“Wait until I ask a question to talk.”
The bald hunchback one rise, his cane wobbling. He walk not to her, but to the window. Only when he get there do Sogolon notice that she can see right through him.
“A woman don’t have to speak to you to tell you something, little Sogolon. You was a woman of the bedchamber. How come we fetch you from the stables?” he ask.
“I . . . I . . . the . . . the princess, the King Sister grow tired of me.”
“So it go?”
“Yes.”
“Not so other women say, but everybody know how woman lie, not so?”
Sogolon don’t have no answer.
“She banish you for theft, girl. Don’t waste our time. We are talking before that.”
“I don’t know nothing.”
“You don’t—”
“Scala. Everybody appreciate that you so dedicated to the elders that not even death will keep you from duty. But living affairs don’t concern you. Now, girl, we asking what you see, not what you know,” the man from Malakal say.
“I don’t see—”
“You not blind. A fool, maybe, but your eyes have use.”
“Or perhaps afraid,” say the white hair one. “You have nothing to fear. Lady Emini will be stripped of King-Sisterhood. It is no treason or blasphemy to speak out against her.”
So say the hunchback ghost, “Kantu the berserker? General Diamante? Commander Olu? So many virgins that one devirgin. In my day there was competition between—”
“Scala! Shut up!”
“I don’t know them men,” Sogolon say.
“But you see others. Listen, girl, again, it’s no treason to speak against the King Sister, but to be false is to be treacherous to all that is good, and all that is good is of the King. You understand? Nobody here care about the adultery, let aggriever and aggrieved sort out their own mess. But we cannot have a bastard on the throne just to keep the house of Akum in power.”
“If is the end of the line is the end of the line,” say the man from Malakal with a wicked smile.
“That is not what is happening, friend. We already have Kwash Moki as King and he is no son of a sister. The law is the law. If there is no sister, and Ancestor Kagar have none, the next in line is the son of the King. If his sister produce a son, then he is the next King. If she having a bastard, then she violating the rule of gods to keep the throne not in the house of Akum, but her very own roof. You can cuckold a man but you cannot cuckold the kingdom. A plot to seize the crown is treason against the crown. If you lie or we find you in league, then you commit treason too. Besides, the only kind of woman who trade in secret is witch. So again, little girl, what did you see?”
In her mind is a name for these shrivel-cock buckets of shit that keep calling her girl.
“I don’t see nothing. Sirs.”
“Send her to the Aesi. Let him get what he want out of her,” the man from Malakal say. The hunchback nod, agreeing.
* * *
—
They leave her in a room in a temple off the royal enclosure. The room is misty and white, but green also, a forest with plants reaching, spreading, snaking, coiling, popping yellow flowers, and standing still. No windows but inside is bright as day. Glass ceilings resting on a wood frame, Sogolon never see the like, not like the beads in all colors that people wear, but like the windows she kept tapping, thinking nothing is there. She hear a flutter and there he is in the room, though she don’t see him come in. She don’t see a door either, but know she come through one. He point to two stools in the clearing and tell her to sit.
“You think it will rain tonight?” he ask.
“I . . .”
“Speak up, child.”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“No? Even the market woman reads the clouds before she sets out.”
“Never have a reason to look up in the sky,” she say.
“Little girl, we both know that is not true. Are you not a farm girl? How else does one tell the beginning or end of days?”
She don’t answer.
“Such a refreshing rudeness in you,” he say. “Ignorant, but refreshing.”
Sogolon enter the room expecting anything. Questions that cut into her flesh. Or a knife. She don’t know what this is, but it feel like circling. Turn him into something in your head, reduce him, ask yourself why he only wear red and black and if he look like a fool in pink, say the voice that sound like her. I didn’t see nothing, she say to herself. That is what she going to say. Not that she loyal to this King Sister, surely he must know of how she mistreat her. Then she think of what she do know, which is not much really, nothing that the lowborn is required to make any sense of, and what she really want is peace. No, that is not what she want.
“Be here now, child,” he say, and raise an eyebrow because he know a response was coming to her lips.