“I hope it’s enough for you. Because you should have divorced me. For a divorce, my prince, gets you any province west of Luala Luala and your entire family’s weight in gold. To annul the marriage is to say it never happened. You get nothing, you fool. Really, Prince, you’re a fool’s idea of a fool. An idiot’s idea of an idiot. An imbecile’s idea of a—”
The prince curse and charge her. The King Sister steady herself, for these are the things that must happen to her. A mighty wind, a near storm, blow past her on the right, knock him over, fling him up in the air, and slam him so hard against the window that he burst right through. Sogolon scream. The room is on the ground floor, so he don’t fall far. But for a long time, both women watch him lying there still. Soon he twitch and shake and bolt up and start to cry. Blood running from his arms. He stagger to his feet, and try to run, but fall twice.
“Now is not the season for witches,” the King Sister say.
“I not a witch,” Sogolon say.
“You are something, for certain. Maybe you should join the Sangomin.”
“I would rather go back to Mitu.”
“What is in Mitu?”
“Death.”
Prince Majozi out of sight now. The window will not be replaced. Neither say it, but they both know.
“Commander Olu still missing,” Sogolon say.
“Who?”
“Commander Olu.”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
TEN
See the girl as certain things come to pass. Nobody is watching her and she is watching nobody. Sogolon here thinking that it feel like freedom until she remember that every freeborn person is here at the King’s fancy. Nobody watching her, but they all watching this house of the King Sister, where nobody bother to visit no more. Whatever disgrace visit Emini visit her too, for Sogolon pass by the gatherings of court with no greeting and talk switch to whisper as soon as they see her. The womanservant stop coming and a new one replace her. Her smile is too wide, Sogolon think, for there is nothing in this place for anyone to grin about. She thinking it mockery that this woman keep calling her Highness, but it is that the woman don’t see too good, certainly nothing farther than three arm length ahead of her, and at night she totally blind. But she cook, and clean, and serve with such pleasantness that Sogolon start to wonder if she is sometimes deaf as well. How could she not hear about this house of a fallen woman? Who is this woman with nothing but kindness in the heart? Sogolon is about to believe that there can be still goodness because of this one woman until she remember the Aesi. The work of the Aesi—she smell it all over her.
Sogolon would tell the King Sister, but Emini no longer remember Commander Olu. Forgetfulness spread through this enclosure like a sickness and she know who is the cause. And he know that she know. And she know that he know that she know. Any more knowledge would be a kind of madness, so Sogolon quiet her head. Besides, it is not forgetfulness, for forgetfulness means feeling there is something to remember. Is like Commander Olu gone to the place that Jeleza gone to, the place of they who never born. Like never knowing sight, instead of going blind.
Meanwhile Sogolon watching and plotting. Emini keep to her room, coming out every odd day to go to the battlements and watch hawks. All of the court awaiting the judgment of Kwash Moki but that is so long coming now that the anticipation pass. Maybe that is the punishment, that her bedroom is a prison. But Sogolon hiding, saving dry food, a dull knife that she sharpen, a cowskin that she cut out holes with the knife to wear over her head and see without being seen, and a small wood fetish shaped like a man that she find in the old cook’s room. In it she drive two nail to make her own nkisi nkondi. And other things, like a potion in a green bottle she find under the cook’s bed that she said would heal a cut in one night, a lodestone shaped like an egg, and sandals too big for her feet but with straps as long as a child’s height. She wonder what the guards tell the cook that she had to leave the palace in the quick, without her stashed things.
Should she tell Keme? Better not since he is the King’s soldier who forget his griot friend as soon as he go missing. No, better to leave like a secret. Nobody will care that she gone, but they will punish her for trying to leave. The King, that is. But she already seeing where she going and it is not a place, not a city, not any lands or sea, just a place that is not here. Or Mitu. Or a house of whores, or a mistress married to a master who go hunting for whores. A night with no moon, that is when she should go. That way a white blanket won’t glow in silver light. A day before, she follow the wastewater to see it pouring down the back side of the castle and into an aqueduct that cut through wild field and lead all the way over a gate. This is what she will do. Tie together her sheets and whatever rope she can find. Climb down the back wall of the castle and follow the wastewater.
She move back to her old room knowing nobody would notice. All that is left is to pick the night. She have no other way of picking it other than when she feel ready. That leave it open to be tomorrow, but also two days, two moons, two years from now. Not years, not even a year. No. She need a better plan than that. There is no such thing as the right night, no such thing as ready, and more and more guards are setting up station around the enclosure walls each day.
This day wake her with a monstrous stink. It rush to her nose and pull her eyes open. Yank up her sheets she do, then rush over to every jar in the room to smell it, then unroll a linen that is holding all her dried food to see if any is rotting. But rot of just handful of food could never whip up such a stench. Outside her room it is worse, a torment of smell with something almost sweet underneath it. Flesh, maybe. The smell lure her down the steps, through the great hall and one more after it, and then a third, which frighten her when she remember that the lions used to sleep here. The stink come over her in gusts, but it is sound that lure her farther. Flies buzzing. Ripe. That’s what the smell is, ripe. And the flies making a dinlike swarm. Across the room, the curtains are flapping, hiding the open window. Sogolon stop breathing, but taste the stink on her tongue. She pull back the curtains.
Somebody plant the stake outside the open window and leave the rest to wind. The face with eyes open look at Sogolon, the hair clumpy and wild, the cheeks thin with the skin cracked, and the lips pulled back like a grin but the teeth red from dried blood. The hands loose and the legs free. The stake invading through a hole, Sogolon can’t bear to see which, dislodging her spine and bursting through the side of her neck. Blood like ink cover her chest, breasts, and belly. They impale her like they been doing witches. Her, the headwoman.