Black Leopard, Red Wolf

by Marlon James

“Only one.”

  Leopard touched his face.

  “Ay, buffalo, even now you have been no man’s meal?”

  The buffalo stomped in the dirt and the Leopard laughed. Sadogo put him down.

  “Who is this, with swords drawn? A foe?”

  “To tell true, Leopard, I half thought to draw my knife as well.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Leop . . . Is that boy with you?”

  “Of course he is. . . . Oh, wait. Yes, yes, yes. I would have drawn a knife on me too, this is a true thing. There is a story I must tell you. An ass is fucked, so you shall love it. And how many you must have to tell me? First who is this good man who still won’t withdraw his sword?”

  “Mossi. He used to be chieftain army.”

  “I am Mossi.”

  “So he just said. I’ve been through a few chieftains, not so chieflike, they were. How do you come to be with these . . . what do I call you, call us?”

  “The story is long. But now I also search for the boy. With him,” Mossi said.

  “So you told him about the boy,” Leopard said, looking at me.

  “He knows everything.”

  “Not everything,” Mossi said.

  “Fuck the gods, prefect.”

  Leopard looked at him, then me, and broke into a wicked grin. A thousand fucks for him doing that.

  “Where is Sogolon?”

  “This is a very long story. Longer than yours. I will have words with the lord of this house. He has a man who looks just like him in Dolingo.”

  “What took you to Dolingo? Alas, the only thing to meet us when we came were spiders, empty it was. Every room, every window, not even a plant left. Go in, good Ogo and prefect, whatever your name is.”

  “Mossi.”

  “Yes, that was it. Buffalo, our vegetables inside are better than anything on this foul ground. Go around the back and let them give you through the window.”

  That was the first in a long time I heard the buffalo make that sound that I still swear was a laugh.

  “Mossi, you look like a swordsman,” Leopard said.

  “Yes, and what of it?”

  “Nothing, but I have two swords that are no use to a beast on four legs. Fine blades made in the South. Belonged to a man whose neck I chopped off.”

  “Do you or this one ever leave a man whole?”

  The Leopard looked at me, then at Mossi, and laughed. Then he slapped Mossi hard on the back and pushed him off with a “They are in there.” I can’t imagine Mossi liked it, not as much as I liked seeing it.

  “Tracker, she is here also.”

  “Who?”

  He nodded for me to follow.

  “We get the boy tomorrow night,” he said.

  * * *

  —

  As we entered, Fumeli, whom I had not seen for so long, ran up to us, but slowed quick when the Leopard snarled.

  “I will be asking about that later,” I said.

  “We shall do as we always do, Tracker. Contest story against story. I believe I will again win.”

  “You have not heard my story.”

  He faced me. His whiskers stuck out under his nose, and his hair looked longer, wilder. I missed this man so much that my heart still jumped at the slightest movement from him. At him turning around with a wicked grin. At him scratching his crotch against the robe, hating clothes as much as me.

  “It will not match mine, I can promise you,” he said.

  The Leopard led me up six flights. We approached a room I had not seen before when the smell of the river came to me. Not from outside, but one of the five or six smells I knew but did not welcome. One was in the room, the rest were close but not here.

  “I smell the boy,” I said, “not far from here. We should go get him now, before they can move again.”

  “A man of the same mind as me. I said the same thing three times now. But they say too many are they that hunt them, and an entire army hunts me, so we must move at night.”

  I did not know that voice.

  “The Tracker is here. He can tell you what happens when plan is thrown to whim.”

  That voice I knew. I stepped in and looked for the new voice first. She lay on cushions and rugs, a mug in her hand, strong drink of the Fasisi coffee bean. A hat on her head, wide at the top like a crown, but of red fabric, not gold. A veil, silk maybe, rolled up to reveal her face. Two large disks at her ears, the pattern a circle of red, then white, then red, then white again. Her gown also red, her sleeves baring her shoulders but hiding her arms. A large blue pattern in the front, shaped like two arrowheads pointing at each other. I almost said, I know no nun who ever dressed so, but my mouth had gotten me into enough trouble. Two women servants stood behind her in the same leather dress that Sogolon loved to wear.

  “You are the one they call Tracker,” the King sister said.

  “That is what they call me, Your Excellence.”

  “I am nothing close to excellent and everything far from perfect for years now. My brother saw to that. And Sogolon is no longer with you. Has she perished?”

  “She had what was coming to her,” I said.

  “She was one for plans, Sogolon. Give us tidings.”

  “She went through a door she should not have, which probably burned her to death.”

  “A horrible one from what I know of deaths. Strength through your sorrow, this I wish for you.”

  “I have no sorrow for her. She sold us as slaves in exchange for safe passage through Dolingo. She also took the body of a girl and gave it to the soul of a man whose body she stole long ago.”

  “You don’t know any of that!” Bunshi said. I wondered when she would speak. She rose from a puddle on the floor to the right of the King sister.

  “Who knows, water witch? Perhaps he took revenge by dragging her with him through one of the ten and nine doors. I heard that you cannot return to a door until you have been through all ten and nine. This she proved true, if you were one of those that wonder,” I said.

  “And you let him.”

  “It happened so quick, Bunshi. Quicker than one could care.”

  “I should drown you.”

  “When did you learn that she changed the plan? Did she not tell you? You a liar or a fool?” I said.

  “With your permission,” Bunshi said to the King sister, but she shook her head.

  “At some point, she decided we were all unfit to save your precious boy. Even as we, the unfit, freed ourselves and saved her from the one called Ipundulu,” I said.

  “She—”

  “Made a mistake that cost her the child? Yes, that would be what she did,” I said.

  “Sogolon only tried to serve her mistress,” Bunshi said to the King sister, but she was already facing me.

  “Tracker? What is your real name?” the King sister said.

  “Tracker.”

  “Tracker. I understand you. This child carries no stakes for you.”

  “I hear he is the future of the kingdom.”

  She rose.

  “What else did you hear?”

  “Too much and not nearly enough.”

  She laughed and said, “Strength, guile, courage, where were men of such quality when we needed them? Where is the woman that you have hurt and abandoned?”

  “She hurt herself.”

  “Then she must be a woman of more power and means than me. Every scar I have, it is somebody else who put it there. Which woman is this?”

  “His mother,” said the Leopard. I could have killed him in that moment.

  “His mother. She and I have much in common.”

  “You’ve both abandoned your own children?”

  “Maybe we’ve both had our lives ruined by men only to have our children grow up blaming us for it. Pray forgive
that remark; I have also been living in a nunnery across from a whorehouse. Think of it, I, the King sister, in hiding with old women because he has sent assassins to the same fortress he imprisoned me. Seven Wings, they left to join the King’s armies in Fasisi. From there they will invade Luala Luala first, and the Gangatom and the Ku, and force every man, woman, and child into slavery. Not will, has. Luala Luala is already under control. War weapons do not build themselves.”

  “Respect of the kings to you. But you stand there and try to make ordinary men and women care about the fates of princes and kings, as if what happens to you changes anything that happens to us,” I said.

  “The Leopard tells me you have children among the Gangatom.”

  “Don’t think I have been in any koo long enough to seed a child,” I said.

  “Is this the mouth you warned me of?” she said, looking at both Bunshi and the Leopard. The Leopard nodded. She sat back down on a stool.

  “How lovely a family you must have had, so that the loss of a son means nothing to you.”

  “Not my—”

  “Tracker,” Leopard said, shaking his head.

  “The view is different when you are the child lost, Your Excellence. Then all you think of is the disappointment that is parents,” I said.

  She laughed.

  “Do I look calm to you, Tracker? Do you think here is one possessed with Itutu? How is the King sister so calm when monsters and men have taken her son? Maybe it is only the latest violation. Maybe I am tired. Maybe I take a bath every night so that I scream underwater and wash away tears. Or maybe a thousand fucks for you, thinking any of this is your business. Word has already reached several of the elders that not only do I have a child, but a child of a legal union with a prince. They know I will go to Fasisi and I will bring my claim of succession to the elders, the court, the ancestors, and the gods. My brother even thinks he has killed all the southern griots, but I have four. Four with account of the true history, four whose account will not be questioned by any man.”

  “Why do all this to put another man on the throne? A boy.”

  “A boy trained by his mother. Not by men who can only raise a boy to become another just like him. My brother’s army marched north to the river lands two days ago. Do you not have blood there?”

  “No.”

  “Gangatom is just across the river. And what he will do with the children too young to be slaves? You ever heard word of the white scientists?”

  It took everything in me to answer quickly, and I still spoke too late.

  “No.”

  “Thank your gods that you never cross them,” she said, but she looked at me with one raised eyebrow, and slowed her words.

  “White because even their skin rebel against their evil, for there is only so much vileness that your own skin can agree to. White like only the purest evil. The children, they take and bind to beasts, and devils. Two attacked me myself, one had wings of a bat as big as that flag. When my men killed it with arrows, it was just a boy, and the wings were part of his skin and bones now, even blood ran through it. And they do other things, turning three girls into one girl, sewing tongue to tongue to the boy so that he hunts like a crocodile and giving him bird eyes. You know why they take them young? Think, Tracker. Turn a man into a killer and he can turn back, or he can kill you. Raise a little one to be a killer and killing is all he does. He lives for blood, with no remorse. They take the children and turn them like they are plants, with every wicked art of the white science, worse if the children already come with gifts. Now they work for my brother and the bitch of Dolingo.”

  “Sogolon said you were allies. Sisters together.”

  “I was never sisters with that woman. Sogolon is who she knows. Knew.”

  “Then I go to Gangatom.”

  “You know some, don’t you? Children with gifts.”

  “I go to Gangatom,” I said again.

  “What? Nobody here told me you came with your own army. Your own mercenaries, maybe? Maybe two spies? A witchman to mask your approach? How shall you save them? And why would you care what happens to any child? The Leopard tells me they are even mingi. Tell me true. Is one blue with no skin, one with legs like an ostrich, and still one with no legs at all? Many men who march believe in the old ways. They will be in a white science house if not killed first. Worthless and useless.”

  “They are worth more than a useless shit of a king on a useless shithole of a throne. And I will kill whoever takes them.”

  “But you are not with them, and you do not have them. How does such fathering work? Yet you think you can judge me.”

  I had nothing to say to her. She came over to me, but walked to the window.

  “Sogolon burned to her death, you say?”

  “Yes. She was haunted by many spirits.”

  “She was. Some of them her own children. Dead children. I grow tired of dead children, Tracker, children who do not need to die. You talk of stakes. I do not know how to give you any. But right now, two have my child, because of a mistake this one made that Sogolon went desperate trying to redeem. I don’t need a man on a mission and I don’t need a man who believes in kings or gods any more than I need a man who thinks he will shit a gold nugget. I just want someone who when he says, I will bring you your son, brings him to me.”

  “I am still doing this for coin.”

  “I expect no less.”

  “Why did you not tell us from the beginning? The truth.”

  “What is truth?”

  “That is your answer? I would have cared more had your river demon told us everything.”

  “You needed more than what you heard to care?”

  “What I heard and what I saw were two different things.”

  “I thought it was your nose you trusted. You and your company look like you still have wounds to tend to.”

  “Me and my company are fine.”

  “Nevertheless. Go get my boy tomorrow night.”

  * * *

  —

  I have something for you,” the Leopard said.

  I took one of the rooms on the top floor, but facing the snake street. Rugs on the floor, spilled civet musk, and a head plate for sleeping, which I had not seen since my father’s house. Grandfather’s. He threw one of the axes at me and I caught it in the spin. He nodded, impressed. The second was in a harness, which I put over my shoulder.

  “I brought something else,” he said, and gave me a jar that smelled like tree gum.

  “Black ochre in shea butter, perfect for you. You can blend in dark and shadow without wearing all those rags that makes your nipples and asshole itch. Walk with me.”

  Outside, we walked down to the river and along the bank.

  “Things have changed between you and this Fumeli,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “Or maybe me. You snap at him more but I care less.”

  He turned to face me, walking backward again.

  “Tracker, you must tell me. How evil was I?”

  “Like a mangy dog robbed of his last meal. You were odd, Leopard, one day the man of mirth that made me laugh like no other. The next you’re not just wishing me harm, you bit me in the neck.”

  “That is impossible, Tracker. Even at my worst I could never—”

  “Look at my scar,” I said, and pointed. “Those were your teeth. Your malcontent was fierce.”

  “Fine, fine. Dear Tracker, now I have such sorrow. I was not myself.”

  “Then who were you?”

  “I promised you a tale strange. Fumeli, how I laugh when I think about it. But this, this boy, fuck the gods. Hear me now.”

  We kept walking along the shore, both of us wearing hoods, and the clothing of those devoted to the gods. The old lord’s clothes.

  “Fumeli, he thought that he should have me and no one else s
hall. Especially you, Tracker. Somehow you as friend frightened him more than any other man as lover. But he was frightened by that as well. So he put me under strange enchantment. Something that would make me think myself his all the time. Babacoop.”

  “Devil’s whisper? Potion’s so foul no wine can mask it. No beer either. How did he get it past your mouth, Leopard?”

  “He did not get it past my mouth.”

  “Even as vapor, it burns the nose.”

  “Not my nose either. Tracker, how do I tell you this? Fumeli, he would dip his finger in devil’s whisper, and then he would . . . after that, before the time glass is even flipped he could tell me to do anything and I would do it, tell me to believe anything and I would believe it, tell me to hate anything, and I would hate it. It would be several days, I will remember nothing and whenever we fucked again he would stick more devil’s whisper up my hole.”

  “When did you discover his ways?”

  “He added another finger.”

  I burst out laughing.

  “I grabbed him. I saw his hands and said what is this? I tell you true, Tracker, I beat him to near death until he told me, and then I beat him to near death again when he told me.”

  I laughed so hard I fell to the sand in a fit. And I could not stop. I would look at his face and laugh, look at his leg and laugh, look at him scratch his ass and laugh. Laugh until I heard my laugh come back to me from the river. He laughed as well, but not as loud. He even said, “Come now, Tracker, surely this could not be so funny.”

  “Yes it is, Leopard, yes it is,” I said, and started laughing again. I laughed until I hiccupped. “You know what they say, Hunum hagu ba bakon tsuliya bane.”

  “I don’t know that tongue.”

  “The left hand is not a new thing to the anus.”

  I collapsed in laughter again.

  “Hold. Why is he still with you?” I asked.

  “A Leopard still cannot carry his own bow, Tracker. And here is truth, he is far better with it than I ever was, and I was very good. Soon as I remembered myself, I whipped his buttocks until he told me where you were all heading to. So we rode back to Kongor, where I have been waiting in this house. Bunshi found us when we crossed into Nimbe and took us here. I might have left had you not come, though.”