The priest sprinkle all the relations with blessed water, and rub them with herbs to banish the shadows following them that their body didn’t cast. But not Sogolon, or the cook, or anybody working in the house, for they are not blood. Just as well, the cook say. Their devils is their own business.
The house of Komwono is finally restored in favor, the bearer of this good news say, a boy with a smile too wide. He carry the words in his mouth like he don’t know what he is saying or who to, which is true. He don’t know he is coming to a house in the middle of mourning, or that he would be telling this news to Sogolon. May the gods bring you consolation, he also say, before leaving quick, all the while looking up at the ceiling as if he catch a bad spirit watching him. Tell me everything he say, Mistress Komwono say, and they watch in shock as her bad mood burn off her skin quick, fire set to wild bush.
First thing she do is drive everybody but her staff out of the house. What about those of who come from far, sister? say Lady Mistress Morongo. That don’t include you, sister, you live up the street, say the mistress. But all of you need to go by noon, for I will have back my house. Sisters and sisters-in-law deem the whole thing appalling. Brothers and brothers-in-law all sigh, nod in relief, for spirits is visiting between their legs at night, and none can swear that they are female. The mistress sisters one by one refuse to go, saying, Dear sister you will be in ukuzila for nine moons, maybe even a year if the ancestors don’t welcome your husband in time. A woman in ukuzila can’t do what is expected of a woman wearing red or yellow. The gods demand that you not be bold in action or thought. You need your sisters, say her sisters. The Komwonos say the same thing, but they add, And we need to see about what our dearest brother has left for us.
“Ukuzila doesn’t bind the feet, nor the hand, not even the mouth,” she say to her sisters. “And you chigger foot bitches forget that the one with the wealth is not the one dead,” she say to the Komwonos, though the look on her face say that all sisters are scavengers. They leave that afternoon. Sogolon still don’t believe that the mistress could be back to her old wits in just a few turns of the time glass, not when she couldn’t even take herself out of the room to piss only a day before. But she know that wits return to her mistress by the evening hour, when blood and law relation set to leave on their feet, horses, chariots, carts, and caravan only to see seven warriors of the Seven Wings, mercenaries in the service of the Black Sparrowhawk, standing at the gate to check one and all for pilfering. The rest of the evening Sogolon hear the cling and clang of gold, silver, iron, and ivory thrown out of thieving carriages, with the mistress laughing and saying, See that? See that? As if somebody is watching with her by the window.
Mistress Komwono now consumed with preparations and readiness. The herald leave nothing but the trail of his own voice, with the message that the master (and Mistress Komwono) is invited by the grace of the Most Excellent Kwash Kagar, King of Fasisi, Emperor of the Northern Lands, Regent of the Valley Territory, and Imperial Cleric of the Divine Regions of Earth and Sky, to an audience, of course at his regal pleasure.
Mistress Komwono is no fool. She knows that “at his regal pleasure” is both promise and trap. That his pleasure might change at a whim and the trip from the royal enclosure to the royal dungeon can be within the wave of a finger. Or that his pleasure might just be to taunt them further by declaring himself too busy to see anyone. Them, for she not sending news that the master is dead. For a King whose blood is in the divine line of gods has very little time for silly mortal business. And who is she to think she had right to be in quarrel with the King or anyone in the house of Akum? This she say to the room as Sogolon enter it. Sogolon taken aback. The mistress, in a tone almost like a girl, like somebody wanting somebody to like her, but not sure what to do. The mistress yet to say what get her banish from court.
“The master, he is the one she like, you understand. She loved how he would call her pretty. Not beautiful like a woman, or handsome like a horse, which indeed she was, but pretty like a little girl. That must be why she giggle. What she say to me was harsh. What she do to me was harsher.”
“Who, mistress?”
“The goddess of love and poetry—who else I talking about but the King Sister, you walking imbecile? When I was one of her ladies-in-waiting, she was always cursing me, calling me slow, saying that I even wiped her ass slow.”
Sogolon is a girl. Grief look like carrying a house on your back, so she is nothing but perplex that the mistress not buckling under the weight. Maybe she hide it, or maybe a big woman can carry grief as big as a house on her back and it look like she carrying everything else too. Sogolon wonder how she do it, because her mind buckling nearly every night. She think she is in the dream jungle, but night jump to morning and leave her with the feeling that either she never wake or didn’t sleep. Grief and guilt mixing, brewing into something like a lump under the skin. Something monstrous.
The night before they set out for Fasisi, Nanil approach her outside the grain keep but don’t turn to show her face. Bold for a slave to talk just so to anybody free, even if it is a foundling girl of no use. I know is you, she say. I know is you surely. The master go down to the library waiting for me, and nobody else would have any use, not the wife, not the cook, and not either boy surely. Sogolon think to say something. Girl, shut your mouth until the mistress permit you to talk. She open her mouth, the words right behind her teeth. Then she look over again and see nothing but the lonesome yard. It must be her head running from her. It must be.
Two more day come, then they up and leave in a caravan, on the way to Fasisi. Right at the edge of town they pass the magistrate, who shout that he don’t forget and one day he heading back to the house.
“Head there right now,” say the mistress. “But if you don’t find out who kill . . . no, how they kill my husband, I will get a decree from the King himself to have you flogged.”