“Tracker! This way.”
Smoke burned my eyes and made me cough. I couldn’t remember if the Sangoma protected me from fire. Mossi pulled me along, cursing that I wasn’t moving faster. We dashed through an arch of flames right before they collapsed, and burning paper hit my heel. He jumped over a stack of books, went through a wall of smoke, and vanished. I looked back, almost slowed down to think of the fire’s speed, and jumped through the smoke. And landed almost on top of him.
“Stay to the ground. Less smoke. And they will see less of us when we come out.”
“They?”
“You think this is one man?”
This section of the hall had only smoke, but the fire was running out of food and hungrier than ever. It jumped from stack to stack, and ate through papyrus and leather. A tower fell and shot flames through the smoke wall at us. We scrambled. I could not remember where to find the door. He grabbed my robe and pulled me again. We ran right, between two walls of books, then left, then right, and then what felt like north but I did not know. Mossi’s hand still gripped my robe. The heat was close enough that the hair on my skin burned. We reached the door. Mossi swung it open and jumped back before four arrows hit the floor.
“How far can you throw those?”
I grabbed the ax. “Far enough.”
“Good. Judging from how these arrows lean, they are on the roof to the right.”
He ran back into the smoke and came out with two books burning. He nodded to window, then pointed at the door. Don’t give them a chance to grab new arrows. He threw the books out the window and four arrows cut through the wind, two hitting the window. I ran, dropped, and rolled out the door, then jumped up, ax in hand, and threw it. As the ax spun towards the archers it curved, slicing one man’s throat and lodging in the other’s temple. I jumped into the dark and out of the path of two arrows. More arrows kept coming, some with flame, some with poison, like rainfall until it stopped.
The hall burned in every wall, every chamber, and a crowd started to gather in the street. No more archers waited on the roof. I slipped away from the crowd and ran around to the back of the building. Up on the roof Mossi wiped his sword on the skirt of a dead man and sheathed it. How he passed me I don’t know. Also this: On the roof lay four bodies, not two.
“I know what you will say. Don’t sa—”
“These men are prefects.”
He walked to the ledge and watched the blaze. “Two of them are dead,” he said.
“Are they not all dead?”
“Yes, but two were dead before we killed them. The fat one is Biza, the tall one Thwoko. Both have been missing for over ten and three moons, but nobody knew what happened to them. They—”
I heard them in the dark and knew what was happening. The dead men’s mouths tearing open. The rumbling and rattling from toes to head as if death came in fits. Even in the dark the ripples rose from their thighs, to belly, to chest and then flew out the mouth in a cloud inky as night, a cloud we could barely see, which swirled and then vanished in the air. Too many shadows to see, but I knew on the spin of cloud and dust formed wings, for we both heard the flutter. We both stood there, looking at each other, neither wanting to say anything first, anything that spoke of what we just saw.
“They will crumble to dust if you touch them,” I said.
“Then best not to touch them,” a man said, and I jumped. Mossi smiled.
“Mazambezi, was it the flames that drew you or you missed the smell of me?”
“Indeed, one lives with shit, one gets used to the perfume of it.”
Two more prefects climbed up on the roof, neither saying anything to Mossi, but both looking over at the fire and covering their mouths at the smoke that started drifting our way.
“What do we do when we watch our history burn?” Mazambezi said.
“Your words speak of such loss, Mazambezi. We shall fill a new hall,” Mossi said.
“How did it start, do you know?”
“Don’t you know? Your men—”
“Some men dressed as chieftain army,” Mossi said, interrupting me. “I saw them myself, fire arrows into the great hall. Maybe they are usurpers. Hurting us where it would hurt the most.”
“This too will need a record. And where shall we store them?” Mazambezi laughed.
“You must take a look at these men, Mazambezi, their whole bodies are racked by dark craft,” Mossi said, and looked at the bodies again. It flashed, catching the light of the fire, and I yelled.
“Mossi!”
He ducked just as Mazambezi’s sword sliced through the air right above his head. The duck made him stumble. One of the men drew a small bow and aimed at me. I dropped beside the body that had caught my ax in the skull. I tore it out as an arrow flew in and replaced it. I jumped up and flung my ax, which spun and blurred and struck him in the middle of his chest. Mazambezi and a prefect both fought Mossi with swords. Mazambezi charged at him, sword out straight like a spear. Mossi dodged and kicked him in the chest with his knees. Mazambezi elbowed him in the side; Mossi fell and spun out of the other prefect’s strike, which sparked lights on the ground. The prefect raised his sword again but Mossi swung from the ground and chopped off his foot. The prefect fell, screaming. Mossi jumped up and drove his sword down into the prefect’s chest. He paused, panting, and Mazambezi sliced right across his back. I jumped between them and swung my ax. His blade met my blade and the force knocked him clear across the floor. He rose, shocked, confused, Mossi jumped in between us.
“Enough with this madness, Mazambezi, you called yourself incorruptible.”
“You call yourself handsome, and yet I can’t see what the women see in you.”
Mossi held his sword up, as did Mazambezi, and circled as if to clash again. I jumped in between them.
“Tracker! He will—”
Mazambezi swung his sword a hair’s length from my face, and I caught the blade. It shocked the prefect. He pulled his sword to cut my fingers but drew no blood. Mazambezi stood there, stunned. Two swords went straight through his back and came out through his belly. Mossi yanked his swords back, and the prefect fell.
“I would ask how, but do I—”
“A Sangoma. An enchantment. He would have killed me with a wooden sword,” I said.
Mossi nodded, not accepting the answer, but not wanting to push for another one.
“More of them will come,” I said.
“Mazambezi was not like the others. He spoke.”
“He only possesses some. He pays the others.”
Mossi turned back to watch the crowd, all lit up by firelight. He cursed and ran past me. I followed him down the rear staircase, jumping three steps like he did. He dashed into the crowd. I ran after him but the crowd surged forward and pulled back like waves. Someone cried that Kongor is lost, for how can we have a future without our past? The crowd confused me, made me deaf and blind until I remembered that I could now smell the library master. Mossi slapped him in the dark, slapped him until I grabbed his hand. The bookkeeper cowered on the ground.
“Mossi.”
“This whoreson will not talk.”
“Mossi.”
“They murder my books, they murder my books,” the library master said.
“Let me speak for you. A man came to you and said, Send word if any man comes by asking for records of Fumanguru. I come in, I say where are the records for Fumanguru, and you sent word by pigeon.”
He nodded yes.
“Who?” Mossi shouted.
“One of yours,” I said to him.
“Stick your falsehoods up your asshole, Tracker.”
“The only thing lying to you are your own eyes.”
“Why they murder my books? Why they murder my books?” the library master wailed.
“We will see what he knows and does not know.”
I went right up to Mossi.
“Listen to me. He is no different from Ekoiye. Told only what he could be trusted to know, which is nothing. Told by just a messenger, not the man sending the message. Maybe chieftain army, maybe not. Somebody is both one step ahead of us, waiting for us to come, and one step behind us, waiting for us to move so that he can follow. Somewhere in the course of the last hour we were being watched, and that person heard enough.”