Fumeli, was behind me. He shot her again, the second arrow almost in line with the arrow in her shoulder, and she howled. The lightning coursed through her and the whole room glowed blue. She growled at him but the boy drew a new arrow and looked right down the shaft at her. He could aim for her heart and hit. She stepped back as if she knew. Lightning woman leapt for the window, missed, grabbed the sill, digging her nails in the wall, pulled herself up, punched out the window bars, and jumped.
The Leopard ran past Fumeli and me and down the steps.
“Did he teach you how to—”
“No,” he said, and went down after him.
Outside, the Leopard and Fumeli were already many paces ahead of me, down a narrow alley with no lantern light coming from any window. They had slowed to a walk when I caught them.
“Do you have her? In your nose? Do you have her?” the Leopard said.
“Not this way,” I said, and turned down a lane running south. This street boasted beggars, so many lying in the alley that we stepped on a few, who shouted and groaned. She was running like a madwoman, I could tell from her trail. We turned right, down another alley, this one pocked with potholes full of stinking water and a guard on the ground, shaking and foaming at the mouth. We knew this was her doing, so none of us said it. We followed her scent. She ran ahead of us, upending carts and knocking over mules trying to sleep.
“Down here,” I said.
We caught up with her at a fork, the road on the right going back into town, the left heading to the north gate. No sentry at that gate held a club or spear that could stop her. I have never seen a soul run that fast who was not lifted by devils. Two sentries with shield and spear saw her and stepped forward, raised their spears above their heads. Before either could throw she jumped high, as if running on steps of air, and slammed into the city wall. She dug into the mortar before falling, scrambled up to the top of the wall, and jumped off before more guards could get to her. The sentries kept their spears ready to throw at the sight of us.
“Good men, we are not enemies of Malakal,” I said.
“Not friends neither. Who else coming to bother us near the noon of the dead?” said the first guard, bigger, fatter, iron armour no longer shiny.
“You saw her too, do not deny it,” the Leopard said.
“We seeing nothing. We seeing nothing but three witchmen working night magic.”
“You must give us leave,” I said.
“Shit we must give you. Leave before we send you somewhere you won’t like,” said the other guard—shorter, skinnier.
“We are not witchmen,” I say.
“All prey gone to sleep. So starve. Or go find whatever entertainment keeping a man up.”
“You will deny what you have just seen?”
“I seeing nothing.”
“You saw nothing. Fuck the—”
I cut the Leopard off. “That is fine with us, guard. You saw nothing.”
I took a bracelet off my hand and threw it at him. It was three snakes, each eating another’s tail, the sign of the Chief of Malakal, and a gift for finding something even the gods told him was lost.
“And I serve your chief, but that is nothing. And I have two hatchets and he has bow and arrow, but that is nothing. And that nothing ran by two men as if they were boys and jumped over a city wall as it were a river stone. Open your locks and give us three leave, and we will make sure the nothing that you didn’t see never comes back.”
This was the north wall. Outside was all rocks and about two hundred paces to the cliff, where the drop-off was sharpest. She stood about a hundred paces away, scurrying left, then right, then left again. It looked like she was sniffing. Then she dropped to the ground and sniffed the rocks.
“Nooya!” the Leopard said.
She turned like somebody who heard a noise, not something she knew was hers, and ran again. As she ran the lightning struck inside her and she screamed. Fumeli, still running, drew the bow and arrow, but the Leopard growled. We ran along the side of the cliff towards its point. We were closing on her, for though she was far faster than us she would not run straight. She ran right