What the Priest Wanted

The thief was caught three days later, on the road to the coast, with a mule and a sack of kola nuts and not the slightest idea what he had stolen.

He was a boy of fourteen. His name was Dele. He had been paid two silver pieces by a man in a mask to carry a bundle from the Temple to the road, and he had no notion that it was the sacred drum, or that the priest had been murdered, or that half the kingdom was searching for him. He was shivering, filthy and starving, and when Kayode brought him into the Alaafin's hall in chains, the boy fell to his knees and wept.

"Please, my lord," he sobbed. "I did not kill the old man. I swear it on my mother's grave."