Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“I see. How powerful is he, the man who pays you to say such?”

He laughed. “You paid Miss Wadada to fuck.”

“And I pay you far above your sum to talk. You saw my pouch and you know what is in it. Now talk.”

He stared at me again, then. He looked around, as if more were in the room, then wrapped himself in a sheet. “Come with me.”

He pushed away a pile of chests and opened a hatch door no higher than my thigh.

“You will not be coming back to this room,” he said.

He crawled in first. Dark and hot, crumbly with dust, then hard from wood, then harder from mud and plaster, always too black to see. Hear much I did. From every room came men shouting and fucking in all ways and manners, but girls and boys who all moaned the same, saying fuck me with your big, your hard, your Ninki Nanka battering ram, and on and on. Training from Miss Wadada. Twice the idea ran through me that this was a trap, Ekoiye coming out first being a sign to kill the man who crawls out after. There might have been a man with a ngulu sword waiting for my neck, though Ekoiye did not hesitate. For we crawled even longer, long enough to make me wonder who built this, who traveled this long for Ekoiye’s bed. Ahead of him, the dark twinkled with stars.

“Where are you taking us?” I asked.

“To your executioner,” he said, then laughed. We came to a flight of steps, which led to the roof of a place I did not know. No smell of civet, no smell of Miss Wadada, no scent or stench of the whorehouse.

“No, there is no smell of Miss Wadada,” he said.

“Are you hearing my words unsaid?”

“If you think them so loud, Tracker.”

“Is this how you know the secrets of men?”

“What I hear is no secret. All the girls can hear them too.”

Laughter burst out of me. Who else would be expert at reading the minds of men?

“You are on the roof of a gold merchant from the Nyembe quarter.”

“I smell Miss Wadada’s perfume south of us.”

Ekoiye nodded. “Some say it was murder, some say it was monsters.”

“Who? What do you speak of now?”

“What happened to your friend, Basu Fumanguru. Have you seen the men who gather now, in our city?”

“The Seven Wings.”

“Yes, that is what they are called. Men in black. The woman who lives beside Fumanguru said that she saw many men in black in Fumanguru’s house. Through the window she saw them.”

“Seven Wings are mercenaries, not assassins. Not like them to kill just one man and his family. Not even in war.”

“I didn’t call them Seven Wings, she did. Maybe they were demons.”

“Omoluzu.”

“Who?”

“Omoluzu.”

“I do not know him.”

He went over to the edge of the roof and I followed him. We were three floors up. A man rolled in the road, palm wine smell coming of his skin. Other than him, the street was empty.

“Such a swarm of men, who want this man dead. Some say Seven Wings, some say demons, some say the chieftain army.”

“Because they share a love for black?”

“You the one seeking answers, wolf. This is known. Somebody entered the house of Basu Fumanguru and killed everyone. Nobody see no bodies and there were no burial rites. Imagine an elder of the city of Kongor dead with no tribute, no funeral, no procession of lords with a man of royal blood leading it, nobody even declaring him dead. Meanwhile thornbush sprung wild around the house overnight.”

“What do your elders say?”

“None come to me. Do you know he was killed on the Night of the Skulls?”

“I do not believe you.”

“That it was the Night of the Skulls?”

“That none of those chatty child-fuckers have seen you since.”

“I think the Seven Wings assemble for the King.”

“I think you dance away from the question.”

“Not how you think.”

“Lowly people all seem to know the ways of kings these days.”

He grinned. “I know this, though. People visit that house, including one or two of the elders. And maybe one or two Seven Wings. One not from here, they call him Belekun the Big, because that is how men around here joke. He was one who could not keep any of his holes shut, his mouth the worst. He came here with another elder.”

“How do you remember after three years?”

“It was last year. As they both took turns fucking a deaf girl, Miss Wadada heard also. Them saying that they need to find it. They need to find it now, or it will be the execution sword for them.”

“Find what?”

“Basu Fumanguru wrote a long writ against the King, they said.”

“Where is this writ?”

“People keep breaking in his house and not finding anything, so not there mayhaps?”

“You think the King killed him over a writ?”

“I think nothing. The King is coming here. His chancellor is in the city.”

“His chancellor visits Miss Wadada?”

“No, stupid Tracker. I have seen him, though. Kinglike but not the King, skin blacker than you and hair red like a new wound.”

“Maybe he will come sample your famous services.”

“Too pious. Holiness itself. As soon as I saw him I forgot when I first saw him and it was as if I was always seeing him. Do I sound like the fool?”

A dark man with red hair. A dark man with red hair.

“Tracker, you look gone.”

“I am here.”