Black Leopard, Red Wolf (Dark Star Trilogy)

TWENTY

Strong winds blew into the sails and pushed the dhow. This was the fastest I ever see it go, save for a storm, the captain said, but claimed it was sake of neither river nor wind goddess. He wasn’t sure which, even though the answer showed itself clear to anybody who went belowdecks. We boarded the dhow to Kongor a day ago, and here is why it made sense. We could not go through Dolingo, for no one had word on whether the rebellion had spread or if the Queen’s men doused it. Dolingo’s mountains rose higher than Malakal and would have taken five nights to cross, followed by four through Mitu, before we reached Kongor. But a boat on the river took three nights and half a day. The last I sailed on a dhow, the boat was less than ten and six paces long, not even seven paces wide, and carried five of us. This boat was half the walk of a sorghum field and wider than twenty paces, and had two sails, one as wide as the ship and just as high, the other half that size, both cut like shark fins. Three floors belowdecks, all empty, made the ship sail faster, but also made it easier to capsize. A slave ship.

“That ship, have you ever seen the like?” Mossi said when I pointed it out docked by the river.

A half day’s walk led us to a clearing and the river, which ran from far south of Dolingo, snuck past it on the left, snaked around Mitu, and split to surround Kongor. On the other side of the river, the giant trees and thick mists hid the Mweru.

“I have seen the like,” I said to him about the ship.

We were all tired, even the buffalo and the Ogo. We were all sore, and the first night the Ogo’s fingers were so stiff he swatted three mugs of beer away trying to pick them up. I couldn’t remember what hit me in my back for it to smart so, and when I dipped in the river, every wound, scratch, and sore screamed. Mossi was sore as well and he tried to hide his limp, but winced when he stepped with his left foot. The night before, the cut above his forehead opened again, and blood streaked down the middle of his face. I cut another piece of his tunic, pounded wild bush into a paste, and rubbed it in his wound. He grabbed my hand and cursed at the sting, then eased his grip and dropped his hands to my waist. I wrapped his forehead.

“Then you know why it would dock here, on the outskirts of Dolingo.”

“Mossi, Dolingo buys slaves, not sells them.”

“What does that mean, that the ship is empty? Not after what’s coming to pass in the citadel.”

I turned to him, looking over at the buffalo, who snorted at the sight of the river.

“Look how it floats above the water. It’s empty.”

“I don’t trust slavers. We could turn from guest to cargo in the course of one night.”

“And how would a slaver do that with the likes of us? We need passage to Kongor, and this ship is going to either Kongor or Mitu, which is still closer than where we are now.”

I hailed the captain, a fat slaver with a bald head he painted blue, and asked if he minded some fellow travelers. They all stood from the port, looking down on us, ragged and covered in bruises and dust, but with all the weapons we took from the Dolingons. Mossi was right, the captain looked us over, and so did his thirty-man crew. But Sadogo never took off his gloves, and one look from him made the captain charge us nothing. But you take that cow to the shed with the rest of the dumb beasts, he said, and the Ogo had to grab the buffalo’s horn to stop him from charging. The buffalo took an empty stall beside two pigs who should have been fatter.

The second level had windows, and the Ogo took that one, and frowned when it looked like we would join him. He has nightmares and wishes that nobody knows, I said to Mossi when he complained. The captain said to me that he sold his cargo that night to a thin blue noble who pointed with his chin the whole time, only two nights before the god of anarchy let loose in Dolingo.

The ship would dock in Kongor. None of the crew slept below. One, whose face I didn’t see, said something about slave ghosts, furious about dying on the ship for they were still chained to it and could not enter the underworld. Ghosts, masters of malice and longing, spent all their days and nights thinking of the men who wronged them, and sharpening those thoughts into a knife. So they would have no quarrel with us. And if they wanted ears to hear of their injustice, I have heard worse from the dead.

I went down the stairs to the first deck, the stairway so steep that by the time I reached the bottom, the steps behind me vanished into the dark. I couldn’t see much in the dark but my nose took me over to where Mossi lay, the myrrh on his skin gone to everyone but me. He rolled rags from an old sail into a pillow and put it right against the bulkhead, so that he could hear the river. I went to sleep beside him, except I couldn’t sleep. I turned on my side, facing him, watching him for such a long time that I jumped when I saw that he was looking at me, eye-to-eye. He reached over and touched my face before I could move. It seemed as if he wasn’t even blinking, and his eyes were too bright in the dark, almost silver. And his hand had not left my face. He rubbed my cheek and moved up to my forehead, traced one brow, then the other, and went back down to my cheek like a blind woman reading my face. Then he put his thumb on my lip, then my chin, while his fingers caressed my neck. And lying there, I already forgot when I closed my eyes. Then I felt him on my lips. There is no such kiss among the Ku, and none with the Gangatom either. And nobody in Kongor or Malakal would do such gentle tongue play. His kiss made me want another. And then he pushed his tongue in my mouth and my eyes went wide open. But he did it again, and my tongue did it back to him. When his hand gripped me I was already hard. It made me jump again and my palm brushed his forehead. He winced, then grinned. Night vision made him out in the dark, gray and silver. He sat up, pulled his tunic over his head. I just looked at him, his bruised chest purple in spots. I wanted to touch him but was afraid he would wince again. He straddled my lap and grabbed my arms, to which I hissed. Sore. He said something about us being poor old injured men who have no business doing … I did not hear the rest, for he then bent down and sucked my right nipple. I moaned so loud, I waited for some sailor upstairs to cuss or whisper that something is afoot with those two. His knees against my own bruised ribs made me breathe heavy. I rubbed his chest and he sucked in air and moaned it back out. I was frightened that I hurt him, but he took my hand away and placed it on the floor. He blew on my navel, then moved lower between my legs and did precious art. I begged him to stop in the most feeble whisper. He climbed back on me. The floorboards, looser than they should have been, creaked with each jerk. I let everything out through gnashed teeth and grabbed his ass. I went on top. He grabbed my left ass cheek right on a raw bruise and I shouted. He laughed, pulling me deeper into him, my lips down on his. Both of us failing to not make a sound, then both thinking fuck the gods for we will have sound.

In the morning, when I woke, a boy looked down on me. Not surprised at all, I was waiting for him, and for more like him. He raised his eyebrows, curious, and scratched at the shackle around his neck. Mossi grunted, frightening him, and the boy faded into the wood.

“You have saved children before,” Mossi said.

“I didn’t see you were awake.”

“You are different when you think no one watches you. I always thought that what made one a man was that he takes up so much space. I sit here, my sword is there, my water pouch there, tunic there, chair over there, and legs spread wide because, well, I love it so. But you, you make yourself smaller. I wondered if it was because of your eye.”

“Which one?”

“Fool,” he said.

He sat across from me, leaning against the wood planks. I rubbed his hairy legs.

“That would be the one I speak of,” he said. “My father had two different eyes. Both were gray, until his enemy from childhood punched one brown.”

“What did your father do to his enemy?”

“He calls him Sultan, Your Great Eminence, now.”

I laughed.

“There are children of great importance to you. I have thought of such things, of children, but … well. Why think of flight when one can never be the bird? We are of strange passions in the East. My father—well my father is my father and just like the one before him. It was not that I … for I was not the first … not even the first carrying his name … and besides, my wife was chosen from a noble house before I was born, and so it would have gone, for such is the way of things. The thing is not what I did, the thing is the prophet allowed men to discover us and he was poor so he … I … they sent me away and told me never to sail back to their shores or it would be death.”

“A wife? And a child?”

“Four. My father took them and gave them to my sister to raise. Better to keep my filth away from their memory.”

Fuck the gods, I thought. Fuck the gods.

“Then I sailed off course. Maybe it was the gods. There are children you think of.”

“Don’t you?”

“A night never passes.”

“This must be why loose wives dismiss us as soon as we burst. Sad talk of children.”

He smiled.

“Do you know of mingi?” I asked.

“No.”

“Some of the river tribes and even some places in great cities like Kongor kill newborns who are unworthy. Children born weak, or limbless, or with top teeth before bottom, or with gifts or forms strange. Five of those children strange in form we saved, but they return to me in dreams—”

“We?”

“Does not matter now. These five return to me in dreams and I have tried to see them, but they live with a tribe that is my tribe’s enemy.”

“How?”

“I gave them to my tribe’s enemy.”

“Nothing you ever say ends the way I think you would end it, Tracker.”

“After my tribe tried to kill me for saving mingi children.”

“Oh. You and these people, none of your rivers run straight. Take us finding this boy. There is no straight line between us and this boy, only streams leading to streams, leading to streams, and sometimes—and tell me if I lie—you get so lost in the stream that the boy fades, and with him the reason you search for him. Fades like that boy who just vanished in the ship.”

“You saw him?”

“Truth does not depend on me believing it, does it?”

“This is truth, there are times I forget who we are after. I don’t even think of the coin.”

“What compels you, then? Not reunite mother with child? You said that only a few days ago.”

He crawled over to me and shafts of light marked stripes on his skin. He rested his head in my lap.

“This is what you ask?”

“Yes, this is what I ask.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

I looked at him.

“The further I go—”

“Yes?”

“The more I feel that I have nothing to go back to,” I said.

“This comes to you after how many moons?”

“Prefect, news such as this comes only one way: too late.”

“Tell me about your eye.”

“It is from a wolf.”

“Those jackals you call wolves? Maybe you lost a bet with a jackal. This is not jest, is it? Which question do you desire first: how or why?”

“A shape-shifting hyena bitch in her woman form sucked the eye out of my skull, then bit it off.”

“I should have asked why first. And after last night,” he said.

“What of last night?”

“You … nothing.”

“Last night was not a deposit on something else,” I said.

“No, that it was not.”

“Can we talk of something else?”

“We talk of nothing now. Except your eye.”

“A gang ripped my eye out.”

“A gang of hyenas, you said.”

“Truth does not depend on you believing it, prefect. I wandered that wilderness between the sand sea and Juba for several moons, I can’t remember how many, but I do remember wanting to die. But not before I killed the man responsible.”

Here is a short tale about the wolf eye. After this man betrayed me to the pack of hyenas, I couldn’t find him. After that I went roaming, and roaming, full and brimming with hate but with nowhere to let all this malcontent out. I went back to the sand sea, to the lands of beetles big as birds, and scorpions who stung the life out, and sat in a sand hole while vultures landed and circled. And then the Sangoma came to me, her red dress blowing though no wind blew, and her head circled by bees. I heard the buzz before I saw her, and when I saw her I said, This must be a fever dream, sun madness, for she was long dead.

“I expect the boy with the nose to not have the nose but did not think the boy with the mouth would no longer have a mouth,” she said. It came trotting beside her.

“You brought a jackal?” I asked.

“Do not insult the wolf.”

She grabbed my face, firm but not hard, and said words I did not understand. She grabbed some sand in her hand, spat in it, and kneaded it until the sand stuck together. Then she ripped off my patch and I jumped. Then she said, Close your good eye. She put the sand on my eye hole and the wolf came in closer. The wolf growled, and she whimpered, and she whimpered some more. I heard something like a stab and more growls from the wolf. Then nothing. Sangoma said, Count to ten and one before you open them. I started counting and she interrupted me.

“She will come back for it, when you are near gone. Look out for her,” she said.

So she lent me a wolf’s eye. I thought I would see far and long and make people out in the dark. And I can. But lose colour when I close my other eye. This wolf will one day come back and claim it. I couldn’t even laugh.

“I could,” Mossi said.

“A thousand fucks for you.”

“A few more before we dock will be fine enough. You might even turn into something of a lover.”

Even if he was joking, he annoyed me. Especially if he was joking, he annoyed me.

“Tell me more about witches. Why you hate them so,” he said.

“Who said I hate witches?”

“Your own mouth.”

“I fell sick in the Purple City many years ago. Sick near death—a curse some husband paid a fetish priest to put on me. A witch found me and promised me a healing spell if I did something for her.”

“But you hate witches.”

“Quiet. She was not a witch, she said, just a woman who had a child without a man, and this city can be wicked in its judgment of such things. They took her child, she said, and gave it to a rich but barren woman. Will you make me well, I asked, and she said, I will give you freedom from want, which did not sound like the same thing. But I followed my nose and found her child, took her away from that woman in the night, disturbing no one. Then I don’t know what happened, except I woke up the next morning, well, with a pool of black vomit on the floor.”

“Then why—”

“Quiet. It really was her child. But she had a smell about her. Tracked her down two days later in Fasisi. She was expecting someone else. Somebody to buy the two baby hands and one liver she left out on the table. Witches cannot work spells against me, though she tried. I chopped her in the forehead before she could chant, then hacked her head off.”

“And you have hated witches ever since.”

“Oh I’ve hated them from long before that. I hate myself for trusting one, is more the like. People always go back to their nature in the end. It’s like that gum from the tree, that no matter how far you pull it, snaps itself back.”

“Maybe you bear hatred for women.”

“Why would you say that?”

“I’ve never heard you speak good of a single one. They all seem to be witches in your world.”

“You don’t know my world.”

“I know enough. Perhaps you hate none, not even your mother. But tell me I lie when I say you always expected the worst of Sogolon. And every other woman you have met.”

“When have you seen me say any of this? Why do you say this to me now?”

“I don’t know. You can’t go inside me and not expect me to go inside you. Will you think on it?”

“I have nothing to think—”

“Fuck the gods, Tracker.”

“Fine, I shall think on why Mossi thinks I hate women. Anything more before I go on deck?”

“I have one thing more.”

We docked a day and a half later at noon. His forehead wound looked sealed, and none of us were sore, though we were all covered in scabs, even the buffalo. Most of that day I passed in the slave cabin, me fucking Mossi, Mossi fucking me, me loving Mossi, Mossi loving me, and me going above deck to check faces to see if anyone would start words with me. They either didn’t know or care—sailors are sailors everywhere—not even when Mossi stopped grabbing my hand to cover his shouts. The rest of the time Mossi gave me too many things to think about and it all came back to my mother, who I never, ever wanted to think about. Or the Leopard, who I had not thought of in moons, or what Mossi said that inside me is a hate for all women. It was a harsh thought and a lie, as I could not help that I have run into witches.

“Maybe you draw the worst to you.”

“Are you the worst?” I asked, annoyed.

“I hope not. But I think of your mother, or rather the mother you told me about who might not even be real, or if she is real, not as you say. You sound like fathers where I am from who blame the daughter for rape, saying, Had you not legs to run away? Had you not lips to scream? You think as they do that suffering from cruelty or escaping it is a matter of choice or means, when it is a matter of power.”

“You say I should understand power?”

“I say you should understand your mother.”

The night before we docked he said, Tracker, you are at all times a vigorous lover, but I do not think that was praise, and he kept asking me about long gone things, dead things, afterward. So much so that yes, I was getting a little tired of the prefect and his questions. In the morning the crew repaired a hole the Ogo punched through the bulkhead, without asking any questions. He said it was a nightmare.

Kongori deserted their streets at noon, a perfect time to slip into the city and vanish down an alley. Take away the streets where the Tarobe, or the Nyembe, or the Gallunkobe/Matyube lived, and people made house anywhere they could buy, cheat, inherit, or claim, which meant that if most of the people stayed indoors then the entire city would look as if it hid behind walls. Not even the sentries, usually on guard around the city limits, stood by the shore. Mossi and I took two of the ship crewmen’s clothes in exchange for cowrie shells, and one, stunned, said, I have killed men for less. We wore the sea-worn robes of sailors, robes with hoods, and trousers like men from the East.

More than seven nights had gone since we saw the city last. Maybe more but I could not remember. No loud music and nothing left of Bingingun masquerade but bits of straw, cloths, sticks, and staffs in red and green, all scattered on the street, with no master to claim them.

I looked for the Ogo to look at me and the prefect with different eyes, but saw nothing. If anything, the Ogo talked more than he had in almost a moon, on everything from the agreeable sky to this most agreeable buffalo, that I almost told him that a chatter-loving Ogo would bring attention to us. I wondered if Mossi thought the same and that was why he kept behind us, until I caught his eye sweeping up and down and behind and beside, past each crossroad, his hand never leaving his sword. I pulled back, walking beside him.

“Chieftain army?”

“Down a merchant’s street? They paid us well to never come to these parts.”

“Then who?”

“Anyone.”

“Which enemy is expecting us, Mossi?”

“Not enemies on the ground. It’s pigeons in the sky that worry me.”

“I know. And I have no friends here. I—”

I had to stop right there, right on that road as we walked. I clutched my nose and backed against the wall. So many at once that an older me would have gone a little mad, but now they slapped my mind around, pushing me forward, and back, and all around at once; my nose making me dizzy.

“Tracker?”

I can walk in a land of a hundred smells I do not know. I can walk into a place with many smells I know if I know this is the place where they will be, and decide what scent my mind will follow. But six or even four ambushing me unawares and I go almost mad. So many years have gone since this has happened to me. I remembered the boy who trained me to cluster on one, the boy I had to kill. There, all of them came at me, all I remember, not all I remember being in Kongor.

“You smell the boy,” Mossi said, grabbing my arm.

“I’m not going to fall.”

“But you smell the boy.”

“More than this boy.”

“Is that good or not so?”

“Only the gods know. This nose is a curse, it is no blessing. Much afoot in this city, more than when I was last here.”

“Speak plain, Tracker.”

“Fuck the gods, do I sound mad?”

“Peace. Peace.”

“That’s what that fucking cat used to say.”

He grabbed me and pulled me into his face.

“Your temper is making it worse,” he said.

The Ogo and buffalo had walked on, not noticing we had stopped. He touched my cheek and I flinched.

“No one sees us,” he said. “Besides, it gives you something else to worry about.” He smiled.

“I think someone tracks us. How far are the Nyembe streets?” I asked.

“Not far, north and west of here. But there’s no masking these two,” he said, pointing at the buffalo and the Ogo.

“We should stay along the coast. Do we go to the boy?” Mossi asked.

“It’s only three of them now, and the Ipundulu is wounded. No witch-mother to quicken his healing.”

“You say wait?”

“No.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“Mossi.”

“Tracker.”

“Quiet. I say while we hunt people, people hunt us. The Aesi might still be in Kongor. And I have this feeling he watches us, just waiting for us to fall into his lap. And others, others who track us.”

“My sword is ready when they find us.”

“No. We shall find them.”

Dusk came before we snuck through deserted alleys to get west. We passed a lane narrow enough for only one to pass through that Mossi dashed in and came back with blood on his sword. He did not say, I did not ask. We continued north and east, lane to lane, until we reached the Nyembe quarter and that snake street that led to the old lord’s house.

“Last I was on this street it was infested with Seven Wings,” I said.

He pointed to the flag of the black sparrow hawk, still flying from that tower three hundred paces away. “That still flies, though. And the Fasisi King’s mark is everywhere.”

We came to the doorway, suspiciously open.

“There’s a mark right here on this wall that I know,” I said.

“I thought you would give word about the piss first.”

Mossi jumped, but I did not move, though I wished I had an ax. He came from somewhere deep in this house, running down the narrow hallway leading outside, and leapt straight at me, knocking me down flat on the ground. The buffalo snorted, the Ogo ran to my side, and Mossi drew his two swords.

“No,” I said. “He’s a—”

The Leopard licked my forehead. He rubbed his head against my right cheek, dipped under my chin, and rubbed against the left. He rubbed his nose against my nose and rested his forehead on mine. He hummed and purred as I sat up. Then he shifted shape.

“Picked that up from lions, you poor excuse of a leopard,” I said.

“Shall we go into the foul things you’ve picked up, wolf? Because foul they are. Soon I shall hear that you kiss with tongue.”

The snort came from me, not the buffalo.

“You, with your eye of a dog, me with my eyes of a cat. We are quite the pair, are we not, Tracker?”

Leopard jumped to his feet and pulled me up. Mossi still had both swords drawn, but the Ogo went right up to the Leopard and picked him up.

“I like you more than most cats,” he said.

“How many cats do you know, Sadogo?”

“Only one.”

Leopard touched his face.

“Ay, buffalo, even now you have been no man’s meal?”

The buffalo stomped in the dirt and the Leopard laughed. Sadogo put him down.

“Who is this, with swords drawn? A foe?”

“To tell true, Leopard, I half thought to draw my knife as well.”

“Why?”

“Why? Leop … Is that boy with you?”

“Of course he is …. Oh, wait. Yes, yes, yes. I would have drawn a knife on me too, this is a true thing. There is a story I must tell you. An ass is fucked, so you shall love it. And how many you must have to tell me? First who is this good man who still won’t withdraw his sword?”

“Mossi. He used to be chieftain army.”

“I am Mossi.”

“So he just said. I’ve been through a few chieftains, not so chieflike, they were. How do you come to be with these … what do I call you, call us?”

“The story is long. But now I also search for the boy. With him,” Mossi said.

“So you told him about the boy,” Leopard said, looking at me.

“He knows everything.”

“Not everything,” Mossi said.

“Fuck the gods, prefect.”

Leopard looked at him, then me, and broke into a wicked grin. A thousand fucks for him doing that.

“Where is Sogolon?”

“This is a very long story. Longer than yours. I will have words with the lord of this house. He has a man who looks just like him in Dolingo.”

“What took you to Dolingo? Alas, the only thing to meet us when we came were spiders, empty it was. Every room, every window, not even a plant left. Go in, good Ogo and prefect, whatever your name is.”

“Mossi.”

“Yes, that was it. Buffalo, our vegetables inside are better than anything on this foul ground. Go around the back and let them give you through the window.”

That was the first in a long time I heard the buffalo make that sound that I still swear was a laugh.

“Mossi, you look like a swordsman,” Leopard said.

“Yes, and what of it?”

“Nothing, but I have two swords that are no use to a beast on four legs. Fine blades made in the South. Belonged to a man whose neck I chopped off.”

“Do you or this one ever leave a man whole?”

The Leopard looked at me, then at Mossi, and laughed. Then he slapped Mossi hard on the back and pushed him off with a “They are in there.” I can’t imagine Mossi liked it, not as much as I liked seeing it.

“Tracker, she is here also.”

“Who?”

He nodded for me to follow.

“We get the boy tomorrow night,” he said.

As we entered, Fumeli, whom I had not seen for so long, ran up to us, but slowed quick when the Leopard snarled.

“I will be asking about that later,” I said.

“We shall do as we always do, Tracker. Contest story against story. I believe I will again win.”

“You have not heard my story.”

He faced me. His whiskers stuck out under his nose, and his hair looked longer, wilder. I missed this man so much that my heart still jumped at the slightest movement from him. At him turning around with a wicked grin. At him scratching his crotch against the robe, hating clothes as much as me.

“It will not match mine, I can promise you,” he said.

The Leopard led me up six flights. We approached a room I had not seen before when the smell of the river came to me. Not from outside, but one of the five or six smells I knew but did not welcome. One was in the room, the rest were close but not here.

“I smell the boy,” I said, “not far from here. We should go get him now, before they can move again.”

“A man of the same mind as me. I said the same thing three times now. But they say too many are they that hunt them, and an entire army hunts me, so we must move at night.”

I did not know that voice.

“The Tracker is here. He can tell you what happens when plan is thrown to whim.”

That voice I knew. I stepped in and looked for the new voice first. She lay on cushions and rugs, a mug in her hand, strong drink of the Fasisi coffee bean. A hat on her head, wide at the top like a crown, but of red fabric, not gold. A veil, silk maybe, rolled up to reveal her face. Two large disks at her ears, the pattern a circle of red, then white, then red, then white again. Her gown also red, her sleeves baring her shoulders but hiding her arms. A large blue pattern in the front, shaped like two arrowheads pointing at each other. I almost said, I know no nun who ever dressed so, but my mouth had gotten me into enough trouble. Two women servants stood behind her in the same leather dress that Sogolon loved to wear.

“You are the one they call Tracker,” the King sister said.

“That is what they call me, Your Excellence.”

“I am nothing close to excellent and everything far from perfect for years now. My brother saw to that. And Sogolon is no longer with you. Has she perished?”

“She had what was coming to her,” I said.

“She was one for plans, Sogolon. Give us tidings.”

“She went through a door she should not have, which probably burned her to death.”

“A horrible one from what I know of deaths. Strength through your sorrow, this I wish for you.”

“I have no sorrow for her. She sold us as slaves in exchange for safe passage through Dolingo. She also took the body of a girl and gave it to the soul of a man whose body she stole long ago.”

“You don’t know any of that!” Bunshi said. I wondered when she would speak. She rose from a puddle on the floor to the right of the King sister.

“Who knows, water witch? Perhaps he took revenge by dragging her with him through one of the ten and nine doors. I heard that you cannot return to a door until you have been through all ten and nine. This she proved true, if you were one of those that wonder,” I said.

“And you let him.”

“It happened so quick, Bunshi. Quicker than one could care.”

“I should drown you.”

“When did you learn that she changed the plan? Did she not tell you? You a liar or a fool?” I said.

“With your permission,” Bunshi said to the King sister, but she shook her head.

“At some point, she decided we were all unfit to save your precious boy. Even as we, the unfit, freed ourselves and saved her from the one called Ipundulu,” I said.

“She—”

“Made a mistake that cost her the child? Yes, that would be what she did,” I said.

“Sogolon only tried to serve her mistress,” Bunshi said to the King sister, but she was already facing me.

“Tracker? What is your real name?” the King sister said.

“Tracker.”

“Tracker. I understand you. This child carries no stakes for you.”

“I hear he is the future of the kingdom.”

She rose.

“What else did you hear?”

“Too much and not nearly enough.”

She laughed and said, “Strength, guile, courage, where were men of such quality when we needed them? Where is the woman that you have hurt and abandoned?”

“She hurt herself.”

“Then she must be a woman of more power and means than me. Every scar I have, it is somebody else who put it there. Which woman is this?”

“His mother,” said the Leopard. I could have killed him in that moment.

“His mother. She and I have much in common.”

“You’ve both abandoned your own children?”

“Maybe we’ve both had our lives ruined by men only to have our children grow up blaming us for it. Pray forgive that remark; I have also been living in a nunnery across from a whorehouse. Think of it, I, the King sister, in hiding with old women because he has sent assassins to the same fortress he imprisoned me. Seven Wings, they left to join the King’s armies in Fasisi. From there they will invade Luala Luala first, and the Gangatom and the Ku, and force every man, woman, and child into slavery. Not will, has. Luala Luala is already under control. War weapons do not build themselves.”

“Respect of the kings to you. But you stand there and try to make ordinary men and women care about the fates of princes and kings, as if what happens to you changes anything that happens to us,” I said.

“The Leopard tells me you have children among the Gangatom.”

“Don’t think I have been in any koo long enough to seed a child,” I said.

“Is this the mouth you warned me of?” she said, looking at both Bunshi and the Leopard. The Leopard nodded. She sat back down on a stool.

“How lovely a family you must have had, so that the loss of a son means nothing to you.”

“Not my—”

“Tracker,” Leopard said, shaking his head.

“The view is different when you are the child lost, Your Excellence. Then all you think of is the disappointment that is parents,” I said.

She laughed.

“Do I look calm to you, Tracker? Do you think here is one possessed with Itutu? How is the King sister so calm when monsters and men have taken her son? Maybe it is only the latest violation. Maybe I am tired. Maybe I take a bath every night so that I scream underwater and wash away tears. Or maybe a thousand fucks for you, thinking any of this is your business. Word has already reached several of the elders that not only do I have a child, but a child of a legal union with a prince. They know I will go to Fasisi and I will bring my claim of succession to the elders, the court, the ancestors, and the gods. My brother even thinks he has killed all the southern griots, but I have four. Four with account of the true history, four whose account will not be questioned by any man.”

“Why do all this to put another man on the throne? A boy.”

“A boy trained by his mother. Not by men who can only raise a boy to become another just like him. My brother’s army marched north to the river lands two days ago. Do you not have blood there?”

“No.”

“Gangatom is just across the river. And what he will do with the children too young to be slaves? You ever heard word of the white scientists?”

It took everything in me to answer quickly, and I still spoke too late.

“No.”

“Thank your gods that you never cross them,” she said, but she looked at me with one raised eyebrow, and slowed her words.

“White because even their skin rebel against their evil, for there is only so much vileness that your own skin can agree to. White like only the purest evil. The children, they take and bind to beasts, and devils. Two attacked me myself, one had wings of a bat as big as that flag. When my men killed it with arrows, it was just a boy, and the wings were part of his skin and bones now, even blood ran through it. And they do other things, turning three girls into one girl, sewing tongue to tongue to the boy so that he hunts like a crocodile and giving him bird eyes. You know why they take them young? Think, Tracker. Turn a man into a killer and he can turn back, or he can kill you. Raise a little one to be a killer and killing is all he does. He lives for blood, with no remorse. They take the children and turn them like they are plants, with every wicked art of the white science, worse if the children already come with gifts. Now they work for my brother and the bitch of Dolingo.”

“Sogolon said you were allies. Sisters together.”

“I was never sisters with that woman. Sogolon is who she knows. Knew.”

“Then I go to Gangatom.”

“You know some, don’t you? Children with gifts.”

“I go to Gangatom,” I said again.

“What? Nobody here told me you came with your own army. Your own mercenaries, maybe? Maybe two spies? A witchman to mask your approach? How shall you save them? And why would you care what happens to any child? The Leopard tells me they are even mingi. Tell me true. Is one blue with no skin, one with legs like an ostrich, and still one with no legs at all? Many men who march believe in the old ways. They will be in a white science house if not killed first. Worthless and useless.”

“They are worth more than a useless shit of a king on a useless shithole of a throne. And I will kill whoever takes them.”

“But you are not with them, and you do not have them. How does such fathering work? Yet you think you can judge me.”

I had nothing to say to her. She came over to me, but walked to the window.

“Sogolon burned to her death, you say?”

“Yes. She was haunted by many spirits.”

“She was. Some of them her own children. Dead children. I grow tired of dead children, Tracker, children who do not need to die. You talk of stakes. I do not know how to give you any. But right now, two have my child, because of a mistake this one made that Sogolon went desperate trying to redeem. I don’t need a man on a mission and I don’t need a man who believes in kings or gods any more than I need a man who thinks he will shit a gold nugget. I just want someone who when he says, I will bring you your son, brings him to me.”

“I am still doing this for coin.”

“I expect no less.”

“Why did you not tell us from the beginning? The truth.”

“What is truth?”

“That is your answer? I would have cared more had your river demon told us everything.”

“You needed more than what you heard to care?”

“What I heard and what I saw were two different things.”

“I thought it was your nose you trusted. You and your company look like you still have wounds to tend to.”

“Me and my company are fine.”

“Nevertheless. Go get my boy tomorrow night.”

I have something for you,” the Leopard said.

I took one of the rooms on the top floor, but facing the snake street. Rugs on the floor, spilled civet musk, and a head plate for sleeping, which I had not seen since my father’s house. Grandfather’s. He threw one of the axes at me and I caught it in the spin. He nodded, impressed. The second was in a harness, which I put over my shoulder.

“I brought something else,” he said, and gave me a jar that smelled like tree gum.

“Black ochre in shea butter, perfect for you. You can blend in dark and shadow without wearing all those rags that makes your nipples and asshole itch. Walk with me.”

Outside, we walked down to the river and along the bank.

“Things have changed between you and this Fumeli,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Or maybe me. You snap at him more but I care less.”

He turned to face me, walking backward again.

“Tracker, you must tell me. How evil was I?”

“Like a mangy dog robbed of his last meal. You were odd, Leopard, one day the man of mirth that made me laugh like no other. The next you’re not just wishing me harm, you bit me in the neck.”

“That is impossible, Tracker. Even at my worst I could never—”

“Look at my scar,” I said, and pointed. “Those were your teeth. Your malcontent was fierce.”

“Fine, fine. Dear Tracker, now I have such sorrow. I was not myself.”

“Then who were you?”

“I promised you a tale strange. Fumeli, how I laugh when I think about it. But this, this boy, fuck the gods. Hear me now.”

We kept walking along the shore, both of us wearing hoods, and the clothing of those devoted to the gods. The old lord’s clothes.

“Fumeli, he thought that he should have me and no one else shall. Especially you, Tracker. Somehow you as friend frightened him more than any other man as lover. But he was frightened by that as well. So he put me under strange enchantment. Something that would make me think myself his all the time. Babacoop.”

“Devil’s whisper? Potion’s so foul no wine can mask it. No beer either. How did he get it past your mouth, Leopard?”

“He did not get it past my mouth.”

“Even as vapor, it burns the nose.”

“Not my nose either. Tracker, how do I tell you this? Fumeli, he would dip his finger in devil’s whisper, and then he would … after that, before the time glass is even flipped he could tell me to do anything and I would do it, tell me to believe anything and I would believe it, tell me to hate anything, and I would hate it. It would be several days, I will remember nothing and whenever we fucked again he would stick more devil’s whisper up my hole.”

“When did you discover his ways?”

“He added another finger.”

I burst out laughing.

“I grabbed him. I saw his hands and said what is this? I tell you true, Tracker, I beat him to near death until he told me, and then I beat him to near death again when he told me.”

I laughed so hard I fell to the sand in a fit. And I could not stop. I would look at his face and laugh, look at his leg and laugh, look at him scratch his ass and laugh. Laugh until I heard my laugh come back to me from the river. He laughed as well, but not as loud. He even said, “Come now, Tracker, surely this could not be so funny.”

“Yes it is, Leopard, yes it is,” I said, and started laughing again. I laughed until I hiccupped. “You know what they say, Hunum hagu ba bakon tsuliya bane.”

“I don’t know that tongue.”

“The left hand is not a new thing to the anus.”

I collapsed in laughter again.

“Hold. Why is he still with you?” I asked.

“A Leopard still cannot carry his own bow, Tracker. And here is truth, he is far better with it than I ever was, and I was very good. Soon as I remembered myself, I whipped his buttocks until he told me where you were all heading to. So we rode back to Kongor, where I have been waiting in this house. Bunshi found us when we crossed into Nimbe and took us here. I might have left had you not come, though.”

“Your poisoned asshole could give me laughs for a whole moon.”

“Laugh. Spare me not. Now all that stops me from killing him is who will carry my bow? Tracker, there is more that I must show you, though you might not want to see it.”

We left the shore and went down an alley that I did not know. Still not many people on the street, even though noon had long passed.

“I still have questions about your Queen,” I said.

“My Queen? Bunshi smuggled her into town in an oil urn. And don’t think that just because she is here in secret she is not giving orders. I thought that water witch answered to no one.”

I stopped. “I have missed you, Leopard.”

He took my hand at the wrist. “Much has happened to you,” he said.

“Much.”

“Did you search for the boy?” he asked.

“Not with Fumeli having me do his bidding I did not. He couldn’t care less for the boy. We were living on the top floor of an abandoned house right in Kongor when I discovered his poison. He was always ready to stick me as soon as I got confused. It went like this, me saying, By the gods, where are we? He says, Don’t you remember? Fuck me some more.”

“Let that be a lesson to all guided by their cocks.”

“Or the other man’s finger.”

We laughed loud enough for people to look at us.

“And the King sister?”

“What of her?”

“She told me you were on your way back to Kongor and not with good news. But the boy was here. This was only a few days ago, Tracker.”

This I take you to, you will not like. But we must go before we get the boy.”

I gave him a nod that said, I trust you. Also this, when scents come together, even those I know, I lose track of who gives what, worse when the smells are so far apart. But down this narrow street, past houses not joined together, until we came to one facing the end of the road, one smell rose above all others.

Khat.

I reached for my ax but the Leopard touched my arm and shook his head. He knocked on the door three times. Five locks someone unlocked. The door opened slow, as if the wood was suspicious. We went inside before I saw her. Nsaka Ne Vampi. She nodded when she saw me. I stood there, waiting for her smart mouth, but she had nothing on her face but weariness. Her hair matted and dirty, the long black dress streaked with dirt and ash, her lips dry and chapped. Nsaka Ne Vampi looked like she had not eaten and did not care. She started walking down a corridor and we followed.

“We go this night?” she asked.

“One night hence,” the Leopard said.

She opened the door and blue light flashed upon the wall and my face. Lightning first, crackling through his fingers up to his brain, and down to his legs, toes, and the tip of his penis. All around him the bones of dogs and rats, gourds of food untouched and rotting, blood, and shit. And on him skin flaking off still, which had become his mark.

Nyka.

Rags lay in a pile to one corner. He saw Nsaka Ne Vampi and spat. Nyka leapt to his feet and dashed at her, the chain at his feet clanging until he ran as far as it would go. It stopped him, just a finger’s reach away from her.

“I can smell your bitch koo from here,” he said.

“Eat your food. The rats know you going to eat them and won’t come out anymore.”

“You know what I going to eat? I going to chew around my own ankle, rip off the skin, rip out the flesh, rip out the bone, until this shackle falls off, and then I going come for you, and cut you deep in your chest, so that he will smell you and come for me, and I will say, Master, look what I prepared for you. And here is what he will do. He will drink from you, and I will watch. Then I will drink from him.”

“You have claws like him? Teeth? All you have is dirty fingernails to shame your mother,” she said.

“Fingernails going to claw into your pox face and dig out your witch eyes. And then I … I … please, please unshackle me. It cuts and it itches, please, by all that is of the gods, please. Please, sweetness. I am nothing, I have nothing … I yes, yes, yes yes yes yes yesyesyes!”

He turned to the wall behind him and ran straight into the corner. I heard his head hit the wall. He fell back on the ground. Nsaka Ne Vampi looked away. Was she crying, I wanted to know. Lightning coursed through him again and he trembled, in a fit. We watched until it passed, and he stopped banging his head on the floor. He stopped panting and breathed slow. Only then, still lying on the floor, did he look at the Leopard and me.

“I know you. I have kissed your face,” he said.

I said nothing. I wondered why Leopard brought me here. If this came from his head or hers. That to see him there, hate left me. That is not full truth. Hate there was, but the hate before was of him and for him, like love. This hate was at a pathetic, wretched thing that I still wanted to kill, the way you come across a near-dead animal eating shit, or a raper of women beaten near to death. He was still looking at me, looking for something in my face. I stepped to him, and Nsaka Ne Vampi drew a knife. I stopped.

“Do you not hear? Do you not hear him calling? His sweet voice, so much pain he is in. So much pain. Agony. Oh he suffers so,” Nyka said.

Nsaka Ne Vampi looked at the Leopard and said, “He has been saying that for nights.”

“The vampire is wounded,” I said.

“Tracker?” Leopard said.

“I threw flame on him and he caught fire. Burst into flames, Nyka.”

“You tried to kill him, yes you did, but my lord, he will not die. No one shall kill him, you shall see, and he will kill you, all of you, even you, woman, you shall all see it. He will—”

Lightning crackled through him again.

“Khat is the only thing that calms him,” she said.

“You should kill him,” I said, and walked out.

“I remember your lips!” he shouted as I walked out.

I almost got to the door when a hand grabbed my wrist and pulled me back. Nsaka Ne Vampi, with the Leopard coming up behind her.

“Nobody is killing him,” she said.

“He is already dead.”

“No. No. What you are doing is lying. You lie because there is great hate between you.”

“There is no hatred between us. There is only the hatred I had for him. But now I don’t even have hate, I have sadness.”

“He can’t put pity to use.”

“Not for him, I have disgust for him. I have pity for me. Now that he is dead I cannot kill him.”

“He is not dead!”

“He is dead in every way that dead is dead. The lightning in him is all that stops him from stinking.”

“You think you can tell me how he is.”

“Of course. There was a woman. The one you all followed in your glorious chariot? Give us tidings, woman. Did she lead you all into a trap? Here is a weird thing. From what I hear Ipundulu turns mostly children and women, so why did he change Nyka instead of killing him?”

“He has turned soldiers and sentries,” she said.

“And Nyka is neither.”

Nsaka Ne Vampi sat down by the door. It irritated me that she thought I would stay and hear her story.

“Yes, how easy it looked. How we rode, how proud we were when we left behind you and the fools with you. Such fools, especially that old woman. Going to Kongor, why? Why when his lightning slave runs north? I was glad when we left, glad to get him away from you.”

“Is that what he is? A lightning slave? Why did you take me here, Leopard?”

Leopard looked at me, blank, saying nothing.

“Here is truth,” I said. “Years I have thought about this. Years. His ruin. I hated him so much that I would kill the man who ruined him before me. Now I have nothing.”

“He said you led him to a pack of hyenas, but he escaped.”

“He said much, this Nyka. What did he say of my eye? That I plucked it from a dead dog, and shoved it in my face? Poor Nyka, he could have been a griot, but would cheat history.”

“You hate him so.”

“Hate? This is what I did when I could not find him. I hunted down his sister and his mother. I would kill them both. Found both of them. Do you hear me, Nyka, I found them. Even had words with the mother. I should have killed them, but I did not, do you know why? Not because the mother told me all the ways she failed him.”

“I will have him back,” Nsaka Ne Vampi said.

“Ipundulu’s witch is dead. There is no back.”

“What if we kill him, the Ipundulu? You said he was injured and weak. If we kill him, Nyka will come back to me.”

“Nobody has ever killed an Ipundulu, so how in a thousand fucks would any soul know?”

“What if we killed him?”

“What if I don’t care? What if I lose no sleep over your man dead? What if I feel deep sorrow, such deep sorrow for not killing him myself? What if I didn’t give a thousand fucks for your ‘we’?”

“Tracker.”

“No, Leopard.”

“This is a tickle for you. This gives you joy.”

“What gives me joy?”

“Seeing him so low.”

“You would think so, would you not? I despise him and even a deaf god hears I have no love for you. But no, this does not tickle me. As I said, it disgusts me. He is not even worth my ax.”

“I will have him back.”

“Then get him back, so I can kill an actual man, instead of what you have in there.”

“Tracker, she comes with us. She will go for the lightning bird, while we get the child,” the Leopard said.

“You know who he is, Leopard. The other one who travels with the boy. We killed his brother. You and I. Remember the flesh eater in the bush, the forest of enchantment when we stayed with the Sangoma, do you yet remember? The one who strung me in that tree with all those bodies? We were but boys then.”

“Bosam.”

“Asanbosam.”

“I remember. The stench of that thing. Of that place. We never found his brother.”

“We never looked.”

“I’ll bet he dies from the arrow, just like his brother.”

“Four of us and we couldn’t kill him.”

“Maybe you four—”

“Don’t assume what you don’t know, cat.”

“Listen to both of you. Talking like I vanished from the room,” Nsaka Ne Vampi said. “I will join you to get the boy and I will kill this Ipundulu. And I will have my Nyka back. Whatever he is to you, he is not to me and that is all I have to say.”

“How many times has he broken your heart? Four? Six?”

“I am sorry for all he is to you. But he is none of those things to me.”

“So you’ve said. But those things he is to you, he was to me once as well.”

She looked at me as I looked at her. Us understanding each other.

“If you still want him after all this, if you want us, we will be waiting,” she said.

Then we heard the thump of Nyka running into the wall again and Nsaka Ne Vampi sighed.

“Wait outside for me,” I said to the Leopard. She shut her eyes and sighed when he bumped into the wall again. I wondered how would she fight with Nyka making her tired.

“He also made me love him once, this is what he does,” I said. “Nobody works harder at getting you to love him, and nobody works harder to fail you once you do.”

“I am my own woman and feel for myself,” she said.

“Nobody needs Nyka. Not what he is.”

“He is this because of me.”

“Then his debt is paid.”

“You said he betrayed you. He was the first man to not betray me.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he’s still alive, unlike all the other men who betrayed me. One used to farm me out as his slave every night for men to do as they wished. I was ten and four. When he and his sons weren’t raping me himself. They sold me to Nyka one night. He put a knife in my hand and put the hand to his throat, and said do as you wish this night. I thought he was speaking a foreign tongue. So I went to the master’s room and slit his throat, then I went to his sons’ room and killed them all. What a terrible thing to lose a father and all your stepbrothers, the town people said. He let the town think he murdered them and fled in the night.”

“Sogolon had a story like yours.”

“What do you think makes the sisters of Mantha, sisters?”

“You were—”

“Yes.”

“You’re not showing him love. You’re repaying a debt.”

“I find girls who are about to become me, and save them from the men doing the coming. Then I take them to Mantha. They are who I owe. Nyka I always said I owed him nothing.”

Why did you not kill her?” Leopard asked outside.

“Who?”

“Nyka’s mother. Why didn’t you?”

“Instead of killing her, I would tell her of his death. Slowly. In every detail, right down to how it sounds to hack off his neck in three chops.”

“Leave, both of you,” she said.

Walking back to the lord’s house, Leopard said, “Your eyes still don’t know when your lips lie.”

“What?”

“Just now. All that show about Nyka’s mother. That’s not why you didn’t kill her.”

“Really, Leopard, tell me.”

“She was a mother.”

“And!”

“You still wish for the like.”

“I had the like.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Now you speak for me?”

“You are the one who just said ‘had.’”

“Why did you take me there?”

“Nsaka Ne Vampi asked the King sister. Tracker, I think she was hoping for your pity.”

“She didn’t ask for it.”

“Did you think she would?”

“She wants the fruit to stay on the branch and be in her mouth at the same time.”

“Forgiveness, Tracker.”

“I don’t care. I don’t care about Nsaka Ne Vampi, or this queen, and no matter how many moons pass, I still don’t care for this boy.”

“Fuck the gods, Tracker, of what do you care?”

“When do we leave for Gangatom?”

“We will.”

“Our children are as bound to you as to me. How can you let them sit there?”

“Our children? Oh, so now you think you can judge me. Before the King sister told you about white scientists, when last you saw them? Said a word? Even thought of them?”

“I think of them more than you know.”

“You said nothing like this last time we spoke. Anyway, what good is your thinking? Your thinking brings no child close.”

“So what now?”

We turned down the same road as before, walked the streets. Two men looking like guards passed by on horseback. We jumped into a doorway. The old woman in the doorway looked at me and frowned, as if I was exactly who she was expecting. The Leopard looked his least Leopard, even the whiskers were gone. He nodded for us to go.

“Tomorrow night, we get this boy once and for all. The day after, we go to the river lands and get our children. The day after that, who in all the fucking gods knows?” Leopard said.

“I have seen these white scientists, Leopard. I have seen how they work. They do not care about the pain of others. It’s not even a wickedness; they are just blind to it. They just glut on the conceit of their wicked craft. Not what it means, only how new it will look. I have seen them in Dolingo.”

“The King sister still has men, she still has people who believe in her cause. Let her help us.”

I stopped. “We forget someone. The Aesi. His men must have followed us to Kongor. The doors, he knows of them even if he doesn’t use them.”

“Of course, the door. I have no memory.”

“Doors. Ten and nine doors and the bloodsuckers have been using them for years. That is why the boy’s smell can be in front of me one blink, half a year away the next.”

“Did he follow you through this door, the Aesi?”

“I just said no.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then the son of a hyena bitch either hunts you in Mitu or Dolingo, or maybe the poor fool and his troops got what he was looking for by whatever the gods shat out in the Mweru. Nobody from the King is in Kongor, Tracker—no royal caravan, no battalion. The town crier announced the King’s leaving the day we came.”

“You forgave the boy?” I asked.

“Weather changed quick on this conversation.”

“You wish I go back to white scientists cutting up and sewing our children?”

“No.”

“So is Fumeli not with us?”

“Would he dare go someplace else?” He laughed.

“We should have chosen a different road,” I said.

“You’re as suspicious as Bunshi.”

“I am nothing like Bunshi.”

“Let us not talk of her. I want to know what happened in Dolingo. And of this prefect who has your eyes bewitched.”

“You want to know if I have relations with this prefect.”

“‘Relations’? Mark you and your words. The man has knocked all coarseness out of you. A most magnificent fuck—or is he more?”

“This is talk you enjoy, Leopard, not me.”

“Fuck the gods, Tracker. ‘This is talk you enjoy.’ You enjoyed it much when it was I talking about men’s journeys to and from my ass. I have told you everything and you have told me nothing. This prefect, I better watch him. He’s taken up some space in you. You didn’t even see it until I said so.”

“Stop talking about this, or I shall leave.”

“Now all we need is a woman for the Ogo who will not burst from just looking at his—”

“Leopard, watch me as I walk away.”

“Did this not make you think less of the children? Talk true.”

“Leaving I am.”

“Have no guilt, Tracker.”

“Now you accuse me.”

“No, I confess. I feel it too. Remember, they were my children before they ever smelled you coming. I was saving them from the bush from before you even knew you were Ku. I want to show you one more thing.”

“Fuck all the living and dead gods, what?”

“The boy.”

The Leopard took me down to near the end of the Gallunkobe/Matyube quarter, where the houses and inns thinned to a few. Past the slave shacks and the freemen quarters, to where the people worked as artisans of a different nature. Nobody came down this part of the street unless sending something to a grave of secrets or buying something that could only be bought in the Malangika. I smell necromancy on this street, I told him. We took a street that had sunk underwater halfway. These were the large houses of noblemen before flooding sent them north to the Tarobe quarter. Most of the houses had long been looted, or collapsed into soggy mud. But one house still stood, a third of it under the water, the turrets on the roof broken off, the windows gouged out and black, the side wall caving in, and the trees all around it dead. The front had no door, as if begging to be raided, until Leopard said that was exactly how they wanted it. Any beggar foolish enough to seek shelter because of an open doorway would never be heard from again. We stood behind some dead trees a hundred paces away. In one of the dark windows blue light flashed for a blink. “This is what we will do,” said the Leopard.

“But first, tell me of Dolingo.”

The next night came quick, but wind on the river rippled slow. I wondered what was this black skin butter the Leopard gave me that did not wash off in the water. No moon, and no fire, light in homes hundreds of paces away. Behind me the wide river; in front, the house. I slipped under the water, feeling myself in the dark. My hand ran into the back wall, soaked enough that I could scoop chunks of mud out. I felt down until my hands went through what the water ate away, a hole as wide as my span. Only the gods knew why this building still stood. The water was colder, smellier, more thick with rotten things that I was glad I could not see, but I held my hands out, since it was far better for my hands to touch something wretched than my face. On the inside I stopped paddling and rose slow to the surface, first just my forehead and then just the ridge of my nose. Planks of woods floated past me, and other things that I could tell by smell that made me shut my lips tighter. It came straight for me, almost hitting the side of my face before I saw that it was the body of a boy, everything below the waist missing. I shifted out of the way and something below scraped across my right thigh. I clamped so hard on my teeth I nearly bit my tongue. The house kept silence thick. Above me, the roof that I knew was there but couldn’t see was thatch. The stairs to my right led to the floor above, but made as it was from mud and clay, steps had washed away. Above, blue light flickered. The Ipundulu. Blue lit up the three windows almost halfway from the roof, two small, one large enough to fit through. I could stand now on solid floor, but I crouched, not rising above my neck. Bobbing by the wall, not far from me, were the legs and buttocks of a man, and nothing else. The bodies in the tree came back to me, the stink and rot of them. Sasabonsam was not finished feeding on them, floating in the water in front of me. He was supposed to be the blood drinker, not the flesh eater. I retched and clapped my mouth. The Leopard was outside, climbing down from the roof, where he would enter through the middle window. I listened for him but he truly was a cat.

Somebody whimpered by the doorway. I dipped back down in the water. She whimpered again and waded into the water, carrying a torch that lit the water and the walls but threw too much shadow. The water not as high in the doorway as it was in the rest of the room, which slanted as if about to slide into the river. This was a merchant’s house I guessed, and this room a dining hall perhaps, wider than any room I have ever lived in. The Sasabonsam ran across my nose, also the Ipundulu, but the boy’s smell vanished. Wings flapped once above me, up in the ceiling. Ipundulu lit the room again, and I saw Sasabonsam, his wide wings slowing his jump down, his legs stretched out to grab the woman, which would probably kill her if his claws dug deep. He flapped his wings again, and the woman turned to the door, looking as if she heard the sound but thinking maybe it came from outside. She raised the torch, but did not look up. I saw him as he flapped again, lowering himself clumsily, thinking he moved with stealth.

He flapped down, his back to the window as the Leopard locked his ankles around one of the turrets sticking out of the wall and swung upside down until he and his bow and arrow were in the window frame. He fired the first and drew the second, and fired the second and drew the third, and fired the third, all zup zup zup in Sasabonsam’s back. He squawked like a crow, flapped, crashed into the wall, then fell into the water. He jumped up as I jumped up and I hurled one of my axes into his back. He flipped around, not wounded, not pained, just annoyed. The woman, Nsaka Ne Vampi, held the torch close to her mouth and blew a storm of flame that jumped on his hair. Sasabonsam squawked and screamed and swung both his wings open, the right knocking out part of the steps, the left cracking the wall. Leopard jumped through the window with his bow firing into the water, and I almost shouted that I’m down here. He landed on his toes at the top of the steps, and jumped right off, right into the swat of Sasabonsam’s wing, which sent him into a pile that sounded like dead branches breaking. I swam to the stairs, and jumped up on a step that crumbled under me. I jumped up again as Nsaka swam towards me. Sasabonsam, trying to pull arrows out of his back, grabbed her by the hair and pulled her across the water. Nsaka Ne Vampi, daggers in both hands, stabbed him in the right thigh, but he caught her left hand and pulled it back, determined to break it off. She screamed. I pulled my second ax to jump over the stairs at him when Sadogo ran in and punched Sasabonsam straight in the temple. He fell back, letting go of Nsaka Ne Vampi. Sasabonsam howled, but ducked Sadogo’s second punch. His brother was the cunning one; he was the fighter. He tried to swing his huge wing around to swat Sadogo, but Sadogo punched a hole through it and tore his hand free. Sasabonsam screamed. He seemed to fall back, but jumped up and kicked Sadogo right in the chest with both feet. Sadogo went barreling, stumbling and falling in the water. Sasabonsam leapt after him. Mossi jumped in, from where I do not know, bracing a spear in the water and setting it slant for Sasabonsam to land on it, the spear going right through his side. Sadogo jumped back up and began punching into the water.

“The boy!” Mossi said.

He waded over to the steps and I pulled him up. Nsaka Ne Vampi walked past me, but I knew she wasn’t trying to save the boy. Mossi drew his two swords and followed me. At the top of the stairs were two rooms. Nsaka Ne Vampi stood in the entry to one of the rooms, feeling the knives in her hands, until blue light flashed from the right. I got to the door first. Ipundulu was on the floor, charred, black, half-changed into a man but all along his arms stalks jutted out, all that was left of his wings. He jumped when he saw me, opened his arms, and there was the boy lying on his chest. He pushed the boy off hard and he stumbled away, cowering in a corner. Both Nsaka Ne Vampi and Mossi stepped past me. They looked at him, Nsaka already screaming that she will kill him for infecting Nyka with his demon sickness. Mossi held out both swords, but also looked behind us, hearing Sadogo still fighting Sasabonsam with the King sister’s men, who must have been down there by now. I looked at the boy. I would have sworn to any god that before Ipundulu pushed him away, the boy was sucking the lightning bird’s nipple, drinking from it like he was suckling a mother. Maybe a boy torn too early from his mother still yearned for the breast, or maybe this Ipundulu was doing indecent acts with the boy, or maybe my eyes worked lies in the dark.

The Ipundulu, he lay there on the floor, sputtering from his mouth, blabbering, and groaning and trembling as if fever made him shake. Watching him, and watching Mossi and Nsaka Ne Vampi close in on him, I felt something. Not pity, but something. Outside, Sasabonsam screeched, and all of us turned around. The Ipundulu jumped and ran for the window. He limped, but was still much stronger than I thought from all the trembling and sputtering. Before Mossi turned to chase him Nsaka Ne Vampi’s first dagger burst right through the back of his neck. Ipundulu fell to his knees but not flat on the ground. Mossi ran up, swung his sword, and chopped his head off.

In the corner, the boy cried. I walked over, thinking of what to say to him, something warm, like Young one, it is over, your torment, or Behold, we take you to your mother, or Come now, you are so young but I will give you dolo so that you sleep and will awake in your own bed for the first time in your still short life. But I said nothing. He cried, gentle sobs, and stared at the rugs Ipundulu had slept on. Here is what I saw. From his mouth came a child’s sorrow, a cry that turned into a cough and back into a cry. From his eyes, nothing. From his cheeks and his brow, nothing. Even his mouth barely moved more than a mumble. He looked at me with the same hollow face. Nsaka Ne Vampi grabbed him under his arms, and scooped him up. She held him over her shoulder and walked out.

Mossi came over and asked if I was well, but I didn’t answer him. I did nothing until he grabbed my shoulder and said, We go.

Sadogo and Sasabonsam still struggled. I ran down the steps, shouted to the Leopard, and threw him my ax. Sasabonsam looked straight up at me.

“I know the smell,” he said.

Leopard grabbed Sadogo’s belt, pulled himself up on his back, flipped over on his shoulder, and leapt after the beast’s head. Sasabonsam turned to me when Leopard jumped straight for his head, swung the ax, and slashed across his cheek, slicing into the face, cutting right across, as blood and spit splashed into the air. Sasabonsam yelled and clutched his face. Sadogo kicked him down in the water, grabbed his left foot before he could resist, swung, and flung him against the wall. Sasabonsam burst through it and fell outside. Before he fell into the water, two arrows, shot from Fumeli, hit him in the leg. His good wing swept up water, a huge torrent that knocked Fumeli down. Sasabonsam turned to lift himself and turned right into the buffalo, who hooked him with his horns and flung him a hundred paces into the river. He stayed under, as if drowned, or a strong current dragged him away. But then Sasabonsam leapt from the water, flapped his wings, bawling at the damaged one, and lifted himself out of the river. He flapped again and again, yelling each time, and finally flew away, dropping once, falling into the river once, flying low, but still flying away. We left this place quietly, with care, though it did not fall. The boy’s scent vanished again, but I looked over at Nsaka Ne Vampi’s shoulder and there he was.

Back at the house, climbing the stairs all the way up to the sixth floor, with Nsaka Ne Vampi and the child and Mossi ahead of me, the Leopard asked me a question about Sogolon.

“I have no good words for her,” I said. But before I entered the room, somebody said, “Save those good words for me.”

In the center of the sixth floor the King sister, struggling to get up, as if someone kept kicking her down. Bunshi, her eyes shut tight, a dagger, green and almost glowing, stroking her neck and another arm across her chest, pulling her against him.

The Aesi.