enough by half.”
“The slaver said his piece,” said Nsaka Ne Vampi. “You have the choice, yes or no, so make it quick. We ride in the morning. Even with fast horses it will take ten and two days to get to Kongor.”
“Tracker, we leave,” the Leopard said.
He turned to go. I watched the Ogo watch him as he stepped past.
“Wait,” I said.
“Why?”
“Have you not yet finished making marks?”
“What? Make sense, Tracker.”
“Not you. Her.”
I pointed to the old woman still crouched on the ground. She looked at me, her face blank.
“You have been drawing runes since we came into this room. Writing on air, so nobody here would know. But they are there. All around you.”
The old woman smiled.
“Tracker?” the Leopard whispered. I knew how he was when he understood nothing. He would change, ready for a fight.
“The old crone’s a witch,” I said, and the Leopard’s hair went wild across his back. I touched behind his neck and he stayed.
“You are writing runes either to let someone in or keep someone out,” I said.
I stepped forward and looked around the room.
“Show yourself,” I said. “Your stench was with this room from the moment I entered it.”
In the doorway, liquid coursing down the wall pooled on the floor. Dark and shiny, like oil, and spreading slow like blood. But the smell, something like sulfur, filled the room. “Look,” I said to the Leopard, and pulled a dagger from my waist. I clutched the blade, chucked it at the puddle, and the puddle swallowed it with a suck. In a blink, the knife shot out from the puddle. The Leopard caught it right before it hit my left eye.
“Work of devils,” he said.
“I have seen this devil before,” I said.
The Leopard watched the puddle move. I wanted to see how the others reacted. The Ogo stooped down, but was still taller than everybody else. He bent even lower. He had never seen the like before. The old woman stopped writing runes in air. She was expecting this. Nsaka Ne Vampi stood fast, but moved backward, one slow step, then another. Then she stopped, but something else made her step back again. She was here for this, but perhaps this was not what she was waiting for. Some beasts can walk through a door. Some must be conjured from ground, and some must be evoked from sky, like spirits. The slaver looked away.
And this puddle. It stopped spreading and reversed, closed in on itself and started to rise, like dough being kneaded by invisible hands. The black shiny dough rose and twisted, and squeezed in, and spread out, even as it grew taller and wider. It twisted on itself, getting so thin in the middle that it would break in two. And still it grew. Little pieces popped away like droplets, then flew back and joined the mass. The Leopard snarled but did not move. The slaver still did not look. The black mass was whispering something I did not understand, not to me but on the air. At the top of the mass a face pushed itself out and sucked itself back in. The face pushed through the middle and vanished again. Two branches sprouted from the top of the mass and turned into limbs. The bottom split and twisted and spun into legs and toes. The form shaped itself, sculpted itself, curved herself into wide hips, plump breasts, the legs of a runner and the shoulders of a thrower, and a head with no hair and bright white eyes, and when she smiled, bright white teeth. She seemed to hiss. As she walked she left droplets of black, but the droplets followed her. Some separated from her head but followed her as well. Truly, she moved as if underwater, as if our air was water, as if all movement was dance. She grabbed a cloak near the slaver and dressed herself. The slaver still did not look at her.
“Leopard, the torch,” I said. “The torch right there.”
I pointed at the wall. The black woman saw the Leopard and smiled.
“I am not the one you think,” she said. Her voice was clear, but vanished on air. She would not raise her voice to make herself heard.
“I think you are exactly as I think,” I said. I took the torch from the Leopard. “And I would guess there is as much hate between you and flame as there was with them.”
“Who is she, Tracker?” the Leopard said.
“Who am I, Wolf Eye? Tell him.”
She