looked older than he did in the dark. Or maybe bigger. I really wanted to see his sword.
“Why did you come to Fumanguru’s house tonight?” I asked.
“Perhaps I am heedless. People with blood on their hands tend to wash it where they shed it.”
“That is the most foolish thing I have ever heard.”
“You cast a foolish hand, moving in masquerade and climbing over thornbush yet expecting none to take note.”
“I track lost people.”
“We found them all.”
“You did not find one.”
“Fumanguru had one wife and six boys. They are all accounted for. I counted them. Then we sent for an elder who has since moved to Malakal. Belekun was his name. He confirmed all eight were blood.”
“How soon after did he move?” I asked.
“One, two moons.”
“Did he find the writ?”
“The what?”
“Something he was looking for.”
“How do you know the elder was looking for anything?”
“You are not the only one with big, fat friends, prefect.”
“Do you itch, Tracker?”
“What?”
“Itch. You scratched your chest seven times now. I would guess you are those river types who shun clothes. Luala Luala, or Gangatom?”
“Ku.”
“Even worse. Yet you say writ as if you know what it is. You might have even been looking for it.”
He sat back down on the stool, looked at me, and laughed. I could not remember anyone, man, woman, beast, or spirit who irritated me so. Not even Leopard’s boy.
“Basu Fumanguru. How many enemies had he in this city?” I asked.
“You forget I am the one to ask questions.”
“Not any wise ones. I think you should jump to that time of the night when you torture me for the answers you want.”
“Sit down. Now.”
“I could—”
“You could, had you your little weapons. I will not ask again.”
I sat back down.
He walked around me five times before he stopped and sat down again, pulling his stool next to me.
“Let us not talk of murder. Do you even know which part of the city you were in? You would have been detained merely for casting strange looks. So what took you to the house? A three-year-old murder or something you knew would still be there, untouched, even unspoilt? I will tell you what I know of Basu Fumanguru. He was loved by the people. Every man knows of his clashes with the King. Every woman knows of his clashes with his fellow elders. They killed him for some other reason.”
“They?” I asked.
“What happened to those bodies could not have been by one man, if done by man at all, and not some beast bewitched.”
He looked at me so long and so quiet that I opened my mouth, not to speak, just to look as if I was going to.
“I have something to show you,” he said.
He left the room. I heard flies. I wondered how they questioned the Ogo, or if they just left him alone to unspool how many he has killed in as many years. And what about me? Was all this the Ogudu, or did the forest itself leave something in me, waiting to strike? Something other than a reminder of my loneliness? Also this. What a strange thought to be had right here, when a prefect is trying to trap me into whatever charge he long thought to make up.
He walked back in and threw something at me so quick that I caught it before I knew what it was. Black and stuffed soft with feathers, wrapped in the same aso oke cloth that I had shoved into this curtain I was wearing. I was ready this time when it came, everything that came with a smell I now knew.
“A doll,” he said.
“I know what it is.”
“We found it three years ago near the body of the youngest boy.”
“A boy can play with dolls.”
“No child in Kongor would have been given one. Kongori think it’s training children in the way of worshipping idols—a terrible sin.”
“And yet every house has statues.”
“They just like statues. But this doll belonged to no one in that house.”
“Fumanguru was not Kongori.”
“An elder would have respected their traditions.”
“Maybe the doll belonged to the killer.”
“The killer is one year old?”
“What are you saying?”
“I am saying there was one more child in that house. Maybe whoever killed the family came for the child. Or something else, much more wild,” he said.
“That does sound wild. The child, a poor relation?”
“We spoke to all family.”
“So did Belekun the Big. Maybe you asked questions together?”
“Are you saying the elders are doing their own investigation?”