Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“Popele,” Aesi said, whispering to Bunshi in the way of people who want to be overheard. “Your life for the child. I think you are the one who should beg for it. For these brave men and women plus one fool are war-eager and will not listen to me. Popele, you of a thousand years and more, shall we let them see that you too can die? Their ears go deaf at my voice, goddess, and this dagger is so hungry.”

Aesi looked at me.

“Such was a time when I could have used a tracker. Many a time, many a place. Especially one so good at killing.”

“I am not a killer.”

“Yet your road from Malakal to Dolingo to Kongor is paved with corpses. Who am I, do you know?”

“You tried to kill me in a dream once,” I said.

“Are you sure it was me you met in dreams? You still live.”

“You are the extra four limbs of the Spider King.”

He laughed. “Yes, I have heard that is the way you call your King behind his eye. The King is his own, entire. I have no stake.”

“Never met a king who does his own thinking,” Mossi said.

“You do not hail from these lands.”

“I do not.”

“Of course, eastern light. The people who believe in one god, and everything else is either a slave to the god or an evil spirit. Every belief comes in two, which leads to a god two-sided. Vengeful and mad in his ways and takes his fury out on womenfolk. Yours is the silliest of all the gods. No art to his thoughts, no craft to his deeds. I’ve heard that you think men in the constant visitation of ancestors to be mad.”

“Or possessed.”

“What a land. Possession you call bad, spirits you call evil, and love? Love, as your heart calls it, makes men force you to leave. I sniff you and get a whiff of Tracker. More than a whiff, indeed a funk. What shall your father think?”

“I go by my own thoughts,” Mossi said.

“You must be a king. As for him, this little fly, your little king, the one who drools at this woman’s neck, even though he is six years gone in age. Tracker, it has been said you have a nose. Is the shit we smell not his?”

“There is a big piece of black shit in this room, no doubt of that,” I said.

“If you’re going to tell them who you are, tell them who you are,” the King sister said.

She still sat on the floor, still looking weak, as if drained. She finally looked at us.

“This, this Aesi, these four limbs of the Spider King. Tell them about your prophecy. Tell them about how you just appeared in our hearts and minds as someone who was there all along, but no woman or man can remember when you first came,” the King sister said.

“I want what is best for the King,” Aesi said.

“You want what is best for you. For now that is the same as what the King wants. Meanwhile nobody notices that you the same today as you was twenty years ago, and even before that. Call yourself by your name, necromancer. Man of sorcery and wicked art. You are what you are. You build nothing, disrupt everything, destroy everything. You know what he does? He waits until all are asleep, then he jumps through the air or runs under the ground. He goes to covens in caves and rapes babies offered up by mothers. Breeds children with sister upon sister and brother, but they all die. Eater of human flesh. I saw you, Aesi. I saw you as the wild boar, and the crocodile, and the pigeon, and the vulture, and the crow. Your evil will soon eat itself.”

Just out of her reach lay a bag made of rags, tied at the neck with a carving sticking out. A phuungu. A charm, like a nkisi, to protect against witchcraft. She tried to grab it, but her head slammed into the ground and the charm rolled away.

“I want what goes best for the King,” the Aesi said.

“You should want what goes best for the kingdom. Not the same thing,” I said.

“Look at you, noble men and women, and one fool. None of you bear any stake in this room. Some of you have been wounded, some of you have died, but this boy means nothing more than coin to you. Truly, I wondered how women and men could risk limb for a child not their own, but such is money in this age. But now I am bidding you all farewell, for this is a family argument.”

The King sister laughed. “Family? You dare to call yourself family? Did you marry one of my slow cousins in some cave? Will you not tell them your grand plan, king kisser? God butcher. Oh, that one moves you. God butcher. Butcher of gods. Sogolon knew. She told my servant. She said, I go to the temple of Wakadishu. I go to the steps of Mantha. I go north, and east, and west, and I have not felt the presence of the gods. Not one. But that is another of your tricks, is it not, God butcher? Nobody knows what they lost because nobody remembers what they have had. Is this the night where you stop the King just as you have stopped the gods? Is it? Is it?”

A flap of huge wings, we heard it.

“Leave the child and go. Don’t hesitate and set him down gently. Just drop him and go,” the Aesi said.

He locked his eyes on Nsaka Ne Vampi.

“He is your King,” the King sister said.