“Try the goat. Raw, as you like it.” He laughs. “I know, you don’t like no goat. You don’t like a single thing on this plate. What shall we serve your father, they ask me, as if I know what my father likes. Then I remember the first time you spit this out. Who be here mistaking me for some mountain man, you say. You, a civilized King. So civilized that you don’t know what thought calls for ‘be’ and what calls for ‘is.’ So here it be, Father, I serving you raw goat.
“Nobody believe that I want none of this, except you. I run all the way to Omororo to not be you. My memory comes back like a dream, Father. That is the one time you ever looked for me. Whatever you trying to drive out, my general will beat back into you. Beat back into you. Beat back . . .”
He laughs again, so long and loud that he start to cough.
“You lying in rest in the same bed I took your last nine concubines. The last two didn’t take me, if we speaking true. Truth, Father? This bed is as wet from me as you. Ponder the horror, old man. Tell me what upsets you more, that I disrespect you or your bed? Spill away the line of the house of Akum on bed linen washed by slaves. I will bet you’ve never seen your own sperm, have you, Father? Not a drop of seed wasted with our Kwash Kagar. I woke up this morning thinking, Has ever a man had so many bastard brothers as I?”
He throw a chunk of meat at the darkchild, who catch it with his teeth. The child sniff, picking up the scent of something. Sogolon shudder under the fur.
“The elders say it is a curse to speak directly to the dead. It confuses them. They think they’re still alive and then they start to meddle in the living’s affairs. Meddle? That would be a start, not so, Father? Meddling would speak of fathers speaking to sons, the one having care in the affairs of the other. But when did such thing exist between us?
“Meanwhile everyone speaks of the line of King. It comes from the sister, did you know, Father? Your brilliant daughter. The woman who will spit forth the next King from between her legs. You should hear talk in the street, Likud the incorrect. Likud the proxy King. Oh King Sister, bring forth a boy, and restore the line. They calling her King Sister even before they crown me King. Oh King Sister, bring forth a boy, and restore the line, even the children sing it as verse. If she ever has a firstborn. If your father had more care about who he fucked, I wouldn’t be burdened with your damn throne. You think I want it? I hear what you tell the elders. You still think you know what I want. I want many things, Father. I wanted to be the one who when you see him, you say you see the sun, but no more. That Likud, that fool, if only he loved duty as much as he love power. That’s what you tell the elders just three days before you die. You tell people a lot of things you think I won’t hear. But I have something to tell you, Father.
“Do you know that I’m not raising my sons to be King? My twin sons, my ibeji. Make them meet you once and even that is too much. My sons look at the lions and look at you and cannot tell the difference. No, that is not praise.
“Father. That is not what I have to tell you. What I will tell you is this. Your daughter. Noble Emini, dearest sister. Plotting against me, she is. You didn’t know, and as much as you wish she could rule, not even you want to break tradition. Listen, old man, and don’t tell anyone. I said she is plotting. Even now she speaks to some of the elders, promising them a boy child before the rain season. And when that child is born, we crown him King and her as regent until he reach ten and five in years. Oh yes. But know this, Father, that does not offend me. I will destroy her plan and wreck her ambition, but I admire it. But Father, that is not what I come to tell you.
“I come to tell you about the prince. Your son-in-law from Kalindar, you know, that prince with nowhere to rule. Emini is his third wife, and as for concubines, he has more than you. But hear this, Father. After all this time, all these seasons, all these years, not a single child. Not even a girl. Not one. But your daughter is crafty, Father, after all, she takes from you. Yet not even you would think to have your husband fuck you odd nights, then go to some secret place and have some soldier lay his seed in you again. Your daughter is crafty, Father. She will have a child, a son, and nobody would even know that a bastard would soon sit on the throne of Akum. She do it with every new moon. She is doing it tonight. Send your spirit, I know it still walks. Go see for yourself, how this whore will end the house of Akum, end it with no one even knowing that she killed it, just to get the throne that I don’t even want. Because I don’t want it, Father, but unlike her, unlike you, I can think beyond myself. So, you might never have liked me, Father, and this is fair, for I abhor you. But I’d see you rot on this bed, and rats feed on your lips, before I make a bastard the next King. I take your silence as gratitude. Who knew the day would come when your unworthy son saves your fucking throne? The knight she will have tonight? I send him myself. Tested him on one of your concubines, who found him most satisfactory. Eh, Father? Even the King Sister deserves some sort of pleasure at least once.”
Sogolon feel the bed rebound from losing his weight. Likud is at the door when he say, “Oh, and the generals you had beat me? They shall all be beheaded tomorrow. I will arrange to have their heads buried with you. You really should try the goat.”
He leave. She almost get up when she hear scuttling across the ceiling. Under the leopard skin she stay until night fall. In the room she stay until dawn break.
As much as she fear the darkchild, it is only by thinking herself as him that she escape the King’s palace. Sliding from wall to wall with her back scraping against the stone, crawling along shadows, slipping into dark corners, behind loose tapestry, waiting for people to leave a room, taking on the shape of statues and craftwork, and standing in places where no person highborn would look. She almost make it out until she come to first set of guards stationed by a doorway. Nothing to do now but walk. She grab the smallest urn by the tapestry and take it with her as if she and it have purpose. The third guard stop her.
“No servant supposed to be in the palace,” he say. Sogolon have nothing to say, so she say nothing. She lift the urn to him, hoping it would mean something.
“That urn have no use,” another guard say. Sogolon almost drop it before she hear a roar. The guards stiffen up. Her lion. He trot right up beside her and they leave together.
At the princess palace she tiptoe through the cookroom. When to speak to the princess? Should she tell the headwoman? The first question both will ask, How you know? How you hear these things? Maybe she will tell them that fall asleep is what she do. She wonder why nobody is in the cookroom until a foot slip right into her way and trip her.
“Where you going, little bitch?” the headwoman ask as she come from around a corner. “Grab her.”