Then we heard the thump of Nyka running into the wall again and Nsaka Ne Vampi sighed.
“Wait outside for me,” I said to the Leopard. She shut her eyes and sighed when he bumped into the wall again. I wondered how would she fight with Nyka making her tired.
“He also made me love him once, this is what he does,” I said. “Nobody works harder at getting you to love him, and nobody works harder to fail you once you do.”
“I am my own woman and feel for myself,” she said.
“Nobody needs Nyka. Not what he is.”
“He is this because of me.”
“Then his debt is paid.”
“You said he betrayed you. He was the first man to not betray me.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he’s still alive, unlike all the other men who betrayed me. One used to farm me out as his slave every night for men to do as they wished. I was ten and four. When he and his sons weren’t raping me himself. They sold me to Nyka one night. He put a knife in my hand and put the hand to his throat, and said do as you wish this night. I thought he was speaking a foreign tongue. So I went to the master’s room and slit his throat, then I went to his sons’ room and killed them all. What a terrible thing to lose a father and all your stepbrothers, the town people said. He let the town think he murdered them and fled in the night.”
“Sogolon had a story like yours.”
“What do you think makes the sisters of Mantha, sisters?”
“You were—”
“Yes.”
“You’re not showing him love. You’re repaying a debt.”
“I find girls who are about to become me, and save them from the men doing the coming. Then I take them to Mantha. They are who I owe. Nyka I always said I owed him nothing.”
Why did you not kill her?” Leopard asked outside.
“Who?”
“Nyka’s mother. Why didn’t you?”
“Instead of killing her, I would tell her of his death. Slowly. In every detail, right down to how it sounds to hack off his neck in three chops.”
“Leave, both of you,” she said.
Walking back to the lord’s house, Leopard said, “Your eyes still don’t know when your lips lie.”
“What?”
“Just now. All that show about Nyka’s mother. That’s not why you didn’t kill her.”
“Really, Leopard, tell me.”
“She was a mother.”
“And!”
“You still wish for the like.”
“I had the like.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Now you speak for me?”
“You are the one who just said ‘had.’”
“Why did you take me there?”
“Nsaka Ne Vampi asked the King sister. Tracker, I think she was hoping for your pity.”
“She didn’t ask for it.”
“Did you think she would?”
“She wants the fruit to stay on the branch and be in her mouth at the same time.”
“Forgiveness, Tracker.”
“I don’t care. I don’t care about Nsaka Ne Vampi, or this queen, and no matter how many moons pass, I still don’t care for this boy.”
“Fuck the gods, Tracker, of what do you care?”
“When do we leave for Gangatom?”
“We will.”
“Our children are as bound to you as to me. How can you let them sit there?”
“Our children? Oh, so now you think you can judge me. Before the King sister told you about white scientists, when last you saw them? Said a word? Even thought of them?”
“I think of them more than you know.”
“You said nothing like this last time we spoke. Anyway, what good is your thinking? Your thinking brings no child close.”
“So what now?”
We turned down the same road as before, walked the streets. Two men looking like guards passed by on horseback. We jumped into a doorway. The old woman in the doorway looked at me and frowned, as if I was exactly who she was expecting. The Leopard looked his least Leopard, even the whiskers were gone. He nodded for us to go.
“Tomorrow night, we get this boy once and for all. The day after, we go to the river lands and get our children. The day after that, who in all the fucking gods knows?” Leopard said.
“I have seen these white scientists, Leopard. I have seen how they work. They do not care about the pain of others. It’s not even a wickedness; they are just blind to it. They just glut on the conceit of their wicked craft. Not what it means, only how new it will look. I have seen them in Dolingo.”
“The King sister still has men, she still has people who believe in her cause. Let