He grabbed one of the statues by the neck, and grinned that wide smile I couldn’t remember when last I saw.
“This one the most,” he said.
“Grab your bird,” I said.
We wrapped our waists in cloths and walked south to Gallunkobe/Matyube. The freemen and slave quarter, also the poorest, except for vulgar houses that spread wide instead of tall for freemen with much coin, but no noble air. Most of the houses were one room or hall, and packed so tight that they shared the same roof. Not even a rat could squeeze between each wall. The towers and roofs of the Nyembe quarter made it look like a huge fort or a castle, but no towers rose in this quarter. Freemen and slaves had no need to watch anyone, but everyone needed to watch them. And despite having the most men and women sleeping there at night, by day it was the emptiest quarter, freemen and slaves at work in the other three.
“When did Bunshi tell you such a story?”
“When? Good cat, you were there.”
“I was? I don’t … yes I do remember … memory comes forth, then slips away.”
“Memory must be one of them who heard what you do in bed.”
He chuckled.
“But, Tracker, I remember it as if somebody told me, not as if I was there. I have no smell of it. So strange.”
“Yes, strange. Whatever that Fumeli makes you smoke, stop smoking such.”
I was happy to talk to the Leopard, as I always am, and I did not want to bring up the sourness of the days past—one moon past, a fact that staggered him every time I said it. I think I know why. Time is flat to all animals; they measure it in when to eat, when to sleep, when to breed, so missed time to him feels a board with a huge hole punched out.
“The slaver said the boy was his partner’s son, now an orphan. Men kidnapped the boy from his housekeeper and murdered all others in that house. Then he said the house belonged to his aunt, not his housekeeper. Then we saw him and Nsaka Ne Vampi try to pry information out of the lightning girl, who we set free but then she jumped off a cliff and landed in Nyka’s cage.”
“You tell me things I know. Everything but this lightning woman in the cage. And I remember thinking for sure this slaver lies, but not about what.”
“Leopard, that was when Bunshi poured herself down the wall and said the boy was not that boy, but another who was the son of Basu Fumanguru, who was an elder, and on the Night of the Skulls the Omoluzu attacked the house and killed everyone but the boy who was then a baby and who Bunshi hid in her womb to save him, but then she took him to a blind woman in Mitu who she thought she could trust, but the blind woman sold him to a slave market where a merchant bought him, perhaps for his barren wife, but then they were attacked by men of malicious means. A hunter took the boy and now none can find him.”
“Slow, good friend. None of this I remember.”
“And that is not all, Leopard, for I found another elder, who called himself Belekun the Big, who said the family died of river sickness, which was false, but the family was eight, which was true, and of it six were sons and none were just born.”
“What are you saying, Tracker?”
“Do you not remember when I told you this on the lake?”
The Leopard shook his head.
“Belekun was always liar and I had to kill him, especially when he tried to kill me. But he had no reason to lie about this, so Bunshi must have. Yes, Omoluzu killed Basu Fumanguru’s family, and yes, many know this including her, but that the boy we seek was not his son as he had no young sons.”
The Leopard still looked confused. But he raised his brow as if a truth suddenly struck him.
“But, Leopard,” I continued, “I have done some looking and some digging and somebody here in this city also asks of Fumanguru, meaning they asked to be told if somebody asks, which means the closed matter of the dead elder is not so closed, because one thing remains open, this missing boy who is not his son, and though he may not be his son, he is the reason why others search for him and why