Matters Arising

General Sax watched the city dawn from the Time Tower, a tall concrete monstrosity that seemed to scrape the sky. It was the latest in the capital’s growing race to the stars, and it was the tallest, too. At its tip sat a concrete orb on the pyramidal roof. On all four sides, a large metallic sundial told the time. Right beneath one of the sundials, a veranda with night-black marble floors and furniture with slim, curved legs stretched out. This was where the General stood, his leather-gloved hand gripping the cold steel railing as his cold blue eyes drank in the city. He heard a man cough and turned to look. The butler was holding a tray in one hand and a kerosene lamp in the other. On the tray was an envelope addressed to the General by name and rank. It was sealed with marked wax bearing the face of a lion and three crosses. Beside the letter lay a silver knife with a heavy hilt.
‘Thank you.’ The General reached for the envelope and the knife to break its seal. When he had extracted the letter, he returned the empty envelope and the knife. The butler bowed and took three steps back before turning to make his exit. The General waited until he was gone before fishing a monocle from his breast pocket and placing it on his right eye. His eyes darted and danced through the words, his mind decoding the message as he swept through every line.

Dearest General Sax,

Words cannot express the glee with which I write to inform you that the Kanna Protocol has been executed with great success in Eke land. And to add fish to chip, it was performed at a titled man’s wedding—well, his daughter’s wedding—but let me not bore you with frivolous details. Oh, you should have been there to see the mass greying! Truly, it was a beautiful thing to behold. I hope things are well in our Great Kingdom. While nothing brings me more joy than to be of service to the empire, I truly miss the Fatherland as if it were my very own mother’s love. God willing, these savages will be quick to fall, and I will be back soon.
I have been speaking with the other colonial officers around the Nero Area, and they tell me of great progress with the Yaruda Kingdom and the Ausa, too. I hear that the Ausa spelling system is different, as are their ways and customs. They are already a people of a book; they belong to the Order of Lam, a gift perhaps spilling from the conquest of the legendary warrior Gan Khan of the Eastern Mongs, and inherited eventually by the warrior king Uzmane Danfodia. This makes any form of direct rule and spell-binding extremely difficult. They have already encountered Xrist, Ableham, Mozues, and have bound them to meanings from their book. It will be easier breaking old horses than it will be to break these people. But not to worry, what cannot be broken can surely be bent. We have been negotiating an indirect ruling system. They are a people quick to submit, as their Order trains them to be. This gives their leaders godlike power, and we aim to control the leaders and thus the people.
The Yarudas have more in common with the Ogbis. I have even recorded words with shared meanings and folktales that overlap. Their spelling techniques in language and religion also bear similarities. Perhaps they are born of the same seed. The difference is that the Yarudas are a people of central monarchs, while the Igbos practise a sort of strange republic. We have already established a good relationship with the kings of the Yarudas. Our ways will galvanise theirs in no time. They are not yet a writing people, and so they have no real archives of their spells—only priests who must commit what feels like an entire encyclopaedia to memory. Slowly, we will take what they call gods and make idols of them. We will teach them not just to accept our own, but to hate their own. I see visions of burning shrines and the casting away of their holy men as charlatans. This, and so much more will we do. Oh, and the priests have been most helpful; thank you for facilitating their efforts.
The Ogbis and their kingless ways make for harder conquering, which will mean many battles. Even with the Kanna success in Eke, I do not see a path to victory without bloodshed. In fact, as I write this, a part of me fears for my own life. They are a people of honour who are not likely to bring about death without warning. But still, I fear, for they are also the type to strike at the heart of what they see as evil. We must remain vigilant. Of the seven surrounding towns that encase the kingdom, three have fallen and one is on its last leg. Please, ready at least ten battalions—horses, rifles, muskets, and the Maxim on mounted carriage. We shall overcome, but first, the needful must be done.

Ever loyal,

Commander Stones

This was exactly the sort of news General Sax liked to start his day with. Clinking and clattering found his ears, and he reckoned the butler had arranged for his morning tea. He folded the letter with meticulous flips and slid it into his coat pocket. He stepped back into the room, where plush furniture of red cushions and gold framing stared at him. His usual tea tray held a steaming tea kettle, a teacup, uneven rocks of sugar, and two bags of tea. He made the tea to his taste and waited for it to cool, warming the hands he had now slipped out of his black leather gloves.
As General Sax waited, his eyes canvassed the paintings on the wall. He had very little say regarding the furnishing of the staff residence in the Sun Tower, but he would not be surrounded by tasteless art in a lifetime so short. He didn’t even take any special permission. On the same day he moved in, following his promotion to the rank of General overseeing colonial affairs, he simply swapped the generic landscape paintings for works from his personal collection. In his opinion, burning the shallow landscape abominations would have been a real favour to the Queen and her government, but he opted to place them in storage instead. As for his redecoration, on the far right, closest to the door, a painting of a titan devouring a child hung proudly. It was an image of immense gore that evoked a latent dread in most, but General Sax liked to see it.
‘Father, I can’t sleep. It’s really cold and the red lio stone is dying.’
General Sax unbuttoned his fur coat and placed it over his son’s shoulder as soon as the boy reached him. He could not have been older than thirteen, but he was tall for his age, bright blonde-haired and blue-eyed like his father.
‘Do you know about Kronos and Zuos, child?’
The child followed his father’s eyes to meet the painting.
‘No, father.’
‘But every day, you have strolled past this painting. Why have you never thought to ask what it is about? Who they are? Does it scare you?’
The General now turned squarely to his son, eyes beaming as if to literally locate the fear in him.
‘It is a bit… dark, father.’
General Sax walked closer to the painting, studying the face of the titan, mouth gnawed open, eyes wide with greed and terror.
‘In the faith of our ancients in the older Solaris Empires, they believed Kronos to be the birth of time… the first dimension from which all other things can be. For if you do not have time, where would you put space?’
The boy’s face folded with mild confusion, but his father either didn’t notice or didn’t care to react.
‘Kronos was told that one of his sons would usurp him, as he had usurped his father before him. So, wanting to cling to power, he chose to devour all his children before they could ever grow.’
‘That doesn’t sound nice.’ The boy’s fear now shone in his eyes.
‘Life is not nice. Only the strong survive.’
‘So, Kronos is still alive and eating his sons?’ the boy asked.
‘No, no. Zuos defeated him and went on to rule as god of gods.’
The boy eyed the painting, the fear in his eyes giving way to more confusion.
‘But there is no God. Science has cleared all doubts.’
General Sax sighed.
‘You say that Aris is dead only because when, in the past, we would say Aris possessed a man to kill, we now say the man was possessed by anger… that he was overcome with it, that he lost his temper. You see, gods cannot die, child, because gods are not things or even beings. Gods are a condition. One day, you’ll understand.’
The boy moved his lips to the side and shrugged his shoulders.
‘What are they teaching you in school these days? I need to start supplementing your reading. All that Shakepear is good, but we need more than romance and tragedy to survive.’
‘But we are well already. The Empire is rich. What other survival is there?’
‘The Empire is not rich, it is only resourceful. They are not the same thing. I have travelled and seen lands overflowing with lio, sunlight bountiful, and soil fertile as a rabbit on heat. There are places occupied by monkey men with more gold than we can carry, more diamonds than we thought existed. How do you suppose the strong survives if it doesn’t eat the weak? You think as a child, only of the now, of today. I am a father, I must think of tomorrow… forever.’
The boy said nothing.
The General turned towards the second painting. In the gold-embroidered frame, the body of Xrist lay bare while men in priestly robes fed on his flesh and drank his blood.
‘We’ll save this one for another day.’ General Sax reached for a pocket watch and checked the time. He drank the rest of his tea in haste and placed his official hat on his head. Knee-length leather boots guarded his feet, medals and rank totems decorated his army-blue uniform, and a leather belt and sash held it all together with the Queen’s emblem for a buckle—he was ready to go. He stopped abruptly at the exit and walked back to his son. Without a word, he lifted the coat from the boy’s shoulder and watched the chill find him.
‘Think Peter—what would it feel like to never have to worry about lio-generated power again? To have control over lands of abundance?’

***

The closed-door meeting the priest-guide had called was reserved for the elite of elites. In a small enclave in his home, a cave sat with carved stones for chairs, its walls mapped with symbols—icons and stick letters. The light of the moon was full, and it shone on their dwelling and marked the place with thick shadows.
‘You are all welcome.’ Nnanyi could barely see the Eze’s face as he spoke, only a corrugated cheek etched with the lines of his tribal markings to denote his office. His crown could be made out in the dark too, along with a lone feather that stuck out of the otherwise iron smelt.
‘We are honoured to be here.’ The responses differed in wording, but the sentiment was the same. Nnanyi counted the heads in the cave. Iyom was the first and one of the few women present, given away by the elephant-tusk odu bracelets she wore on her wrists and ankles. Her large frame also did little to hide her as she sat with a slouched back, a white wrapper cloth slung over her breasts. The second woman was Ifedi Onuokwu, popularly known as the electric ant—or in Eke, where electric lio was still an uncommon novelty, ajo danda. She was the leader of the market women, a loudmouth who ironically did not talk too much. She wore a raffia gown as always; after all, she was a raffia garment maker. Almost nothing of her age-lined face could be seen in the dark, but Nnanyi still caught her elephant ears and the giant beads she used as ornaments. He himself was representing the order of Ikenga, dressed in a knee-length wrestler’s wrapper cloth and a bare chest to show off some tribal markings, although the dark made it difficult to read any of the lines or swirls. The village librarian was also there, her small frame perched on a rock, with her walking stick leaning against her shoulder. Then there was the head of the d’bias, a certified Agwu priest no one could question on matters of insight.
‘I cannot be the only one who has noticed the vast greying. It appears like a plague, sweeping through Eke land every day. It respects neither age, class, nor what rests between your legs. It is as if it is in the air, a fog of spiritual blindness infecting anyone who dares to breathe.’ The priest-guide paused for nods. ‘The Ape Men on whose shoulders I stand long told us: anyuko mamili onu, ogba ofufu—when we urinate together, the foaming is strongest.’ It was a most peculiar saying, and perhaps in a larger crowd, the priest-guide would have gone for the more popular igwe bu ike—there is strength in numbers. But this was not a gathering of numbers, but a pooling of minds.
‘I hear Umuano, Nri, Edo, and many more have fallen to the pig-men. There have been many castaway d’bias who speak of mobs of converts advocating for the burning of their shrines, and even the spilling of their blood. They say it is as though the pig-men have found a spell that sets our people against everything once natural to them. It is only a matter of time until they bare their teeth here.’ Nneoma shook her head, her white-painted eye glowing under the light of the moon. ‘This is how they enter: they first infiltrate the minds with soft powers—their religious and linguistic spells, their Xrist and the saving of your chi, which I believe they say is the soul. Then when the people are weak enough in spirit, they march in with armies.’
‘Armies?’ Nnanyi asked. ‘They have them stationed already?’
‘If what I hear is true. They say their men march with guns that spit thunder. With only one of them, they say a hundred can be slain.’
‘What cursed use of the mind! What perversion of power!’ Ifedi chimed in.
‘It is what it is,’ the Eze pointed out. ‘Good or bad, it doesn’t matter. What matters now is power. And we are losing it.’
‘I say we attack them right now. Attack is the best form of defence. Before they rally their armies. I say we climb into their quarters by the bushes and slit their throats, them and their efulefu servants.’ Nnanyi meant every word that tumbled from his lips. In fact, in his mind, he had done this a few times alone as an assassin. He could clearly picture the pig-men asleep, pasty pink bodies sprawled with mouths agape. In his mind’s eye, he did not bother to wake them. He left them dead where they slept, striking at their necks and faces with an axe. It was a gory thing to picture, but he could not help the hunger for the warmth of their blood, the metallic tang on his tongue.
‘If we attack them like that, they are sure to come for revenge. And from what I heard of the Binin expedition in Edo land from travelling traders, the Queen of Anglonland must never be tempted to war.’ The market leader shook her head as she spoke.
The room was silent. Binin was a well-known kingdom even among well-known kingdoms. The red-earthed city boasted the longest defensive wall known in all kingdoms and republics in Afaraka. Their armies were vast, strong, and unafraid to die in service of the ruler they called Oba. To hear that Binin of the Edolands had fallen to the pig-men was a most unsettling thought.
‘What happened in Binin?’ Nnanyi broke the silence.
‘I hear the Oba struck first after catching wind of the pig-men’s plans. He killed every last pig-man stationed in the kingdom but one, whom he spared to tell the Anglon Queen that they were forever barred from his lands.’
The market leader paused.
‘And then what happened?’ Iyom, the odu woman, pressed.
‘The spared man returned with fleets bigger than anything the Oba could have imagined. They say the sound of their guns was like the voice of a god, the dead too many to count, the bounty of art and treasure enough to start a small kingdom.’ The market leader paused to weigh her words. ‘It is said that the leading officer boasted that only mercy and softness saved Afaraka. Apparently, there are lands the Anglons have completely slaughtered and now lay claim to as theirs. Americus, to which we once sold slaves, is one of such places. There are now more of them there than the native owners.’
Nnanyi felt a chill run down his bones, one he had not felt in so many years. Worry, anxiety, even frustration he occasionally felt, but never fear—not in forever. Until now. It surprised him that he feared most not the death that stood imminently before him, but a graver idea—the eclipsing of not just himself, but his entire world. He could not imagine the Ogbis ceasing to exist. It didn’t matter if this death came by the gutting of his kind with swords and bullets, or by the erosion of their identity through religion and language that bound them to the pig-men’s spell. Whether physical or spiritual, the death was just as bad. A picture of his son flashed in his mind: the boy stood alone in a desolate street, eyes shining with the pig-man’s luminous blue he could swear would glow in the night.
‘We need to act now and fast. I say I set off at dawn to speak with Umuato and Onicha. Alone we may be weaker, but together, perhaps we stand a chance.’
‘What do they want from us?’ a voice asked from the dark.
‘Everything,’ the village librarian replied. ‘They want our everything.’