“I think you think you have smart tongue.”
“You read the part about the history of kings? That who succeed the King changed with Moki? Every King before him was the oldest son of the King’s oldest sister.”
“Yes, you fucking hound I was there. I live it, and I survive it when that same Kwash Moki and that same Aesi decide that all woman of her own means must be witch, and drive a stake from her bottom hole right through her mouth. At least Fumanguru didn’t tell you that part because for all his nobleness even he can’t see any woman beyond her koo’s use. Not even a royal one. But Bunshi didn’t tell that part? I was there, and I suffer all of that before most of you was even born.”
“Most?” ask Mossi.
“Shut you face whoever you is!” I say, not taking my eye off Jakwu.
“I only ask how he became King?” Mossi say with sorrow.
“Banish his sister for adultery and plotting to install a false king. I was serving the princess when it happen. Banish her all the way to Mantha to join the divine sisters, then he send this Tracker’s Sangomin brethren to murder us before we get halfway.”
“Of course. My murderous brethren,” the Tracker say with a laugh.
“You act like you never ever see what they do.”
“After seeing the nastiness that you witches do, I would say they justified. Like you alone know atrocity. I survive your wickedness too.”
“Tracker,” Mossi say.
“No. This woman will have words so I will give her words. I see Sangomin protecting people who nobody else protect. I see little babies’ bones because woman like you judge them as abomination, so you let them starve and die slow, because to you that is mercy. And yet all they do is protect the same people that try to destroy them from they born. Last time I see it, nobody call the Malangika the Sangomin market.”
“Tracker.”
“What, Mossi? Listen to her slander children?”
“If they are anything like the Sangomin in Kongor, then she is not wrong for feeling her way in my eyes.”
The Tracker frown and gripe, but he shut up.
“After Moki even good King Liongo follow his father lead. Then the Aesi make the whole empire forget. That used to be one of his gifts. Now he less powerful,” I say.
“Old age come for everyone but you, I hear. Three hundred seventy and three years old?” Mossi ask.
“That what this Tracker tell you?” I laugh. “In any case, Bunshi think the land cursed ever since this Aesi take hold.”
“All this expansion and bounty? What curse?”
“The South nearly win the Areri Dulla war at one point, if that mean anything. And I been behind those palace walls. One of Kwash Moki’s twins drown. Liongo lose his firstborn so they have to crown his second. And the children of their concubines turn as mad as a southern king. Rot run through the whole family. Yes, the great kings of the North make war and win plenty, but they lose where it count, and they always want more. Free lands, lands in fuss. Realms that don’t take a side. They cannot help themself, man raised by man, not woman. Woman not like man, they don’t know gluttony. And as each kingdom spread wider, each King get worse. The South kings get madder and madder because they keep making incest with one another. The North kings get a different kind of mad. Evil curse them, because they whole line come out of the worst kind of evil, for what kind of evil kill his own blood?”
“Only care about questions where the answer is the boy,” the Tracker say. I come this close to blasting him out the window.
“If you can’t answer those questions by now, your mother probably still worry about you,” I say.
He try to enter my face, but Mossi stop him.
“Mossi, read it,” he say, and the magistrate reach for the papers.
Gods of sky—no, lords of sky. They no longer speak to spirits of the ground. The voice of kings is becoming the new voice of the gods. Break the silence of the gods. Mark the god butcher, for he marks the killer of kings. The god butcher in black wings.
“Pompous, silly, stupid man, even on paper he must puff his chest bigger.”
“You want the rest or no? Continue, Mossi.”
Take him to Mitu, to the guided hand of the one-eyed one, walk through Mweru and let it eat your trail. Take no rest till Go.
“Go. Take the child south to the floating city? Fumanguru is guessing. Guessing because he don’t know much about the Mweru. And why would a man know?” I say.
“The god butcher, for he marks the killer of kings. The god butcher in black wings. The Aesi?” the Tracker ask and I nod.
“That is why he is trying to get this boy either before us or from us, not so? The boy will grow up to kill the King,” say Mossi. The magistrate in him on alert. He will not quit that soon, his nature to protect the King. I laugh.
“Is not prophecy,” I say.
“What, you’re deaf? It’s a prophecy resting hope on a child. Which prophet so foolish? Witch bitches from the Ku? On a little thing that not going live ten years? And you, Mossi, are you not from countries where people never stop with the talk of magic children? Children of fate, people put all hope in them. All hope in a thing that sticks a finger in his nose and eats what he pulls out,” the Tracker say.
“Is not prophecy, even though he pompous. He pointing to a way,” I say.
“Listen to you. You still think I don’t know. That night Bunshi told me all that shit about Fumanguru and the elders, I went to see an elder. Killed him too, which happens when you try to kill me. He also wanted to know about the writs. He even knew about Omoluzu. Your fish told me the boy was Fumanguru’s son, but he had six sons, not seven. Even the people sent to kill him didn’t know, which is why they thought, mission accomplished. Also this. The day before we met you, the Leopard and I tail the slave trader to a tower in Malakal, for no other reason than somebody was calling a fish a dog. So you see, we saw that woman with lightning sickness that Nsaka let loose the next day. So either you all were dropping nuts like a trail for the bird to follow, or you don’t know a thing.”
“I know of ten and nine doors,” I say.
“And not one lead you to him. At this rate, the Aesi will either find him first, or will be right there to snatch him when you do.”
“The man knows his importance,” say Mossi.
“The man knows his worth. I can find this boy; your door only make it quicker,” the Tracker say.
“And this magistrate with you.”
“Mossi is his own man. We have come a long way, Sogolon. Longer than I would have ever gone on half-truths and lies, but something about this story . . . no, that’s not it. Something about you and the fish shaping this story, controlling so hard how each of us read it, that turned into the only reason I came. Now it will be the only reason I leave,” the Tracker say.
He turn to leave. Mossi follow for a step then stop.
“It’s right there. Not so? Everything is in there. Now you waiting on us to put it all together like we’re children,” he say.