A hand grab my neck from behind.
“This is the third time you grab my neck,” I say to the Aesi.
“Oh is so? What happen the first time?”
“Second time more interesting.”
“Tell us,” he say.
“Second time is when I remember that you are the only one I need touch first.”
“Touch for wha—”
I don’t look back, not once. I been doing this for over one hundred years. First a big pop in his left eye, then his right. He too shocked to do anything before his right ear pop. Before he can shout or scream, his tongue swell and burst. He drop the hand now, trying to get away from me. I still don’t turn around when the back of his head explode and he fall. I don’t know why I don’t turn. Yes you do, say the voice in my head. Turn around and you will see that this is not the peak you come here expecting, that his dead body won’t give you anything more than the last time you kill him. That this close nothing and end nothing, for his death is just the beginning of killing him.
Then he grab my hair and pull me to him. The Aesi. I turn around and see the bloody, pulpy head trying to tell me something. I cut his throat.
The Tracker still have the dead cat in his arms, still crying and kissing him.
“He the only man who ever love me,” he say.
“Nobody love no one,” I say.
You want to know about my kill list. Some list this be, where only one man on it I actually kill. You looking for something profound to come from my mouth.
* * *
—
Juba. He cross a bridge east that nobody ever name, the one they call the Bridge That Has a Name Not Even the Old Know, and enter the city before sentries return for the night and close the gate. The sun dip in the west and the east already dark. Three days since he leave the Purple City, and nobody there shedding no tears that he gone. Five years in the North and still not much knowledge of it, so he do what men do when they reach a road they don’t know. Turn left. He hoping this will open up Juba, even though it is small road, too small for big sport, but perhaps the kind of street for the kind of pleasure that like to hide in a dark corner. Man like him don’t want what the city show; he want what it hide. So, the horse he leave at a stable that promise fresh grass and good housing from the rain coming. But he threaten to behead the stable keeper if tomorrow he don’t find his horse unweary and unspoiled. And the stable keeper look at him and take his word for joke until he brandish a dagger longer than a sword and shove it by his balls before the man could jump. I know why this kind of threat give him glee, just as I know that this kind of threat he would carry out, just so. Anybody can still see the east gate from where he standing, and the aqueduct running over it, so he walk in the other direction, ignoring what this thunder is promising, leaving this little road for one bigger. He will have drinking and carousing and masquerading and big adventure. And fucking, and hurting, and sporting, and whoever come at him with the wrong intent will get a knife in their gut. Or their back.
He wearing clothes off the back of a man he kill in the Purple City. The voice that sound like me ask, What it make you that you just want to watch a man die? I tell the whimpering bitch that not a single person’s world is all the poorer from that loss, as that man was scum too. Steal from a thief, gods laugh. Kill a murderer and gods whoop and holler. If you believe in gods. I once hear the Tracker say that is not that he don’t believe in gods, but that he don’t believe in belief.
First he hide for two years, for every single day he think I was coming. I let him think I was dead, which is what time always let us think, and it make him bold. His sort always go where his urges lead, which mean a place that don’t ask questions, and don’t leave tracks, where nobody ever come looking, and where nobody place value on whoever live there. Masi then, or Juba, the nasty shitholes of the South and North. Two years I take to get this close to him, and is not because he was always moving. Is not like he was covering tracks. Is because I was making myself ready and he not the first name on my list.
Here is truth. The first time I follow him was to see how he making out in the world. He knew war was coming, that in the mind of many war was already here, and there he is, the master war tactician from the South, but from war over one hundred years ago. Skill is skill, and skill can’t kill, he say to the army officer recruiting men in Malakal. I follow him right up to the window but can’t hear what they say. I see him, though, losing his temper, slamming his hand down on their table, probably screaming about his quality. About how in his day he was the master tactician of a great army even though he look like he don’t reach twenty years. The marshal sigh, the look on his face saying so young, yet mad already. The deputy looking like he say that at least our Kwash Dara inspiring everybody to take up arms, even the women. Jakwu, still in Venin’s body no matter how much hard work he push it through to shape himself a man. I watch that too, how he let his hair go wild and knotty. How he rub certain bush to grow a beard but leave only a mark, smoke all sort of wicked grass to pound and grate his voice, but now sound like a eunuch, how in his room he wrap a tight linen around his breasts to keep them down before he go sporting, or whoring. How plenty time he will fuck a whore with his finger and his tongue, which make one laugh—yes, I watch while he beat her. Then one day when that Kampara actor troupe was passing through the city, he sneak into the caravan and steal one of their wood cocks. Now he fuck whoever with it, causing them great damage, but woe to the woman who laugh.