The palace official's name was Tunde and he was conducting what he called a census.
Kola's uncle had received the formal notice two days before, a thin piece of official cloth with the palace ward seal, informing the household that a census representative would be visiting all compounds in the lower ward to update residency records. This happened every few years and was usually conducted by a junior official with a long list and no interest in anyone specifically. You answered the standard questions, you were recorded, the man moved on to the next compound.
Tunde was not that kind of census official.
He was perhaps fifty, well dressed for a civil servant, with the specific quality of someone who had been answering questions for a long time and was now asking them. He came into the compound's receiving courtyard and went through the household members one by one with a thoroughness that was technically correct and practically unusual, noting relationships, ages, occupations, the length of time each person had been resident.
When he got to Kola he spent longer than he had spent on anyone else.
"You are seventeen," he said.
"Yes."
"And your occupation is?"
"I assist at a blacksmith's yard in the palace ward." This was true. It was also the safest version of the truth available.
"Which yard?"
"Gbadegesin's yard."
Tunde wrote this down. He wrote it down slowly, which meant he was giving himself time to look at Kola while appearing to focus on the record. Kola noticed this. He had been noticing things since he was small and the noticing had gotten sharper this year.
"Your father's name?" Tunde said.
"Not recorded," Kola said. Standard language for households where the father's identity was not part of the official record. It happened often enough that the census had a category for it.
"Your mother was in the coastal trading towns before returning to Oyo-Ile?"
"For some years. Yes."
"How many years?"
"I was born here. She returned when I was three."
Tunde wrote this down. He wrote down several more things. He asked three more questions that were all technically census questions and that were also, if you were paying attention, questions designed to establish a timeline. When did the mother arrive in the coastal towns. When did she return. What was her occupation there.
Kola answered everything simply and accurately and gave nothing extra. He had learned from Amaka that extra information was a gift and gifts should not be given to people whose purpose you did not understand.
When Tunde left, Kola's uncle stood at the compound gate watching him go and said, very quietly, to no one in particular: "That was not a census."
"No," Kola agreed.
His uncle looked at him. He was a gentle man, his uncle, who had spent his life in the cloth trade and wanted no part of whatever this was and had taken Kola in because family was family and that was where the gentleness ended and the stubbornness began. "What have you done?" he said.
"Nothing," Kola said. "I have not done anything. Something is paying attention to me."
His uncle looked at him for a long moment. Then he went inside without saying anything else, which was, Kola had always understood, his uncle's particular version of I believe you and I am frightened on your behalf.
* * *
His mother was waiting in the inner courtyard.
She had been in the compound during the census visit, in the back room, and she had heard all of it through the wall. He could tell by the quality of her stillness when he came in. She was sitting upright with her hands folded and the expression she got when she had already decided something and was waiting to tell him.
"Sit down," she said.
He sat.
"I told you his name," she said. "Three weeks ago."
"Yes."
"And you have been thinking about it since then without acting."
"I have been watching," he said. "From the boundary road. I did not want to do anything until I understood what I was doing."
She looked at him for a long moment. Then she said something he had not expected: "That is the right instinct. But the palace is asking about you now, which means you do not have the time you thought you had."
"You think the census was about my father."
"I think the census was about who your father is and whether it shows on you. And I think whoever sent that man already suspects the answer."
He was quiet for a moment. "Do you think my father knows?"
She was quiet in turn. "I sent a message once, years ago. The response was careful and asked for evidence. I did not send evidence." She looked at her folded hands. "But there are people who track bloodlines the way merchants track goods. The Ase does not hide itself perfectly. You have been in the lower ward for seventeen years, close to the palace ward, near the forge work that responds to you. Someone may have noticed things I did not intend."
"What do I do?"
She looked up at him. "You go to him before he comes to you. On your own terms, not his."
"I don't know how to do that."
"You are a blacksmith's assistant. He has an encampment. Encampments need blacksmiths." She said it simply, as if it were obvious, which it was obvious now that she had said it. "Gbadegesin knows someone in the camp's craft attachment. He has mentioned it. Ask him to make an introduction."
"He will know what I am doing."
"He has known what you are for years. He has been waiting for you to decide what to do about it."
Kola sat with this. Outside the compound a street seller was calling prices, the familiar afternoon sound of the lower ward winding toward evening. He had grown up with that sound. He had grown up in this compound, in this city, in the ordinary world of it, the cloth trade and the forge work and the market arguments and Taiwo and Amaka.
His father had twelve victories. His father had an army. His father had been making decisions that shaped the frontier since before Kola was born.
His father did not know he existed.
"Alright," he said. "I will ask Gbadegesin tomorrow."
His mother nodded. She unfolded her hands. She looked, briefly, like a woman who had been waiting a long time for something and had just been told it was starting, and was not entirely sure whether to be relieved or afraid.
* * *
He went to see Amaka that evening.
She was in her family's compound two streets over, sitting in the courtyard doing the mending her mother had assigned her and reading at the same time, which she did by propping the book against the mending basket in a way that appeared to be mending when anyone walked past and was in fact reading.
She looked up when he came through the gate. She saw his face.
"Sit down," she said.
He sat.
"The census man," she said.
"You heard."
"The whole ward heard. Tunde from the palace records office spent eleven minutes in your compound when the standard visit is three." She put down the book. "What did he ask?"
He told her. She listened with the focused attention she brought to things that mattered, not interrupting, not offering opinions until he had finished.
When he was done she said: "Your mother is right. You go on your own terms."
"I am seventeen."
"Seventeen and able to do work at journeyman level that the encampment's smith attachment needs. That is not nothing. That is a reason to be somewhere."
"He might not want to know me."
Amaka looked at him steadily. "You are not going to find out whether he wants to know you by standing on the boundary road watching his campfires."
"I know."
"The worst answer is no. No is not the worst thing."
"What is the worst thing?"
She thought about this for a moment. She was thorough, Amaka, she did not give half answers. "The worst thing is that you spend the rest of your life not knowing, and the wondering becomes a habit, and the habit becomes the shape of how you think about yourself. That is worse than no."
He looked at the courtyard wall. The evening light was making long shadows across the compound floor.
"There is also the matter of what I am," he said quietly. "The forge. The sky. Whatever is paying attention."
"That too," she agreed.
"If he is what I am, then he might know things I need to know."
"He has twelve victories. He has been managing whatever he is for twenty years longer than you have. Yes. He probably knows things you need to know." She picked up her mending again. "So go and find out."
He went home. He lay awake for a while, which had been his habit since his mother told him his father's name. The name moved through his head the way names did when you had learned them recently and were still adjusting to their weight. Olasubomi Ajanlekoko. He said it quietly in the dark, to himself, to the room. It sounded like something large.
He was not afraid of it. He was not afraid and this surprised him a little.
He fell asleep with the name still in his head and in the morning, before the lower ward market opened, he went to Gbadegesin's yard and asked for an introduction.
The old smith looked at him for a long moment. Then he said: "I have been waiting for this question."
"I know," Kola said.
"I will write the letter today."
"Thank you."
Gbadegesin picked up his tools. "His name is Rotimi," he said. "Good smith, better man. Tell him I sent you and mean it."
He went back to work. Kola stood in the yard a moment longer, feeling the warmth of the forge from across the room, the familiar rightness of it. The fire burned steadily. Above the yard the morning sky was clear and empty and very quiet.
He picked up the bellows.
The letter would be ready by afternoon. Tomorrow, then. Tomorrow he would go.