“That would be from the house that gave the child away in the first place,” I said.
“Who is they that last saw the boy? You are in the business of slaving lost boys, not finding them,” said the Leopard. Funny how willing he was to question our employer when his belly was full.
The slaver laughed. I stared at him, hoping my stare would say, What game are you playing?
“Who is he and what is he to you?” the Leopard asked.
“The boy? He is the son of a friend who is dead,” the slaver said.
“And so most likely is the boy. Why do you need to find him?”
“My reasons are my own, Leopard. I pay you to find him, not investigate me.”
The Leopard rose. I knew the look on his face.
“Who is this aunt? Why was the child with her and not his mother?”
“I was going to tell you. His mother and father died, from river sickness. The elders said the father fished in the wrong river, took fish meant for the water lords, and the Bisimbi nymphs who swam underwater and stood guard struck him with illness. He spread it to the boy’s mother. The father was my old friend and a partner in this business. His fortune is the boy’s.”
“A slave rich as you, catching his own fish?” I said.
The slaver paused. I said, “Do you know how to tell a good lie, master Amadu? I know how to tell a bad one. When people talk false, their words are muddy where they should be clear, clear where they should be muddy. Something that sounds like it might be true. But it’s always the wrong thing. Everything you just said, you said different before.”
“Truth don’t change,” he said.
“Truth changed between one man saying the same thing twice. I believe there is a boy. And I believe a boy is missing, and if he’s missing many years, dead. But four days ago, the boy child was living with a housekeeper. Today you say aunt. By the time we get to Kongor it will be a eunuch monkey.”
“Tracker,” the Leopard said.
“No.”
“Let him finish.”
“Good, good, wonderful, fine,” the slaver said, and held his hand up.
“But stop lying,” the Leopard said. “He can smell when you do.”
“Is three years ago a child was taken. A boy, he was just starting to walk and could say maybe papa.”
“Late for a child, even a boy,” I said.
“I tell you true and I tell you wise. From his home right here in the night. Nobody leave nothing, and nobody send notice for ransom. Maybe—”
I pulled the two hatchets from my back. The Leopard’s eyes were going white and his whiskers grew longer. The tall woman stood up and moved to the slaver.
“You heard him?” I said to the Leopard.
“Yes. The same story, almost right down to the word. Almost. But he forgets. Fuck the gods, slaver, you have rehearsed this and still you forget. You must be the worst liar or the echo of a bad one. If this is an ambush I will rip your throat out before he splits your head in two,” the Leopard said.
Leopard and I stood side by side. The Ogo saw me and the Leopard on one side of the room and the slaver and tall woman on the other, and stood still, his eyes hiding under the wild bush of his brow. The old woman opened her eyes.
“One room too small for so many fools,” she said. But she did not move from the mat.
She must have been a witch. She had the air and the smell of witches—lemongrass and fish, blood from a girl’s koo, and funk from not washing her arms or feet.
“Messenger is what he is, all he is,” she said.
“The first time, his message was a pig. This time it’s a sheep,” I said.
“Sangoma,” the old woman said.
“What?”
“You talk in riddles, like a Sangoma. Did you live with one? Who teach you?”
“I don’t know her name and she taught me nothing. The Sangoma from the Hills of Enchantment. The one who saved mingi children.”
“Also the one who give you that eye,” she said.
“My eye is none of your business. This some plot against us?” I asked.
“But you be nothing. Why would anyone plot against you?” the old woman said. “You wish to find the child or no? Answer the question plain, or maybe …”
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe the woman is still part of the man. No man has cut you. No wonder you so flighty.”
“Should I be like you then, a credit to your kind?”
She smiled. She was enjoying this. And there it was, a smell again, stronger this time, stronger mayhaps because of the discord in this room, but also outside it. I could not describe it, but I knew it. No, the smell knew me.
“What do you know of the men who took the boy?” I asked.
“What makes you think they were men?” the tall woman said.
“What is your name?”
“Nsaka Ne Vampi.”
“Nsaka,” I said.
“Nsaka Ne Vampi.”
“As you wish.”
“I tell you true, we know nothing,” she said. “Night is when they came. Few, maybe four, maybe five, maybe six, but they were men of strange and terrible looks. I can read the—”
“I can also read.”
“Then go to the Kongor great hall of records and seek it yourself. Nobody saw them enter. Nobody saw them leave.”
“Did no one scream?” said the Leopard. “Had they no windows or doors?”
“Neighbors saw nothing. The women overcharged for her millet porridge and flatbreads, so why would they listen twice what noises come from her house?”
“Why this boy, of all the boys in Kongor?” I asked. “Truly, Kongor is so steadfast in breeding warriors that finding a girl would be a bigger mystery. One boy in Kongor is the same as any other. Why him?”
“That is all we will say until Kongor,” the slaver said.
“Not enough. Not enough by half.”
“The slaver said his piece,” said Nsaka Ne Vampi. “You have the choice, yes or no, so make it quick. We ride in the morning. Even with fast horses it will take ten and two days to get to Kongor.”
“Tracker, we leave,” the Leopard said.
He turned to go. I watched the Ogo watch him as he stepped past.
“Wait,” I said.
“Why?”
“Have you not yet finished making marks?”
“What? Make sense, Tracker.”
“Not you. Her.”
I pointed to the old woman still crouched on the ground. She looked at me, her face blank.
“You have been drawing runes since we came into this room. Writing on air, so nobody here would know. But they are there. All around you.”
The old woman smiled.
“Tracker?” the Leopard whispered. I knew how he was when he understood nothing. He would change, ready for a fight.
“The old crone’s a witch,” I said, and the Leopard’s hair went wild across his back. I touched behind his neck and he stayed.
“You are writing runes either to let someone in or keep someone out,” I said.
I stepped forward and looked around the room.
“Show yourself,” I said. “Your stench was with this room from the moment I entered it.”
In the doorway, liquid coursing down the wall pooled on the floor. Dark and shiny, like oil, and spreading slow like blood. But the smell, something like sulfur, filled the room. “Look,” I said to the Leopard, and pulled a dagger from my waist. I clutched the blade, chucked it at the puddle, and the puddle swallowed it with a suck. In a blink, the knife shot out from the puddle. The Leopard caught it right before it hit my left eye.
“Work of devils,” he said.
“I have seen this devil before,” I said.