“Yes, Most Magnificent.”
“Very interesting, in just one flip of the time glass you have done four things that would have gotten you beheaded, if not five. And yet it is not disrespect I am getting from you, but that you simply do not know. How old are you?”
“I don’t have no official count,” I say.
“Misstep number six. Tell her, Chancellor.”
“It is, ‘I don’t have an official count, Your Majesty.’ Address the liege in front of you.”
“Who else I would be addressing? For certain I not speaking to you.”
She laugh. “I hear you are one hundred and seventy years old. Of course. You have seen too much to still be standing on ceremony. Where is your princess?”
“I not her lady-in-waiting, Queen.”
“Of course. She never told me what it is you do exactly.”
“I kill whoever come near her that she don’t know.”
“Man? Beast? Bird?”
“Yes.”
“How frightening. And how delicious. This King Sister wants my allegiance and my help, and why not? Dolingo is the light of the world and who else but us will show the way out of these beast kings and barbarians? Brother and sister fighting over a throne neither has ever truly earned, the whole thing make for mild amusement. But we shall be Queens together—even if she is just a regent. But she has nothing to offer this kingdom. But you. You, lowly as you are, you, on the other hand, just might.”
The whole court shudder so hard the floor shake when I tell the Queen that I will think about her offer. She herself drop back like I hit her with a punch when she was expecting a slap. I live in the bush too long to care about offending queens or kings. Or lords, or chiefs, or the wives of them for that matter. If they come for me, they come. I exploding at least four heads before they come for mine, one of which might be the Queen, and even the dumbest of them know that I have nothing to lose. I am in my quarters gathering my things, for it is long past time I cut this place loose. The King Sister is safe as she can be, escaping a pack of wolves by hiding in a nest of snakes. Word was that the Aesi was coming as part of a diplomatic mission, maybe to ask things this Queen will neither confirm nor deny. For all my talking, he was still the one thing I could never be indifferent about. Too much time pass before I realize I am holding the same wineskin in my hand as I was since evening, because I done trapped myself into thinking of the Aesi. There was no presence of rage, but I know that I didn’t have to give myself too much time to work it up. Standing here, with this wineskin in my hand, I am wondering why I come here in the first place. Money, yes, but I was not lacking money and even a little was more than I need. Seeing my family, most certain, but that thought would never come to me had my great-great-granddaughter not arrived to disturb my peace. To know her, my great-great-granddaughter? We know the other enough to know that there can never be love between us, not even liking. To love her, to love them, would take great work, mostly on myself, too much work. Just because you are blood don’t mean you are family. And this Aesi. I still remember how Bunshi warn me against taking up anything with him, for according to her he is a god. Demigod. Some kind of diminished divine thing. Still a man I kill once, and nearly kill a second time. I feel a voice coming, one with a filthy taste in my mouth, and I draw an nsibidi mark in the air just as he announce his name and that he was coming to free my head from my neck. Jakwu, he call himself. I remember him from sixty and seven years ago. A warrior that even the South King has honored with gold. A rapist and killer of girls, from Weme Witu. I sneak into his house thinking I could disguise myself as his victim, a move that fail as soon as I see that not a single living or dead girl hanging in his dungeon had hair anywhere else but on her head. Him I remember because he make me enjoy cruelty. It give me pleasure to kill him slow, and watch him suffer till the end only to see me push the end back even longer. Long enough that some of the living girls start to wonder how many monsters was in the room. And even then I leave his body in way that his hereafter would be of suffering. But now he is back. I grab a chalk and draw a line of nsibidi on the door. He still manage to slam my head into it. I know I feel them—one hand grabbing my right hand, the other grabbing my neck. The push, the wind, the whatever her name is still an erratic bitch, coming to help only when she feel like it. Then just as I start to feel fingernails digging into my skin, nsibidi appear on the wall, writing themselves with fire. They blaze, burn, and leave a smoking mark in just a blink. Behind me, the Nnimnim woman.
“You not ready,” she say.
“Nevertheless, it is time to leave.”
“You couldn’t even fight two. What you going to do with twenty attacking you at once?”
“Take them to the river and drown them.”
“Them already dead.”
“Then I will just—”
“Abandon humor, girl, that is not for you.”
“You just call me girl? Who now making jokes? I taking what I know and leaving in the morning. If you want to show me more between now and then it is welcome. If not, then get out.”