“I will speak to him. Now, girl.”
Before Keme even get to the caravan, Mistress Komwono lighting fire on him, wanting to know if his eye is in his pants and two shitholes are flanking his nose. And if they not near the crown of Fasisi then they in the wrong place.
“And what place is this?” she ask.
“Ugliko.”
“This is not Ugliko. All I see is trade.”
“The merchant side of Ugliko, ma’am.”
“Merchant side? Is that what money does now, buy nobility?”
“It is with the grace of the King, ma’am.”
“They going to buy princedoms next? How much to be a priest? God alive, somebody will even pay to be a griot. Anyway, please to take me to somewhere else.”
“Here is where you stay until the crown call you to court.”
“What you just say to me? Stay? To put my feet down here? Stay?”
And on she go, about if she is to really believe that a woman of noble birth, a woman married to a lord chief even nobler, a man whose blood one can trace to the great warrior kings of the North lands, must take up residence within Ugliko prefecture, among men of trade. Trade, she yell again and again, saying it the way another would say shit. And as if to let him know she mean shit, the mistress go on about how the trade prefecture smell, how merchants always smell, how the smell going to infect her if she stay here even one night and what in a million curses is to be done with this ghastly blue. All Sogolon can remember is the mistress loving to count money. The escort listen to it all with patience and calm.
“Lady Komwono. All who see the King, all who will enter court, whether noble, peasant, family, or pet, must go through the house of notice, where they will be vetted before given permission to be in the royal enclosure.”
“But I am—”
“Not deaf, I know. That’s why I don’t need to repeat myself. I’m sure you view the safety of our King, Queen, and princes as paramount, or perhaps you do not?”
“What?”
Sogolon almost say, No more what.
“Of course I do. May the gods always protect our King and princes.”
“And the Queen?”
“Gods alive, of course protect her too. This must be new.”
“Not so, ma’am. They started it the month you were—you leave court. The wisdom of His Excellency the chancellor. Mistress, we must go. The Ugliko is a different place after dark.”
“What kind of place? I would never know.”
The escort nod and go back to his place at the front. Sogolon turn to follow.
“Not you,” the mistress say.
* * *
—
Two days pass on the merchant street. They stay at a compound as large as a palace, but the mistress use every chance to curse about how vulgar the place be. Everything has the shine of the new, she say. The glare of the coarse and the bought, instead of the elegant coat of generations of nobility plus the original blessing of the gods. Sogolon thinking the place more grand than any room in the mistress house. Each room have a fire, each room telling a story with paintings on the ceilings of devout men doing what look like devout things. A room with a bath for the mistress and three more for whoever have use. And servants that come from the crown’s service, but none working in the palace. This they know because the mistress ask. Keme is with them as well, for his duty is not complete until he has done what the court send him to do. To deliver those of the house of Komwono. Sogolon attend to this mistress until she grow tired of praising the King Sister for her bottomless forgiveness, then cursing her for her petty vindictiveness, then falling asleep. But Sogolon never sleep.
The second night she go out in the courtyard and see the escort with a lion. She sure she never see one before. A male lion looking almost white in the dark. Big as table, big enough to crush Keme just by lying on him. The lion grunt and growl, and Sogolon jump even though she out of sight. What kind of place is this where beasts run loose? Mistress Komwono never say anything about this kind of danger. Sogolon don’t know what to do, confusion seizing her, terror also, but then she notice that no such thing seizing Keme. This? Keme seem to say. Then he dash across the courtyard and the lion growl and chase after him. Keme don’t get far. The lion pounce just as he turn around and both fall to the ground. Sogolon about to scream when Keme laugh even louder, and shout, Watch where you lick, man lover, to which the lion growl again. Keme scratch the lion’s jaw and he purr like a cat, rubbing his face against the escort and almost knocking him away. All this make Keme laugh even more. They roll and tumble in the dirt.
“A mosquito getting into that body before you,” Keme say and the lion purr before trotting off.
“Good thing you hang back while you were watching,” he say as he turn to her. “Because Makaya looking for a new mate.”
“How me to marry a lion?”
“No ceremony. He will just bite onto your neck and take you away.”
“Woman like that?”
“Noblest of creatures? You could do worse.”
“I wasn’t watching.”
He brush the dirt off his clothes.
“You looking at nothing at all, and the lion and I just walked in your way?”
“I going to bed.”
“But you not going to sleep. Or you wouldn’t be out here talking to me.”
“I don’t—”
“Stop disagreeing with me for disagreeing’s sake. Not every man want to fight you.”
“True. The dead ones give me peace.”
Keme burst out laughing so much he had to shush himself.
“You going wake up the mistress,” Sogolon say.
“Fuck the gods, let us not have that. Tell you something. We should go around the back. I can show you something you will like,” he say.
Sogolon stop and look at him long and deep. The frown that come over her face even he can see in the dark. Her frown hold him there, in the space and in the night.
“I not going around any back with you.”
“Suit yourself,” he say and walk away. Sogolon will spend more time than she will admit wondering whether she should follow. But she go back to her room and enter that land of neither asleep nor awake. Things moving as if she under water, but everything she see and know. This house with the beds raised off the floor, and with blue and green parrots flying in the ceiling and drawings of holy men in the ceiling that sometimes, in the corner of her eye, move. It’s a trick, she thinks. At this time of night, at this point of tiredness, the mind too weak to keep anything still, including what one see.
* * *
—
Oh no, that woman losing her head. A decree is a decree,” she say. She, the lady who this morning pay a visit to Mistress Komwono. The mistress keep calling her “dear sister” when they speak, but did call her a foul mouth, lanky breast bitch before she come. She been calling her all sorts of curse as soon as the herald leave, he who wake up the whole household that morning to give message with shouting and drums to expect her visit after noon.