by Marlon James
“I will be at the Kulikulo Inn.”
“Nobody leave without notice,” the slaver said.
I turned to leave, and almost made it to the entrance when three guards appeared, hands on weapons not drawn.
“The guards will mistake you for a runaway. Deal with you first, ask questions later,” Kasawura said. The guards clutched their weapons, and I pulled the two hatchets from my back strap.
“Who is first?” I asked.
Kasawura laughed louder. “This is the man who you said time cooled his heat?”
The Leopard sighed loud. I knew this was a test, but I didn’t like being tested.
“My name speaks for itself, so make your decision quick and don’t waste my time.”
Also, I hate slavers.
“Bring him food and drink. A raw goat shank for Kwesi. Make sure is fresh kill, or would you like a live one to kill yourself? Sit down, gentlemen,” he said.
Now the umbrella bearer raised his eyebrows and mashed his lips together. He handed the slaver a gold goblet, which he handed to me.
“It’s—”
“Masuku beer,” I said.
“It has been said you have a nose.”
I took a drink. This was the best beer I have ever tasted.
“You are a man of wealth and taste,” I said.
The slaver waved it off. He stood up but nodded at us to stay seated. Even he was getting annoyed at the servants fussing over every move. He clapped twice and they all left.
“You don’t waste time so waste it I will not. Three years now a child they take, a boy. He was just starting to walk and could say nana. Somebody take him one night. They leave nothing and nobody ever demand ransom, not through note, not through drums, not even through witchcraft. I know the thinking, which you now think. Maybe they sell him in Malangika, a young child would bring much money to witches. But my caravan get protection from a Sangoma, just as one still binds you with protection even after her death. But you knew this, didn’t you, Tracker? The Leopard think iron arrows bounce away from you because they are scared.”
“There are still things to tell you,” I said to the Leopard with a look.
“This child we trust to a housekeeper in Kongor. Then one night somebody cut the throat of everybody in the house but steal the child. Eleven in the house, all murdered.”
“Three years ago? Not only are they far ahead in the game, they might have already won.”
“Is not a game,” he said.
“The mouse never thinks so, but the cat does. You have not finished your tale and it already sounds impossible. But finish.”
“Thank you. We heard reports of several men, mayhaps a woman and a child taking a room at an inn near the Hills of Enchantment. They all took one room, which is why one of the guests remembered. We know this news because they find the innkeeper a day after they leave. Listen to me—dead like stone, pale from all the blood gone from him.”
“They killed him.”
“Who knows? But then we get news of two more ten days later. Two houses all the way down in Lish where we hear of them next, four men, and the child. And everything dead after they leave.”
“But from those hills to the blood takes at least two moons, maybe two and a half by foot.”
“Tell me something we don’t ponder. But the killings the same, everybody dead like stone. Near one moon later people in Luala Luala run from their huts and wouldn’t go back, talking about night demons.”
“He travels with a band of murderers, but they haven’t murdered him? What is his quality? A boy freeborn of a slaver? Is he your own?”
“He is precious to me.”
“That is no answer.” I rose. “Right now, your story has meat where you will not talk, bone where you do. Why is he precious to you?” I asked.
“Do you need to know, to work for me? Talk a true talk.”
“No, he does not,” the Leopard said.
“No, I do not. But you seek a child missing three years. He could be beyond the sand sea, or long shat out of a crocodile’s ass in the Blood Swamp, or lost in the Mweru for all we know. Even if he is still alive, he will be nothing like the child gone. He might be under another house, calling another man father. Or four.”
“I am not his father.”
“So you say. Maybe he is now a slave.”
He sat down in front of me. “You want us to be out with it. Tell me true. You wish to throw words at me.”
“About what?”
“Every man here is unlucky in war. Every woman here will be bought into a better life. After all, if their lives were so good, they would not be on a bondsman’s cart.”
“He didn’t say anything, excellent Amadu, that is just his way,” the Leopard said.
“Don’t speak for him, Leopard.”
“Yes, Leopard, don’t speak for me.”
“You were a slave, no?” said excellent Amadu.
“I don’t have to dip my nose in shit to know it stinks.”
“Fair. And yet who are you that I should present my life as just to you? You who would search, and find, and return a wife even though her eyes had been cut out by her husband. Every man in this room has a price, good Tracker. And yours might even be cheap.”
“What of him do you have?”
“No, not so quickly. I only need to know that the offer tickling you. We have met, we have drank beer, we will make decisions. This you should know. I have made the offer to more as well. Eight, perhaps nine in number. Some will work with you, some will not. Some will try to find him first. You have not asked how much coin I will pay.”
“I don’t have to. Given how precious he is to you.”
The Leopard was raising a fuss. He didn’t know some would be searching for the child on their own. It was my time to hush him.
“Tracker, are you not offended by this?” he said.
“Offended? I’m not even surprised.”
“Our good friend the Leopard still doesn’t know that there is no black in man, only shades and shades of gray. My mother was not a kind woman and she was not a good woman. But she did say to me, Amadu, pray to the gods but bolt your door. The child has been gone three years.”
“Leopard, think. When we find him, we split coin two ways, not nine.”
The slaver clapped and the three men rushed in again, doing exactly as before, rubbing his feet, feeding him dates, and looking at me as if I would change into a Leopard too.
“I give you four nights to decide. This not going be no easy journey. There are forces, Tracker. There are forces, Leopard. They come in on wind at morning or sometimes in the highest sun, the hour of the blinding light of witches. Just as I wish him to be found, surely there are those who wish him to stay hidden. Nobody ever send word for ransom, and yet I know he is alive, even before the fetish priest consult the older gods who tell him this is so. But there are forces, you two. Ill wind rolling through the cities in the hot season, and taking what is not for them. Day robber, night thief, I can’t tell you what you will find. But we talking too much. I give you four nights. If yes be your answer, meet me at the collapsed tower at the end the street of bandits. You know this place?”
“Yes.”
“Meet me there after sunset and let that be your yes.”
He turned his back to us. Our business was done with him for the time. They came back to me just then, the woman he killed and the man he made a eunuch.
“Silly Tracker, surely you know how eunuchs are made? That man will surely die,” the Leopard said.
I asked the landlady to allow the Leopard stay in a room I knew was empty. I wore nothing when I spoke to her, so she said yes, of course, but now the rent is double, or you will return from one of your trips to find nothing in your room. But I have nothing, I said. The Leopard took the room after I told him that should he find some tree to sleep in as a beast, somebody would take a perfect shot from a bow and arrow and get him right through the ribs. And all the prey in the city belonged to one man
or another, so one could not roam about and hunt them. And even if you did kill somebody’s goat or chicken, do not bring it back to the room. And even if you did bring it back to the room, do not spill even a drop of blood.
This annoyed the Leopard but he saw there was wisdom in it. I knew he would be in there pacing and pacing, knowing he could not growl. Trying to sleep in the window but knowing he could not, and smelling blood quicken under the flesh of prey down below in the animal pens. So he brought the boy up to his room. The third day he came up to my room, grinning and rubbing his belly.
“You look like you sneaked an impala into your room.”
“Quiet as it’s kept. I might have been the glutton lately.”
“The whole inn knows of your appetites.”
“You must be the one nun in the whorehouse. Fantastic beasts, fantastic urges, Tracker. Where go you today? I shall see your city.”
“You already saw the city.”
“I want it through your eyes, or rather your nose. I know there is something in this city waiting for us.”
I looked at him straight. “Go whoring on your own time, cat.”
“Tracker, who’s to say we can’t do both?”
“As you wish. Go wash.”
He poked out his tongue, long as a young snake, and licked both his arms.
“Done,” he said, and grinned. “Who shall we see? A man owing you coin, whose legs we shall break? To us each a leg!”
They say Malakal is a city built by thieves. Malakal is mountains and mountains are Malakal. The one place that was never conquered because it was the one city nobody ever dared to try. Just the trip up to the mountains would exhaust men and horses. Nearly every man here is warrior born and most of the women too. This was the King’s last stand against your Massykin people of the South, and that from here we turned back the war and beat you southerners back like the bitches you are. Truce was your idea, not ours. Nearly every city spreads wide, but Malakal reaches up to the sky instead, house on top of house, tower on top of tower, some towers so thin and high that they forgot steps, leaving you to get to the top by rope. The towers themselves stacked so close that they seemed to have collapsed on each other, and to the south of the first wall was one that did, but was still in use. Four walls enclosed the city, built each inside the other, four rings built around the mountains that rose out of each other. Men built the first wall over four hundred years ago, after old Malakal went to ruin. The fourth and last wall was still being built. Come to it straight and Malakal looks like four forts, each rising out of the one below it, and towers set on top of towers. But take the view of birds and you see great walls like spirals and within them roads shooting out like spider legs from mountain peak to flat land, with lookouts for warriors, and arrow slits for archers, and homes and inns, and workhouses, and trade houses, and poorhouses, and dark lanes for necromancers, thieves, and men seeking pleasures and boys and women giving them. From our windows you can see the Hills of Enchantment, where many Sangoma live, but they were too far away. The citizens came to wisdom early how to use space for yards with chickens to get fat, and fences to keep out dogs and mountain beasts. Down from the mountains is the quickest way to the slave routes in the valley and the gold and salt routes to the sea. Malakal produces nothing but gold, trades everything that can be enslaved, and demands tribute from all who pass through, for if you are in the North it is the only way to the sea.
Of course I speak of nine years ago. Malakal is nothing like that now.
“I cannot tell you if these are good times or bad times to be in the city because the King is coming,” I said to the Leopard as we went out.
His caravan was seen two days out and all of Malakal was expected to celebrate his tenth jubilee as Kwash Dara, the North King, the son of Kwash Netu, the great conqueror of Wakadishu and Kalindar. Of course he celebrates in the city most responsible for saving his royal backside so that he could still have his royal shit wiped away by servants. But the griots were already singing, Praise the King for saving the city of mountains. Men from Malakal weren’t even in his army; they were mercenaries who would have fought for the Massykin had they come with good coin first. But fuck the gods if the city was not going to put on great fabrics and feast. The black-and-gold flag of Kwash Dara was on everything. Even children were painting their faces gold and black. The women painted gold for the left breast, black for the right, both in the sign of the rhinoceros. Weavers made cloths, and men wore robes, and women wrapped their heads into large flower arrangements, all of it black and gold.
“Your city is putting on her good face,” he said.
“An elder told me that peace is a rumor, and we will be back at war with the South in less than a year.”
“So in war or peace, wives will want to know who fucks their husbands.”
“That is one of your better points, Leopard.”
I lived in town, which was a new thing for me. I have always been an edge man, always on the coast, always by the boundary. That way nobody knows if I have just come or was turning to leave. I kept only as much as I could pack in a sack and leave with in less than a time-glass flip. But in a place like here, where people are always coming and going, you could stay in the center that never moves and still vanish. Which is convenient for a man that men hate. My inn was far west, at the edge of the third wall. People within the third wall other people thought were rich, but that is not true. Most of those people lived within the second wall. Warriors and soldiers and traders bedding for the night stayed within the fourth, in forts at all four points of the city that kept the enemy out. I’m telling you this, inquisitor, because you have never been there and a man of your sort never will.
I took the Leopard down streets that climbed up and rolled down, twisting and turning, winding to the last tower at the peak of the mountain range. I looked around and turned back to see him looking at me.
“He does not follow,” he said.
“Who, your little lover?”
“Call him anything but that.”
“He’ll follow you into a crocodile’s mouth.”
“Not until the swelling is gone,” I say.
“Swelling?”
“Tried to rub my belly last night. Fuck the gods, I would never believe it. Who would rub a cat’s belly?”
“Mistook you for a dog.”
“Do I bark? Do I sniff men’s balls?”
“Well …”
“Quiet yourself right now.”
I could hold the laugh no longer.
The Leopard frowned, then laughed. We walked downhill. Not many people were about, and whoever came out darted back indoors as soon as they saw us. I would think they were afraid, but nobody is afraid in Malakal. They knew something was afoot and wanted no part in it.
“Darkness comes quickly down this street,” Leopard said.
We went to the door of a man who owed me money but tried to pay in stories. He let us in, offered us plum juice and palm wine, but I said no, the Leopard said yes, and I said he means no, ignoring him glaring at me. The man was in the middle of another story about how the money was on the way from a city near the Darklands, and who knows what has happened, but it could be bandits, though his own brother carried the money, and sweets baked by his mother, of which he will give me as much as I could eat. The sweets from his mother was the only new part of this story.
“Is it me or are the trade routes now less safe than they were during the war?” he said to me.
I thought of which finger to break. I threatened to break one last time and to not do so would make me a man who did not keep his promises, and one could not have word like that get out in the cities. But he looked at me just then and his eyes popped open so wide that I thought I had said all that out loud. The man ran to his room and came back with a pouch heavy with silver. I prefer gold, I tell my customers before even going out looking, but this pouch was twice as heavy as the one he owed me.
“Take all of it,” he said.
�
��You overpay, I’m sure.”
“Take all of it.”
“Did your brother just come through the back door?”
“My house is none of your business. Take it and go.”
“If this is not enough I—”
“It is more than enough. Leave so my wife never knows two dirty men come to her house.”
I took his money and left, the man mystifying me. Meanwhile the Leopard couldn’t stop laughing.
“A joke between you and the gods or do you plan to share it?”
“Your debtor. Your man. Shit himself in the other room he did.”
“So strange. I was going to break a finger like I said I would. But he looked at me like he saw the god of vengeance himself.”
“He wasn’t looking at you.”
Just as the question was about to leave my mouth the answer came in my head.
“You …”
“I started changing right behind you. Wet his front with piss, frightened he was. Did you smell it?”
“Maybe he was marking territory.”
“Some thanks for the man who just fattened your pouch.”
“Thanks.”
“Say it with sweetness.”
“You try my patience, cat.”
He came with me to a woman who wanted to send a message to her daughter in the underworld. I told her that I found the missing and she wasn’t missing. Another who wanted me to find where a man who was his friend but stole his money had died, for wherever that corpse lay, beneath him would be bags and bags of gold. He said, Tracker, I will give you ten gold coins from the first bag. I said, You give me the first two bags and I will let you keep what is left, for your friend is alive. But what if there are only three bags? he said. I said, You should have said that before you let me smell the sweat, piss, and cum of his bed robes. The Leopard laughed and said, You are more entertaining than two Kampara actors pretending to fuck with wooden cocks. I didn’t notice the sun was gone until he skipped a few steps ahead and vanished into the dark. His eyes flashed like green light in the black.
“Is there no sport in your city?” he said.
“Took you long to get to this. Be warned, the pleasure women in this city gave up on being boys a long time ago. Nothing there but the scars of a eunuch.”
