“She hurt herself.”
“Then she must be a woman of more power and means than me. Every scar I have, it is somebody else who put it there. Which woman is this?”
“His mother,” said the Leopard. I could have killed him in that moment.
“His mother. She and I have much in common.”
“You’ve both abandoned your own children?”
“Maybe we’ve both had our lives ruined by men only to have our children grow up blaming us for it. Pray forgive that remark; I have also been living in a nunnery across from a whorehouse. Think of it, I, the King sister, in hiding with old women because he has sent assassins to the same fortress he imprisoned me. Seven Wings, they left to join the King’s armies in Fasisi. From there they will invade Luala Luala first, and the Gangatom and the Ku, and force every man, woman, and child into slavery. Not will, has. Luala Luala is already under control. War weapons do not build themselves.”
“Respect of the kings to you. But you stand there and try to make ordinary men and women care about the fates of princes and kings, as if what happens to you changes anything that happens to us,” I said.
“The Leopard tells me you have children among the Gangatom.”
“Don’t think I have been in any koo long enough to seed a child,” I said.
“Is this the mouth you warned me of?” she said, looking at both Bunshi and the Leopard. The Leopard nodded. She sat back down on a stool.
“How lovely a family you must have had, so that the loss of a son means nothing to you.”
“Not my—”
“Tracker,” Leopard said, shaking his head.
“The view is different when you are the child lost, Your Excellence. Then all you think of is the disappointment that is parents,” I said.
She laughed.
“Do I look calm to you, Tracker? Do you think here is one possessed with Itutu? How is the King sister so calm when monsters and men have taken her son? Maybe it is only the latest violation. Maybe I am tired. Maybe I take a bath every night so that I scream underwater and wash away tears. Or maybe a thousand fucks for you, thinking any of this is your business. Word has already reached several of the elders that not only do I have a child, but a child of a legal union with a prince. They know I will go to Fasisi and I will bring my claim of succession to the elders, the court, the ancestors, and the gods. My brother even thinks he has killed all the southern griots, but I have four. Four with account of the true history, four whose account will not be questioned by any man.”
“Why do all this to put another man on the throne? A boy.”
“A boy trained by his mother. Not by men who can only raise a boy to become another just like him. My brother’s army marched north to the river lands two days ago. Do you not have blood there?”
“No.”
“Gangatom is just across the river. And what he will do with the children too young to be slaves? You ever heard word of the white scientists?”
It took everything in me to answer quickly, and I still spoke too late.
“No.”
“Thank your gods that you never cross them,” she said, but she looked at me with one raised eyebrow, and slowed her words.
“White because even their skin rebel against their evil, for there is only so much vileness that your own skin can agree to. White like only the purest evil. The children, they take and bind to beasts, and devils. Two attacked me myself, one had wings of a bat as big as that flag. When my men killed it with arrows, it was just a boy, and the wings were part of his skin and bones now, even blood ran through it. And they do other things, turning three girls into one girl, sewing tongue to tongue to the boy so that he hunts like a crocodile and giving him bird eyes. You know why they take them young? Think, Tracker. Turn a man into a killer and he can turn back, or he can kill you. Raise a little one to be a killer and killing is all he does. He lives for blood, with no remorse. They take the children and turn them like they are plants, with every wicked art of the white science, worse if the children already come with gifts. Now they work for my brother and the bitch of Dolingo.”
“Sogolon said you were allies. Sisters together.”
“I was never sisters with that woman. Sogolon is who she knows. Knew.”
“Then I go to Gangatom.”
“You know some, don’t you? Children with gifts.”
“I go to Gangatom,” I said again.
“What? Nobody here told me you came with your own army. Your own mercenaries, maybe? Maybe two spies? A witchman to mask your approach? How shall you save them? And why would you care what happens to any child? The Leopard tells me they are even mingi. Tell me true. Is one blue with no skin, one with legs like an ostrich, and still one with no legs at all? Many men who march believe in the old ways. They will be in a white science house if not killed first. Worthless and useless.”
“They are worth more than a useless shit of a king on a useless shithole of a throne. And I will kill whoever takes them.”
“But you are not with them, and you do not have them. How does such fathering work? Yet you think you can judge me.”
I had nothing to say to her. She came over to me, but walked to the window.
“Sogolon burned to her death, you say?”
“Yes. She was haunted by many spirits.”
“She was. Some of them her own children. Dead children. I grow tired of dead children, Tracker, children who do not need to die. You talk of stakes. I do not know how to give you any. But right now, two have my child, because of a mistake this one made that Sogolon went desperate trying to redeem. I don’t need a man on a mission and I don’t need a man who believes in kings or gods any more than I need a man who thinks he will shit a gold nugget. I just want someone who when he says, I will bring you your son, brings him to me.”
“I am still doing this for coin.”
“I expect no less.”
“Why did you not tell us from the beginning? The truth.”
“What is truth?”
“That is your answer? I would have cared more had your river demon told us everything.”
“You needed more than what you heard to care?”
“What I heard and what I saw were two different things.”
“I thought it was your nose you trusted. You and your company look like you still have wounds to tend to.”
“Me and my company are fine.”
“Nevertheless. Go get my boy tomorrow night.”
I have something for you,” the Leopard said.
I took one of the rooms on the top floor, but facing the snake street. Rugs on the floor, spilled civet musk, and a head plate for sleeping, which I had not seen since my father’s house. Grandfather’s. He threw one of the axes at me and I caught it in the spin. He nodded, impressed. The second was in a harness, which I put over my shoulder.
“I brought something else,” he said, and gave me a jar that smelled like tree gum.
“Black ochre in shea butter, perfect for you. You can blend in dark and shadow without wearing all those rags that makes your nipples and asshole itch. Walk with me.”
Outside, we walked down to the river and along the bank.
“Things have changed between you and this Fumeli,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Or maybe me. You snap at him more but I care less.”
He turned to face me, walking backward again.
“Tracker, you must tell me. How evil was I?”
“Like a mangy dog robbed of his last meal. You were odd, Leopard, one day the man of mirth that made me laugh like no other. The next you’re not just wishing me harm, you bit me in the neck.”
“That is impossible, Tracker. Even at my worst I could never—”
“Look at my scar,” I said, and pointed. “Those were your teeth. Your malcontent was fierce.”
“Fine, fine. Dear Tracker, now I have such sorrow. I was not myself.”
“Then who were you?”
“I promised you a tale strange. Fumeli, how I laugh when I think about it. But this, this boy, fuck the gods. Hear me now.”