your heart I wonder about all the time. Worry too.”
“This too is part of it.”
“What?”
“Your fucking test.”
“Tracker, we are freeborn. I am drinking and eating with another. At least sit if you’re never going to eat.”
I got up to leave. I was a good few paces away from him when I said, “Send word for me when I have passed whatever test it was you were trying to give me.”
“You think you passed?”
“I passed when I came through the door. Or you wouldn’t have waited four days to call on me. You ever see a man who doesn’t know he’s unhappy, Leopard? Look for it in the scars on his woman’s face. Or in the excellence of his woodcraft and iron making, or in the masks he makes to wear himself because he forbids the world to see his own face. I am not happy, Leopard. But I am not unhappy that I know.”
“I have word of the children.”
He knew that would stop me.
“What? How?”
“I still trade with the Gangatom, Tracker.”
“Give me this word. Now.”
“Not yet. Trust me, your girl is fine, even if she still huffs and puffs and turns to blue smoke when she loses her temper, which is often. Have you seen them?”
“No, not ever.”
“Oh.”
“What is this oh?”
“A strange look on your face.”
“I have no strange look.”
“Tracker, you are nothing but strange looks. Nothing is ever hidden from your face, no matter how much you try to mask it. It’s how I can judge where your heart is with people. You are the world’s worst liar and the only face I trust.”
“I will hear of the children.”
“Of course. They—”
“Did none say I came to see them? Not one?”
“You just said you have not seen them. Not ever, this is what you said.”
“Not ever it might as well be, if they say they have not seen my face.”
“More strangeness, Tracker. The children are fat and smiling. The albino will soon be their best warrior.”
“And the girl?”
“I just told you about the girl.”
“Eat.”
“We have other matters to discuss, Tracker. Enough with nostalgia for now.”
He took the last chunk of flesh in his mouth and chewed. There was blood on the dish. He looked at it, I looked at it, then he looked at me.
“Oh be a fucking beast, Leopard. Your wanting man’s approval troubles me.”
He smiled his huge grin, put the plate to his face, and licked it clean.
“Not fresh kill,” I said.
“But it will do. Now finally. Why I came to see you.”
“Something about a fly?”
“That was me being clever.”
“Why did you ask if I was happy?”
“This road I am asking you to come on. Oh, Tracker, the things it will take from you. Best if you have nothing in the first place.”
“You just said it was better if I have something to lose.”
“I said I’ve been disappointed by men who have nothing. Some. But the Tracker I know has nothing and cultivates nothing. Has that changed?”
“And if it had?”
“I would ask different questions.”
“How do you know I …”
Leopard swung around, trying to see what took my words.
“Nothing,” I said. “Thought I noticed … thought it went and came back …. It …”
“What?”
“Nothing. A thought loose. Nothing. Come now, cat, I’m losing patience.”
The Leopard got off the chair and stretched his legs. He sat back down and faced me.
“He calls him little fly. I find it strange that he does so, especially in that voice of his that sounds like an old woman more than a man, but I think the fly is dear to him.”
“Once more. This time with sense.”
“I can only tell you what the man told me. He was very clear—Leave instructions to me, he said. Fuck the gods, you men who are not direct. Fucks for you too—I saw that look. Friend, this is what I know. There is a child that went missing. The magistrates said he most likely got swept off in a river, or mayhaps the crocodiles got him, or river folk, since you will eat anything if hungry.”
“Thousand fucks for your mother.”
“A thousand and one if we’re speaking of my mother,” he said, and laughed. “This is what I know. The magistrates think this child either drowned or was killed and eaten by a beast. But this man, Amadu Kasawura is the name he goes by, he is a man of wealth and taste. He is convinced that his child, his little fly, is alive, mayhaps, and moving west. There is compelling stuff there, Tracker, in his home, evidence so