I laugh. He nod and leave me.
My memory of Kongor is barely anything, but it is enough to know that in nearly every way I walk through a different city. Yes, some building and dwelling look as they always do, but everything else is now set to disturb me. I remember stick fights and boys wearing nothing but the attitude of a warrior and showman. And I remember some women wearing skirts that stop below the breast, never above it. So when I walk through the Nyembe quarter and see women covering up not just breast, but arms, legs, fingers, hair, sometimes even face, I keep thinking I trip and land in another place. I walk down roads where I know the smell, but not the look, paths where the color come back but not the sounds. Maybe because this place never think me somebody to claim. I ask an old man going nowhere what happen to Kongor. First he look at me confused, after all Kongor was always like this.
“I mean the flood,” I say.
“Which one?”
“The one that move Tarobe.”
“Ah. Ah. Barely a boy when that shit come to pass. Before the flood was the drought, understand. After nine moons, people demand that the elders beg and sacrifice to the gods—well, they do more than demand. They drag three visiting elders out in the street and beat them until they start to work cloud magic. One of them warn the people that all they can do is start the rain. Only the gods decide what to do next. But hear this now, the begging work, but just as they warn it work too good, for rain wouldn’t stop for a moon. The biggest flood, and quick too, so big that it swallow most of Tarobe and kill plenty from the quarter. Here is truth—nobody grieve over that loss. Anyway, when the flood recede half of Tarobe remain underwater. They move north and didn’t care who they root up to do it.”
“But what happen to Kongor?”
“How you mean? I just tell you. . . . Oh. Oh, that. Me old enough to remember before that too. Well after the great flood Kongor start to fear the gods, you understand? Fear of punishment for not being strict against sin, so the whole place turn pious, even the whores wear veil now. And the littlest thing can bring some quick, severe justice, oh. Severe justice.”
I don’t ask him why Seven Wings mercenaries is everywhere amassing, for it can’t just be because they answering roll call at the Tower of the Black Sparrowhawk.
Bunshi show herself two times more. The first was before me and Venin come. Spook the shit out of me, the master of his house say, but he quiet when I ask why he would get spook by who he worship. The word make him frown, worship, and it make me remember that praise is not the same as fear. Me performing my ablutions in the bath when the window frame melt like oil and the oil mold into her, he say. He didn’t stop screaming until she wrap her fingers around his mouth. What is the news? Where are they? she demand from him and then scream when he say he don’t know.
“I mean, since she is the divine one, isn’t she the one who supposed to know? The day after you two come she appear again,” he say.
“She look any better when you tell her I was here?”
“No. I tell her that you and the girl sleep upstairs, but she leave as soon as she come.”
“Uncanny.”
“You talk like there is a canny.”
“How you so sharp, old man? I thought you was down for the cause.”
“The cause have my head, it might even have my eyes. But my heart?” he say.
“Say more.”
“This grand peace is walking on a crocodile’s back, Sogolon. All you see is men of the Black Sparrowhawk, but they not the only ones who assemble. Man from Juba getting word—unofficial of course—to find the sword they long put away and the shield they long retire. Seven Wings assemble in Malakal, even Mitu, and soldiers long on leave getting called back to barracks. I can’t speak for this King, but when his father used to gather mercenary it was only for one thing.”
“Something that nobody want.”
“We not the correct nobody. Ambassadors from Weme Witu coming in two quartermoons. To settle disputes, they say.”
“What they disputing?”
“Better question is will it get settle. You can guess my answer.”
“Kwash Netu should have never given spoils of war he didn’t lose.”
“Spoils? What? Kalindar and Wakadishu? Wakadishu is an independent nation and Kalindar was never spoils.”
“Look like that news never reach the South. I hear the Marabangan tongue there more than once.”
“He didn’t give the South Kalindar. No treaty ever say so. He give them free passage and a trade agreement, gold for salt. The South take it to mean they have land title and start to move in like a soft invasion.”
“And how the people of Kalindar take to that?”
“Before or after they start burning down things South man build?”
He leave me to the food somebody cook. I stop asking for the mistress or the woman he claim come to cook and clean. It become a joke the next three nights between me and he, whether that water sprite will show and will she come as a trickle through the window, a pool under the door, or a lump in the shit bucket. So when she do show on the fourth night, as Bunshi always do, trickling down the window to pool at the sill, I don’t bother to explain why I cackle. In the quick Venin is annoyed with her, as Bunshi is with she.
“How go your fellowship now?” I ask.
“Is not yet two quartermoons,” she say.
“Who marking your time, Bunshi? Time running fast. Days going faster than that. You and Mistress King Sister need another tack.”
“They may still show.”
“When? It looking like anytime is just in time for you. If I did know I was going to be so free, I would have tell the ferryman to take me to Juba.”
“We need the Tracker.”
“What you need is another plan, water sprite. This mission, if we going call it such, on the edge of a knife.”
“We need them.”
“Him or them? And which him, the Leopard?”
“The wolf.”
“The Wolf Eye? What he call himself, Tracker? Which mother name their son Tracker? What his brother name, Guard? The man sound like he sit down on a cactus and it still there.”
“He have a nose.”
“Everybody have a nose, sprite.”
“Nobody have his nose. When he pick up a smell of a man or beast he can follow the source.”
“So he really is the wolf.”
“You don’t understand. He can follow it across the land no matter how far, across the sea, even the sand sea. And he can follow it from a quartermoon to a year. He get ahold of the boy’s smell, all left for him to do is point. The only reason I approach the Leopard is to approach him.”
“Crafty. The water sprite is crafty. Well, the rest of us who don’t have a nose will have to use our head.”
“That is just one of his gifts,” she say.
“What a man this is. He demigod or sorcerer? Or just another man deceiving you?”
“You won’t get to where you need to go without him.”
“His gift must be wings. He is a bird?”
“You think this is a joke.”
“I don’t say nothing.”