Everfair (15 page)

“I did! Though Mama”—another of those glances at Lisette—“Mama insisted it was all Tink's fault.”

“If you had stayed to the mission Council assigned you—”

“Then I would not be stuck here with you!”

“Ah! ‘Stuck'! Your mother trusts me to look after you, and because of this you are ‘stuck'!” Lisette shook her head. “Forgive us, Queen.” Her peculiar eyes, color of a raincloud, didn't seem truly penitent. “We're grateful for King Mwenda's message. I'll convey it onward. You must need to rest now.”

“No. I need to leave for the place of my father.” Already she had wasted time, traveling the opposite direction from N'dalatando. Josina had come here only because Mwenda had made her promise in their one, tense meeting.

“At least take some tea,” the maiden insisted. Not to be rude, Josina accepted their foreign drink. Going down the river would be quicker than going up, and there were still many hours of daylight left.

The bowl's cover was a pair of smaller bowls stacked inside each other. Clever, but undecorated. Lily set them out separately on the mat and poured a warm, golden liquid into them from a spout in the big bowl's side. Copying Lisette, Josina carried the little bowl to her lips, inhaled briefly, sipped, and swallowed.

“It's good!” she exclaimed, surprised. Lily giggled. “Tea” tasted somewhat acrid, like beer, but also a bit sweet. Dried leaves went into boiling water, Josina was informed; and left behind their virtues when removed. “This plant is grown where you come from? In Europe? England?”

The tea plants' sources were far countries much hotter than their homes. Josina rapidly consumed two more bowls, talking in greater detail than before about her negotiations for the king's release. Her heart rose. Her mind understood this rising as having to do, in some measure, with what she had been given. Tea was a drug, like dagga. A drug they could learn to cultivate here, also?

Dismissing this question as untimely, Josina parted with Lisette to return to her women and paddlers, sure to be waiting already by the canoes. She would have parted with Lily, too, but the maiden insisted on accompanying her to the riverbank.

The reason for this became obvious as Lembe jumped up to help her queen on board. Suddenly the maiden spoke—rapidly, again in French. “In two days you will be back in Bolombo.”

“Yes. Or a little longer.”

“When you get there, look up. Into the sky. Look up,” the maiden urged again. In a blink she was running away, back along the path.

Some conflict, some trouble. Secrets being kept. Josina recalled how Lily had regarded Lisette. She didn't know enough to pick sides yet, so when they came, finally, to the open space near Bolombo where the Lubudi River flowed into the Sankuru, she did as invited.

Thus she was the first to see it. Though naturally not the only one: the aircanoe was too large to miss. Shortly it loomed above them, a huge shadow, its boat-form basket just barely above the tops of the trees marking the rivers' sides. Higher than that, bigger than that, loomed its other portion, which reminded her of the pods of cacao beans her father had shown her … the shape and even the colors, yes. But did it swell in size? No, it was coming closer, lower …

Lengths of rope appeared over the basket's rim, and a figure climbed down one of them like a monkey—Lily. “Shall we give you a lift?” she asked. “On our way to rescue the king?”

 

Kinshasa, Congo, October 1897

Tink argued stubbornly. Vainly. “No. You can't. Let Captain Renji—”

“The captain doesn't speak French. Or English. And besides that, you've no way to prevent me.”

He was stronger than Lily, but only physically. “I won't let you land.”

“Then you'll have to call the entire rescue off. If anyone goes, it's—”

“Me.”

“I!”

“I, then, if you insist on correcting my speech. I—I will go,” Tink said as calmly as he could. “And you will stay here on
Mbuza
. Safe.”

“Oh! You're as bad as any white man!” Lily stuffed her hands in the front pockets of her trousers and turned away from him, staring off at the final moments of the red and purple sunset. Light lasted long up here on the aircanoe, high over the trees. But now, the third day of their trip north from N'dalatando, they descended toward their goal almost as fast as the sun sank.

No more time to argue. Darkness would arrive soon, bringing the shadows so necessary for hiding their rescue party.

“All right. Fine. We will both go, then.” Tink regretted the words as soon as he said them.

“Of course we'll both go.” Lily sounded matter-of-fact, but her eyes shone with delight as she turned back to embrace him. A mock-solemn kiss and she left to gather the others who'd take part.

Tink shuttered and extinguished lamps on his way to the steering apparatus. After nightfall the chance of them being spotted from the ground was low, of them being recognized even more negligible, but he would do everything in his power to make the danger less than nothing. Though Old Kanna had determined by divination that the date was not the most fortunate.

Once again Winthrop held the wheel. His brother Chester, in Kamina, worked to build a second aircanoe for Everfair. Others Tink had instructed made more weapon hands. They must maintain their advantage over Leopold.

Tink led their group to where the scoop in the gondola's woven sides made it easier to lower their ladder. Captain Renji, who had joined them at N'dalatando at Josina's insistence; Yoka; himself. And Lily, his fierce love, the skin of her face and hands and throat streaked with dark dye, smiling down at him like a constellation, like a stubborn, wayward divinity.

He could not have stopped her.

They leapt from the dangling ladder to a grassy hillside south of the main settlement. It was a different approach than that used by King Mwenda, in case Leopold's men watched for them. Neither did they rely on a fire nor any other distraction this time. Their party was small enough that they passed to the wall of the prison yard without notice. Yoka tossed the weighted rope the captain had provided over its top. The weight's hooks caught as they were designed to do. Tink's grip on Lily's soft upper arm was enough to keep her back till the two others had climbed the rope. He followed her up.

On the other side, on the ground, Tink smelled old death and new. The unnamed sense that always informed him where Lily was whispered that she knelt a little ways off. She rose to stand, small patches of her pallor winking at him furtively, stars in the blackness. At her feet slumped a corpse reeking of blood and offal.

As ever, she seemed unsurprised by Tink's movements. When he came close enough she clasped his hand in hers—her left. The one that didn't hold a wet knife. Her mouth grazed his ear. “He was sneaking along behind Captain Renji,” she breathed. “Not crying for help. They must already know we're here.”

Josina had suspected a spy among her entourage. This was probably proof. They should leave. But how to convince the others?

Like a ghost, Yoka appeared noiselessly, a mere silhouette. He urged them further inward, away from the wall. The earth humped high and low beneath their bare feet, loose and uneven, stinking of incomplete burials.

More freshly dead men littered the dirt before the jail's open door. Tink saw them—parts of them—in the narrow slit of light spilling through. Slowly his eyes adjusted, and Captain Renji appeared, beckoning them inside.

The first room was wide as the whole building, and its ceiling as high as three tall men balanced on one another's shoulders. Deserted, and that felt wrong—so wrong—

Lily pulled a jangling ring of keys from the drawer of a desk in front of her and shared them around equally. The rescuers exited the room to a short passageway lined with four heavy doors. Tink tried both his keys in a lock Captain Renji had abandoned in frustration. The second worked, and here, at last, were people: captives staring at him, at first in silence. Then crying out—in fear? Tink understood their words poorly, but they huddled away into the cell's corner. He realized they must fear his axe. And his strange appearance—had they ever met a “Mah-Kow” before?

“He isn't here!” Lily had run to the end of the passage. Tink barely heard her above the loudening clamor of the prisoners calling to each other, the shouts of Yoka and Captain Renji telling them they were truly free in English, French, and other tongues. All the doors were open now, and the corridor getting crowded. Tink pushed his way to Lily.

“But Josina said she met with the king here, in this building.” He reassured himself as much as her. “She had no cause to lie.”

“No. But he may have been moved. There are other quarters, worse ones. Someone heard the drums calling for mission volunteers and told them we were coming—they
knew
—”

Just-released prisoners surrounded them in ever-thickening clots. Tink lifted his axe overhead to avoid accidentally wounding any. That was when he first saw their way out.

The captain and Yoka led the men and women filling the passage through to the outer room. Lily and Tink went, too, checking there for more doors to other cells. Behind one door, unlocked, they found a long, thin storage space containing chains, hammers, baskets, a pair of wooden ladders, whips. Behind another, a room holding four low cots and a dry water bucket. Four cots; how many dead men outside?

With the king or without him, it was time to go. Sure enough, when Tink stuck his head outside to count how many Yoka and Captain Renji had killed, a gunshot drove him back in. They barricaded the entrance and the one big window beside it. Four other windows ran in a row near the wall's top, too small for coming in and out of.

“Use a ladder. Get up to the window and signal through there, yes?” said Captain Renji, gesturing. Yoka nodded and slung the drum strapped to his back into playing position. “Then we must bring these lanterns and fight our way out of the compound—”

“Wait!” The jail's interior and exterior slid together, clicked into place, within Tink's mind. “There's a way! Ask them—” Most of those freed looked ill and emaciated; after building the barricades they had collapsed to the floor. Some, probably imprisoned a shorter time, seemed stronger. He waved in their direction. “They can carry the ladders. Both. I saw a—a hatch—” No, that was the English for it when you were on a ship.

But Lily, as usual, knew what he meant. “I saw it, too!”

While Yoka drummed to
Mbuza
from atop one leaning ladder, Tink climbed the second's rungs till his arms reached the ceiling. The square door lifted easily. Darkness above it. But not night. The stifling air hung still and sweaty, and then it moved without wind and he heard breath—soldiers? More than one person. “Hullo?” His voice struck dully against walls and ceiling. How large—

Metal sang. Tink ducked.
“Haaaghh!”
A blade chopped down where his head had been. The ladder rocked as a flashing sword sheared a chunk from the top of one of its legs. Tink fell, stunning himself. He heard the bang of a rifle. Several more shots. A lengthy quiet.

“They must be out of ammunition,” Lily said.

What if they're bluffing,
he thought, but he couldn't say it. His mouth wouldn't work. Nothing would. He lay helpless in the dirt as Lily went back up the broken ladder to the trap. The trap door. Why?

“Give us the king and we'll spare you!” he heard her demanding. So that was why. What made her think, though, that King Mwenda was in the jail's attic? She couldn't know that. Could she?

Beyond the passageway's far end, Yoka drummed on.

A rush of cool air flowed over Tink. The ceiling boards creaked above as whoever had been hiding up there crossed the room—which must have an additional hatch open now: the breeze! The drumming had ended. He made an effort and rolled onto his side. One more push and he was sitting, lolling against the wall. “Lily!”

He had called to her aloud. She came back to him. Her odd eyes gleamed. “I'm sure they've run out! But they won't escape,” she informed Tink. “Captain Renji's asking Yoka to redirect
Mbuza
. Come along. You'll be fine. We may not even need to pull the ladder up with us if there are steps.”

“Steps? Steps where?”

“In the attic. From there to the roof, of course.” Of course.

Tink wanted to climb up on his own. His left hand refused to clamp onto the rungs, so he gave his axe to Yoka and used the right. The ladder's top was whole again—no, this must be the second one, the ladder Yoka had been using.

A lamp lit the rough boards of the roof's underside. A slanting square of black marked the hole in it. Lily and Captain Renji stood underneath, with two men who must be released prisoners. No one else was in the room. But quiet whispers and soft scuffling noises filtered in by way of that hole.

Yoka emerged into the attic after him. Lily mimed drawing the ladder up and they did as bid, dragging it over to her. The new men made to lift it and prop it into place, but Captain Renji blocked them. Tink knew why: it was long enough that setting it up so close would leave several feet sticking out in plain sight of the men waiting on the roof.

Yoka and the captain stared up at the empty heavens. Tink put his bad arm around Lily's shoulders and got his recalcitrant fingers to caress her short, curling hair. He could feel its slipperiness sliding against his skin. She leaned against his side, moved her sweet mouth next to his ear. “Stay still. After a while, they'll think we've given up. When
Mbuza
returns we'll act quickly: swarm up and take them by surprise. Capture the king and sail off safe.”

He nodded. It sounded like a good plan. He turned her toward him and they kissed. For a very long time.

A far-off thrum he'd hardly noticed in his desire came nearer. Lily backed away from him a little. “It's here,” she said, though he didn't hear her, only saw the words' shapes on her lips. By now the noise of
Mbuza
's engines drowned out everything else.