Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Mossi pulled out of his satchel a bunch of papyrus leaves folded small. I knew from the smell before I saw what they were.

“You took the writs?” I said.

“Something about them had the air of importance. Or maybe just sour milk.”

He smiled but neither I nor Sogolon laughed.

“No laughter to you people below the desert. So, who is this boy you seek? Who presently has him? And how shall he be found?”

He unfolded the papers, and Sogolon turned around. She moved in closer, but not so close it would look like she was trying to read them.

“The papers look burn,” she said.

“But they fold and unfold like papers untouched,” Mossi said.

“Those are not burns, they are glyphs,” I said. “Northern-style in the first two lines, coastal below. He wrote them down in sheep milk. But you knew this,” I said.

“No. Never know.”

“There were glyphs of this kind all over your room in Kongor.”

She glared at me quick, but her face smoothed. “I don’t write none of them. Is Bunshi you must ask.”

“Who?” Mossi said.

“Later,” I said, and he nodded.

“I don’t read North or coastal mark,” Sogolon said.

“Well fuck the gods, there is something you cannot do.” I pointed at Mossi with my chin. “He can.”

The room had a bed, though I was sure Sogolon never slept on one. The girl went beside her, they whispered, then she went back to the door.

“The writ the prefect holding be just one. Fumanguru make five, and one come across where I stay. He say the monarchy need go forward by going back, so that make me want to know more. You read the whole writ?”

“No.”

“Don’t have to. Boring once he stop talking about the King. Then he just turn into one more man telling woman what to do. But for what he say about the King, I find him one night.”

“Why would anything about the elder and the King concern you?” I said.

“It never was for me. Why you think no man can touch me, Tracker?”

“I—”

“Don’t bother with the smart tongue. I didn’t call on him for me, but for somebody else.”

“Bunshi.”

She laughed. “I find Fumanguru because I serve the sister of the King. From what he write, he sound like the one man who understand. The one who could look past his own fattening belly to see what wrong with the empire, the kingdom, how the North Kingdom being plagued by evil and misfortune and malcontent for as long as a child know the kingdom. Your eyes pass the part where he talk about the history of kings? The line of kings, this I know. That who succeed the King change when Moki become King. He not supposed to be King. Every King before him was the oldest son of the King’s oldest sister. So it was written for hundreds of years. Until now we have Kwash Moki.”

“How did he become King?” Mossi said.

“He murdered his sister and all under her roof,” I said.

“And when the time come Moki send his oldest daughter to the ancient sisterhood where no girl can become a mother. That way his oldest son, Liongo, become King. And so it go for year after year, age after age that when we come to Kwash Aduware, everybody forget how one become King and who can become King, so that even the faraway griots start singing that so always be the way. This land curse ever since,” Sogolon said.

“But all the griots’ songs sing of winning wars and conquering new lands. When exactly did a curse happen?”

“Look behind the palace wall. The records show all the children who live. You think it going show all the children who die? Too many dead sons mean the royal blood weak. Records, do they tell you of the three wives Kwash Netu have before he find one that would give him a prince? Kwash Dara lose his first brother to plague. And have three slow sisters because his father breeding concubines. And one uncle as mad as a southern king, and death strike nearly every wife who don’t give him a son. In which book all of that write? Rot run through the whole family. Here is a question and answer it true. When you last see rain in Fasisi?”

“And yet there are trees.”

“Defeat is not the problem. Victory is.”

Even Mossi leaned in when he heard that. Sogolon finally turned around, and sat in the windowsill. I almost expected Bunshi to come seeping down the wall.

“Yes, the great kings of the North make war and win plenty, but they always want more. Free lands, lands in fuss. Those cities, and towns that not take a side. They cannot help themself, man raise by man, not woman. Woman not like man, they don’t know gluttony. Each kingdom, spread wider, each king get worse. The South kings get madder and madder because they keep making incest with one another. The North kings get a different kind of mad. Evil curse them, because they whole line come out of the worst kind of evil, for what kind of evil kill he own blood?”

“More interested in questions where the answer is the boy,” I said.

“You said you know him? Tell me what you know,” Sogolon said.