Mourning rites for Ancestor Kagar should take seven quartermoons, but Prince Likud chop that down to three. That displease many who say that Kwash Kagar, the uniter of the ten and one kingdoms, the great and terrible lion, the master of war and peace, and the dominator of the South deserve seven years of weeping and wailing, but here the court won’t even give him seven quartermoons. But people speak their displeasure in the bedchamber, whisper it under tavern light, or share with their reflection in water and shiny silver, for word travel on wind much these days, and a secret is not a secret even if the only person you tell is yourself. That she learn from the princess, the night before her father’s funeral. When she ask her brother by whose authority does he cut short the time of mourning for the King, Prince Likud laugh and say that there is no King, only a spirit, waiting to be called an ancestor, and until then Kagar is neither man nor spirit. He is nothing. Princess Emini leave him, for that outright blasphemy make her choke. She leave Likud, already sitting on his father’s throne shouting that funerals, like wars, also cost plenty coin. Grief must be driving him mad, she say to Sogolon and the women.
The princess, when she is not crying, is wailing, and when she not wailing, is cursing anybody who cross her path, and when she tire of all these things she is at the window staring into sky until it start to shimmer with stars. One of the chamberwomen whisper to Sogolon that she crying because her time pretending she King is over. Sogolon mark her, remembering her face and name. The King is always the King Sister’s firstborn son for a reason, for all that is truly kingly, not the seat of power, but the strength and wisdom to bear the burden of responsibility, come from the sister. But Kwash Kagar lose his only sister, Lokji, to malaria when she was just nine in years, and no more sister come. That is the common knowledge to everybody but one. Sogolon.
Sogolon try to let go of this Jeleza, who is nothing but a name that Olu whisper in his sleep. But two nights before the funeral, Sogolon find herself in the dream jungle, and that bush lead her to castle grounds of the house of Akum. Or what look like it. She assume before she can know for sure, for she has seen no other castle. She follow a white vapor that vanish into a trail of just sound, a mumble that fade into a whisper, that fade into something that not until she walk past palace, library, archive, banquet hall, one more palace, and the ruins of another to reach the lion cages do she realize is the silent sniffling of sorrow. A lioness alone. No, not alone, beside a lying lion, stretched too loose and sprawled too wide open to be alive. Louder than her weeping, the buzz of flies. But the lioness don’t even see the lying lion, for she looking down at her own belly, where womb must be, and instead of belly is nothing, no skin, no flesh, not guts, not even air. A nothing like a hole but hole is not what Sogolon would call it. She search her mind but can’t find no words. The lioness with a hole in her belly, she know something is there, but don’t know what that is. A flutter of huge wings and a blinding splash of red wake her up. Sogolon pull the sheet over her face before looking, then pull it down slow and quiet, while she look at the ceiling for moving eyes.
This is woman’s work. Queen, princess, freeborn, or slave, it don’t matter. That is the answer she get the three times she ask the question. The question still on her tongue though she run out of people willing to answer, and she certainly not going to ask the princess. The question consume her all the way down the corridors and walkways, past the ruins of Kwash Abili and the towering castle of Kwash Kong. The question fill her mind and avert her eyes from seeing all that is different in Kwash Kagar’s palace, the guardhouse as wide as a throne room, the grand entrance, the pillars of gold rising in the halls, and the lions standing guard, shapeshifter and beast-born, outside his chamber, where all the murals, frescoes, and tapestries are covered in purple cloth and no light is allowed in. And when the headwoman stride in first, in a slow mourning march, followed by two death midwives, then the princess, then six more chamberwomen, and Sogolon, the question is right there in the bed. So she ask herself, knowing no answer is going to come. Why must they be the ones to wash his body? Sogolon won’t cut the question loose, and now, when she in this great lion’s bedchamber, which call for silence, she whisper it again to a chamberwoman who look younger than her. The woman whisper it to another woman, who whisper it to another, and another until it reach the princess.
“Sogolon, come here,” she say without looking or turning behind her. Sogolon barely in front of her before the princess swing her hand with force and slap the girl in her face so hard that she stagger backways. She can’t stop it, the tears that run down her cheek.
“Is so it go, that you are too good to wash your King? What it be? A King’s blood not as noble as yours? Or maybe you turn King last night, and is the King who turn into a no name girl fucking a mad commander by lamplight? Hmmm? Girl, tell me, since it is I who need to hear from you, and not the other way, so tell me. Tell me!”
Sogolon hang her head low.
“You get called to clean the King’s shit, you fall on your knees and ask the gods why you so blessed. Every woman in this room born, raised, and trained for this day, including your princess. You the only one here because I was in a good mood the day I first see you. Now all you do is prove that my kindness is a gift to a fool. Go stand over there. I don’t want you touching my father.”