Black Leopard, Red Wolf

And I thought, for a blink, What should I construct now, and how much will I have to build on it? The thought alone made me tired. I told myself that I was just tired of believing there was a secret to protect from some unknown enemy, when the truth was I was tired of not having someone to tell it to. Here is truth: At this point I would have told anyone. Truth is truth, and I do not own it. It should make no difference to me who hears it, since him hearing the truth does not change it. I wished the Leopard was here.

“I could ask you the same thing. His family died from sickness,” I said.

“No sickness cuts a woman in two. The prefect of prefects declared this matter closed, and recommended that to the chiefs, who recommended that to the King.”

“Yet here you are, in front of me, because you didn’t swallow that story.”

He leaned his sword against a stack of books and sat on the floor. His tunic slipped off his knees and he wore no underclothes. I am Ku and it is nothing new to see the man in men, I said to myself three times. Without looking at me, he pulled the tail of his garment up between his legs. He hunched over the papers and read.

“Look,” he said, and I leaned over.

“Either his mind went slightly mad, or it is his intent to confuse you. Look at this, the vulture, the chick, and the foot all pointed west. This is northern writing. Some make one sound, like the vulture’s sound, which is mmmm. Some make a whole word or carry an idea. But look at this down here, the fourth line. Do you see how it differs? This is the coast. Go to the coast of the South Kingdom, or even that place, I forget its name. That island to the east, what is the name …?”

“Lish.”

“You can still find this writing in Lish. Each one is a sound, all sounds make—”

“I know what a word is, prefect. What is he saying?”

“Patience, Tracker. ‘God … gods of sky. They no longer speak to spirits of the ground. The voice of kings is becoming the new voice of the gods. Break the silence of the gods. Mark the god butcher, for he marks the killer of kings.’ Is this sounding wise to you? For it is foolishness to me. ‘The god butcher in black wings.’”

“Black wings?”

“This is what he says. None of this moves like a wave. I think he meant it so. A king is king by a queen, not a king. But the boy—”

“Wait. Stay, do not move,” I said.

He looked up and nodded. His thighs, lighter in skin than the rest of him, sprouted hairs too straight. I went right to the library master’s table, but he was still gone. I guessed he kept behind him the logbooks and records of kings and royal subjects. I climbed two steps up a ladder and looked around until I saw the mark of the rhinoceros head in gold. I flipped from the back page and dust rushed into my nose, making me cough. A few pages in was the house of Kwash Liongo, almost the same as what Fumanguru had scratched out on paper. On the page before was a Liongo, his brothers and sisters, and the King before him, Kwash Moki, who became King at twenty and ruled until he was forty and five.

“What news on black wings?”

I knew I jumped. I knew he saw me.

“Nothing,” I said.

I grabbed the batch of papers and placed them on the table. The candles threw colour on them like weak sunlight.

“This is the house of Akum,” I said. “Rulers for over five hundred years, right up to Kwash Dara. His father is Netu, here. Above him, here, is Aduware the Cheetah King, who was third in line, when the crown prince died, and his brother banished. Then above him is Liongo the great, who ruled nearly seventy years. Who doesn’t know the great King Liongo? Then over here on this leaf, Liongo again and above him, Moki, his father, the boy King.”

“Turn the page.”

“I did. There’s nothing before.”

“You didn’t—”

“Look,” I said, pointing at the blank page. “Nothing is there.”

“But Moki is not the first Akum King, that would make the line about two hundred and fifty years old.”

“Two hundred and seventy.”

“Keep flipping,” Mossi said.

“Family map. Fasisi Kwash Dara. Akum. His seat of rule, his praise name, his king name, and his family.”

Three pages up, another family map someone drew in a darker blue. At the top of the page was Akum. At the bottom was Kwash Kagar, Moki’s father. But above him something curious, and above that even more curious.

“Is this a new line? An old one, I mean,” the prefect said.

“House of Akum up to Moki’s father. What do you notice?”

“Above Kagar is a line pointing to Tiefulu? That’s a woman’s name. His mother.”

“Beside hers.”

“Kwash Kong.”

“Now look above Kong.”

“Another woman, another sister. Tracker, no king is the son of a king.”

“Until Moki.”

“There are many kingdoms that follow the wife’s line, or the sister.”

“Not the North Kingdom. From Moki down, every king is the king’s oldest son, not his sister’s son. Grab these.”

I went back to the glyphs. He followed me over, looking at the maps, not at me.

“What did you say about kings and gods?” I said.

“I said nothing about kings and—”

“You tiresome in all your ways?”

He dropped the papers at my feet and grabbed the writs.