Black Leopard, Red Wolf (Dark Star Trilogy)

SEVEN

They took the woman away to drown her, and the man to cut all manhood off.

“This is what you took me here to see?” I said to the Leopard.

“The world isn’t always night and day, Tracker. Still haven’t learned.”

“I know everything I need to know about slavers. Did I ever tell you of the time I tricked a slaver into selling himself into slavery? Took him three years to convince his master he was a master as well, after the master cut out his tongue.”

“You speak too loud.”

“Loud enough.”

The man had so many rugs thrown on the dirt, rugs on top of rugs, rugs clearly from the East, and others with colours for which there were no names, that you would think him a rug seller, not a man seller. He made walls out of rugs, black rugs with red flowers and writing in foreign tongues. It was so dark that two lamps were always burning. The slaver sat on a stool while one man took off his sandals and the other brought over a bowl of dates. He may have been a prince, or at least a very rich man, but his feet stank. The man who held the umbrellas tried to take his hat off but the slaver slapped him, not hard, but playful, too playful. I decided many moons ago to stop reading into the little actions of men. The man with the umbrella turned to us and said, “His most excellent Amadu Kasawura, lion of the lower mountain and master of men, will see you before sunset.”

The Leopard turned to leave, but I said, “He will see us now.”

The umbrella bearer caught his dropping jaw. The dates bearer turned around as if to say, Now we shall have words. I think he smiled. That was the first time the slaver looked at us.

“I think you not understand our language.”

“I think I understand it fine.”

“His most excellent—”

“His Most Excellency seems to have forgotten how to talk to the freeborn.”

“Tracker.”

“No, Leopard.”

The Leopard rolled his eyes. Kasawura started to laugh.

“I will be at the Kulikulo Inn.”

“Nobody leave without notice,” the slaver said.

I turned to leave, and almost made it to the entrance when three guards appeared, hands on weapons not drawn.

“The guards will mistake you for a runaway. Deal with you first, ask questions later,” Kasawura said. The guards clutched their weapons, and I pulled the two hatchets from my back strap.

“Who is first?” I asked.

Kasawura laughed louder. “This is the man who you said time cooled his heat?”

The Leopard sighed loud. I knew this was a test, but I didn’t like being tested.

“My name speaks for itself, so make your decision quick and don’t waste my time.”

Also, I hate slavers.

“Bring him food and drink. A raw goat shank for Kwesi. Make sure is fresh kill, or would you like a live one to kill yourself? Sit down, gentlemen,” he said.

Now the umbrella bearer raised his eyebrows and mashed his lips together. He handed the slaver a gold goblet, which he handed to me.

“It’s—”

“Masuku beer,” I said.

“It has been said you have a nose.”

I took a drink. This was the best beer I have ever tasted.

“You are a man of wealth and taste,” I said.

The slaver waved it off. He stood up but nodded at us to stay seated. Even he was getting annoyed at the servants fussing over every move. He clapped twice and they all left.

“You don’t waste time so waste it I will not. Three years now a child they take, a boy. He was just starting to walk and could say nana. Somebody take him one night. They leave nothing and nobody ever demand ransom, not through note, not through drums, not even through witchcraft. I know the thinking, which you now think. Maybe they sell him in Malangika, a young child would bring much money to witches. But my caravan get protection from a Sangoma, just as one still binds you with protection even after her death. But you knew this, didn’t you, Tracker? The Leopard think iron arrows bounce away from you because they are scared.”

“There are still things to tell you,” I said to the Leopard with a look.

“This child we trust to a housekeeper in Kongor. Then one night somebody cut the throat of everybody in the house but steal the child. Eleven in the house, all murdered.”

“Three years ago? Not only are they far ahead in the game, they might have already won.”

“Is not a game,” he said.

“The mouse never thinks so, but the cat does. You have not finished your tale and it already sounds impossible. But finish.”

“Thank you. We heard reports of several men, mayhaps a woman and a child taking a room at an inn near the Hills of Enchantment. They all took one room, which is why one of the guests remembered. We know this news because they find the innkeeper a day after they leave. Listen to me—dead like stone, pale from all the blood gone from him.”

“They killed him.”

“Who knows? But then we get news of two more ten days later. Two houses all the way down in Lish where we hear of them next, four men, and the child. And everything dead after they leave.”

“But from those hills to the blood takes at least two moons, maybe two and a half by foot.”

“Tell me something we don’t ponder. But the killings the same, everybody dead like stone. Near one moon later people in Luala Luala run from their huts and wouldn’t go back, talking about night demons.”

“He travels with a band of murderers, but they haven’t murdered him? What is his quality? A boy freeborn of a slaver? Is he your own?”

“He is precious to me.”

“That is no answer.” I rose. “Right now, your story has meat where you will not talk, bone where you do. Why is he precious to you?” I asked.

“Do you need to know, to work for me? Talk a true talk.”

“No, he does not,” the Leopard said.

“No, I do not. But you seek a child missing three years. He could be beyond the sand sea, or long shat out of a crocodile’s ass in the Blood Swamp, or lost in the Mweru for all we know. Even if he is still alive, he will be nothing like the child gone. He might be under another house, calling another man father. Or four.”

“I am not his father.”

“So you say. Maybe he is now a slave.”

He sat down in front of me. “You want us to be out with it. Tell me true. You wish to throw words at me.”

“About what?”

“Every man here is unlucky in war. Every woman here will be bought into a better life. After all, if their lives were so good, they would not be on a bondsman’s cart.”

“He didn’t say anything, excellent Amadu, that is just his way,” the Leopard said.

“Don’t speak for him, Leopard.”

“Yes, Leopard, don’t speak for me.”

“You were a slave, no?” said excellent Amadu.

“I don’t have to dip my nose in shit to know it stinks.”

“Fair. And yet who are you that I should present my life as just to you? You who would search, and find, and return a wife even though her eyes had been cut out by her husband. Every man in this room has a price, good Tracker. And yours might even be cheap.”

“What of him do you have?”

“No, not so quickly. I only need to know that the offer tickling you. We have met, we have drank beer, we will make decisions. This you should know. I have made the offer to more as well. Eight, perhaps nine in number. Some will work with you, some will not. Some will try to find him first. You have not asked how much coin I will pay.”

“I don’t have to. Given how precious he is to you.”

The Leopard was raising a fuss. He didn’t know some would be searching for the child on their own. It was my time to hush him.

“Tracker, are you not offended by this?” he said.

“Offended? I’m not even surprised.”

“Our good friend the Leopard still doesn’t know that there is no black in man, only shades and shades of gray. My mother was not a kind woman and she was not a good woman. But she did say to me, Amadu, pray to the gods but bolt your door. The child has been gone three years.”

“Leopard, think. When we find him, we split coin two ways, not nine.”

The slaver clapped and the three men rushed in again, doing exactly as before, rubbing his feet, feeding him dates, and looking at me as if I would change into a Leopard too.

“I give you four nights to decide. This not going be no easy journey. There are forces, Tracker. There are forces, Leopard. They come in on wind at morning or sometimes in the highest sun, the hour of the blinding light of witches. Just as I wish him to be found, surely there are those who wish him to stay hidden. Nobody ever send word for ransom, and yet I know he is alive, even before the fetish priest consult the older gods who tell him this is so. But there are forces, you two. Ill wind rolling through the cities in the hot season, and taking what is not for them. Day robber, night thief, I can’t tell you what you will find. But we talking too much. I give you four nights. If yes be your answer, meet me at the collapsed tower at the end the street of bandits. You know this place?”

“Yes.”

“Meet me there after sunset and let that be your yes.”

He turned his back to us. Our business was done with him for the time. They came back to me just then, the woman he killed and the man he made a eunuch.

“Silly Tracker, surely you know how eunuchs are made? That man will surely die,” the Leopard said.

I asked the landlady to allow the Leopard stay in a room I knew was empty. I wore nothing when I spoke to her, so she said yes, of course, but now the rent is double, or you will return from one of your trips to find nothing in your room. But I have nothing, I said. The Leopard took the room after I told him that should he find some tree to sleep in as a beast, somebody would take a perfect shot from a bow and arrow and get him right through the ribs. And all the prey in the city belonged to one man or another, so one could not roam about and hunt them. And even if you did kill somebody’s goat or chicken, do not bring it back to the room. And even if you did bring it back to the room, do not spill even a drop of blood.

This annoyed the Leopard but he saw there was wisdom in it. I knew he would be in there pacing and pacing, knowing he could not growl. Trying to sleep in the window but knowing he could not, and smelling blood quicken under the flesh of prey down below in the animal pens. So he brought the boy up to his room. The third day he came up to my room, grinning and rubbing his belly.

“You look like you sneaked an impala into your room.”

“Quiet as it’s kept. I might have been the glutton lately.”

“The whole inn knows of your appetites.”

“You must be the one nun in the whorehouse. Fantastic beasts, fantastic urges, Tracker. Where go you today? I shall see your city.”

“You already saw the city.”

“I want it through your eyes, or rather your nose. I know there is something in this city waiting for us.”

I looked at him straight. “Go whoring on your own time, cat.”

“Tracker, who’s to say we can’t do both?”

“As you wish. Go wash.”

He poked out his tongue, long as a young snake, and licked both his arms.

“Done,” he said, and grinned. “Who shall we see? A man owing you coin, whose legs we shall break? To us each a leg!”

They say Malakal is a city built by thieves. Malakal is mountains and mountains are Malakal. The one place that was never conquered because it was the one city nobody ever dared to try. Just the trip up to the mountains would exhaust men and horses. Nearly every man here is warrior born and most of the women too. This was the King’s last stand against your Massykin people of the South, and that from here we turned back the war and beat you southerners back like the bitches you are. Truce was your idea, not ours. Nearly every city spreads wide, but Malakal reaches up to the sky instead, house on top of house, tower on top of tower, some towers so thin and high that they forgot steps, leaving you to get to the top by rope. The towers themselves stacked so close that they seemed to have collapsed on each other, and to the south of the first wall was one that did, but was still in use. Four walls enclosed the city, built each inside the other, four rings built around the mountains that rose out of each other. Men built the first wall over four hundred years ago, after old Malakal went to ruin. The fourth and last wall was still being built. Come to it straight and Malakal looks like four forts, each rising out of the one below it, and towers set on top of towers. But take the view of birds and you see great walls like spirals and within them roads shooting out like spider legs from mountain peak to flat land, with lookouts for warriors, and arrow slits for archers, and homes and inns, and workhouses, and trade houses, and poorhouses, and dark lanes for necromancers, thieves, and men seeking pleasures and boys and women giving them. From our windows you can see the Hills of Enchantment, where many Sangoma live, but they were too far away. The citizens came to wisdom early how to use space for yards with chickens to get fat, and fences to keep out dogs and mountain beasts. Down from the mountains is the quickest way to the slave routes in the valley and the gold and salt routes to the sea. Malakal produces nothing but gold, trades everything that can be enslaved, and demands tribute from all who pass through, for if you are in the North it is the only way to the sea.

Of course I speak of nine years ago. Malakal is nothing like that now.

“I cannot tell you if these are good times or bad times to be in the city because the King is coming,” I said to the Leopard as we went out.

His caravan was seen two days out and all of Malakal was expected to celebrate his tenth jubilee as Kwash Dara, the North King, the son of Kwash Netu, the great conqueror of Wakadishu and Kalindar. Of course he celebrates in the city most responsible for saving his royal backside so that he could still have his royal shit wiped away by servants. But the griots were already singing, Praise the King for saving the city of mountains. Men from Malakal weren’t even in his army; they were mercenaries who would have fought for the Massykin had they come with good coin first. But fuck the gods if the city was not going to put on great fabrics and feast. The black-and-gold flag of Kwash Dara was on everything. Even children were painting their faces gold and black. The women painted gold for the left breast, black for the right, both in the sign of the rhinoceros. Weavers made cloths, and men wore robes, and women wrapped their heads into large flower arrangements, all of it black and gold.

“Your city is putting on her good face,” he said.

“An elder told me that peace is a rumor, and we will be back at war with the South in less than a year.”

“So in war or peace, wives will want to know who fucks their husbands.”

“That is one of your better points, Leopard.”

I lived in town, which was a new thing for me. I have always been an edge man, always on the coast, always by the boundary. That way nobody knows if I have just come or was turning to leave. I kept only as much as I could pack in a sack and leave with in less than a time-glass flip. But in a place like here, where people are always coming and going, you could stay in the center that never moves and still vanish. Which is convenient for a man that men hate. My inn was far west, at the edge of the third wall. People within the third wall other people thought were rich, but that is not true. Most of those people lived within the second wall. Warriors and soldiers and traders bedding for the night stayed within the fourth, in forts at all four points of the city that kept the enemy out. I’m telling you this, inquisitor, because you have never been there and a man of your sort never will.

I took the Leopard down streets that climbed up and rolled down, twisting and turning, winding to the last tower at the peak of the mountain range. I looked around and turned back to see him looking at me.

“He does not follow,” he said.

“Who, your little lover?”

“Call him anything but that.”

“He’ll follow you into a crocodile’s mouth.”

“Not until the swelling is gone,” I say.

“Swelling?”

“Tried to rub my belly last night. Fuck the gods, I would never believe it. Who would rub a cat’s belly?”

“Mistook you for a dog.”

“Do I bark? Do I sniff men’s balls?”

“Well …”

“Quiet yourself right now.”

I could hold the laugh no longer.

The Leopard frowned, then laughed. We walked downhill. Not many people were about, and whoever came out darted back indoors as soon as they saw us. I would think they were afraid, but nobody is afraid in Malakal. They knew something was afoot and wanted no part in it.

“Darkness comes quickly down this street,” Leopard said.

We went to the door of a man who owed me money but tried to pay in stories. He let us in, offered us plum juice and palm wine, but I said no, the Leopard said yes, and I said he means no, ignoring him glaring at me. The man was in the middle of another story about how the money was on the way from a city near the Darklands, and who knows what has happened, but it could be bandits, though his own brother carried the money, and sweets baked by his mother, of which he will give me as much as I could eat. The sweets from his mother was the only new part of this story.

“Is it me or are the trade routes now less safe than they were during the war?” he said to me.

I thought of which finger to break. I threatened to break one last time and to not do so would make me a man who did not keep his promises, and one could not have word like that get out in the cities. But he looked at me just then and his eyes popped open so wide that I thought I had said all that out loud. The man ran to his room and came back with a pouch heavy with silver. I prefer gold, I tell my customers before even going out looking, but this pouch was twice as heavy as the one he owed me.

“Take all of it,” he said.

“You overpay, I’m sure.”

“Take all of it.”

“Did your brother just come through the back door?”

“My house is none of your business. Take it and go.”

“If this is not enough I—”

“It is more than enough. Leave so my wife never knows two dirty men come to her house.”

I took his money and left, the man mystifying me. Meanwhile the Leopard couldn’t stop laughing.

“A joke between you and the gods or do you plan to share it?”

“Your debtor. Your man. Shit himself in the other room he did.”

“So strange. I was going to break a finger like I said I would. But he looked at me like he saw the god of vengeance himself.”

“He wasn’t looking at you.”

Just as the question was about to leave my mouth the answer came in my head.

“You …”

“I started changing right behind you. Wet his front with piss, frightened he was. Did you smell it?”

“Maybe he was marking territory.”

“Some thanks for the man who just fattened your pouch.”

“Thanks.”

“Say it with sweetness.”

“You try my patience, cat.”

He came with me to a woman who wanted to send a message to her daughter in the underworld. I told her that I found the missing and she wasn’t missing. Another who wanted me to find where a man who was his friend but stole his money had died, for wherever that corpse lay, beneath him would be bags and bags of gold. He said, Tracker, I will give you ten gold coins from the first bag. I said, You give me the first two bags and I will let you keep what is left, for your friend is alive. But what if there are only three bags? he said. I said, You should have said that before you let me smell the sweat, piss, and cum of his bed robes. The Leopard laughed and said, You are more entertaining than two Kampara actors pretending to fuck with wooden cocks. I didn’t notice the sun was gone until he skipped a few steps ahead and vanished into the dark. His eyes flashed like green light in the black.

“Is there no sport in your city?” he said.

“Took you long to get to this. Be warned, the pleasure women in this city gave up on being boys a long time ago. Nothing there but the scars of a eunuch.”

“Ugh, eunuchs. Better an abuka with no holes, no eyes, no mouth than a eunuch. I thought one became this to swear off fucking, but curse the gods, there they are, infesting every whorehouse, making the blood boil of every man who just wants to lie on his back for a change. I wish we could find the child right now.”

“I know who we could find right now.”

“What, who?”

“The slaver.”

“Gone to the coast to sell his new slaves.”

“He is not even four hundred paces from here and only one of his men travels with him.”

“Fuck the gods. Well it’s been said that you have—”

“Do not say it.”

We dipped into an alley and took two small torches.

He followed me past a tower with seven floors and a thatch roof, one with three floors and another four floors high. We passed a small hut where lived a witch, for nobody wanted to live above or below a witch; three houses painted in the grid patterns of the rich; and another building of mysterious use. We had left roads and gone northwest, right at the edge of the fourth wall, and not far from the North fort. I was a savannah dog, picking up too much flesh, living and dead, and burned by lightning.

“Here.”

We stopped at a house four floors high, the taller buildings beside it throwing moon shadow. No door stood in front and the lowest window was as high as three men foot-to-shoulder. One window near the top and in the center, dark with what looked like flickering light. I pointed to the house, then the window.

“He is here.”

“Tracker, a problem you have,” he said and pointed up. “Are you now crow to my Leopard?”

“All the birds in the ten and three kingdoms and a crow is what you call me?”

“Fine, a dove, a hawk—how about an owl? You better fly quick because this place has no door.”

“There is a door.”

The Leopard looked at me hard, then walked as far around the house as he could.

“No, you have no door.”

“No, you have no eyes.”

“Ha, ‘you have no eyes.’ I listen to you and hear her.”

“Who?”

“The Sangoma. Your words fall just like hers. You think like her too, that you’re clever. Her witchcraft is still protecting you.”

“If it were witchcraft it wouldn’t be protecting me. She threw something on me that binds craft; this I was told by a witchman who tried to kill me with metals. It’s not as if one feels it on the skin or in the bones. Something that remains even after her death, which again makes it not witchcraft, for a witch’s spells all die with her.”

I walked right up to the wall as if to kiss it, then whispered an incantation low enough that not even his Leopard ears could hear.

“If it were witchcraft,” I said.

I shuddered and stepped back. This always made me feel the way I do when I drink juice of the coffee bean—like thorns were under my skin pushing through, and forces in the night were out to get me. I whispered to the wall, This house has a door and I with the wolf eye will open it. I stepped back and without my torch the wall caught fire. White flame raced to four corners in the shape of a door, consumed the shape, crackled and burned, then put itself out, leaving a plain wooden door untouched by scorch.

“Whoever is here is working witch science,” I said.

Mortar and clay steps took us up to the first floor. A room empty of man smell, with an archway setting itself off in the dark. Blue moonlight came through the windows. I knew stealth, but the cat was so quiet I looked behind me twice.

People were talking harshly above us. The next floor up had a room with a locked door, but I smelled no people behind it. Halfway up the steps the smells came down on us: scorched flesh, dried urine, shit, the stinking carcasses of beasts and birds. Near the top of the steps sounds came down on us—whispers, growls, a man, a woman, two women, two men, an animal—and I wished my ears were as good as my nose. Blue light flashed from the room, then flickered down to dark. No way we could climb the last steps without being seen or heard, so we stayed halfway. We could see in the room anyway. And we saw what flickered blue light.

A woman, an iron collar and chain around her neck, her hair almost white but looking blue as light flickered through the room. She screamed, yanked at the chain around her neck, and blue light burst within her, coursing along the tree underneath her skin that one sees when you cut parts of a man open. Instead of blood, blue light ran through her. Then she went dark again. The light was the only way we could make out the slaver in dark robes, the man who fed him dates, and somebody else, with a smell I both remembered and couldn’t recognize.

Then somebody else touched a stick and it burst into flame like a torch. The chained woman jumped back and scrambled against the wall.

A woman held the torch. I had never seen her before, was sure of it even in the dark, but she smelled familiar, so familiar. Taller than everybody else in the room, with hair big and wild like some women above the sand sea. She pointed the torch to the ground, to the stinking half carcass of a dog.

“Tell me true,” the slaver said. “How did you get a dog up into this room?”

The chained woman hissed. She was naked and so dirty that she looked white.

“Move in close and I tell you true,” she said.

The slaver moved in close, she spread her legs, her finger spreading her kehkeh, and shot a streak of piss that wet his sandals before he could pull away. She started to laugh but he cracked his knuckles and punched the cackle out of her mouth. The Leopard jumped and I grabbed his arm. It sounded as if she was laughing until the tall woman’s torch shined on her again as tears pooled in her eyes. She said, “You you you you you all go. You all must go. Go now, run run run run run because Father coming, he coming on the wind don’t you hear the horse go go go you he won’t kiss the head of you unclean boys, go wash wash wash wash wash wash wash—”

The slaver nodded and the tall woman shoved the torch right up to her face. She jumped back again and snarled.

“Nobody comes! Nobody comes! Nobody comes! Who are you?” the woman said.

The slaver moved in to strike her. The chained woman flinched and hid her face, begging him not to strike her anymore. Too many men striking her and they strike her all the time and she just want to hold her boys, the first and the third and the fourth, but not the second, for he does not like when people hold him, not even his mother. I still held on to the Leopard’s arm and could feel his muscles shift and his hair grow under my fingers.

“Enough with that,” the tall woman said.

“This is how you get her to talk,” the slaver said.

“You must think she is one of your wives,” she said.

The Leopard’s arm stopped twitching. She wore a black gown from the northern lands that touched the floor, but cut close to show she was thin. She stooped down to the woman in chains, who still hid her face. I couldn’t see it but knew the chained woman was trembling. The chains clanged when she shook.

“These are the days that never should have happened to you. Tell me about her,” the tall woman said.

The slaver nodded to his date feeder and the date feeder cleared his throat and began.

“This woman, her story, very strange and sad. It is I who am talking and I will—”

“Not a performance, donkey. Just the story.”

I wish I could have seen his scowl but his face was lost to the dark.

“We don’t know her name, and her neighbors, she scared them all away.”

“No she did not. Your master here paid them to leave. Stop wasting my time.”

“As if I give two shakes of a rat’s ass about your time.”

She paused. I could tell nobody expected that to come out of his mouth.

“This always his ways?” she said to the slaver. “Maybe you tell me the story, slave monger, and maybe I cut his tongue out.”

The date feeder pulled a knife from under his sleeve and flipped the handle to her.

“How this for sport? I give you the knife and you try,” he said.

She did not take it. The woman in chains was still hiding her face in the corner. The Leopard was still. The tall woman looked at the date feeder, with a curious smile.

“He has chat, this one. Fine, out with your story. I will hear it.”

“Her neighbor, the washerwoman, say her name is Nooya. And nobody knows her or claims her so Nooya be her name, but she don’t answer to it. She answer to him. Nobody living to tell the story but she, and she not telling. But this is what we know. She live in Nigiki with her husband and five children. Saduk, Makhang, Fula—”

“The shorter version, date feeder.”

The tall woman pointed at him. She did not take her eye off the woman in chains.

“One day when the sun past the noon and was going down, a child knock on her door. A boy child, who look like he was five and four years in age.”

“We have one word for that in the North. We call it nine,” the tall woman said.

She smiled; the date feeder scowled and said, “A boy child knocking on the door rapraprapraprap like he going to knock it down. They after me, they coming for me, save this boy child! he say. Save this boy child, save him, he said. Save me!”

The chained woman darted a look. “Sssssssssssssssave the chhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” she said.

“The little boy screaming and screaming, what could a mother do? A mother with four boys of her own. She open the door and the boy run in. He run right into a wall and fall back and wouldn’t stop moving till she close the door. Who is after you? Nooya ask. Is it your father you run from? Nooya ask. Your mother? Yes, mothers can be strict and fathers can be wicked, but the look in his eye, the fear in his eye was not for strong word or the switch. She reach to touch him and he stagger back so quick his head hit the side of a cupboard and he fall.

“The boy wouldn’t nod, the boy wouldn’t talk, only cry and eat and watch the door. Her four sons including Makhang and Saduk say, Who is the strange boy, Mother, and where did you find him? The boy will not play with them so they leave him alone. All he do is cry and eat. Nooya’s husband was working the salt pits and would not be back till morning. She finally get him to stop crying by promising him millet porridge in the morning with extra honey. That night, Makhang was asleep, Saduk was asleep, the other two boys were asleep, even Nooya was asleep, and she never sleeps until all her boys was under the one roof. Hear this now. One of them was not asleep. One of them get up from the mat, and answer the door though nobody knock. The boy. The boy go to the door that nobody was knocking. The boy open the door and he come in. A handsome man he was, long neck, hair black and white. The night hide his eyes. Thick lips and square jaw and white skin, like kaolin. Too tall for the room. He wrap himself in a white-and-black cloak. The boy point to rooms deep in the house. The handsome man go to room of boys first and kill the first son to the third son and the floor was wet from blood. The little boy watch. The handsome man wake the mother by strangling her throat. He lift her up above his head. The boy watch. He throw her to the ground, and she is crippled with pain and she whimpering and screaming and coughing and nobody hear. She watch when he bring out the fourth son, the smallest boy, the little dormouse, holding his sleepy head up. The mother trying to scream no, no, no, no, but the handsome man laugh and cut his throat. She screaming, and screaming and he drop the fourth son and move in for her. The boy watch.

“The father come home when the sun far up in the sky. He come home tired and hungry and know he have to go out again before the sun go down. He put down his hoe, put down his spear, take off his tunic, and leave his loincloth. Where is my food, woman? he say. Dinner should be here and breakfast too. The mother come out of her room. The mother naked. Her hair wild. The room air feel wet and the father say it smell like it going rain soon. He hear her coming to him and want to know where is breakfast and where are the children. She right behind him. The room go dark and light flashing in the room and he say, A storm coming? It was just bright with sun. He turns around and his wife is the one with the lightning flashing through her like it do now. He look down and see the fourth son dead on the floor. Her husband jump back and look up and she grab his head with both hands and break his neck. When the lightning fade inside, her head come back and she look around her house and see all of them dead, the four sons and the husband and she forget the boy and the handsome man because they both gone. Just she and the dead bodies and she think she kill them, and nothing prove her otherwise and the lightning flash up in her head and she go mad. She kill two men and break the legs of one before they catch her. And they lock her up in a dungeon for seven murders. Even though nobody believe that she could break the neck of a big man who work in the fields alone. In her cell, she try to kill herself every time she remember what really happen, because she rather believe she kill them herself than it was the little boy she let in that kill them all. But most times she don’t remember and just growl like a cheetah in a trap.”

“That was a long story,” the tall woman said. “Who was the man?”

“Who?”

“The tall white man. Who was he?”

“His name not remember by any griot.”

“What kind of magic did he leave in her why this happen?”

Light was starting to glow in the woman again. She shook every time it happened, as if she had fits.

“Nobody know,” the date feeder said.

“Somebody knows, just not you.”

She looked at the slaver.

“How did you get her out of prison?” she asked.

“It was not difficult,” the slaver said. “They been waiting long days to get rid of her. She scare even the men. Every day as soon as she wake she would say the master going east or west or south and run in that direction, right into the wall, or the iron gate—two time she break out a tooth. Then she will remember her family and go mad all over again. They sold me her for just one coin when I said I will sell her to a mistress. I have her here for when she going to have use.”

“Use? You’ve been standing in her shit, and the maggots of the dead dog she been eating.”

“You don’t understand a thing. The white man. He didn’t kill her, and what he do, he do it to others. Many a woman like her running loose in these lands and many a man too. Even some children and I hear a eunuch. From women he take everything so they have nothing, but nothing is something too big for any one woman to bear, so she search and she run and she look. Look at her. Even now she want to be with him, she will be near him and want nothing else, she will let him eat her, she will never let him go. She will never stop following. He be her opium now. Look at her.”

“I am looking.”

“If he shift south she run south to that window. If he change west, she switch and run until the chain pull her back by the neck.”

“He who?”

“Him.”

“This story of yours growing long in the teeth. And the boy?”

“What of the boy?”

“You know what I am asking, Your Excellence.”

The slaver said nothing. The tall woman looked at the chained woman again as she raised her head from filthy arms. It looked like the tall woman was smiling at her. The chained woman spat on her cheek. The tall woman struck her face so hard and so quick, the chained woman’s head slammed against the wall. The chain links clicked and clanged from being pulled hard then let loose.

“If this tale had wings it would have flown to the east by now,” she said. “You want to follow the trail of a lost boy? Start with those child-raping elders in Fasisi.”

“I want you to follow this boy, the one this woman see in the company of a white man. It’s him.”

“An old tale mothers use to scare children,” the tall woman said.

“Tell me true—why you doubt? You never see women like her before?”

“I have even killed a few.”

“People from Nigiki all the way to the Purple City talk about seeing a man white as clay, and a boy. And others as well. There are many accounts of them entering city gates, but nobody witness their departure,” the date feeder said. “We have—”

“Nothing. From a madwoman missing her dormouse. It is late,” the tall woman said.

I grabbed the Leopard’s hand, still hairy, still about to change, and nodded to the lower floor. We snuck down and hid in the empty room, looking out in the dark. We looked out as the tall woman went down the steps. Halfway she stopped and looked over to us, but the dark was so thick you could feel it on your skin.

“We will let you know what we decide tomorrow,” she said to the others.

The door closed behind her. The slaver and his date feeder followed soon after.

We should leave,” I said.

The Leopard turned to go upstairs.

“Cat!”

I grabbed his hand.

“I will free this poor woman.”

“The same woman with lightning coursing through her? The woman eating from dog carcass?”

“That is no animal.”

“Fuck the gods, cat, you wish to quarrel now? Cut this notion loose. Ask the slaver about the woman when we see him. Besides, you were fine with chains on women only a night ago.”

“That is different. Those were slaves. This is a prisoner.”

“All slaves are prisoners. We go.”

“Free her I will, and you will not stop me.”

“I am not stopping you.”

“Who calls?” she said.

The woman had heard us.

“Could these be my boys? My lovely noise of boys? You gone so long, and still I didn’t make any millet porridge.”

The Leopard made a step and I grabbed his hand again. He pushed me away. She saw him and ran back to her corner.

“Peace. Peace be with you. Peace,” the Leopard said over and over.

She darted at him, then at me, then back at him, choking on the end of her chain. I stayed back, not wanting her to think we were closing in. She hid her face and started crying again.

The Leopard turned and looked at me. His face was near lost in the dark but I saw his eyebrows raised, pleading. He felt too much. He always did. But it was all sensation to him. Fast heartbeat, lustful swell, sweat down the neck. We stepped over some stones, climbing up the last few steps.

“Leopard, she cannot take care of herself. Le—”

“They want my boys. Everybody took my boys,” she said.

Leopard went back down the stairs and returned with a loose brick. Over by the wall, and away from her, he hammered at the chain’s end, built into the mortar. First she tried to run, but he hushed her with a shh. She looked away as Leopard hammered at the chain. The chain clanged and clanged, it wouldn’t break but the wall did, cracked and cracked until he pulled the peg out.

The chain dropped to the floor. In the dark I saw her stand up and heard her feet shuffle. The Leopard was right in front of her when she stopped shaking and looked up. The little light coming in touched her wet eyes. The Leopard touched the shackle around her neck and she flinched, but he pointed to the crack in the wall and nodded. She did not nod, but held her head down. I saw the Leopard’s eyes, though the room had been too dark moments before to see them. The light flickering in his eyes came from her.

Lightning flashed from her head and went down her limbs. The Leopard jumped but she grabbed him by the neck, heaved him off the floor, and flung him against the wall. Her eyes blue, her eyes white, her eyes crackling like lightning. I ran at her, a charging buffalo. She kicked me straight in the chest, and I fell back and hit my head; the Leopard was rolling over beside me. She grabbed him by the crook of his arm and sent him flying into the wall on the other side. She was lightning, burning the air. She grabbed his left leg and pulled him back, squeezing the ankle, making him howl. He tried to change but couldn’t. Lightning ran through her body and came out of her holes, making her yell and cackle. She kicked him and kicked him and kicked him, and I jumped up and she looked at me. Then she looked away quick like somebody called her. Then back at me, then away again. The Leopard, I knew him, I knew he would be angry, he leapt at her, hitting her in the back and knocking her down, but she turned over and kicked him off. The woman jumped back, blue light inside her a thunderstorm. She tried to run at me but Leopard grabbed the chain and pulled her back so hard she fell again. But she rolled and jumped back up and made for the Leopard. The woman screamed again and raised her hands, but then an arrow burst right through her shoulder. I thought she would scream louder, but she said nothing. The Leopard’s boy, Fumeli, was behind me. He shot her again, the second arrow almost in line with the arrow in her shoulder, and she howled. The lightning coursed through her and the whole room glowed blue. She growled at him but the boy drew a new arrow and looked right down the shaft at her. He could aim for her heart and hit. She stepped back as if she knew. Lightning woman leapt for the window, missed, grabbed the sill, digging her nails in the wall, pulled herself up, punched out the window bars, and jumped.

The Leopard ran past Fumeli and me and down the steps.

“Did he teach you how to—”

“No,” he said, and went down after him.

Outside, the Leopard and Fumeli were already many paces ahead of me, down a narrow alley with no lantern light coming from any window. They had slowed to a walk when I caught them.

“Do you have her? In your nose? Do you have her?” the Leopard said.

“Not this way,” I said, and turned down a lane running south. This street boasted beggars, so many lying in the alley that we stepped on a few, who shouted and groaned. She was running like a madwoman, I could tell from her trail. We turned right, down another alley, this one pocked with potholes full of stinking water and a guard on the ground, shaking and foaming at the mouth. We knew this was her doing, so none of us said it. We followed her scent. She ran ahead of us, upending carts and knocking over mules trying to sleep.

“Down here,” I said.

We caught up with her at a fork, the road on the right going back into town, the left heading to the north gate. No sentry at that gate held a club or spear that could stop her. I have never seen a soul run that fast who was not lifted by devils. Two sentries with shield and spear saw her and stepped forward, raised their spears above their heads. Before either could throw she jumped high, as if running on steps of air, and slammed into the city wall. She dug into the mortar before falling, scrambled up to the top of the wall, and jumped off before more guards could get to her. The sentries kept their spears ready to throw at the sight of us.

“Good men, we are not enemies of Malakal,” I said.

“Not friends neither. Who else coming to bother us near the noon of the dead?” said the first guard, bigger, fatter, iron armour no longer shiny.

“You saw her too, do not deny it,” the Leopard said.

“We seeing nothing. We seeing nothing but three witchmen working night magic.”

“You must give us leave,” I said.

“Shit we must give you. Leave before we send you somewhere you won’t like,” said the other guard—shorter, skinnier.

“We are not witchmen,” I say.

“All prey gone to sleep. So starve. Or go find whatever entertainment keeping a man up.”

“You will deny what you have just seen?”

“I seeing nothing.”

“You saw nothing. Fuck the—”

I cut the Leopard off. “That is fine with us, guard. You saw nothing.”

I took a bracelet off my hand and threw it at him. It was three snakes, each eating another’s tail, the sign of the Chief of Malakal, and a gift for finding something even the gods told him was lost.

“And I serve your chief, but that is nothing. And I have two hatchets and he has bow and arrow, but that is nothing. And that nothing ran by two men as if they were boys and jumped over a city wall as it were a river stone. Open your locks and give us three leave, and we will make sure the nothing that you didn’t see never comes back.”

This was the north wall. Outside was all rocks and about two hundred paces to the cliff, where the drop-off was sharpest. She stood about a hundred paces away, scurrying left, then right, then left again. It looked like she was sniffing. Then she dropped to the ground and sniffed the rocks.

“Nooya!” the Leopard said.

She turned like somebody who heard a noise, not something she knew was hers, and ran again. As she ran the lightning struck inside her and she screamed. Fumeli, still running, drew the bow and arrow, but the Leopard growled. We ran along the side of the cliff towards its point. We were closing on her, for though she was far faster than us she would not run straight. She ran right to the edge of the cliff and without stopping leapt off.