Black Leopard, Red Wolf

He moved in closer and I smelled beer. Now I was looking at him as deep as he was looking at me.

“I am already waiting for the day you finally tell this one to me—lusting for it, I am. Or dreading it.”

I missed that laugh.

“Now, Tracker. I found no boys for sport in your city. How do you make do with night hunger?”

“I quench my thirst instead,” I said, and he laughed.

It was true that in those years I lived as monks do. Other than when travels took me far and there were comely boys, or not as comely eunuchs, who though not pretty were more skilled in love play. And even women would sometimes do.

“What have you been doing the last few years, Tracker?”

“Too much and too little,” I said.

“Tell me.”

These are the stories I told the Leopard as I drank wine and he drank masuku beer at Kulikulo Inn.

One year I lived in Malakal, before I moved to Kalindar, the disputed kingdom at the border with the South. Home of great horse lords. Truly, the place was more a set of stables with lodging for men to fuck, sleep, and conspire. No matter which side you came from, the city could only be reached by hard land journey. War-loving people, bitter and vengeful in hate, passionate and vigorous in love, who despised the gods and challenged them often. So of course I made it home.

So in Kalindar was a Prince with no princedom, who said his daughter was kidnapped by bandits on the trail north. This is what they wanted in ransom: silver, the weight of ten and seven horses. Hear this, the Prince sent his servant to get me, which he tried to, in a way keeping with the Prince’s foul manners. I sent him back missing two fingers.

The Prince’s second servant bowed and asked me to please the Prince with my appearance. So I went to his palace, which was just five rooms, each stacked on the other, in a courtyard overrun with chickens. But he had gold. He wore it on his teeth and stringed it through his eyebrows and when the privy boy passed by, he carried a shit pot of pure gold.

“You, the man who took my guard’s fingers, I have use for you,” he said.

“I cannot find a kingdom you have not lost,” I said. The Kalindar have no double tongue, so the remark went right back out to sea.

“Kingdom? I don’t need kingdom finding. Bandits kidnapped my daughter, your Princess, five days ago. They have demanded a ransom, silver the weight of ten and seven horses.”

“Will you pay it?”

The Prince rubbed his bottom lip, still looking in the mirror.

“First I need trustful word that your Princess is still alive. It has been said that you have a nose.”

“Indeed. You wish that I find her and bring her back?”

“Listen to the way he speaks to princes! No. I only wish you find her and give me good report. Then I shall decide.”

He nodded to an old woman, who threw a doll at me. I picked it up and smelled her.

“The price is seven times ten gold pieces,” I said.

“The price is I spare your life for your insolence,” he said.

This Prince with no princedom was as frightening as a baby crying over shitting itself, but I went searching for the Princess, because sometimes, the work is its own pay. Especially when her scent took me not to the north roads, or the bandit towns, or even a shallow grave in the ground, but less than a morning’s walk from her father’s little palace. In a hut near a place that used to be a busy market for fruit and meat, but is now wild bush. I found her at night. She and her woman-snatchers, one of whom was reeling from a slap to the side of his head.

“Ten and seven horses? Is that all I am to you, ten and seven? And in silver? Was your birth so low that you think this is what I am worth?”

She cussed and snarled for so long that it began to bore me, and still she cussed. I could tell the kidnapper was coming to think mayhaps he should pay the Prince to take her back. I smelled the shape-shifter’s gift on him, a cat like the Leopard. A Lion, perhaps, and the other men lying about were his pride and the woman by the fire looking at them both with a scowl was his mate until this princess. All of them squeezed into a room with the Princess yapping like cockatoo. This was the plan: that the Lion and his pride kidnap the Princess and demand a sum. A sum which her father would gladly pay because his daughter is worth more than silver and gold. The ransom, the Princess would use to pay mercenaries to overthrow this Prince, who had no princedom to overthrow. At first I thought she was like those boys and girls kidnapped too young, who in the midst of captivity start to show loyalty to their captors, even love. But then she said, “I should have picked Leopards; at least they have cunning.” The head Lion man roared so loud it frightened people in the street.

“I think I know how this story ends,” the Leopard said. “Or maybe I just know you. You told the Prince his daughter’s plot, then slipped away as quiet as you came.”

“Good Leopard, what would be the fun in that? Besides, my days were long and business slow.”

“You were bored.”

“Like a god waiting for man to surprise him.”

He grinned.