“No sister?” she say almost as a whisper, but let it trail off. Wedding necklace on Olu’s wall matching the pattern around his neck. Jeleza, Jeleza in his sleep. Maybe everybody in the world is right and she is wrong. She try to shake out the thought but it won’t go. It can’t go with him standing there, with his eyes looking baffled like the river blind, feeling he lost something that he don’t know is gone. In her head, that word gone is starting to fade. Taken slip itself into that spot and rising higher and higher in her mind, insisting that it won’t go. She look for Jeleza on his wall. Her name is all over the house but she is not, making Sogolon wonder if Olu forget her before he lose her.
Meanwhile, the King is yet busy. Another woman long in charge of his care but dismissed by the Aesi four moons ago get sent to the dungeon, for one of the Sangomin visit her house and nearly choke to death on the fumes of witchcraft, his words. As the gods see and hear all things, in there smell like when witches cook my brother, he say. And while the sister is ruling in all the ways that the realm demand her to, it is the prince who take it on himself to render judgment. So he ask the Aesi, who say that if indeed the smell of burning flesh is coming from a woman’s yard, then yes it must be that she is roasting a dismembered baby for witchcraft. But how do this Sangomin, and a boy with a hump in his back at that, know that she is cooking necromancy? The Aesi ignore the prince. When people cook a living thing they season and prepare, the Aesi say. When they just burning flesh for a sacrifice they don’t care that they burning nails, or shit in the bowels, or hair, and nothing smell more foul than baby’s burning hair. The woman scream that she is cooking goat and at the beginning, goat flesh always smell foul. The Aesi declare that this is another of those women who put a curse on the King. The prince condemn her to die in the way she kill babies, but slower, longer, and for three nights all of Fasisi come under the smell of burning, screaming woman. The smell reach every woman who nurse the King and even some who bathe him or wash his bedding, and they flee, knowing they not safe. Most don’t get very far. Sogolon walk into the cookroom one noon to see the headwoman crying. She don’t say why, for why would she lower herself to Sogolon’s level, even in distress, but a cook tell her that nearly all her friends either lock up or executed for putting a curse on the King, and it is only because she never serve in the King’s house why no accuser ever come for her.
“And not because she not a witch?” say a woman peeling yam.
“The only difference between who is a witch and who is not is one man’s mouth,” say the cook.
Now the princess starting to take Sogolon wherever she go, making her think that they looking at her as a bodyguard for true. And she start to ask where Sogolon go when she missing in the mornings and sometimes evenings, and the girl say she go to the library. But when the princess ask why, for she cannot read, Sogolon say she go to smell the paper, for it smell like intelligence. It smell like old age, the princess say. Sogolon know the princess not watching her, so is either the guards or somebody else in the castle giving her news. The winds are changing, don’t you feel it? she say once at court to nobody. Sogolon, who feel all kind of wind, don’t know what she mean.
So, this. The headwoman come to her room without knocking first. Darkness cool the air, and the night is already old. She throw a dagger on the bed and say, Follow me. How you know I wasn’t sleeping? Sogolon say, but she don’t answer. So she follow the woman out the castle, down a long outside path, far past the lights still flickering in Prince Likud’s castle, down to the ruins of Kwash Abili. In the dark it look like a row of cracked giant teeth, but at the base is a door, which the headwoman go through, expecting her to follow. They go down a corridor, long and cold and so dark that Sogolon can’t see her hands in front of her. They stop at a cross path, where two torches blaze.
“Take one and continue. When you get to the door, wait for four knocks, then let him in. Bring him back to the cross path,” she say. Sogolon leaving questions for later, for her heart beating from just being in the now. Four knocks come far apart. She open the door.
A guard in armor is standing there, looking around, not sure if he in the right place. The torchlight turn his face into just cheekbone and brow, but the armor look green, not the red of royal guard. She don’t dare speak to him. Sogolon head back to where she come from, and listen for his footsteps crunching behind her. She want to turn back and look at him again, but don’t. At the cross path, the headwoman is waiting. She take Sogolon’s torch and hand her one with two flames. “Leave it behind the green door and enter, don’t wait,” she say. “Bring her back to the cross path and go where you see me going.” The headwoman and the guard turn right and go off.
At the green door she pause when she hear sounds that men make when they dream. Or the other thing, which is what she see when she enter. The bed wide as a room and full of so many pillows and cushions that the two of them almost lost in them. The prince consort standing by the edge of the bed, between the two legs of the princess. He is the one making the sound, the grunt, the mumble. The princess left leg as still as her right, and both of them bare like a slave girl’s. This prince thrust and thrusting, his buttocks sweaty in torch and lamplight. She mumble too, like she keeping her voice out of the reach of somebody else. At Miss Azora, the woman shriek and bawl that the man is tearing her in two, two I say, don’t destroy my little koo now, big master. A grunt take her back into the room. She move over to the side, kicking a silver basin, which make her jump. Neither turn around. The prince consort continue with his grunting and thrusting, and in the dim light Sogolon see the princess tapping her fingers on the bed. The prince grunt into a yell and try to pull back, but the princess wrap her legs around him tight and he almost pull her off the bed. The princess burst into a laugh and the prince let his nightgown drop and he climb into the bed. He throw himself down on the pillows and there they stay. The prince, his head on a pillow at the head of the bed, and the princess, lower down than him, her legs still hanging off. And so they stay for what would be many a flip of the time glass. The princess remain nothing more than two legs still wide apart. The prince consort lie still for a while, then sit up, take off his nightshirt, look at Sogolon, then lower back down on the bed.
As soon as he start snoring, the princess raise up and gather herself in the robe she still wearing and leave through the green door. She stride so fast that Sogolon have to trot to keep up, but at the cross path she stop and wait for Sogolon to take over the lead. She still thinking about the rat she sure she step on when they come to another green door. The princess don’t wait. Inside the guard is just taking off his breastplate. He see the princess and start to take off his armor quicker.