Beremu still shaking the girl. The girl not moving.
“Beremu!” Keme shout again and grab his spear. Beremu drop the girl and roar louder than she ever hear him roar. Everybody rush out, leaving just those with Keme.
“You kill her?” Oumou ask. Beremu growl again. “But she look dead.”
Beremu look at Keme and roar. Keme still clutching his spear. Bimbola go over to the girl, head to toe in white, even hair. She stoop down and look at the girl, just a child with her eyes open but seeing nothing, mouth open but silent. She touch her forehead and all of the girl crumble into powder.
“The gods!” she say.
Keme lower his spear. To Beremu he say, “Sangomin?”
The lion growl and mumble and hiss, and growl again. Keme stare at Sogolon. She don’t like the look on his face.
“Powder. Nothing but powder dust,” Oumou say.
“He or she already change into someone else. They gone,” say Alaya.
Sogolon afraid to go look, but everybody do except Alaya. “If Sangomin come up here before, I never see them,” he say.
“Alaya, who you anger now?” Keme say. “Soon somebody will follow him.”
Powder is slipping out of Oumou’s hands. Now they all looking at Alaya.
“Beremu is the one that kill him,” he say.
Beremu start to growl, but then Oumou say, “Whatever that was is nothing more than a husk.”
“And you, Mr. Castle Guard. You can’t stay here,” Bimbola say.
“But I didn’t do a thing.”
“This need to cool off. Leave.”
“Alaya is the one that need to leave.”
“I look like I was asking?”
Keme don’t look back when he say, “We gone.” At the doorway he pause. “Sogolon,” he say, and leave. She run after him.
* * *
—
Outside, Keme walking real fast the entire way and it is a while before Sogolon catch up with him.
“All I want was one peaceful night.”
“I not the one who take it from you.”
“Even when nobody bringing fight to you, you fight anyway.”
“You the one in there fighting with your friend then.”
“Oh I forgot. You don’t have friends. You going to the palace tomorrow. From then on you’re another guard’s problem.”
“Oh is problem I was. You teach all your problems how to ride horse and shoot arrow?”
“Go home, Sogolon.”
“I don’t have no home.”
“Then go to wherever will have you. And don’t follow me.”
“Look here, I—”
“Don’t follow me again.”
SIX
Understand that the King don’t live in the royal enclosure. The walls of this place hold those noble, and those close by blood, those rich and those powerful, those of old coin and new, those in the King’s favor and in his service. But in the enclosure is another enclosure, with high curtain walls and sitting on the peak of the mountain. Is there that sit Kwash Kagar’s castle, and the grounds where seven other castles stand. Seven of them leaving behind stories of the seven kings of the Akum dynasty, for it is forbidden that any heir live in the house of a dead king. A prince can live in any castle he want, and a princess too, or Queen Mother, or those with blood but not title. But a crown prince must build his own when he is to become king. And in the erecting there must be wisdom and care, for if he build too late, the old king will die leaving the new king with no house. If he build too soon, then the living king will see the insult of the son already trying to take his place, and banish him to a mountain fortress farther away than even Mantha.
Kwash Kagar build the biggest castle any eye did see, big to match his ambition, and to house his many legitimate and bastard children, as certain mischievous griots sing. Curtain walls of brick, four floors high with battlement as high as a man. On every floor, windows set in an arch, and as tall five men. Four tower corners to the wall with sentries standing guard, and within that the castle, and on the top floor of the castle stand two more floors half as wide where the King and Queen live. You look at Kwash Kagar’s castle and see that this King did come with one ambition, which was to be greater than any other king, and if not, then to look so. Each brown brick marked with the day he was born. Each brick wall four footsteps thick. People say the castle is so wide that when night come to the east wing, it is still evening in the west. And as his kingdom and family grow, he add room onto room, hall onto hall, and what not part of the castle spread out to the enclosure, including the servant quarters for those who feed him, clothe him, wash him, cut his claw-looking fingernails, clean his crusty eyes, and wipe away loose piss before the royal bed goes rank. Also close by, the ballroom, theater, and bathhouse. Then the barracks for the ten and two imperial lions, a library as big as the first palace, and an archive hall. A guard with spear stand at every battlement, and sometimes there be two. Guards also stand, four at the gatehouse, and one on every step of the staircase leading to the entrance.