Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“She sold him at the slave market in the Purple City, near Lake Abbar. A baby fetches great coin outside of Kongor, especially a male. She told me this as I started to slit her throat with this finger.”

“What wise choices in people you make.”

I knew from across the room, Nsaka Ne Vampi rolled her eyes. I did not look, but I knew.

“I tracked the child to a perfume and silver merchant who was going to take him to the East. It took me a moon and it was too late. He was late with his silver and merchants in Mitu sent mercenaries to find him. You know where they found him? At the border of Mitu. They found flies but no stench of death. Somebody ransacked the caravan and killed everyone. Nobody touched the civet, or silver, or myrrh. Never found the boy; they took him.”

“The King?” I asked.

“The King would have had him killed.”

“So he is gone? Why not leave him gone?”

“You would have a child walking with murderers?” the old woman said.

“Because a child in the company of witches would fare much better,” I said. “What use is the boy to murderers?”

“They found use,” Bunshi said.

I remember what the date feeder said to the slaver in the lightning woman’s tower. About the little boy knocking on the woman’s door, crying that he was running from monsters, only to let them in as soon as her family fell asleep. I nodded at the Leopard, hoping he caught what they were not saying.

I couldn’t decide whether to sit down, stand up, or leave.

“A little boy survives roof walkers only to be sold into slavery, where he was kidnapped by who, witchmen? Devils? A society of boy-lover spirits starting out the child early? What will happen next, maybe Ninki Nanka the swamp dragon will smell them as they go through the bush and eat them all?”

“You don’t believe in such creatures?” Bunshi said. “Despite all you have seen and heard and fought with? Despite the animal beside you?”

“You don’t need belief in evil creatures when men flay their own wives,” I said. I turned and looked at the Leopard, who was still drinking in this story.

“But you do believe speaking clever is wise. Good. I am not paying for your belief. I am paying for your nose. Bring me back the boy.”

“Or proof of his corpse?”

“He is alive.”

“And when we find him, what then? You are asking us to go against the King?”

“I’m paying you to expose the King.”

“Proof that the King is behind a murder.”

“There is more to the story of the King than you know. And if you knew you could not bear.”

“Of course.”

“She’s not paying you to ask or to think. She’s paying you to smell,” said Nsaka Ne Vampi.

“How do you know they have not killed the child?”

“We know,” Bunshi said.

I almost said I know too, but looked at the Leopard. He glanced at me and nodded.

A door opened and shut. I thought it was Fumeli but it was not his smell. Nsaka Ne Vampi walked over to the doorway and looked out. She said, “In two days we ride for Kongor. Come or don’t come, it makes no difference to me. She’s the one that wants you.”

She pointed to Bunshi, but I kept looking past her. I didn’t even hear what she said after, because of the scent coming up the stairs. The scent I caught earlier, which I thought was Bunshi, but I had never met her and she was right, she did not smell like Omoluzu. This scent was coming closer, someone carrying it, and I knew I hated it, more than I have hated anything in years, more than I have hated men I have known but killed anyway. He was coming up the stairs, coming closer, I could hear the patter of his feet and with each step my fury was bursting into flames.

“You are late,” Nsaka Ne Vampi blurted. “Everyone is—”

I cut her words off with the hatchet that I flung straight past her face to lodge in the door.

“God’s fuck! You barely missed me, friend,” he said, stepping into the doorway.

“I wasn’t trying to miss,” I said, and threw the second one straight for his face. He dodged but it grazed his ear.

“Tracker, what the—”