“That’s when new wisdom clubbed me. I know my brother. He is not an idiot but he is limited in his ways, narrow by choice because why be wide? He is King. People learn to climb to the top but if you born at the top why learn? No, never was smart, my brother, but somebody was giving him smart counsel. I tell the whole court that only the gods know my heart.
“So we agree. For I certainly know yours, Sister, he say, then tell us all to eat and even then my brother can’t resist making ceremony. At one point he is demanding milk with a little cow’s blood in it so he can be like river folk. Honey and milk, mutton cooked, mutton raw, chicken, vulture, and stuffed doves, even now I can smell the garlic, and pepper, and powdered crawfish, and locust bean. And wine, so much wine. And beer too. All of this at the great table, all of them the servant present, one after the other as if it was some pageant. I remember one manservant not seeing that my brother’s wineskin was empty so the guards took him outside to flog him. And the court, these men and women, these carrion. They love to mock river folk and to tell truth I used to do so as well. But you should see them attack the table like hyena stealing a lion’s meal. All of them eating, drinking, gorging, fattening, noble women with blood running down their dresses because the raw goat must have been divine blessed, I tell you, divine blessed! All this time I am just standing and watching because I know better than to sit without his permission. Finally he wave at me to sit and I am about to take my place, three chairs down on his left, where I always sit, and he says, 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? All these people still eating, then eating more and drinking too. Grabbing meat, grabbing fruits, grabbing raised bread, grabbing flatbread, calling for honey wine and daro beer, while musicians with little of the skill of the past play kora and drum and sing of how the great Kwash Dara is even greater one year in the reign. Maybe the reason why I remember all this is because all I could do was watch. I turn to look at my brother to see him looking at me. Then he clap and two palace guards bring to the table this large basket.
“Listen to me now, he say. I brought in a special delicacy, both of them from the noble houses in the South. For you, Sister. So there is no malice between us and we are again equal.
“He wave his goblet at me, then at the men. They turn over the basket, and this happen: Two severed heads fall on the table. Yes I jump, why wouldn’t anybody do anything but jump if they see two heads dumped on a platter as if it was food. And he wait, my brother did. He wait until I recognize the faces. He wait until he could catch me shudder, or cry, or gasp, or scream, because that is what everybody else in the room was doing. But I just look at him. Julani of the house of Ishl was one of them, who knew my father. Nwangaya was the other, an elder. Both of them from the South Kingdom.
“My brother wave and everybody shut down. Then he grabs Nwangaya’s head and lift up this face like he will have words with it. Nwangaya’s eyes were still open. These are men who do nothing more than bring light to my days because I wanted to know more about the South. All my life I heard how different they were from us. I just want to know. Nwangaya was the one who told me about the southern song men who were exiled from the North, and that they had stories that would interest everyone, but especially me. This is what my brother say to the whole court:
“?‘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.’
“Then he drop the head in my bowl, and say, Remove her from me. Guards lock me in what lords called the midnight hole and had more guards at the top waiting to report whether I cry or scream or go mad. Most times he order them to feed me only scraps from the royal table. Either he was giving the guards direction or they learn cruelty on their own, because it was quite the problem, wasn’t it? How do you hurt the princess without touching her? One day they bring me a bowl of water and say it was soup with a special seasoning most excellent, and as they place it down I see a rat floating in it. There they stand by the bars, grinning, looking at me like they aiming to ask, What now, woman? So I grab the rat, drink some of the water, then I bite into the rat and spit right into the guard’s face. He try to rush me, the imbecile. I dare them to come touch divine flesh.
“Ten and four days pass. I know because the head guard always piss right as dawn break. Right in front of my cell, did I tell you this? Nonetheless, my brother come to my little room and first he do, he ask me if I didn’t have a chamber pot. I say to him, Brother I thought we long pass those days when you fuss over my koo. He try to grin it away, but I know this fool. The same pissing guard had to go down on all fours in his own piss when his Kwash Dara say he need something to sit on. Then he say to me that he misses me. I say this to him:
“?‘I miss me too.’
“Whatever he was looking for me to say, that was not it. Then he start to go on about this and that, but conversation is not one of my brother’s skills. He care too little to be interested in whatever people have to say. Painful it was, to hear him trying to make talk, and I don’t remember most of what he said. Except that even though I betrayed the North, blood is blood. And this, that my sorrow is his sorrow.
“I didn’t betray the North, I don’t have no reason to. And if I listened to ambassadors from the South because somebody need to bring reason and wisdom to the latest dispute, then so be it. I would do it again. I didn’t even know about the line of succession until I come here. I didn’t betray anybody, but what I said to him was, You have no proof that I betrayed you. Then he strayed off his own path and went down some strange roads indeed, about truth being with the King, who is the godhead, and in all of this I am realizing that this is not him, for my brother don’t have the kind of head from which would come those words. Not at all. Even in the dark I could see he who was behind the words lurking in the shadows. Foolish to hide in the shadows when your hair is redder than a whore’s mouth, I say to the Aesi. That make him leave the dark.