Now we were walking to the collapsed tower. Together, but we did not speak. The Leopard ahead, me behind, and the boy between us, carrying his bow and quiver. Since we had not spoken we had not agreed, and I was still half of the mind to say no. Because the Leopard did speak true in this, that it’s one thing if you are unlucky in war, of lower birth, or slave born, but chaining a woman as prisoner is something else, even if she was clearly possessed by some kind of lightning devil. But we did not speak of the woman; we did not speak of anything. And I wanted to slap the boy for walking ahead of me.
The collapsed tower stood to the south of the first wall. Nobody on these streets, or paths, or alleys looked like they knew the King was coming. In all my years in Malakal I had never been down this street. I never saw reason to go to the old towers, past the peak, and down below the reach of most of the sun. Or up, as the climb was first so steep that the clay street turned into a narrow lane, then steps. Going down was steep again, where we passed the windows of houses long gone from use. Another two on both sides of the lane that looked like it housed wicked acts, for it was covered in markings and paintings of all kinds of fucking with all kinds of beasts. Even going down, we stood high enough to see all of the city and the flat land beyond it. I heard once that the first builders of this city, back when this was not yet a city, and them not yet fully men, were just trying to build towers tall enough to get back to the kingdom of sky and start a war in the land of gods.
“We are here,” the Leopard said.
The collapsed tower.
That itself is a misspeak. The tower is not collapsed, but it has been collapsing for four hundred years. This is what the old people say, that back then men built two towers apart from the rest of Malakal. The building masters went wrong from the day they built on a road going down instead of coming up the mountains. Two towers, one fat and one thin, built to house slaves before ships came from the East to take them away. And the thin tower would be the tallest in all the lands, tall enough, some say, to see the horizon of the South. Eight floors for both but the taller one would reach even farther upward, like a lighthouse for giants. Some say the master builder had a vision, others say he was a madman who fucked chickens and then chopped their heads off.
But what everybody saw was this. The day they set the last stone—after four years of slaves killed by mishap, iron, and fire—was one of celebration. The warlord of the fort, for Malakal was only a fort, came with his wives. Also there, Prince Moki, the oldest son of King Kwash Liongo. The master builder chicken-fucker was about to splash chicken blood at the base and invoke the blessing of the gods, when just like so, the taller, thinner tower rocked and cracked, hissing dust and swaying. It rocked back and forth, west then east, swinging so wide that two slaves on the unfinished roof fell off. The thin tower tilted, tipped, and even bent a little until it ran into the fat tower, like lovers rushing to a hard kiss. This kiss shook and clapped like thunder. The tower looked like it would crumble but it never did. The two towers now squashed together into one tower, but neither gave way, neither fell. And after ten years, when it was seen that neither tower would give way, people even took to living there. Then it was an inn for weary travelers, then a fort for slavers and their slaves, and then as three floors in the thin tower collapsed on each other, it was nothing. None of this explained why this slaver wanted to meet there. On the three top floors, many steps had broken away. The boy stayed outside. Something rumbled a few floors down, like a foundation about to give.
“This tower will finally come down with all of us in it,” I said.
We stepped up to a floor like I have never seen, in a pattern like on kente cloth, but black and white circles and arrowpoints, and spinning even though everything was still. Ahead of us, a doorway with no door.
“Three eyes, look they shining in the dark. The Leopard and the half wolf. Is that how you gained the nose? Do you relish blood like the cat?” the slaver said.
“No.”
“Come in and talk,” the slaver said.
I was about to say something to the Leopard but he changed and trotted in on all fours. Inside, torches shot light up into a white ceiling and dark blue walls. It looked like the river at night. Cushions on the floor but nobody sat on them. Instead an old woman sat on the floor with her legs crossed, her brown leather dress smelling like the calf it came from. She had shaved all around her head but left the top in braids, long and white. Silver circle earrings big as lip plates hung off her ears and rested on her shoulders. Around her neck, several necklaces of red, yellow, white, and black beads. Her mouth moved but she said nothing; she looked at neither me nor the cat, who was trotting around the room as if looking for food.
“My spotted beast,” the slaver said. “In the inner room.”
The Leopard ran off.
I recognized the date feeder. Right beside his master and ready to stuff his mouth. Another man so tall that until he shifted to his left leg, I thought he was a column holding up the ceiling, carved to look like a man. He looked like one who could stomp and make this tower finally collapse. His skin was dark but not as dark as mine, more like mud before it dries. And shiny even in the little light. I could see the beautiful dots of scars on his forehead, one line curling down his nose and out to his cheeks. No tunic or robe, but many necklaces on his bare chest. A skirt around the waist that looked purple and two boar tusks by his ears. No sandals or shoes or boots, but nobody would have made such things for a man with his feet.
“Never have I seen an Ogo this far west,” I said. He nodded, so I at least knew he was an Ogo, a giant of the mountain lands. But he said nothing.
“We call him Sadogo,” the slaver said.
The Ogo said nothing. He was more interested in moths flying into the lamp at the center of the room. The floor trembled whenever he stepped.
Sitting on a stool in a corner by a closed window was the tall, thin woman from that night. Her hair, still out and wild, as if no mother or man had told her to tame it. Her gown, still black but with white running a ring around her neck and then down between her breasts. A bowl of plums rested in her hand. She looked like she was about to yawn. She looked at me and said to the slaver, “You did not tell me he was a river man.”
“I was raised in the city of Juba, not some river,” I said.
“You carry the ways of the Ku.”
“I am from Juba.”
“You dress like a Ku.”
“This is fabric I found here.”
“Steal like a Ku. You even carry their smell. Now I feel like I’m passing through the swamp.”
“The way you know us, maybe the swamp has passed through you,” I said.
Now the slaver laughed. She bit into a plum.
“Are you Ku, or trying to be? Give us a wise river saying, something like one who follows the track of the elephant never gets wet from the dew. So we can say that river boy he even shits wisdom.”
“Our wisdom is foolishness to the foolish.”
“Indeed. I wouldn’t be so bold with it, if I were you,” she said, and bit into another plum.
“My wit?” I asked.
“Your smell.”
She rose and walked over to me.
She was tall, taller than most men, taller than even the lionskin roamers of the savannah who jump to the sky. Her dress reached the ground and spread so that it looked like she glided over. And this—beautiful. Dark skin, without blemish and smelling of shea butter. Darker lips as if fed tobacco as a child, eyes so deep they were black, a strong face as chipped out of stone, but smooth as if done by a master. And the hair, wild and sprouting in every direction as if fleeing her head. Shea butter, which I already said, but something else, something I knew from that night, something that hid itself from me. Something I know. I wondered where the Leopard went.
The date feeder handed the slaver a staff. He struck the ground and we looked up. Well, not the Ogo; there was no up left for him to look. The Leopard came back in smelling of goat flesh.
The slaver said, “I tell you true and I tell you wise. Is three years ago a child was taken, a boy. He was just starting to walk and could say maybe nana. Taken from his home right here in the night. Nobody left nothing, and nobody called for ransom, not through note, not through drums, not even through witchcraft. Maybe he was sold to the secret witches market, a young child would bring much money to witches. This child was living with his aunt, in the city of Kongor. Then one night the child was stolen and the aunt’s husband’s throat cut. Her family of eleven children, all murdered. We can leave for the house at first light. There will be horses for those who ride, but you must go around the White Lake and around the Darklands and through Mitu. And when you come to Kongor—”
“What is this house to you?” the Leopard said.
I did not see him change and sit on the floor near the old woman, who still did not speak, though she opened her eyes, looked left, right, then closed them again. She moved her hands in the air, like the old men forming poses down by the river.
“It is the house where they last saw the boy. You don’t plan to start the journey from the first step?” the slaver said.