the four sons and the husband and she forget the boy and the handsome man because they both gone. Just she and the dead bodies and she think she kill them, and nothing prove her otherwise and the lightning flash up in her head and she go mad. She kill two men and break the legs of one before they catch her. And they lock her up in a dungeon for seven murders. Even though nobody believe that she could break the neck of a big man who work in the fields alone. In her cell, she try to kill herself every time she remember what really happen, because she rather believe she kill them herself than it was the little boy she let in that kill them all. But most times she don’t remember and just growl like a cheetah in a trap.”
“That was a long story,” the tall woman said. “Who was the man?”
“Who?”
“The tall white man. Who was he?”
“His name not remember by any griot.”
“What kind of magic did he leave in her why this happen?”
Light was starting to glow in the woman again. She shook every time it happened, as if she had fits.
“Nobody know,” the date feeder said.
“Somebody knows, just not you.”
She looked at the slaver.
“How did you get her out of prison?” she asked.
“It was not difficult,” the slaver said. “They been waiting long days to get rid of her. She scare even the men. Every day as soon as she wake she would say the master going east or west or south and run in that direction, right into the wall, or the iron gate—two time she break out a tooth. Then she will remember her family and go mad all over again. They sold me her for just one coin when I said I will sell her to a mistress. I have her here for when she going to have use.”
“Use? You’ve been standing in her shit, and the maggots of the dead dog she been eating.”
“You don’t understand a thing. The white man. He didn’t kill her, and what he do, he do it to others. Many a woman like her running loose in these lands and many a man too. Even some children and I hear a eunuch. From women he take everything so they have nothing, but nothing is something too big for any one woman to bear, so she search and she run and she look. Look at her. Even now she want to be with him, she will be near him and want nothing else, she will let him eat her, she will never let him go. She will never stop following. He be her opium now. Look at her.”
“I am looking.”
“If he shift south she run south to that window. If he change west, she switch and run until the chain pull her back by the neck.”
“He who?”
“Him.”
“This story of yours growing long in the teeth. And the boy?”
“What of the boy?”
“You know what I am asking, Your Excellence.”
The slaver said nothing. The tall woman looked at the chained woman again as she raised her head from filthy arms. It looked like the tall woman was smiling at her. The chained woman spat on her cheek. The tall woman struck her face so hard and so quick, the chained woman’s head slammed against the wall. The chain links clicked and clanged from being pulled hard then let loose.
“If this tale had wings it would have flown to the east by now,” she said. “You want to follow the trail of a lost boy? Start with those child-raping elders in Fasisi.”
“I want you to follow this boy, the one this woman see in the company of a white man. It’s him.”
“An old tale mothers use to scare children,” the tall woman said.
“Tell me true—why you doubt? You never see women like her before?”
“I have even killed a few.”
“People from Nigiki all the way to the Purple City talk about seeing a man white as clay, and a boy. And others as well. There are many accounts of them entering city gates, but nobody witness their departure,” the date feeder said. “We have—”
“Nothing. From a madwoman missing her dormouse. It is late,” the tall woman said.
I grabbed the Leopard’s hand, still hairy, still about to change, and nodded to the lower floor. We snuck down and hid in the empty room, looking out in the dark. We looked out as the tall woman went down the steps. Halfway