I don’t need to be here. The Tracker might smell something if he was here, but all I finding is the dead. The welcome room beside the grain keep is where they sit, for these bodies for certain don’t lie. The sun gone some time ago, but last light is yet to leave. This room hold nothing but the urns, three of them as tall as my chest, one below my waist. I think it then make it, the wind (not wind) shifting the lids off and placing them down gently. Big man Fumanguru get the biggest urn. No face and the skull smashed in. They dress him in his elder robes and leave the staff leaning behind him, try to give him back dignity in the sitting pose. But only one leg is a leg, the other is wood and cloth. The second urn have smells both rotten and sweet, something for the Tracker to figure out. But the perfume and the blue linen tell me that this is the wife. She look like those bodies in the north that they preserve by drying out the water. But the top of her body is facing north while below the waist turn to south. In the third urn, what remain of two children, and the fourth urn holding one. Three children here mean three they didn’t find. Nothing left for me to see, so I leave.
They who kill the family is not they who have the boy, but Bunshi have us all come to Kongor so that the Tracker can find him with his magic nose. Except I all but sure where this boy is, and where he will be. But Bunshi not around to hear and the Tracker not around to smell and I in no mood to tell. She keep herself scarce ever since she try to drown me, which suit me well, for if I knew a way to kill her that night I would. For all this talk about the Wolf Eye, for all the needing of these men, none of them spend over one hundred years killing man just like them. None of them can stand up to the Aesi she keep stopping me from killing. Her voice keep barging in my head, telling me that if I kill him, he will only come back. But I know what she don’t, or won’t admit, which is that this empire have no future in the King Sister. You could leave, say the voice that sound like me. Go right now and head them off. Maybe not in time for Wakadishu, but perhaps for the Blood Swamp, or Dolingo. There. Decided. Find them some way, somehow with some other hound. Find the boy, kill the vampire, put the boy to the only use he have left. There. Decided.
I know what you planning, Jakwu say, as usual picking the perfect time to invade my head.
“This little fool keep thinking he know me,” I say.
This whore keep forgetting I live in her head, he say.
“Invade but you still can’t conquer.”
Give me the girl.
“I wouldn’t give you the shit I leave on the ground.”
Who you fooling, woman? You think you is master and she is apprentice. She more dull than a rock and have less of a mind. Even she know that she is nothing but blank flesh for use.
“And you already have a plan for how to use her.”
I know the mission you going on. I even know that you waiting on some man or some beast that will never come. If where you heading call for a fight, that girl is no use to you. Better for she and you that you leave her in Kongor. Or sell to the slaver. Or give her to me.
“As bad as the other choices be, both still better than putting any part of you inside that girl.”
You need a spear. You need sword. You need a skilled warrior that can wield both.
“So I should give her body to a man who used to take women’s bodies, for what now? So you can stab me in the back as soon as you can? I only look like I plop out of cow koo.”
Warm wishes to you then, he say and leave. It stun me that he quit just so, and I steel myself, waiting for a punch or slap. But nothing come. He think it is enough to leave me with thoughts I don’t want to think. That whether I choose to go after the Ipundulu or the Aesi, this girl will not be a help, but a hindrance, a danger even. Yet I can’t bring myself to set her loose, right into the arms of another man waiting to devour her.
I leave Tarobe quarter and take the border road east. The housemaster is fussing over more pots than usual, all but beckoning me to ask who he preparing feast for.
“No feast, just more mouths to feed. They find your Tracker. And your giant. And two more.”
“You tell the Leopard not to follow me?” say the Tracker, alive and unspoiled.
“I tell him you won’t reach the other side, but look at you—alive and unspoiled. Trust the gods.”
The Tracker right now looking like he don’t trust the room. I don’t blame him, for it is dim and musty, and can’t be much peace for his nose. The fowl-shit green not much peace for his eyes either. In Kongor it seem the crabby old men with no women keep together. At least they share something. That is how the master of this house get word that some truly strange men appear in a dim room in the hall of records. A room all but sealed off by a wall of books not touched in one hundred years. This master must did tell somebody that he was expecting exactly such strange men.
Here is truth: It is only now, lying in bed and not able to move far, that I finally see him. Certain woman would even call the Tracker handsome, that certain woman being a younger me. Not like the Leopard—that cat is a walking reason to always stay naked and ready. The thought make me chuckle, which make the Tracker frown, which bring me back to him and his hair cut down close to scalp to show the shape of his head and his skin, darker than pure coffee. He look more Jubite than Ku, no scars except for healed wounds, traces of kaolin on his neck that he never learn to use as a child. Thick dark lips revealing that he still have all his teeth to gnash. I try to smile, which make him scowl. He hate that the world did move on without him. The Tracker hate it so much that even this sunset—another day leaving—is making him angry. Making him say things like, “Those gods told you to forget us after only one night?”
“You leave your whole mind back in the forest,” I say.
“How one night take my whole mind?” he ask.
“Be glad it didn’t take something else.”
“Meaning what, woman? Soon as I pick up a scent at Fumanguru’s house we can leave before this quartermoon is out.”
“Ay, we doing this again.”
“Don’t tell me what I doing, woman.”
“You lost in that forest twenty and eight days, Tracker.”
“What?”
“A whole moon come and go since you go into that bush.”
He do it again, slump back down on the rugs and linen like somebody shove him. You can see it on his face, him staggering to grasp what he hear more than once, his lips quivering, his eye twitching, him turning away from me, for he must know that all this anguish is playing out on his face.
“Yes, a whole moon,” I say.
“Is not my first time in the Darklands. Time never stopped then.”
“Who say it stop?”
“You tire me,” he say.
Outside, Seven Wings gather in the street to march, three and four to a group, to the Tower of the Black Sparrowhawk. This is the first time I am seeing some on horseback, white horses and black with red reins, men in black veils and black robes under chain mail and armor. I don’t hear the Tracker until he is right beside me.
“Coming from all corners of the North and some from the South border. The border men wear a red scarf on the left arm. Do you see them?” I ask.
“This is whose army?” he ask.
“Mercenaries.”
“Who? I spend so little time in Kongor.”
“Seven Wings. Black garments on the outer, white on the inner, like their symbol, the Black Sparrowhawk.”
“What Kongor need mercenaries for? Young girls dancing too wild in Gallunkobe?”
I laugh. “Tell me something,” I say. “The forest don’t lead into this city. It don’t even lead to Mitu. So how you get here?”
“There are doors, and there are doors, woman.”
“Yes. I too know these doors.”
“Old people always seem to know everything. What kind of door turn one night’s ride into just one step?”
“Ten and nine doors. I don’t know if they have a name. Ten and nine door counted so far. A door that cut a trip to the Blood Swamp down to one step.”
“Madness. Just fucking madness.”
“Yet look at you, right now looking at me. How long you apprentice under a Sangoma?”