You look at me as if I know the answer to the question you have yet to ask. Why would our King want war, especially when it is your own, the shit eater of the South, who last started it? A smarter man could answer that question. Listen to me now.
That morning, after Bunshi left, I set out on my own, to the northwest of the third wall. I did not tell the Leopard. When I was walking away, the sun was just rising, and I saw Fumeli sitting in the window. I neither knew nor cared if he saw me. In the northwest slept many elders, and I was looking for one I knew. Belekun the Big. These elders were fond of describing themselves as if locked out of their own joke. There was Adagagi the Wise, whose stupidity was profound, and Amaki the Slippery, but who knew what that meant? Belekun the Big stood so tall that he lowered his head before walking through every door, though to tell truth, the doors were high enough. His hair was white and grained, and stiff like a head plate, with small flowers he liked to wear on top. He came to me three years ago, saying, Tracker, I have a girl you must find for me. She has stolen much coin from the elders’ treasury, after we showed her kindness by taking her in one rainy night. I knew he lied, and not because it had not rained in Malakal for nearly a year. I knew of the elders’ ways with young girls before Bunshi told me. I found the girl in a hut near the Red Lake, and told her to move to one of the cities of the midlands with no allegiance to North or South, maybe Mitu or Dolingo, where the order of elders had no eyes in the street. Then I went back to Belekun the Big and told him that hyenas got to the girl, and vultures left only this bone, an ape’s leg bone I threw at him. He leapt out of the way like a dancing girl.
So. I remembered where he lived. He tried to hide that he was annoyed to see me, but I saw the change in his face, quick as a blink, before he smiled.
“Day has not yet decided what kind of day it seeks to be, but here is the Tracker, who has decided to come to my house. As it is, as it should be, as it—”
“Save the greeting for a more worthy guest, Belekun.”
“We will have manners, boy bitch. I have not yet decided if I should let you pass this door.”
“Good thing I won’t bother to wait,” I said, and walked past him.
“Your nose leads you to my house this morning, what a thing. Just another way you were always more like a dog than a man. Don’t sit your smelly self on my good rugs and rub your stinking skin on it and—milk a god’s nipple and what evil is that in your eye?”
“You talk too much, Belekun the Big.”
Belekun the Big was indeed large, with a massive waist and flabby thighs, but very thin calves. This too was known of him: Violence, the hint of it, the talk of it, even the slightest flash of rancor made him flush. He almost refused to pay me when I came back without a living girl, but did so when I grabbed those little balls through his robes and pressed my blade against them until he promised me triple. This made him a master of double-talk; my guess was it made him think himself not responsible for whatever nasty business he paid people to do. The King, it has been said, has no eye for riches, something the elders more than made up for. In Belekun’s welcome room he kept three chairs with backs that looked like thrones, cushions of every pattern and stripe, and rugs in all the colours of the rain serpent, with green walls covered in patterns and marks and columns that went all the way to the ceiling. Belekun dressed himself like his walls, in a dark green and shiny agbada outer robe with a white pattern on the chest that looked like a lion. He wore nothing underneath, for I smelled his ass sweat on the seat of his robes. He wore beaded sandals on his feet. Belekun threw himself down on some cushions and rugs, waking up a pink dust. He still did not invite me to sit. Laid out on a plate beside him were goat cheese and miracle berry, and a brass goblet.
“You truly are a hound now.”
He chuckled, then laughed, then laughed into a brutal cough.
“Have you had miracle berry before lime wine? It makes the whole thing so sweet, it is as if a flower virgin spurted in your mouth,” Belekun said.
“Tell me about your brass goblet. Not from Malakal?”
He licked his lips. Belekun the Big was a performer, and this show was for me.
“Of course not, little Tracker. Malakal went from stone to iron. No time for the fineries of brass. The chairs are from lands above the sand sea. And those drapes, only precious silks bought from eastern light traders. I am not confessing to you, but they cost me as much as two beautiful slave boys,” he said.
“Your beautiful boys who didn’t know they were slaves before you sold them.”
He frowned. Somebody once warned me about loving to grab fruit low to the ground. He wiped his hand on the robe. Shiny, but not silk, for were it silk he would have told me.
“I seek news of one of you, Basu Fumanguru,” I said.
“News of the elders be only for the gods. What be they to you that you should know? Fumanguru is—”
“Fumanguru is? I heard he was.”
“News of the elders be only for the gods.”
“Well you need to tell the gods he is dead, for news on the drum did not reach the sky. You, though, Belekun …”
“Who seeks to know of Fumanguru? Not you, I remember you as just a carrier.”
“I think you remember more than that, Belekun the Big,” I said, and brushed my bulge on the way to grabbing my bracelet.
“Who is it that will know of Fumanguru?”
“Relations near the city. It seems he has some. They will hear what became of him.”
“Oh? Family? Farmer folk?”
“Yes, they are folk.”
He looked up at me, his left eyebrow raised too high, goat cheese lodged in the corner of his mouth.
“Where is this family?”
“They are where they should be. Where they have always been.”
“Which is?”
“Surely you know, Belekun.”
“Farming lands are to the west, not Uwomowomowomowo, for there are too many bandits. Do they farm the slopes?”
“What is their livelihood to you, elder?”
“I only ask so that we may send them tribute.”
“So he is dead.”
“I never said he was alive. I said he is. We are all is, in the plan of the gods, Tracker. Death is neither end nor beginning, nor is it even the first death. I forget which gods you believe in.”
“Because I don’t believe in any, elder. But I will send them your very best wishes. Meanwhile they wish for answers. Buried? Burned? Where is he and his family?”
“With the ancestors. We should all share their good fate. That is not what you wish to know. But yes, all of them, dead. Yes they are.”
He bit into some more cheese and some miracle fruit.
“This cheese and miracle fruit, Tracker, it is like sucking a goat’s teat and sweet spices come out.”
“All of them are dead? How did this happen, and why do people not know?”
“Blood plague, but the people do know. After all, it was Fumanguru who angered the Bisimbi in some way—he must have, yes he did, of course he did—and they cursed him with infectious disease. Oh we found the source, who was also already dead, but nobody goes near the house for fear of the spirits of disease—they walk on air, you know. Yes they do, of course they do. How could we have told the city that their beloved elder or anyone died of blood plague? Panic in the streets! Women knocking down and trampling their own babies just to get out of the city. No, no, no, it was the wisdom of the gods. Besides, no one else had contracted the plague.”
“Or the death, it seems.”
“It seems. But what is this? Elders have no obligation to speak of the fate of elders. Not even to family, not even to the King. We tell them of death only as a courtesy. A family should regard an elder as dead as soon as he joins the glorious brotherhood.”
“Maybe you, Big Belekun, but he had a wife and children. They all came to Kongor with him. Fled, I heard.”
“No story is so simple, Tracker.”
“Yes, every story is. No story resists me cutting it down to one line, or even one word.”
“I am lost. What are we talking about now?”
“Basu Fumanguru. He used to be a favorite of the King.”
“I would not know.”
“Until he angered the King.”
“I would not know. But it is foolish to anger the King.”
“I thought that was what elders do. Anger the King—I mean, defend the people. There are marks on the streets, in gold, arrows that point where the King shall stop. One lies outside your door.”
“Wind can blow a river off course.”
“Wind blows shit right back to the source. You and the King are friends now.”
“All are friends of the King. None are friends of the King. You might as well say you are friends with a god.”
“Fine, you are friendly with the King.”
“Why should any man be an enemy of the King?”
“Did I ever tell you of my curse, Big Belekun?”
“We have no friendship, you and I. We were never—”
“Blood is the root. Like it is with so many things, and we are talking about family.”
“My supper calls me.”
“Yes it does. Of course it does. Eat some cheese.”
“My servants—”