“I serve who deserve serving,” she say.
“Did you hear, excellent people of the court, did you hear? Seems all kings and gods must make themselves worthy of Princess Lissisolo’s service.”
Lissisolo, she just stare at her brother. Never was smart, this boy, but somebody had been giving him smart counsel.
“Only the gods know my heart.”
“So we agree. For I certainly know yours, sister. But enough talk, now we eat. Bring sweet wines, and strong meats, and honey and milk with a little cow’s blood like river folk, and beer.”
This is what people say happen, people in the exile in the South. That at the great table right before the throne, womanservants and manservants bring out all sort of meat, and all sort of salad and fruit, and drink, in gold cup and silver, glass, and leather. And at the royal table and every table in the great hall was much eating, and drinking, and making merry. No cup of honey wine or beer go empty or a slave would be flogged. On the tables, mutton, raw and cook both, beef the same, and chicken, and vulture, and stuffed doves. Bread, butter, and honey. The air spice up with garlic, onion, mustard, and pepper.
The King step down from the throne and sit at the head of the royal table with his elder warriors and advisers, noblemen and noblewomen. Lissisolo, she about to sit on his right, three places down, where she always sit, when he say, “Sister. Sit at the foot of the table, for we are one flesh. And who else would I want to see when I look up from my meat?”
Everybody at every table wait until the King wave, and they all set to eat. Grabbing meat, grabbing fruits, grabbing raised bread, grabbing flatbread, calling for honey wine and daro beer, while griots play kora and drum and sing of how the great Kwash Dara is even greater one year in the reign. The King grab a chicken leg, but he not eating it, he watching his sister. Then he clap and two men, thick in arms and legs, come around the table carrying a large basket cover in cloth. Then the King turn to the people near to him, and speak soft as if he sharing a joke for few ears only.
“Listen to me now. I brought in a special delicacy, both of them from the noble houses in the South.”
He raise he voice when he say, “For you, sister. So there is no malice between us and we are again equal.”
The two men remove the cloth, upturn the baskets, and two bloody head fall out and land in the table. People jump back, many women scream, Lissisolo jump, but not as much as the King did hope, then just sit there, looking at two lords from the South Kingdom, one an elder, the other a chief and adviser to the King, two head cut off and rolling on the table in front of her. The women still screaming and two lords get up.
“Sit down, beautiful men and women. Sit down!”
The whole hall go quiet. Kwash Dara stand up and walk right over to his sister. He grab one of the heads by the hair and lift up to his face. The eyes still open, the brown skin almost blue, the hair thick and bushy and the beard patchy as if he scratch it out.
“Now this one, this boy lover. Is he a boy lover? He must be a boy lover to think that my sister, a princess, can become a king. What kind of witchcraft they must work on him, to scheme and plot, and remember, eh, sister? Take some wise words from your wise King. As you drag a man into a plot, so you should also drag the wife, or she will think it a plot against her. Next time you get this plotting sickness, try not to infect anybody else with it, sister. Play a game of Bawo.”
He drop the head on the table and Lissisolo jump.
“Remove her from me,” he say.
Now here is a true thing. The King still afraid to kill his sister for if divine blood run in his rivers then it must also run in hers too, and who would be the one to kill she born of a god?
He lock her away in a dungeon with rats big like cats. Lissisolo don’t scream or weep. She in there for day upon day and they feed her scraps from the royal table so that though she only get bone and dregs, she would know where the dregs come from. The guards take to sporting with her but not touching her. One day they bring her a bowl of water, and say it come with a special seasoning most excellent, and as they place it down she could see a rat floating in it. She turn and say, My bowl has special seasoning too, and dash her piss at them. Two guards rush to the bars, and she say, “Get to it then, be the one to dare touch divine flesh.”
Lissisolo don’t know it but ten and four day pass her in the dungeon. Her brother come to see her, wearing red robes and a white turban that he place a crown on. No chair in the cell, and the guard hesitate when Kwash Dara point at him to go down be on four, like the donkey, so the King can sit on his back.
“I miss you, sister,” he say.
“I miss me too,” she say. Always too clever but not clever enough to know when to blow out that wick so she don’t shine too bright around a man, even if the man be her brother.
He say to her, “Differences we have and will have, sister. That is just the ways of blood, but when trouble comes, when ill fortune comes, when just bad tidings come, surely I must stand by my blood. Even if she betrayed me, my sorrow is her sorrow.”
“You have no proof that I betrayed you.”
“All truth rests with the gods, and the King is the godhead.”
“When he dies, if the gods wish his company.”
“Now, and the gods are bound by their own law.”
“Who is your latest coward hiding behind shadows?”
He come out of the dark into the light of the torch. Skin black like ink, eye so white they glow, and hair red like a fireball flower. She know him name before he say it.
“You are the Aesi,” she say. Like every woman, every man, every child in the lands, when she see him, it was as if the Aesi was always behind the King, but nobody can remember when he take that place. Like air and the gods, there was no beginning and no end, only Aesi.
“We come bearing news, sister. It is not good.”
The King rock himself on the soldier back. The Aesi approach the bars.
“Your husband and your children all fell from air sickness for it is the season, and they went where malevolent airs were prominent. They will be buried tomorrow, in ceremonies fit for princes, of course. But not near the royal enclosure, for they may still carry disease. You will—”
“You think you sit like a king when you are the speck of shit on donkey’s backside that the tail can’t wick off. What did you come down here for? A scream? A plea for my children? I fall on the floor so you can laugh? Come to the bars and put your ears here so I can give you a scream.”
“I will leave you to grieve, sister. Then I will come back.”
“For what? What do you want? Your wife hear you call my name when you fuck her yet, or do you let this one do it?”
The King, he jump up and throw his staff at the cell. Then he turn to leave. The Aesi turn to her and say, “Tomorrow you are to leave to join the divine sisterhood, as was your fate set by the gods. All of the realm will grieve for you and wish you abiding peace.”
“Come earlier and I have given you peace I just leave in that bucket.”
“We leave you to grieve, sister.”
“Grieve? I shall never grieve. I reject it, grief. I replace it with rage. My rage at you walk higher and wider than any grief.”
“I will kill you too, sister.”
“Too? Truly, you are an imbecile’s idea of an imbecile. The sun has not even set on their deaths and you have confessed to the murder already. Secret griots said you slipped out of Mother and dropped on your head. They are wrong. Mother must have dropped you on purpose. Yes leave, get out, you coward, men should have come and clip you the way they do girls in the river valley. Mark it, brother. From this day I will curse you and your children’s names every day.”
A curse from blood frighten even Kwash Dara, he leave in the quick, but the Aesi stay to look at her.
“You can still be someone’s wife,” he say.
“You can still be something other than the King’s shit pan,” she say.
As soon as the guard close the door she fall to the ground, and wail so hard it turn into a sickness. The morning when they send her to the fortress of Mantha to join the divine sisterhood, anger and grief gone.
Let us make this quick. The water goddess see all and know all. I am a priestess serving in a temple in Wakadishu when I go down the steps that lead to the river, and up jump Bunshi. No fear come from me, though I see she have a fishtail black like pitch. She send me to Mantha with nothing but my leather dress, one sandal, and a mark from the house at Wakadishu. The princess Lissisolo take to her room, and play the kora at sunset and talk to no one. In the divine sisterhood no one have power or class, or rank, so her royal blood don’t mean nothing. But all the sisters see her need to be alone. Word was that she walk the lands at night under moonlight to whisper to the goddess of justice and girl children how much she hate her.