Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“Tried to rub my belly last night. Fuck the gods, I would never believe it. Who would rub a cat’s belly?”

“Mistook you for a dog.”

“Do I bark? Do I sniff men’s balls?”

“Well …”

“Quiet yourself right now.”

I could hold the laugh no longer.

The Leopard frowned, then laughed. We walked downhill. Not many people were about, and whoever came out darted back indoors as soon as they saw us. I would think they were afraid, but nobody is afraid in Malakal. They knew something was afoot and wanted no part in it.

“Darkness comes quickly down this street,” Leopard said.

We went to the door of a man who owed me money but tried to pay in stories. He let us in, offered us plum juice and palm wine, but I said no, the Leopard said yes, and I said he means no, ignoring him glaring at me. The man was in the middle of another story about how the money was on the way from a city near the Darklands, and who knows what has happened, but it could be bandits, though his own brother carried the money, and sweets baked by his mother, of which he will give me as much as I could eat. The sweets from his mother was the only new part of this story.

“Is it me or are the trade routes now less safe than they were during the war?” he said to me.

I thought of which finger to break. I threatened to break one last time and to not do so would make me a man who did not keep his promises, and one could not have word like that get out in the cities. But he looked at me just then and his eyes popped open so wide that I thought I had said all that out loud. The man ran to his room and came back with a pouch heavy with silver. I prefer gold, I tell my customers before even going out looking, but this pouch was twice as heavy as the one he owed me.

“Take all of it,” he said.

“You overpay, I’m sure.”

“Take all of it.”

“Did your brother just come through the back door?”

“My house is none of your business. Take it and go.”

“If this is not enough I—”

“It is more than enough. Leave so my wife never knows two dirty men come to her house.”

I took his money and left, the man mystifying me. Meanwhile the Leopard couldn’t stop laughing.

“A joke between you and the gods or do you plan to share it?”

“Your debtor. Your man. Shit himself in the other room he did.”

“So strange. I was going to break a finger like I said I would. But he looked at me like he saw the god of vengeance himself.”

“He wasn’t looking at you.”

Just as the question was about to leave my mouth the answer came in my head.

“You …”

“I started changing right behind you. Wet his front with piss, frightened he was. Did you smell it?”

“Maybe he was marking territory.”

“Some thanks for the man who just fattened your pouch.”

“Thanks.”

“Say it with sweetness.”

“You try my patience, cat.”

He came with me to a woman who wanted to send a message to her daughter in the underworld. I told her that I found the missing and she wasn’t missing. Another who wanted me to find where a man who was his friend but stole his money had died, for wherever that corpse lay, beneath him would be bags and bags of gold. He said, Tracker, I will give you ten gold coins from the first bag. I said, You give me the first two bags and I will let you keep what is left, for your friend is alive. But what if there are only three bags? he said. I said, You should have said that before you let me smell the sweat, piss, and cum of his bed robes. The Leopard laughed and said, You are more entertaining than two Kampara actors pretending to fuck with wooden cocks. I didn’t notice the sun was gone until he skipped a few steps ahead and vanished into the dark. His eyes flashed like green light in the black.

“Is there no sport in your city?” he said.

“Took you long to get to this. Be warned, the pleasure women in this city gave up on being boys a long time ago. Nothing there but the scars of a eunuch.”

“Ugh, eunuchs. Better an abuka with no holes, no eyes, no mouth than a eunuch. I thought one became this to swear off fucking, but curse the gods, there they are, infesting every whorehouse, making the blood boil of every man who just wants to lie on his back for a change. I wish we could find the child right now.”

“I know who we could find right now.”

“What, who?”

“The slaver.”

“Gone to the coast to sell his new slaves.”

“He is not even four hundred paces from here and only one of his men travels with him.”

“Fuck the gods. Well it’s been said that you have—”

“Do not say it.”

We dipped into an alley and took two small torches.

He followed me past a tower with seven floors and a thatch roof, one with three floors and another four floors high. We passed a small hut where lived a witch, for nobody wanted to live above or below a witch; three houses painted in the grid patterns of the rich; and another building of mysterious use. We had left roads and gone northwest, right at the edge of the fourth wall, and not far from the North fort. I was a savannah dog, picking up too much flesh, living and dead, and burned by lightning.

“Here.”