Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“White because even their skin rebel against their evil, for there is only so much vileness that your own skin can agree to. White like only the purest evil. The children, they take and bind to beasts, and devils. Two attacked me myself, one had wings of a bat as big as that flag. When my men killed it with arrows, it was just a boy, and the wings were part of his skin and bones now, even blood ran through it. And they do other things, turning three girls into one girl, sewing tongue to tongue to the boy so that he hunts like a crocodile and giving him bird eyes. You know why they take them young? Think, Tracker. Turn a man into a killer and he can turn back, or he can kill you. Raise a little one to be a killer and killing is all he does. He lives for blood, with no remorse. They take the children and turn them like they are plants, with every wicked art of the white science, worse if the children already come with gifts. Now they work for my brother and the bitch of Dolingo.”

“Sogolon said you were allies. Sisters together.”

“I was never sisters with that woman. Sogolon is who she knows. Knew.”

“Then I go to Gangatom.”

“You know some, don’t you? Children with gifts.”

“I go to Gangatom,” I said again.

“What? Nobody here told me you came with your own army. Your own mercenaries, maybe? Maybe two spies? A witchman to mask your approach? How shall you save them? And why would you care what happens to any child? The Leopard tells me they are even mingi. Tell me true. Is one blue with no skin, one with legs like an ostrich, and still one with no legs at all? Many men who march believe in the old ways. They will be in a white science house if not killed first. Worthless and useless.”

“They are worth more than a useless shit of a king on a useless shithole of a throne. And I will kill whoever takes them.”

“But you are not with them, and you do not have them. How does such fathering work? Yet you think you can judge me.”

I had nothing to say to her. She came over to me, but walked to the window.

“Sogolon burned to her death, you say?”

“Yes. She was haunted by many spirits.”

“She was. Some of them her own children. Dead children. I grow tired of dead children, Tracker, children who do not need to die. You talk of stakes. I do not know how to give you any. But right now, two have my child, because of a mistake this one made that Sogolon went desperate trying to redeem. I don’t need a man on a mission and I don’t need a man who believes in kings or gods any more than I need a man who thinks he will shit a gold nugget. I just want someone who when he says, I will bring you your son, brings him to me.”

“I am still doing this for coin.”

“I expect no less.”

“Why did you not tell us from the beginning? The truth.”

“What is truth?”

“That is your answer? I would have cared more had your river demon told us everything.”

“You needed more than what you heard to care?”

“What I heard and what I saw were two different things.”

“I thought it was your nose you trusted. You and your company look like you still have wounds to tend to.”

“Me and my company are fine.”

“Nevertheless. Go get my boy tomorrow night.”

I have something for you,” the Leopard said.

I took one of the rooms on the top floor, but facing the snake street. Rugs on the floor, spilled civet musk, and a head plate for sleeping, which I had not seen since my father’s house. Grandfather’s. He threw one of the axes at me and I caught it in the spin. He nodded, impressed. The second was in a harness, which I put over my shoulder.

“I brought something else,” he said, and gave me a jar that smelled like tree gum.

“Black ochre in shea butter, perfect for you. You can blend in dark and shadow without wearing all those rags that makes your nipples and asshole itch. Walk with me.”

Outside, we walked down to the river and along the bank.

“Things have changed between you and this Fumeli,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Or maybe me. You snap at him more but I care less.”

He turned to face me, walking backward again.

“Tracker, you must tell me. How evil was I?”

“Like a mangy dog robbed of his last meal. You were odd, Leopard, one day the man of mirth that made me laugh like no other. The next you’re not just wishing me harm, you bit me in the neck.”

“That is impossible, Tracker. Even at my worst I could never—”

“Look at my scar,” I said, and pointed. “Those were your teeth. Your malcontent was fierce.”

“Fine, fine. Dear Tracker, now I have such sorrow. I was not myself.”

“Then who were you?”

“I promised you a tale strange. Fumeli, how I laugh when I think about it. But this, this boy, fuck the gods. Hear me now.”

We kept walking along the shore, both of us wearing hoods, and the clothing of those devoted to the gods. The old lord’s clothes.