“The Aesi is not what he was, I say that before. He came back weaker. No more can he wave a hand and wipe a woman’s entire history from our people’s memory. Even he will have to bow to the divine right of kings. But that just mean that now he move like any other man. Plot and scheme and kill. But keeping the prince secret and safe is all for nothing if he is born a bastard.”
I ride back to the Longclaw woods for the elder Fumanguru, who then wed Lissisolo and the prince before most of the divine sisters see what is happening. My thinking was that the sister regent either didn’t know or didn’t care about the princess, at least no more than any other sister. But the night of the wedding there she was in the garden with us, and two moons later there she is, ready to deliver Lissisolo’s baby. A boy.
“The only place safe for him is the Mweru,” she say. How much she know was a mystery to me.
Nsaka look not at her but me and say, “You been in the South, you don’t know the Mweru.”
“It is an evil place. Nothing good grow in the Mweru,” Bunshi say.
“But you never been there,” Nsaka cut back. “I agree with the sister regent.”
“But we know nothing of it. The place is mystery even to the divine.”
“Because there is no divinity in it. You scared because it is a place gods can neither account for nor control.”
“Even from far it smell like it’s always burning. The smell it carry on the air, it—”
“Sangomin will not follow him there,” I say.
This is what the sister regent say of the Mweru. The farthest place west in the North Kingdom yet not even Kwash Dara would dare try to conquer it. People, if you call them people, are taller than a castle pillar, have fangs instead of teeth and skin whiter than the white scientists. Rumor is that while anybody can enter, no man can leave. Now when a man or boy go missing people whisper that they kidnap him to the Mweru.
“But if you take the boy there, he might never leave,” Bunshi say. “The Mweru has giant trees, none of them green, clouds in the sky but none of them is air, and giant towers and tunnels of iron and wood but nobody knows who built them. And no man ever leave the Mweru.”
“That is the shit old men say.”
But it is shit that the princess believe. A quartermoon don’t pass before we send two pigeons, one as decoy straight to Fumanguru’s house, knowing that some crow or wicked hawk would cut it off, and another taking the longer way on a stranger wind, to Fumanguru’s study. We in Lissisolo’s room, trying to feed a boy who don’t want her breast anymore. I about to say that he is full.
“He not even done with milk yet. How we going send off a boy who don’t wean yet?”
“A wet nurse. Fumanguru will arrange it,” I say.
“No.”
“How you mean no? If you was a princess in a palace the boy would not even know your breast.”
“I’m not a princess, and this is no palace.”
“You know what I—”
“Don’t presume to know how I raised my own children. Or that every mother is like you who leave her own. Oh I know about you. Must be so easy to tell me, Give up your child.”
I open my mouth to say something but don’t.
“Sogolon, wait!” Nsaka shout after me but I am already out of this princess’s room, out the hall, down the corridor, when I hear her shout for me again. I open the great door and step outside, but then this. I step backways, landing exactly in each footprint I make before, and as I step back to the door it opens, the knob swinging right into my hands, and I push the door back shut.
“Use your trick on me again and I kill you,” I say.
“You wouldn’t be the first woman she have to apologize to for her loose tongue,” Nsaka say.
“Oh you think she going to ask forgiveness. Woman like that don’t even know how that word feel in her mouth.”
“I not saying forgive the princess. I saying have a care for a woman who lose her whole family.”
“I lose mine too!”
“Is not a cont—”
“Finish that line and you never see me again.”
“I hear you.”
“And you. What the fuck is you all about? First you act like you don’t even want to see me, and now you telling me not to leave, and showing kindness like I either ask for it or need it. What you want?”
“What I want?”
“Yes, what you want for yourself?”
“If I was a man, you would never ask me that. A man tell you he putting his own life down for a cause, even stupid one, and nobody ask any more questions. Sure, they ask question about the cause, but they never ask any more about him. Maybe the world they want to make is the world I want to live in and that is that.”
“You and the water sprite rubbing koo together?”
Nsaka sigh.
“One hundred seventy and three years old but only twenty years deep. I have a man. Before you ask where, he is in hyena country because somebody called in a debt. Also my work is my work and I don’t need him in it. Either way, if I was taking a buffalo’s cock while kissing his granduncle, is none of your fucking business. They will triple the money if that is all that matters to you.”
“Don’t talk down to me and I won’t talk down to you,” I say. It is a relief that she think I am only here for the money.
The sister regent dash in the hallway. “A sister missing. Go by the name Lethabo,” she say.
“Shit,” I say. “How long?”
“Don’t know, but she going by foot.”
Another divine sister rush into the room. “Is Lethabo,” she say. “She here longer than the princess, but still new. A help in the cookroom, but she didn’t report to cook dinner. Her room empty. All sort of white splats in one corner of the room.”
“I leave now.”
“We can intercept her before she reach Fasisi,” Nsaka say.
“She not trying to reach Fasisi.”
I don’t waste time telling her that this woman was trying to get out of the view of the sentries. Bird shit. She was keeping a pigeon. Or maybe a crow.
“Saddle two horses,” Nsaka say.