“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.