The Captain

Captain Kayode Adeleke had been hunting the thief for eleven days.

He was twenty-six, the son of a blacksmith who had risen from a cinder-pit to the king's table on nothing but his father's loyalty and his own brutal discipline. He did not drink. He did not laugh. He slept four hours a night on a pallet in the barracks, and when he closed his eyes he saw the face of the old priest whose throat had been cut in the Temple of the High Priest, eleven days ago, the night the thunder drum disappeared.

The Alaafin had been very clear. Find it. Bring me the one who took it. Alive, if possible.

Kayode sat on the edge of a well in the village square, drinking water from a gourd and watching the villagers go about their frightened business. His soldiers were turning over huts. A baby squalled. A goat escaped.

"Captain." His lieutenant, a gruff older man named Tunde, saluted. "Nothing yet, sir. We've searched forty houses."

"The drum-maker's compound?"

"We were about to go in."

"I'll go myself."

He rose, stretched his sore shoulders, and strode across the village to a compound at the far side of the baobab. A big man stood at the gate with his arms folded, and behind him, half hidden by a mud wall, stood a girl.

She was young. Slim, with a long neck and skin the colour of polished cedar, and enormous dark eyes that she lowered the moment he looked at her. She wore a faded wrapper, a plait over one shoulder, and a bracelet of small bone beads. Something about the angle of her head struck him as familiar, as though he had seen her in a dream.

"Baba Oladele," said Kayode.

"Captain."

"I am told you are the finest drum-maker in the province."

"I am told the same."

"I am here to search your property."

"Of course." The old man stepped aside. His face was a mask. "My house is open."

Kayode moved through the compound. A kitchen. A sleeping room. A storage hut full of hides. He searched with the careful, thorough eye of a man who had been trained by the best. Nothing. He came to the last building, a long low shed, and pushed open the door.

Forty drums hung from the rafters like sleeping bats. The smell was of leather and oil and sandalwood. He walked slowly down the row, touching nothing, letting his eyes adjust.

At the very end he stopped.

Hanging from a beam was a bundle in indigo cloth. It was about the size of a child, and it swung gently, though there was no wind.

"What is this?"

"A drum under repair," said the old man from the doorway.

"Whose?"

"A client's."

"Which client?"

"I cannot say."

Kayode reached up. His fingers brushed the cloth. And a bolt of light went up his arm like a lash, from wrist to shoulder, so sudden that he cried out and staggered back, clutching his hand.

The shed went silent.

Behind him, Baba Oladele had gone the colour of ash. In the doorway, the girl had both hands over her mouth.

"Captain?" called Tunde, from outside.

"It's nothing." Kayode forced his breath level. His hand was numb to the elbow. The skin along his forearm was marked with a pattern, a fine red fern, like the trail left by lightning on the bark of a tree. He looked at it, and then he looked at the girl. "This drum is not stolen."

"No," said Baba Oladele.

"It is old. Very old. It has been here for generations."

"Yes."

"It is not the one from the Temple."

"There were two," said the old man, softly. "My great-grandfather made them. One went to the king. One stayed with us. They were sisters."

Kayode stood very still. Outside, the village bustled. Inside, in the dim, the drum hummed against the beams.

He should arrest them. He should seize the drum and take them to the Alaafin. It was his duty. It was his oath.

But the girl was looking at him with an expression he could not name. Not fear. Not exactly. Something more like recognition.

"I did not find a stolen drum in this village," said Kayode slowly, to Tunde, who had come to the door. "Tell the men to withdraw."

"Sir?"

"We are done here."

He walked out into the sun. His arm burned. He did not look back. But he heard, as he mounted his horse, a sound that he would hear in his sleep for the next twenty years. It was a girl's voice, very low, singing a tune to herself. It was a lullaby, and as it rose, thunder muttered far off in the clear blue sky.