walking in the room crotch first, and walk headfirst. Or step back and be led. You think I goin’ trust the boy to people like you?”
“And where is your boy, Sogolon? Do you nest him so tight to your bosom we can’t see him?” Mossi said.
“No skill, no brain, no plan, yet were it not for us, you would be dead,” I said.
“Goddess of flow and overflow, listen to your daughter. Goddess of flow and overflow.”
“Sogolon,” I said.
“Goddess of flow and overflow.”
“You still call to that slithering bitch?” Venin-Jakwu said.
“Bunshi. You calling for your goddess?”
“Don’t speak of Bunshi,” Sogolon said.
“Still there thinking you get to give orders,” said Venin-Jakwu. “She don’t change in a hundred years, this Moon Witch. I tell you true. Woman in Mantha still calling you prophet, or they finally see you just a thief.”
“We need to save the boy, you know where they heading,” she said to me.
Venin-Jakwu, the wrap around their leg almost full red, started circling her slow, like a lion, and began to talk.
“So what this Moon Witch be telling you about herself? For the only one who tell tales about Sogolon is Sogolon. She tell you she come from the Watangi warriors south of Mitu? Or that she was river priestess in Wakadishu? That she was the bodyguard and adviser to the sister of the King when she was just a water maid, who step over many heads to get to her chamber? Look at her, on a mission again. Save the royal sister’s boy. She tell you that nobody ask her? She set off on mission to find boy, so that she no longer the joke of Mantha. And what a joke. The Moon Witch with one hundred runes but only one spell, finally get to show her quality. Maybe she going tell you later. Listen to me, I tell you this. The moon witch sure be three hundred, ten and five, I tell you true. I meet her when she was just two hundred. She tell you how she live that long? No? That one she keep close to her lanky bosom. Two hundred years ago I was still a knight and have only one hole, not two. You know who me be? Me be the one who knock her off her horse when she forget to write a rune strong enough to bind me.”
Sogolon kept looking at me.
“And her little goddess, you meet it? It come sliming down the wall as of late? If she is a goddess then me is the divine elephant snake. That little river jengu, claiming she fight Omoluzu, when you could kill her with just seawater. Her goddess is an imp.”