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.