but stopped quick and caught an arrow with his left hand, stopping it from his face. With his right he caught another. His hands full, the third and fourth shot straight into his forehead. I saw Fumeli, his bow still pulled, two arrows between his fingers. The Aesi fell back and crashed into the floor, the arrows flag-posts in his forehead. The nothing lost his spell and died a Tokoloshe. The birds, flapping and squawking, flew away from the window.
“We must go,” Leopard said to the King sister.
He grabbed her hand and yanked her away. I could hear Sadogo fighting the invisible monsters and crashing through one wall and then another. I stared at the Aesi lying there and thought not of him, but of Omoluzu, who always attacked from above, not behind. I ran to Sadogo. Killing the Aesi dropped his invisible enchantment. All black and tarlike, but not Omoluzu. Red eyes, but not like Sasabonsam. Shadow creatures who could still break, like the neck that Sadogo just snapped. I ran into the dark, swinging my ax through shadow, but it felt like chopping flesh and chunking bone. Two of the shadowings jumped me, one kicking me in the chest and one trying to stomp me down. I pulled my knife and rammed it right up where his balls would be. He squealed. Or she. On the floor I swung the ax and chopped off toe after toe, then jumped back up. The shadowings ran up and down the Ogo, enraging him so much that he grabbed at the dark, crushing a head with his right hand, breaking a neck with his left, and stomping two so hard into the floor that he kicked a hole right through it. I rolled out of the shadows and a hand grabbed my ankle. I chopped it off.
“Sadogo!”
They crawled all over him. As he pulled off one, another came. They climbed and crawled all over him so that all but his head vanished. He looked over at me, his eyebrows raised, his eyes lost. I stared at him, trying to hold him with just a look. I rose and gripped my ax, but he closed his eyes slow, opened them and looked at me again. I couldn’t read his eyes. Then a shadow creature crawled over his face.
“Sadogo,” I said.
He stomped, stomped, and stomped until he cracked the floor wider open and, with the shadow creatures grabbing him, fell through. I heard one crash the floor, then another, and another, and another and another. Then nothing. I went to the hole and looked down, but saw hole after hole after hole, then darkness. At the foot of the final steps, the door ahead, I looked over to the pile of dirt, bricks, dust, and black shadow, and something that glimmered just a little. His iron glove. Sadogo. He could never face such a life of knowing he killed the old man with such wickedness, even if it was not him. Not truly. I stood there, looking, waiting, not hoping, but waiting all the same, but nothing moved. I knew if anything moved it would be something from the black. And soon.
Mossi ran in shouting something about people and birds. I didn’t hear him. I looked over into the dark, waiting.
Mossi touched my cheek and turned my head to his face.
“We must go,” he said.
Outside people from the city stood about two hundred paces away and watched us. Nsaka Ne Vampi and the King sister mounted horses, the Leopard and Fumeli shared one. The King sister placed the boy in front of her and held him with one hand, the reins in the other. The people stood back. Birds bunched, thick in the sky, then flew apart, then came together again.
“Leopard, look up. Are they possessed?” I asked.
“I don’t know. The Aesi is dead.”
“I do not see any weapons,” Mossi said.
“We also stole these horses,” the Leopard said.
Mossi mounted his horse and pulled me up. The crowd made a noise and charged after us. The King sister galloped off, not waiting. Nsaka Ne Vampi turned to us and, riding off, shouted, “Ride! Fools.”
We took off as the crowd starting flinging rocks. I lost the boy’s smell, even though I could still see the King sister.
“Where are we going?” he said.
“The Mweru,” I said.
The crowd kept chasing us even as we rode away, down to the border road and then west, then south, along the Gallunkube/Matyube, which took us west again until we saw