spies? A witchman to mask your approach? How shall you save them? And why would you care what happens to any child? The Leopard tells me they are even mingi. Tell me true. Is one blue with no skin, one with legs like an ostrich, and still one with no legs at all? Many men who march believe in the old ways. They will be in a white science house if not killed first. Worthless and useless.”
“They are worth more than a useless shit of a king on a useless shithole of a throne. And I will kill whoever takes them.”
“But you are not with them, and you do not have them. How does such fathering work? Yet you think you can judge me.”
I had nothing to say to her. She came over to me, but walked to the window.
“Sogolon burned to her death, you say?”
“Yes. She was haunted by many spirits.”
“She was. Some of them her own children. Dead children. I grow tired of dead children, Tracker, children who do not need to die. You talk of stakes. I do not know how to give you any. But right now, two have my child, because of a mistake this one made that Sogolon went desperate trying to redeem. I don’t need a man on a mission and I don’t need a man who believes in kings or gods any more than I need a man who thinks he will shit a gold nugget. I just want someone who when he says, I will bring you your son, brings him to me.”
“I am still doing this for coin.”
“I expect no less.”
“Why did you not tell us from the beginning? The truth.”
“What is truth?”
“That is your answer? I would have cared more had your river demon told us everything.”
“You needed more than what you heard to care?”
“What I heard and what I saw were two different things.”
“I thought it was your nose you trusted. You and your company look like you still have wounds to tend to.”
“Me and my company are fine.”
“Nevertheless. Go get my boy tomorrow night.”
I have something for you,” the Leopard said.
I took one of the rooms on the top floor, but facing the snake street. Rugs on the floor, spilled civet musk, and a head plate for sleeping, which I had not seen since my father’s house. Grandfather’s. He threw one of the axes at me and I caught it in the spin. He nodded, impressed. The second was in a harness, which I put over my shoulder.
“I brought something else,” he said, and gave me a jar that smelled like tree gum.
“Black ochre in shea butter, perfect for you. You can blend in dark and shadow without wearing all those rags that makes your nipples and asshole itch. Walk with me.”
Outside, we walked down to the river and along the bank.
“Things have changed between you and this Fumeli,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Or maybe me. You snap at him more but I care less.”
He turned to face me, walking backward again.
“Tracker, you must tell me. How evil was I?”
“Like a mangy dog robbed of his last meal. You were odd, Leopard, one day the man of mirth that made me laugh like no other. The next you’re not just wishing me harm, you bit me in the neck.”
“That is impossible, Tracker. Even at my worst I could never—”
“Look at my scar,” I said, and pointed. “Those were your teeth. Your malcontent was fierce.”
“Fine, fine. Dear Tracker, now I have such sorrow. I was not myself.”
“Then who were you?”
“I promised you a tale strange. Fumeli, how I laugh when I think about it. But this, this boy, fuck the gods. Hear me now.”
We kept walking along the shore, both of us wearing hoods, and the clothing of those devoted to the gods. The old lord’s clothes.
“Fumeli, he thought that he should have me and no one else shall. Especially you, Tracker. Somehow you as friend frightened him more than any other man as lover. But he was frightened by that as well. So he put me under strange enchantment. Something that would make me think myself his all the time. Babacoop.”
“Devil’s whisper? Potion’s so foul no wine can mask it. No beer either. How did he get it past your mouth, Leopard?”
“He did not get it past my mouth.”
“Even as vapor, it burns the nose.”
“Not my nose either. Tracker, how do I tell you this? Fumeli, he would dip his finger in devil’s whisper, and then he would … after