want?”
“When did your skin return to you?”
“You still talking nothing but foolishness.”
“I seek someone who does business in the Malangika.”
“Everybody do business in the Malangika.”
“But what he buys, you’re of a few who sell it.”
“So go check the few.”
“I have. Four before you, one after you. Four so far dead.”
The man paused, but just for a blink. The woman and child kept on eating. His face was to his wife but his eyes followed me.
“Not before my wife and child,” he said.
“Wife and child? This wife and this child?”
“Yes, don’t do—”
I threw both knives; one struck the woman in the neck, the other struck the boy in the temple. Both shook and jerked, shook and jerked, then their heads crashed on the table. The old man screamed. He jumped up, ran to the boy, and grabbed his head. The flower on his head wilted, and something black and thick oozed slow from his mouth. The old man wailed and screamed, and bawled.
“I seek someone who does business in the Malangika.”
“Oh gods, look!”
“You kill children now,” a voice I knew said.
“What he buys, you have been known to sell,” I said to the old man. “Sakut vuwong fa’at ba,” I said to the thought.
“Oh gods, my sorrow. My sorrow,” he cried.
“Merchant, if any god were to look, what would he say about you and your obscene family?”
“There were voices, you heard them say that we were an obscene family,” the voice I knew said.
“They were my one. They were my one.”
“They were white science. Both of them. Grow another one. Or two. You might even get a pair who can talk next time. Like a grass parrot.”
“I call black heart men. I tell them hunt you and kill you!”
“Mun be kini wuyi a lo bwa, old man. I brought weeping to the house of death. Do you know what I wish for?”
I came nearer. The woman’s face was rougher up close, as was the boy’s. Not smooth, but run through with lines and ridges, like vines intertwined.
“Neither is of flesh,” I said.
“They were my only one.”
I pulled my ax.
“You sound as if you wish to be with them. Shall I make this happen? Right—”
“Stop,” he said.
He cried to his gods. He may have really loved this woman. This boy. But not enough to join them.
“Not every man is fine in face such as yourself. Not every man can find love and devotion. Not every man can say the gods have blessed them. Some men even the gods find ugly, even the gods have said there shall be no hope for your blood. She smiled at me! The boy smiled at me! How dare you judge a man for refusing to die of loneliness. Gods of sky, judge this man. Judge what he done.”
“There is no sky. Mayhaps call gods under the earth,” I said.
He took his son in his arms and held him, shushing him as if the boy was crying.
“Poor merchant, you have never had the kiss of a beautiful woman, you say.” He looked up at me, his eyes wet, his lips quivering, everything about him saying sorrow. “Is this because you keep killing them?” I said.
The sorrow left his face and he went back to his seat.
“And the men too. You hunt them down. No, there is no blood on your hands. You are too much a coward to fetch your own kill, so you send men out. They put people under spells with potions, for you wish them whole, with no poison in them, for that taints the heart. Then you kill some, and sell them for all sorts of secret magicks and white science. Some you keep alive because the foot of a living man, or the liver of a living woman is worth five times more on the market. Maybe even ten. And what of the baby that you just bartered with a young witch?”
“What you want?”
“I seek a man who comes to you for hearts. Hearts of women. You sometimes give him hearts of men, thinking he will never know. He knows.”
“What your business with him?”
“No business of yours.”
“I sell gold dust, crafts from the river lands, and fruits from the North. I do not sell such things.”
“I believe you. You live in the Malangika because the rent you find agreeable. Is it one heart every nine nights or two?”
“Go let ten demons fuck you.”
“Every soul in Malangika has a wish for my asshole.”
He sat back down at the head of the table. “Leave