“And you have hated witches ever since.”
“Oh I’ve hated them from long before that. I hate myself for trusting one, is more the like. People always go back to their nature in the end. It’s like that gum from the tree, that no matter how far you pull it, snaps itself back.”
“Maybe you bear hatred for women.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I’ve never heard you speak good of a single one. They all seem to be witches in your world.”
“You don’t know my world.”
“I know enough. Perhaps you hate none, not even your mother. But tell me I lie when I say you always expected the worst of Sogolon. And every other woman you have met.”
“When have you seen me say any of this? Why do you say this to me now?”
“I don’t know. You can’t go inside me and not expect me to go inside you. Will you think on it?”
“I have nothing to think—”
“Fuck the gods, Tracker.”
“Fine, I shall think on why Mossi thinks I hate women. Anything more before I go on deck?”
“I have one thing more.”
We docked a day and a half later at noon. His forehead wound looked sealed, and none of us were sore, though we were all covered in scabs, even the buffalo. Most of that day I passed in the slave cabin, me fucking Mossi, Mossi fucking me, me loving Mossi, Mossi loving me, and me going above deck to check faces to see if anyone would start words with me. They either didn’t know or care—sailors are sailors everywhere—not even when Mossi stopped grabbing my hand to cover his shouts. The rest of the time Mossi gave me too many things to think about and it all came back to my mother, who I never, ever wanted to think about. Or the Leopard, who I had not thought of in moons, or what Mossi said that inside me is a hate for all women. It was a harsh thought and a lie, as I could not help that I have run into witches.
“Maybe you draw the worst to you.”
“Are you the worst?” I asked, annoyed.
“I hope not. But I think of your mother, or rather the mother you told me about who might not even be real, or if she is real, not as you say. You sound like fathers where I am from who blame the daughter for rape, saying, Had you not legs to run away? Had you not lips to scream? You think as they do that suffering from cruelty or escaping it is a matter of choice or means, when it is a matter of power.”
“You say I should understand power?”
“I say you should understand your mother.”
The night before we docked he said, Tracker, you are at all times a vigorous lover, but I do not think that was praise, and he kept asking me about long gone things, dead things, afterward. So much so that yes, I was getting a little tired of the prefect and his questions. In the morning the crew repaired a hole the Ogo punched through the bulkhead, without asking any questions. He said it was a nightmare.
Kongori deserted their streets at noon, a perfect time to slip into the city and vanish down an alley. Take away the streets where the Tarobe, or the Nyembe, or the Gallunkobe/Matyube lived, and people made house anywhere they could buy, cheat, inherit, or claim, which meant that if most of the people stayed indoors then the entire city would look as if it hid behind walls. Not even the sentries, usually on guard around the city limits, stood by the shore. Mossi and I took two of the ship crewmen’s clothes in exchange for cowrie shells, and one, stunned, said, I have killed men for less. We wore the sea-worn robes of sailors, robes with hoods, and trousers like men from the East.
More than seven nights had gone since we saw the city last. Maybe more but I could not remember. No loud music and nothing left of Bingingun masquerade but bits of straw, cloths, sticks, and staffs in red and green, all scattered on the street, with no master to claim them.
I looked for the Ogo to look at me and the prefect with different eyes, but saw nothing. If anything, the Ogo talked more than he had in almost a moon, on everything from the agreeable sky to this most agreeable buffalo, that I almost told him that a chatter-loving Ogo would bring attention to us. I wondered if Mossi thought the same and that was why he kept behind us, until I caught his eye sweeping up and down and behind and beside, past each crossroad, his hand never leaving his sword. I pulled back, walking beside him.
“Chieftain army?”
“Down a merchant’s street? They paid us well to never come to these parts.”
“Then who?”
“Anyone.”
“Which enemy is expecting us, Mossi?”
“Not enemies on the ground. It’s pigeons in the sky that worry me.”
“I know. And I have no friends here. I—”
I had to stop right there, right on that road as we walked. I clutched my nose and backed against the wall. So many at once that an older me would have gone a little mad, but now they slapped my mind around, pushing me forward, and back, and all around at once; my nose making me dizzy.
“Tracker?”
I can walk in a land of a hundred smells I do not know. I can walk into a place with many smells I know if I know this is the place where they will be, and decide what scent my mind will follow. But six or even four ambushing me unawares and I go almost mad. So many years have gone since this has happened to me. I remembered the boy who trained me to cluster on one, the boy I had to kill. There, all of them came at me, all I remember, not all I remember being in Kongor.
“You smell the boy,” Mossi said, grabbing my arm.
“I’m not going to fall.”
“But you smell the boy.”
“More than this boy.”
“Is that good or not so?”
“Only the gods know. This nose is a curse, it is no blessing. Much afoot in this city, more than when I was last here.”
“Speak plain, Tracker.”
“Fuck the gods, do I sound mad?”
“Peace. Peace.”
“That’s what that fucking cat used to say.”
He grabbed me and pulled me into his face.
“Your temper is making it worse,” he said.
The Ogo and buffalo had walked on, not noticing we had stopped. He touched my cheek and I flinched.
“No one sees us,” he said. “Besides, it gives you something else to worry about.” He smiled.
“I think someone tracks us. How far are the Nyembe streets?” I asked.
“Not far, north and west of here. But there’s no masking these two,” he said, pointing at the buffalo and the Ogo.
“We should stay along the coast. Do we go to the boy?” Mossi asked.
“It’s only three of them now, and the Ipundulu is wounded. No witch-mother to quicken his healing.”
“You say wait?”
“No.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“Mossi.”
“Tracker.”
“Quiet. I say while we hunt people, people hunt us. The Aesi might still be in Kongor. And I have this feeling he watches us, just waiting for us to fall into his lap. And others, others who track us.”
“My sword is ready when they find us.”
“No. We shall find them.”
Dusk came before we snuck through deserted alleys to get west. We passed a lane narrow enough for only one to pass through that Mossi dashed in and came back with blood on his sword. He did not say, I did not ask. We continued north and east, lane to lane, until we reached the Nyembe quarter and that snake street that led to the old lord’s house.
“Last I was on this street it was infested with Seven Wings,” I said.
He pointed to the flag of the black sparrow hawk, still flying from that tower three hundred paces away. “That still flies, though. And the Fasisi King’s mark is everywhere.”
We came to the doorway, suspiciously open.
“There’s a mark right here on this wall that I know,” I said.
“I thought you would give word about the piss first.”
Mossi jumped, but I did not move, though I wished I had an ax. He came from somewhere deep in this house, running down the narrow hallway leading outside, and leapt straight at me, knocking me down flat on the ground. The buffalo snorted, the Ogo ran to my side, and Mossi drew his two swords.