One night turn to two, two turn to three, and three turn to a number that she stop count. The stables are as long as any palace and the horses count to over one hundred. It is the night she gone walking and counting that at the last horse’s stall she discover steps that lead up into the roof. And up in the roof a floor, a pile of rugs and pillows, a jug and a bowl for water, and in a dark corner under hay, some small fetishes. Other than the groomsmen, no other person come to the stables and those who come don’t speak to her even when they see her. Since she sleeping up in the roof no man come to rest here and nobody put it to use. So she do. Twice a day somebody decide to show her kindness, and send her scraps from one of the royal tables, and twice a day it shame her how she devour them. She don’t want to need anything from the princess ever again. Never ever. There. Decided. She will never need again. Season of plenty, season of famine, same face. People kind, people cruel, same face. So when Keme march past her during the funeral procession she don’t see him, for it is with the same face that she is looking at every soldier. At everybody.
The morning of the funeral, masters of stable come for the brown horses to drape them in red and black. Nobody tell her to come to the funeral, so she don’t go, which might make her the only person not ill, or old, or dead to not go out in the street to mourn and celebrate the passing of Kwash Kagar to the ancestors. Sogolon think of the dead King and what come to her is goat flesh. Now she is on her bed of carpets and hay, thinking about this day and about Keme passing by the stable. Morning it was, with sun already high but not yet hot. Drums beating from dawn send tidings of great mourning from one mountain to the other. The drums draw her to the wide stable entrance, where the procession beginning at the King’s palace would pass the stables, all the palaces, and through the grand guardhouse and gate, then down the main street of Fasisi, looping around the capital three times through all the districts and sections until finally it descend the hill and march to another hill, that of Sigray, the mountain of the tree of the ancestors, where the body and the body alone is tied to rope and pulled up by divine-chosen bearers, who live in the mountains all their life. Up the steep slope they pull, so high that they pass clouds. The bearers will pull the body up to the hole in the mountain, one that the gods already dig out, right below the ancestors’ tree, which is old beyond a dozen ages and more. The bearers will speak in a tongue that only they and the gods know, entreating those divine to welcome Kwash Kagar to the land of the ancestors. I will arrange to have their heads buried with you. The words come quick and at first she start to shake them out, but then stop. Let words land where they want to land, she say to herself. None of this burial she see. All of it she remember from a conversation between an old cook and young milkmaid about how they bury a king.
The rites begin at dawn, the birth of the day, and end with the King’s burial at dusk, the death. Neither princess nor prince pass the stables, though she see many from court walking in procession. From the stables she hear the drums getting louder and louder, and another sound, louder than that, the earth rumbling from the drumming of feet. She know it’s the death masquerade, though she don’t see them, one hundred masked dancers, maybe more. For an instant that feel as long as a season she take her mind there, to the ground, where the feet riling up dust. Bells on their ankles, their chants rising with the wind. First the band of the biriki bearers with masks as tall as a giraffe to bridge earth and sky, the original house of the gods. Then pass the wanaga bearers with masks not as tall, leading the soul into the afterlife while the body go elsewhere. Two bars on top of the mask, one for land, the other for the underworld. Groups of six dancers or ten, they hop, stomp, twirl, bend until their masks touch the ground, then sweep and spin so that the wanaga touch the four points of the universe. Seven hops and they do it again. And on and on. All the same to Sogolon, for morning is morning and night is night, and nothing any person can do to challenge their march.
Then come night and rain.
Sogolon lying right under the ceiling, right under the patter of rainfall on the roof. The sound soothe her, even when it grow louder, into a pounding on the thatch. The hum sweep over in a wave, she is sinking deeper into the rugs and hay, even as she feel lighter and lighter, as if someone slip her wine. But a screech down below rip her from all that. She jump up to see the stable door sliding away and the full spray of rain coming in. A man as well.
“Sogolon. Girl.”
Keme. She roll to the edge of the bunk and jump down, too quick to think that she moving too swift for a man’s sake. He notice her landing quiet on her feet. “Like a cat,” he say.
“Don’t call me that.”
“But is it not uncanny?”
“What?”
“You jump from all the way up there. Ten and one, ten and six . . . seven . . . ten and eight rungs on that ladder. Then look at you landing like a feather.”
“Everything to you is uncanny.”
“Not everything, just you.”
“I know you think I like hearing all the time how strange you find me. But I don’t.”
“By the gods, girl.” Keme raise his hands as if expecting a blow. He turn around before she can study his face. “I know I once called you a horse lord, but Sogolon.”
“Yes, I choose to live in horseshit. Just like how everybody here get to choose what they want.”
“I’ve heard of your fortunes, lately. How sorry I am, Sogolon.”
“Fortunes? Like I lose a game? Yeah, the kick to my forehead did feel like three moves on a board.”
“I’m so—”
“I don’t need your sorry.”
“Of course. Sogolon never need anything.”
“I need one thing. For you to take your wit and fuck off with it.”
“Fuck the gods for this vile temper!”
“Gods can go fuck themselves too!”
“Sogolon!”
“What you want?”
“I . . . I . . . now you’ve flustered me. I forget why I come.”
“Then leave.”
“What kind of strangeness get inside you?”
“I don’t know. Is it different from the last strangeness you find? All you seem to look for in me is strangeness. In what way is Sogolon the freak this week? What new curse you find that you can tell your friends in the floating bar?”
“By the gods, how you misjudge me.”
“I think I judge everybody just right. For the first time.”
“In the court of Sogolon, where all are judged guilty. How will you punish us?” he say with a smile.
“Fuck off.”
“Do not speak to me that way.”
“Or else? Which side of my face you want to punch? Maybe a kick. How my belly look? How about a bruise over the left eye to match the one over my right one?”
“By the gods, no. Sogolon.”
“What you want, guard?” she shout.
“Alaya is vanished.”
“What?”
“Two days ago some people in the tavern called him a manwitch for writing words. We tell him it is safer if he leave, and he look at us like we are the ones calling him a witch. Nobody answer his door two days now.”
“Look like he run.”
“Not like him.”
“Nothing is like it is.”
“Nobody is behaving true.”
“That is not what I say. Maybe everybody behaving true for once.”
“Who did this to you? The princess? Why?”
“It don’t matter.”
He stare at her for a long time until she look away.
“Now Beremu tell me they are dismissing the lions. The new King want his own imperial guard.”
“Sangomin?”
“No. Me. And a few others chosen by the Aesi.”
“At least you getting what you always want. Praise the gods.”
“Fuck the gods, Sogolon. I don’t know what times are these,” he say and sit down in a pile of hay as if the strength just get knocked out of him.
“You still think you fighting for what worth fighting for?”