“?‘What I should do is send you to a prince who will beat your thick head down soft,’ he say.
“I tickle his fingers with my fingers and say, ‘I am Kwash Netu’s daughter. Are you ready for the war that will break out after I murder this prince?’
“He laugh, then he remembered that I am the only one of his children who work his mind, and make him laugh. Plus he didn’t want to send me to no southern land, because he know I would end up strengthening it against him. You too quick of wit, he would say to me, also this, that the gods jump the line of children when they were offering wisdom, which words I know, I for certain know, get back to my brother. Hunting down women and sporting with hogs, hunting down hogs and sporting with women, who know what he was doing when he walk into my bedchamber one morning and say how much more like a son I am to our father than he. I remember how he sound like he mourning when he say it, but in a blink he grin it off.
“Brother, brother, brother. I tell you true that for all his jealousy I was the only one who saw that he was no fool. Wicked, flippant, vengeful, and so petty that he nearly killed servant for serving him warm instead of hot coffee, but no, he was no fool. And by the gods, no warrior. The way he tell it to court now, it was he who tell my father to consider making Kalindar neutral territory with free trade with the South, after the elders all tell him to keep the spoils from the Nine-Day War with the South and spare none to the enemy, for they will think him weak. Especially when he had no more claim on Wakadishu. But Kalindar is a shit stain on the empire. No good fruit, pure silver, or strong slave comes from there, and the Massykin King is so mad he will think all this free trade means he won. And of course as soon as my brother becomes Kwash Dara, he goes around saying it, but what he don’t say is that the reason he knows all this is because my father said to me what I say to you, and this also. How much like a son I was to him, more than this one, and he was behind the curtain and heard it.
“Thirtieth year of his reign. Carra day of the Abrasa moon. I still remember the morning. My ladies-in-waiting rushing into my chamber, pulling back the curtains, and me saying I don’t know who is assaulting me more, these women or this sunlight, when one of them say, You have to rise and wash, my lady, we have to make haste, for the King called a session and all must present themselves at court before the flip of the time glass. Late my father called me. Late. How you going to be late, daughter, when this concerns you? Of course I love my father, but I’m frightened of him too. All he say is make it so and the Aesi himself had to read the proclamation. My father. My beloved Netu couldn’t bear to see me leave his side so he said, You, my darling Lissisolo, shall never have to join the divine sisterhood. But you must find a husband. A lord, or a prince, but not a chief.
“Oh I found a prince. The rare prince among princes, I would say, for the gods know how the North is infested with them. He had nothing to offer me other than pleasant company and the promise that when the North liberate Wakadishu from the South he shall have his lands again. If nothing else he did give me four children in seven years, I even enjoyed what we do to conceive them. My mother was terrible example, and my grandmother as well, so nobody was more surprised that I find myself loving my husband than me. Nobody could ask for better days, you understand me? Nobody could ask for better days. That is until my brother find my father dead, right there in his tent at the battle camp. Choke on a chicken bone he say. I guess I should appreciate that he at least try to look sad, because he was far from it at the camp. Father’s body not even cold before he turn to the generals, saying that he is King now and they should worship him. It take a general to tell him that he become a god when he die, not when he become King. I leave it to you to imagine how my brother react to such news.
“My brother become King and name himself Kwash Dara. As for that general, they found his armor in a crocodile’s stomach all the way west in the Blood Swamp. This godforsaken, sniveling man-bitch. So he is celebrating his anniversary as King even though only six moons pass. Wine, goat, chicken, cheap magic, the whole court is celebrating when he turn to me and ask who is smarter, him or me. He thought I wouldn’t answer the question, that it would silence me, but I just tell him that it is a question he should ask our mother, or our teachers. You should see him try to not look angry. He finally stop with the playing and tell me that the divine King has ears everywhere, Sister. Which King you talking about, since the newly divine King is our father who is now with the ancestors, I say, then laugh. I look at this boy who look like he still in the royal bed, still saying what is mine is mine and what is yours is mine, and I just laugh. Laugh long enough that it slip between the lulls in the guitar strumming, and jump over everybody else’s voice. As soon as everybody turn around to see me, he slap me in the face. No, he didn’t slap me. He strike me down so hard that I fall off the throne platform, and nobody help me up. Oh he was about to let it out now, this man who think he is King. He let it out.
“Your plot has been found out, he say. You, dearest Lissisolo, on this my first anniversary, your plot has been found out. Did you think that you could slip it past a King and a god? All I could do was stare at him like a stunned goat because I didn’t know what he was talking about. All I could say was But you are not a god, and then I laugh again, for what else could this be but a joke? Then he goes into some long rant about how I was always Father’s favorite, and how he would have used surgery to put his own cock on me in order to make me a son. And all I could think was this was my brother’s way with words, to put my father’s cock in me to suggest some sick business. Then he say that I was working witchcraft all those years ago when Father decide not to send me to the divine sisterhood, that I violate the gods, that my husband and children one could call abominations, but not him because he is a kind King. Good King Dara. It’s not him that is treating me this way, it is the gods. And if Kwash Dara has to bow to the will of the gods, why not me?
“I serve who deserve serving, I say. Did you hear, excellent people of the court, did you hear? he say. Seems all kings and gods must make themselves worthy of Princess Lissisolo’s service.