“They are coming,” he said.
“They are here,” I said.
“He looked at me and said, This was the work of the King. Kwash Dara. This was the work of the court, this was the work of the elders, and my son is witness that this happened.
“Your son will not remember, I said.
“But the King will, he said.
“I flicked up my second finger and it became a blade. I pushed below my rib right here and cut it open. The father was afraid but I told him he need not fear, I make a womb for the boy. I cut my womb open the way midwives sometimes do when the baby is unborn and the mother is already dead. I pushed the baby through and my skin sealed him inside. The father was in terror, but seeing my belly big, as if with child, gave him some peace. Will he die in you? he said, and I said no. Were you a mother? this man Basu asked me, but I did not answer. I tell you true, there was a heaviness in me. I have never carried children. But maybe every woman is a mother.”
“You are not a woman,” I said.
“Quiet,” said the Leopard.
“The Sangoma said you had a mouth on you,” she said.
I didn’t ask how she knew.
“The Omoluzu had blades. I had blades too.”
“Of course you did.”
“Tracker, enough,” said the Leopard.
“One came for me, swung his one blade, but I had two.”
“That’s a scene for the griots, a pregnant-looking woman fighting shadow devils with two blades.”
“A scene indeed,” said the Leopard. I was starting to wonder about him. He was feeding on her story like someone starving, or like someone glutting, I could not tell.
“He swung at me and I ducked. I jumped up to the ceiling, their floor, and chopped his head off with my two blades. But I could not fight them all. Basu Fumanguru was brave. He pulled out a knife, but a blade came for him from the back and stabbed right through his belly. But their bloodlust was not satisfied. They could smell the family’s blood on the boy even with him inside me. One swung and cut me in the shoulder, but I swung around and cut his chest open. I ran and jumped through the same window I came through.”
“Not anywhere have I heard such a story. Not from the hawk, not even from the rhinoceros,” the Leopard said.
“It is a very good story. There were even monsters. None of it makes me want to help you,” I said.
She laughed. “If I was looking for noble men with the heart to help a child, I would never have called you. I really don’t care what you want. It is a task for which you will be paid four times more than the highest you have ever charged. In gold. What you like or want, whatever it is in your head means nothing to me.”
“I …” I had nothing to say.
“What of the child—after, I mean?” the Leopard said.
“I did not take him to his aunt. Omoluzu smells blood upon blood and would have, should whoever commanded them willed it, gone after any family. I took him to a blind woman in Mitu, who used to be loyal to the old gods. Without sight she would not know who the child was, or try to find out. She was with a child so could suckle him also, and keep him for a year.”
“Used to be loyal?”
“She sold him at the slave market in the Purple City, near Lake Abbar. A baby fetches great coin outside of Kongor, especially a male. She told me this as I started to slit her throat with this finger.”
“What wise choices in people you make.”
I knew from across the room, Nsaka Ne Vampi rolled her eyes. I did not look, but I knew.
“I tracked the child to a perfume and silver merchant who was going to take him to the East. It took me a moon and it was too late. He was late with his silver and merchants in Mitu sent mercenaries to find him. You know where they found him? At the border of Mitu. They found flies but no stench of death. Somebody ransacked the caravan and killed everyone. Nobody touched the civet, or silver, or myrrh. Never found the boy; they took him.”
“The King?” I asked.
“The King would have had him killed.”
“So he is gone? Why not leave him gone?”
“You would have a child walking with murderers?” the old woman said.
“Because a child in the company of witches would fare much better,” I said. “What use is the boy to murderers?”
“They found use,” Bunshi said.
I remember what the date feeder said to the slaver in the lightning woman’s tower. About the little boy knocking on the woman’s door, crying that he was running from monsters, only to let them in as soon as her family fell asleep. I nodded at the Leopard, hoping he caught what they were not saying.
I couldn’t decide whether to sit down, stand up, or leave.
“A little boy survives roof walkers only to be sold into slavery, where he was kidnapped by who, witchmen? Devils? A society of boy-lover spirits starting out the child early? What will happen next, maybe Ninki Nanka the swamp dragon will smell them as they go through the bush and eat them all?”
“You don’t believe in such creatures?” Bunshi said. “Despite all you have seen and heard and fought with? Despite the animal beside you?”
“You don’t need belief in evil creatures when men flay their own wives,” I said. I turned and looked at the Leopard, who was still drinking in this story.
“But you do believe speaking clever is wise. Good. I am not paying for your belief. I am paying for your nose. Bring me back the boy.”
“Or proof of his corpse?”
“He is alive.”
“And when we find him, what then? You are asking us to go against the King?”
“I’m paying you to expose the King.”
“Proof that the King is behind a murder.”
“There is more to the story of the King than you know. And if you knew you could not bear.”
“Of course.”
“She’s not paying you to ask or to think. She’s paying you to smell,” said Nsaka Ne Vampi.
“How do you know they have not killed the child?”
“We know,” Bunshi said.
I almost said I know too, but looked at the Leopard. He glanced at me and nodded.
A door opened and shut. I thought it was Fumeli but it was not his smell. Nsaka Ne Vampi walked over to the doorway and looked out. She said, “In two days we ride for Kongor. Come or don’t come, it makes no difference to me. She’s the one that wants you.”
She pointed to Bunshi, but I kept looking past her. I didn’t even hear what she said after, because of the scent coming up the stairs. The scent I caught earlier, which I thought was Bunshi, but I had never met her and she was right, she did not smell like Omoluzu. This scent was coming closer, someone carrying it, and I knew I hated it, more than I have hated anything in years, more than I have hated men I have known but killed anyway. He was coming up the stairs, coming closer, I could hear the patter of his feet and with each step my fury was bursting into flames.
“You are late,” Nsaka Ne Vampi blurted. “Everyone is—”
I cut her words off with the hatchet that I flung straight past her face to lodge in the door.
“God’s fuck! You barely missed me, friend,” he said, stepping into the doorway.
“I wasn’t trying to miss,” I said, and threw the second one straight for his face. He dodged but it grazed his ear.
“Tracker, what the—”
I ran and jumped on him; we fell back on the stairs and rolled down the steps. My hands around his neck and squeezing until either his neck snapped or his breath died. Rolling down the steps, skin bruising, blood shedding, his, mine, the steps, the loose mortar. Me losing earth, him losing voice, rolling and rolling and hitting the floor below, the force of the fall and him kicking me in the chest. I fell back and he was upon me. I kicked him off and pulled a knife, but he knocked it out of my hand and punched me in the belly, then the face, then the cheek, then my chest but I blocked his hand, pushed away the knuckle, punched him under the chin, again across the left eye. The Leopard ran down as Leopard and changed maybe, I didn’t see, I kept my eyes on him. He ran, and jumped, and kicked, I dodged and swung up my elbow and hit him square in the face and he was down, head hit the ground first. I jumped on him and punched his left cheek then right, then left, and he hit me in the ribs twice and I fell off, but rolled out of the way of his knife as he stabbed the floor. I kicked his kick, and kicked his kick again and scrambled up as he scrambled up, and the Leopard knew better than to pull me back or stop me, and looking at the Leopard I didn’t see him come up behind and swing for the back of my head and hit and it got wet and I fell to my knees, and he swung his hand back to hit me again and I kicked his feet and he fell. I got on him again and swung my hand back to punch him again, his face running blood, looking like a dark juicy fruit bruised open, and a blade pushed itself against my throat.