“He is a cat. A cat loves that you rub his belly. Just like a dog. Is there nothing up in that head of yours?”
The ground turned red and damp, and green shrubs popped up like bumps. The farther down we walked, the larger the valley looked. It went straight to the end of the sky and beyond that. The wise ones said that the valley was once just a little river, a goddess that had forgotten she was a god. That little river snaked through the valley, washed away ground, dirt after dirt, stone after stone, deeper and deeper until by the time of this age of man, she had left valleys that dug so deep that man started to see the opposite, that it was not land lying so low, but mountain reaching so high. Looking up as we went down, and looking across the sky and the mist, we saw mountains pressed beside mountains, each one bigger than cities. So high that they took the colour of sky, not bush. It was enough to keep your eye to the sky and not the ground. The dirt as it reddened, the shrubs as they gave way to trees, the river clear like glass, and in it, fat nymphs, with broad heads and wide mouths, not hiding in the day, and knowing that they were not the prey this caravan hunts for.
The boy, whose name I already forgot, dashed after the Leopard as soon as we came down the mountain. Truth, I knew he was not his Leopard, and I knew the boy would make this cat very angry. He grabbed the Leopard’s tail, and he swung around and roared, crouched, and leapt at the boy. Another roar came from near the first caravan and the Leopard, pinning the boy, trotted away. The boy jumped up, brushed himself off before anyone noticed, and ran after his Leopard, sitting as a man on the grass, looking out to the river. He turned to me and smiled, but said nothing to the boy.
“Your bow and quiver. I bring it,” the boy said.
The Leopard nodded, looked at me, and said, “Shall we meet the slaver?”
The slaver had a tent at the front of his caravan. And the caravan, as long as a street in Malakal. Four wagons that I have seen only along the border of kingdoms north of the sand sea, among people who wander and never sow root. Horses pulled the first two, oxen pulled the last two. Purple and pink and green and blue, as if the most childish of goddesses painted them all. Behind the wagons, carts open and slatted together from wood. On the carts, women, thick to thin, some red from ochre, some shiny from shea butter and fat. Some wore only trinkets, some wore necklaces and goatskins in yellow and red, some in full robes, but most were naked. All captured and sold, or kidnapped from the river lands. None with the scars of the Ku or the Gangatom. Or the shaved teeth. Men from the East did not find those things beautiful. Behind these carts, men and boys, tall and thin like messengers, with no fat under the chin, just skin and muscle, long in arms, long in legs, many beautiful, and darker than the noon of the dead. Fit like warriors, for most were warriors who had lost in small wars, and would now do what soldiers who lose wars do. All wore irons locked around the neck and the feet, each man chained to the man in front of and behind him. There were fewer men with weapons than I thought I’d see. Seven, maybe eight men with swords and knives, only two carrying a bow, and four women with cutlasses and axes.
“In time. He’s holding court and judging the wicked,” the Leopard said with a smile that made me think it was a joke.
But past the caravans and in front of a large white tent with a dome top and flowing cloths sat the slaver. To his right a man knelt on the ground, holding a slender smoking pipe, with a folded rug in his lap. To his right, another man, shirtless like the kneeling man, with a gold bowl in his hand and a rag, as if he was about to wash the slaver’s face. Right behind him stood another, black in the shadow of the parasol he was holding to keep his master in shade. Another had a bowl of dates, ready to feed him. He did not look at us. But I looked at him sitting there, like the prince he probably was. Kalindar was famous for them, but princes with no kingdoms infested Malakal as well, it was said, because the Kwash Dara was stingy with his favors. His men had draped a long robe over his left shoulder with the right shoulder bare, as is the custom with princes. A white robe, the inner one to hide his royal orb and stick, peeked out underneath. Gold bracelets wrapped around his arms like two snakes in a killing curl. Leather sandals on dirty feet, a woven cap with silk tongues covering his ears over a broad face, and cheeks so fat they hid his eyes when he laughed. He did not look at us.
A man and woman kneeled before him, both kicked to their knees by the two women guards behind them. The man crying, the woman silent like stone. The woman, a red slave and not dark like the men at the back, a slave white in teeth and eyes and with no blemish. Beautiful. She would be a concubine to another master, mayhaps even a master in the East, where a concubine could possess her own palace. A woman captured from Luala Luala or even farther north, straight in nose and thin in lips. The man was darker, and shiny from sweat, not the body oils they rub on slave skin to fetch a bigger price. The man naked, the woman in a robe.
“Tell me true, tell me quick, tell me now,” said the slaver. His voice was higher than I expected. Like a young child’s, or a ragged witch’s. “Man live to plunder, guest attack host, but you was a man under chain. A man ira wewe. Chained to one and twenty men with heavy iron that break the leg bone. You can’t go unless they go, you can’t come unless they come, you can’t sit unless they sit, so how you find yourself up the pupu of this future princess?”
The man said nothing. I don’t think he knew the midlands tongues. He looked like the men who lived along the two sisters river, kingless and strong, but strong from farming soil, not from hunting or fighting among armies and warriors.
The guard behind the woman said that it was the woman that seek him out, or so go whispers bouncing off their backs. That she lie with him while the other men stay quiet, hoping that she will lie with them too. And she did with one or two but this man most of all.
The woman laughed.
“Tell me true, tell me quick, tell me now. What will I do with a red slave carrying baby for a black slave? No merchant going want you, nobody going one day make you their wife and queen. You’re worth less than the robes you wear. Take them off.”
The guards grabbed her from behind and pulled the robes off. The red slave looked at the slaver, spat, and laughed.
“The robes I can wash and put on another. But you …”
The man feeding him dates bent to his ear and whispered something. “You are worth less than my sickest oxen. Make peace with the river goddess for you shall be with her soon.”
“Better you chop my neck off or burn me in flames.”
“You choose how you will die?”
“I choose not to be slave to you.”
I saw the truth in her before the slaver did. She went and had a child with the black slave because she wanted to. The smile on her face said all. She knew he would kill her. Better to be with the ancestors than to live bonded to somebody else, who might be kind, who might be cruel, who might even make you master to many slaves of your own, but was still master over you.
“Men who follow the eastern light would have been good to you. You never hear of the red slave who become empress?”
“No, but I hear of the fat slaver who smelled like ox shit, who will one day choke on his own breath. By the god of justice and revenge I curse you.”
The slaver lost his face. “Kill this bitch now,” he said.
The guard took her away as she laughed. Even gone I could still hear her. The slaver looked at the man and said, “I tell you true, tell you quick, tell you now. Only one thing the northern masters love even more than unblemished woman. Unblemished eunuch. Take him away and make it so.”
Two guards took the man. He was weak and bawling, so each grabbed a chain and pulled him away.