“Not when it reek of Ku. Now I feel like I’m passing through the swamp.”
“You sound like somebody the swamp passed through,” he say with a grin.
Nsaka follow the Leopard to the inner room and return with a bowl of plums. The manservant offer the slaver a tray of berries, the Ogo still standing as if holding up the roof, and the Leopard chomping and swallowing the last of the okapi flesh. I write three nsibidi on air just to make sure.
“We losing time,” I say.
“It’s yours to lose?” say the Tracker.
“Oh. Thought you were done.”
“Done what?”
“Looking around for anybody worthy.”
“True, good sense telling me to leave, but why disappoint my furry friend after he go through so much trouble to find me. And where you hail from, old woman? Writing runes on air. Something nasty must be following you.”
I was about to tell this man which part of a dead sow he should fuck first when the slaver say, “I tell you true and I tell you wise. Three years now they take the child, a boy. Long time he walking and nana was most of what come out of his mouth. Taken from his home right there in the night. They take nothing else, they don’t once call for ransom. Maybe they sell him in the Malangika—yes I know of the place—but by now surely he too old for the uses of a witch. 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,” he say and go quiet. For effect, I think. When I turn to Nsaka, the only thing on my mind is what in the name of gods is he lying for. She nod and shrug, then look over to see if Wolf Eye was watching her.
“Kongor is but the beginning, but it could be the end too,” say the slave trader. “You can leave for the house at first light. There will be horses for those who ride, but the best way is by the White Lake, then around the Darklands, and cross lower Ubangta. And when you come to Kongor—”
“You enslave lost boys, not save them. What is he to you?” say the Leopard, taking the words out of my mouth. I wish he did ask about Kongor being the end too. Nsaka know that I am glaring at her, which mean she don’t look my way. The Tracker is looking at me, though.
“The boy? Son of the friend who is dead. That is all. I will see rescue for him,” the slaver say.
“The boy is most likely dead,” say the Tracker.
“Then I will see justice,” say the slaver.
“And I would seek better answers, slave trader. Why was the child by an aunt and not the 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.”
The Leopard go right up to the slaver and sniff. Nsaka and the manservant clutch their swords.
“Do you know how to tell a good lie, Master Amadu? I know how to tell a bad one. When people talk false, words plop muddy where they should land clear, but clear on shit nobody expect clarity on. Something that sounds like it might be true. But it’s always the wrong thing. Everything you just said, you tell me different three nights ago,” the Leopard say.
“Which he then tell me,” say the Tracker.
“Truth don’t lie,” the slave trader say.
“But it sure can change. I believe there is a boy. And I believe a boy is missing, and if he’s missing many years, dead. I even believe that you want us to find him. 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. What do you believe, Tracker?” ask the Leopard.
“I don’t believe. How about you, old witch?”
“I believe I want less interruption,” I say.
“Good, good, wonderful, fine,” say the slaver.
“Why you need so many of us? Between the Ogo’s sharp mind and the old woman’s mighty strength, people wouldn’t hide shit from you,” the Tracker say.
“Sadogo, he is calling you stupid,” Nsaka say.
That pull the Ogo out of his giant corner, not stomping, but walking most surely to the Tracker.
“I said you was sharp! Everybody hear me say sharp!” he say, backing away quick. The Tracker pull the axes from his back. The Leopard stoop to the floor slow. Nsaka stand by the manservant, both clutching the handle of their blades. The Ogo is still.
“If this is an ambush I will rip your throat out before he splits your heads in two,” the Leopard say.
“Who is looking for you?” I ask.
People taking sides. The Ogo standing alone. I done see enough.
“How one small room hold so many fools, I don’t know,” I say.
“Something a witch don’t know? You must be a rare one. I mean, you have the airs of a witch. Your calf-hide clothes, underarm funk, your lemongrass, fish, and blood—no, moonblood from, well, clearly not you.”
“And you have the air of the Sangomin. They get you young, or you come to this kind of mind all by yourself?”
He laugh. This sparring was sport.
“What do you know of the men who took the boy?” the Leopard ask.
Something catch the Tracker’s nose and he sniff all the way to the window. The scent pull him so hard that he sit in the sill and stay, looking out.
“Tracker?”
“Nothing, cat.”
Tracker. Cat. I am in a room stinking of boys. Boys. Even this Ogo.
“I tell you true, we know nothing,” the slaver say. “Night is not when they came, but in the noon of day. Few, maybe four, maybe five, maybe five and one, but they were men of strange and terrible looks. I can read the—”
“I can also read,” the Tracker say. I can’t tell if I find the whole room tiresome or just him. But I don’t know what game this slaver is playing and can’t tell if Nsaka know either. Of course they smell lie, because a lie what this man is telling them. I set myself to just leave, then I look out the window and picture the dark being nothing but crows.
“Nobody saw them enter. Nobody saw them leave,” the slave trader say.
“Why we back here? How this help us find the boy when who take him last is not who try to take him first? Stop wasting everybody’s time, you stupid water sprite,” I say.
“Sogolon.”
“You shut up too, Ne Vampi. Bunshi, come out of the fucking window frame.”
“Who this old woman talking to?” the Tracker ask the Leopard.
“Bunshi!”
“Tracker, time to leave,” the Leopard say. “Tracker?”