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bored, head tilted, twizzling a pigeon feather in his ear. He was staring straight at me through the haze and the bartering with a surprise that was rapidly working itself up to a realization.
    He knew me.
    It was Bamwoze.
    Bwana’ s second but most favored son.
    Of all people.
    Bamwoze.
    I had wet-nursed the little bastard. I had wiped his scuzzy little arse and rocked him to sleep. I had breastfed him when my first newborn had been taken away and I was still heavy with milk.
    All the while I was in mourning for my lost child.
    I swaddled Bamwoze with all the love meant for my own.
    I even kidded myself, at times, that he was indeed my own.
    He took to me like a leech and wouldn’t let go.
    Then he grew up and was sent off to the forest to be initiated into manhood. When he returned from being buried up to his head in dirt for days to prove his endurance and killing a crocodile with his bare hands to prove his strength, he began strutting around the compound like a mini-Bwana, and I, whose teats had produced full-fat milk that had formed his bone, brain, skin and muscle, ceased to exist for him.
    Nanny no more.
    Invisible, see.
     
     
    SOME TIME AFTERWARD, Bwana discovered Bamwoze had gotten a local slave girl pregnant, a rite of passage for the sons of masters, but he had tried to elope with her to Europa of all places, which was taking the piss. What were they planning? A Grand Tour?
    Bwana disinherited Bamwoze and kicked him out of the house. I don’t know what happened to the girl—dead or in the New World, probably. We were all filled with a newfound respect for Bamwoze when we discovered he had forfeited his inheritance for a mulatto. Some time later we heard he’d become a trader in slaves himself, in order to continue living in the comfort to which he was born. The girl had been an aberration, we all realized—just a pretty mulatto trophy or simply part of his teenage rebellion against Bwana. What I knew for sure was that he couldn’t give a damn about the rest of us.
    And here he was after all these years, locking eyes with me, knowing full well that I was where I shouldn’t be and that there could be only one reason for it. He’d been a big lad and was a big man now, typical of the Ambossans. But I recognized the familiar expression of self-pity sweep across the plump face of the child before he became the man; before bones started pushing through his cheeks and shaping his face into something fierce and arrogant.
    Here was the spoiled boy who got everything he wanted—more giraffe burgers, more vanilla drops, yet another baby camel to take him riding around the compound. He had never been denied anything as a child, and so, as is the way with the blessed of this world, nothing was ever enough for him.
    The wretch still felt sorry for himself.
    I didn’t move and neither did he. I could see the indecision in his eyes, weighing up the options, which one would benefit him the most. If I moved, I would make up his mind for him and he would raise the alarm. Seconds passed. The sensory overload of the smoke and smell and shouts of the bidding faded away. I knew better than to plead with my eyes because he would feel manipulated and resist. If I looked afraid, he would despise me. So I just went blank—the slaves’ default position. Then I sensed a thought take shape in his mind. To let me go would be a way to get back at his father.
    We both knew that I had read him.
    He smiled to himself, then gestured at me with a magnanimous roll-of-the-eyes and an Oh, go on then nod to be on my way.
    Seconds later I was running.
    I didn’t care anymore. I had no time left.
    If someone stopped me, so be it.
    I found the dusty bushes with little effort, using all my strength to open the round iron manhole. I levered myself down and felt strong hands catch my slim hips with such warm, solid strength it was like being caught by my father after he’d thrown me into the air when I was a kid. Would they be a safe pair?