Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Mungunga was waking up. Men dressed like elders on their way to where elders go. Jugs held by no hands, at windows throwing out the slop of last night into gutters that ran inside the trunk of the tree. Men in robes and caps passing by on foot with books and scrolls, men in cloaks and pants, passing by on carts driven by donkeys and mules, without bridles. Women pushing carts overflowing with silk, fruits, and trinkets. People hanging off the retaining walls, with dyes, and sticks, and brushes, back to painting the mural of the Queen on the side of the right-hand branch. Everywhere and nowhere, the sweet reek of chicken fat popping over flame, and bread baking in ovens. Also this, so everywhere that the noise of it became a new quiet: gears running, ropes creaking, and the beat and boom of big wheels turning, though nothing for the eye to put such sounds to.

“They would not even let me wash myself, saying that the Queen has a nose for filth and sneezes like a storm at even a hint of it. I said, Then like many in these lands you must be nose-blind to the funk under your arms. Then they rubbed me in a fragrance they said would be most pleasing to the Queen, which made me wince for the smell was like shit at the feet of growing crops. In my hair, in my nose, do you not smell it still on me?”

“No.”

“Morning bathers scraped it off with all my skin and most of my hair then. Sogolon was there, Tracker.”

“Sogolon? Watching?”

“They were all watching. No queen fucks alone, nor king either. Her handmaidens, her witchmen, two men who looked like counselors, a man of medicine, Sogolon, and all the Queen’s guards.”

“Something ill is in this kingdom. Did you—how does one—”

“Yes, yes, curse it. I think the old bitch promised this Queen something from me, and didn’t ask me.”

“What did she have you do?”

“What?”

“No children anywhere and the Queen has you lie with her the first night you are here. Did you—”

“Yes, if that is what you wish to know. I left my seed in her. You act if as arousal means anything. It does not even mean consent.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Your eyes asked. And they judged.”

“My eyes don’t care.”

“Fine. Then I shall not care either. Then her witchmen and night nurses said it was so, that my seed was in her. The witchman made sure.”

“Why does a queen bed a foreigner she had only just met to have him leave his seed in her? And why is that a matter for the whole court? I tell you, Mossi, something is wrong about these lands.”

“And the Queen was cold as a mountaintop. She said nothing, and they warned me not to look straight at her. She didn’t look as if she was breathing. And everyone watched as if I was there to patch a hole in the floor.”

“Who warned you?”

“The guards who washed me.”

“Did they look like her? Skin so black it’s blue?”

“Isn’t that everyone we see?”

“We have seen neither slaves nor children.”

“You said that. She had a cage, Tracker. A cage with two pigeons. Strange pet.”

“Nobody keeps that disgusting animal as a pet. The Aesi uses pigeons. So does Sogolon. She said she was sending word to the Dolingon queen when I asked her.”

“Twice they made me spill inside her.”

“What did Sogolon say to you?”

“Nothing.”

“We should find the others.”

I grabbed his hand and pulled him quick into a doorway and held him.

“Tracker, what in all the fucks—”

“Men, two in number, following us.”

“Oh, the two men a hundred paces behind me, one in a blue cape and white robes, the other, open vest and white trousers like a horseman? Trying to look as if not in league with each other, but clearly walking together? I think, Tracker, they are following me.”

“We could lead them to that plank, and throw them off.”

“Are all your forms of fun this quick?”

I pushed him away. We kept on walking, past a number of steps I could not count, but I did notice the path took us right around the trunk, covered in little roofs, towers, and great halls, twice. And at almost every turn there was a new tree in the distance. And at every turn I was getting angry with Mossi and couldn’t explain why.

“A city with no children, and a queen hungry to get one, even from you. There is some honor in that, is there not?”

“No honor to such lowly customs.”

“And yet you dropped your robes, and rose to meet it.”

“What is burning you?” he said.

I looked at him. “I feel lost and I do not know what to do here.”

“How could you be lost? I am following you, so I am lost too.”

The men stopped waiting on us and were approaching.

“Maybe what you’re looking for is not a reason to fight, or to save the boy, but just a reason,” Mossi said.

“Fuck the gods if I know what that means.”

“I’ve spent my life on the chase for men. People are either running to, or running from, but you just seem to be cut loose. You have no stakes in this and why should you? But have you a stake in anything? In anyone?”

At this I wished for nothing more than to punch the next remark back into his mouth.