“Something about a fly?”
“That was me being clever.”
“Why did you ask if I was happy?”
“This road I am asking you to come on. Oh, Tracker, the things it will take from you. Best if you have nothing in the first place.”
“You just said it was better if I have something to lose.”
“I said I’ve been disappointed by men who have nothing. Some. But the Tracker I know has nothing and cultivates nothing. Has that changed?”
“And if it had?”
“I would ask different questions.”
“How do you know I …”
Leopard swung around, trying to see what took my words.
“Nothing,” I said. “Thought I noticed … thought it went and came back …. It …”
“What?”
“Nothing. A thought loose. Nothing. Come now, cat, I’m losing patience.”
The Leopard got off the chair and stretched his legs. He sat back down and faced me.
“He calls him little fly. I find it strange that he does so, especially in that voice of his that sounds like an old woman more than a man, but I think the fly is dear to him.”
“Once more. This time with sense.”
“I can only tell you what the man told me. He was very clear—Leave instructions to me, he said. Fuck the gods, you men who are not direct. Fucks for you too—I saw that look. Friend, this is what I know. There is a child that went missing. The magistrates said he most likely got swept off in a river, or mayhaps the crocodiles got him, or river folk, since you will eat anything if hungry.”
“Thousand fucks for your mother.”
“A thousand and one if we’re speaking of my mother,” he said, and laughed. “This is what I know. The magistrates think this child either drowned or was killed and eaten by a beast. But this man, Amadu Kasawura is the name he goes by, he is a man of wealth and taste. He is convinced that his child, his little fly, is alive, mayhaps, and moving west. There is compelling stuff there, Tracker, in his home, evidence so that you believe his story. Besides, he is a rich man, a very rich man given that none of us come cheap.”
“Us?”
“He has commissioned nine, Tracker. Five men, three women, and hopefully you.”
“So his purse must be the fattest thing about him. And the child—his own?”
“He says neither yes nor no. He is a slaver, selling black and red slaves to the ships that come from people who follow the eastern light.”
“Slavers have nothing but enemies. Maybe somebody killed the child.”
“Mayhaps, but he is set in his desire, Tracker. He knows that we might find bones. But then he would at least know, and knowing for certain is better than years of torment. But I skip too much and make the mission—”
“Mission, is it? We’re to be priests now?”
“I’m a cat, Tracker. How many fucking words do you think I know?”
This time I laughed.
“I told you what I know. A slaver is paying nine to either find this child alive, or proof of his death, and he does not care what we do to find him. He may be two villages away, he may be in the South Kingdom, he might be bones buried in the Mweru. You have a nose, Tracker. You could find him in days.”
“If the hunt is so swift, why does he need nine?”
“Clever Tracker, is it not clear to you? The child didn’t leave. He was taken.”
“By who?”
“Better if it comes from him. If I explain you might not come.”
I stared at him.
“I know that look,” he said.
“What look?”
“That look. You are more than interested. You’re glutting on the very idea of it.”
“You read too much in my face.”
“It’s not just your face. At the very least come because something will intrigue you and it won’t be the coin. Now speaking of desires …”
I looked at the man, who not long before the sun left convinced an innkeeper to give him raw meat soaking in its own blood for dinner. Then I smelled something, the same as before, on Leopard yet not on him. When we stepped outside the inn, the smell was stronger, but then it went weak. Strong again, stronger, then weaker. The smell got weaker every time the Leopard turned around.
“Who is he, the boy following us?” I asked.
I spoke loud enough for the boy to hear. He shifted from dark to dark, from the black shadow cast by post to the red light cast by a torch. He slipped into the doorway of a shut house, less than twenty paces from us.
“What I would like to know, Leopard, is would you let me throw a hatchet and split his head in two before you tell me he is yours?”
“He is not mine, and by the gods I’m not his.”
“And yet I smelled him the whole time we were at the inn.”
“A nuisance he is,” the Leopard said, watching the boy slip out of the doorway, too timid to look. Not tall, but skinny enough to come across so. Skin as dark as shadow, a red robe tied at his neck that reached his thigh, red bands above his elbow, gold bracelets at his wrists, a striped skirt around his waist. He was carrying the Leopard’s bow and arrows.
“Saved him from pirates on either the third or fourth voyage. Now he refuses to leave me alone. I swear it’s the wind that keeps blowing him my way.”
“Truly, Leopard, when I said I keep smelling him, I meant smelling him on you.”
The Leopard laughed, but a tiny laugh, like a child caught right as he is about to do mischief.
“He has my bow when I lose arms and always finds me no matter where I go. Who knows but the gods? He might tell great stories of me when I am gone. I pissed on him to mark him as mine.”
“What?”
“A joke, Tracker.”
“A joke doesn’t mean false.”
“I’m not an animal.”
“Since when?”
I stopped myself from asking if this is not the fifth boy or sixth you are leading astray, him waiting without hope for something you will never give him, because that is what you give, is it not, your eyes upon his eyes, your ears for whatever he says, your lips for his lips, all things you can give and take away, and nothing that he wants. Or is he your tenth? Instead I said, “Where is this slaver?”
The slaver was from the North, trading illegally with Nigiki, but he and his caravans, full with fresh slaves, had set up camp in the Uwomowomowomowo valley, not even a quarter day’s ride from Malakal and quicker by just going down the hill. I asked Leopard if the man had no fear of bandits.
“A pack of thieves tried to rob him near the Darklands once. They put a knife to his throat, laughed that he had only three guards that they easily killed and how is it that he had no weapon himself, with such cargo? The thieves fled on horseback, but the slaver sent a message by talking drum that reached where the thieves were going before they approached the gate. By the time the slaver reached the gate the three robbers were nailed to it, their belly skin flayed open, their guts hanging out for all to see. Now he only travels with four men to feed the slaves on the journey to the coast.”
“I have great love for him already,” I said.
When we reached my lodgings, I tiptoed past the innkeeper, who told me two days ago that I was one moon behind in rent, and while scooping her huge breasts in her hands, said there were other ways to pay. In my room I grabbed a goatskin cape, two waterskins, some nuts in a pouch, and two knives. I left through the window.
The Leopard and I went by foot. From my inn we would leave through the third city wall, going under the lookout to the fourth and outer wall, which went around the whole mountain and was as thick as a man lying flat. Then from the South fort gate, out to the rocky hills and right down into the valley. The Leopard would never travel on the back of another animal, and I have never owned a horse, though I have stolen a few. At the gates, I noticed the boy walking behind us, still jumping from tree shadow to tree shadow and the ruined stumps of the old towers that stood long before Malakal was Malakal. I slept here once. The spirits were welcoming, or maybe they did not care. The ruins were from people who discovered the secret of metals and could cut black stone. Walls with no mortar, just brick on top of brick, sometimes curving into a dome. A man from the sand sea who counted ages would have said old Malakal was from six ages ago, maybe more. Surely at a time when men needed a wall as much to keep in as to keep out. Defense, wealth, power. In that one night I could read the old city; rotten wood doorways, steps, alleys, passages, ducts for water foul and fresh, all within walls seventy paces high and twenty paces thick. And then one day, all the people of old Malakal vanished. Died, fled, no griot remembers or knows. Now blocks crumbed to rubble that twisted direction here and there, and around, and back and down what used to be an alley, halted at a dead end with no choice but to go back, but back to where? A maze. The boy held back so far behind us he was at this point lost.
“Truth, you can rip a man’s head off in one bite and yet he’s more afraid of me. What is his name?”
The Leopard, as always, walked off ahead. “I never bothered to ask,” he said, and laughed.