“It was not to kill you, I swear.”
“There is venom in this kohl. An ingenious thing like you must know of enchantments, so learn this. Nothing born of metal can harm me.”
“It was for anybody who ask. He never said kill you.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know! A man in veils, more veils than a Kongori nun. He come in Obora Dikka moon, in the Basa star. I swear it. He said blow kohl breath in the face of anyone who asks of Basu Fumanguru.”
“Why would anyone ask you of Basu Fumanguru?”
“Nobody ask until you.”
“Tell me more of this man. What colour his robes?”
“B-black. No blue. Dark blue, his fingers blue. No, blue in the fingernails like he dyes great cloths.”
“Are you sure he was not in black?”
“It was blue. By the gods, blue.”
“And what was to happen next, Ekoiye?”
“They said men would come.”
“You said he before.”
“He!”
“How would he know?”
“I was to go back to my room and release the pigeon in the window.”
“This story grows more legs and wings by the blink. What else?”
“Nothing else. Am I a spy? Listen, I swear by the—”
“Gods, I know. But I do not believe in gods, Ekoiye.”
“This was not to kill you.”
“Listen, Ekoiye. It is not that you lie, but that you don’t know truth. There was enough venom spewing from your mouth to kill nine buffalo.”
“Mercy,” he said, weeping.
Sweat made him slippery in my hand.
“The ever-dry Ekoiye breaks into sweat.”
“Mercy!”
“I am confused, Ekoiye. Let me retell this in a way that adds up to sense, for me and perhaps you. Even though Basu Fumanguru has been dead three years, a man in blue robes hiding his face still approached you, little more than a moon past. And he said, Should anyone speak of Basu Fumanguru, a man you would have no reason to know, take this antidote, then blow viper-soaked kohl dust in his face and kill him, then send word for me to pick up the body. Or not kill him, just put him to sleep as we can collect him as garbage mongers do for a fee. Is that all?”
He nodded, over and over.
“Two things, Ekoiye. Either you were not supposed to kill me, only leave me helpless so they can squeeze fact from me themselves. Or you were supposed to kill me but ask deeper questions before.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don—”
“You don’t know. You don’t know anything. You don’t even know if the antidote, the poison killer, kills the poison. Here I thought you were a wise boy trapped in an unwise life. No antidote ever kills the poison, Ekoiye, it only delays it. The most you live is eight years, maybe ten, pretty one. Nobody told you? Maybe there is not too much venom in you, and you live ten and four years. I still don’t understand why they came to you.”
Now he laughed. Loud and long.
“Because everybody comes to the pleasure monger later or sooner, Tracker. You cannot help yourselves. Husbands, chiefs, lords, tax collectors, even you. Like a pack of hungry dogs. Later or sooner you all come back to who you are. Like you pushing me down and fucking the little he-whore rough because you were a dog even before that eye. You know what I wish, man-fucker? I wish I had venom to kill the whole world.”
When I let him go he screamed all the way down. He would not be dead—the fall was not high enough. But he would break something, maybe a leg, maybe an arm, maybe a neck. I went back the way we came, passed under the same sounds of men fucking every last coin into wet rugs, and bolted the hatch behind me. The pigeon that he kept in a bamboo cage by the small window I took out and held gentle. The note wrapped around her left foot I removed. At the window I let it loose.
The note. Glyphs, the like I had seen before, but could not remember it. I pushed the birthing chair into the darkest corner of the room and waited. The window looked large enough. The door would mean that others knew about this arrangement, among them, Miss Wadada. I thought on this hard. Nothing could have happened under Miss Wadada’s roof without her knowing of such. But this too is so of the Kongori. If I did kill Ekoiye tonight, she would still welcome me tomorrow with a Take off those robes so I can see you, big stiff prince, and then send me off with her newest girl-boy.
Even as night grew deep the heat still crawled around, leaving my back sticking to the seat. I peeled off the wood and almost missed it, the kick of feet on the wall. Climbing without ropes, a man perhaps under enchantment, where whatever the foot touched became floor. Hands at the windowsill first, knuckles ashy. Hands pulled up the elbows, which pulled up the head. Black head wrap around the forehead and the mouth. Eyes, an opium-lover red, sweeping the room, locking with my eyes, but not seeing me. Shoulder robes in blue, a leather sash over the left shoulder. One leg in, and at the bottom of the sash, two sheaths for two swords and a dagger dangling. I waited until all of him was in and his long blue robes swept the floor.
“Hail.”
He jumped. He grabbed for his sword. My first dagger cut his neck, my second plunged under his chin, killing his head before his legs knew he was dead. He fell, his head slamming into the floor right at my foot. Undressing him felt more like unwrapping him. Scars on his chest, a bird, lightning, an insect with many legs, glyphs that looked in the style of the note. Top joints of both index fingers missing. He was not Seven Wings. And he had the knotty, violent crotch scar of a eunuch. I knew I did not have much time, for whoever sent him was either awaiting his return or followed him here. He had no fragrance other than sweat of the horse he rode on whatever journey led him to be lying dead on Miss Wadada’s floor. I turned him over and traced the glyphs on his back to remember. Two thoughts came to me, one just gone and one now come. Now come: that there was no blood, though where the knife stabbed him, blood usually bursts forth like a hot spring. Just gone: that the man really had no smell. The only scent coming from him was his horse, and the white clay from the wall he’d climbed.
I rolled him over again. Two glyphs on his chest matched the note. A crescent moon with a coiled serpent, the skeleton of a leaf on its side, and a star. Then his chest rumbled, but it was not the rattle of the dead. Something hitting against each bone of his ribs, pumping up his chest and his heart, making his eyes pop open. Then his mouth, but not like he was opening it, but as if someone was pulling his jaws apart, wider and wider until the corners of his lip began to tear. The rumble shook him all the way to his legs, which hammered into the floor. I jumped back and stood up. Ripples rose from his thighs, moved up to his belly, rolled under his chest, and then escaped through his mouth as a black cloud that stank of flesh much longer dead than the man. It swirled like a dust devil, getting wider and wider, so wide that it knocked over some of Ekoiye’s statues. The spinner closed in tight on itself and turned to the window. In the spin of cloud and dust it formed and then broke apart back into dust, the bones of two black wings. It might have been a trick of poor light, or the sign of a witch. The spinning cloud left through the window. Back on the ground the man’s skin turned gray, withering like a tree trunk. I stooped. He still had no scent. I touched his chest with one finger and it caved in, then his belly, legs, and head crumbled into dust.
Here is truth. In all the worlds I have never seen such craft or science. Whoever sent the assassin would certainly be coming now. The man, or spirit, or creature, or god behind such a thing would not be stopped by two daggers, or two hatchets.
His name, Basu Fumanguru, walked into my thoughts right then. Not only did they kill him, but they that did so wanted him to remain dead. I had questions, and Bunshi would be the one to answer them. She left the child with an enemy of the King, but many men challenge the King in great halls and in notices and writs, and they are not killed for it. And if the child was marked for death, why not kill him before? I have heard nothing that would push anyone to get rid of Fumanguru that would not have done so before, certainly no King. As a man he was no more than a chafe on the inside of the leg. Then the thought you knew you would be left with, but denied because one would never wish to be left with such a thought, announced itself. This Bunshi said the Omoluzu came to kill Fumanguru and she saved his child as his dying wish. But it was not his child. Somebody told Ekoiye to send word as soon as someone came asking of Fumanguru, because somebody knew one day a man would come to ask. Somebody has been waiting for this, for me, for someone like me all along. They were not after Fumanguru.