“You can help me flee.”
“You listening to what I telling you? This is not Kwash Kagar’s men. Slaves trying to escape is all they are looking for.”
“I not a slave, oh!”
He jump. Then he glance left and right, looking to see who hear. The afternoon quiet for everybody in the court of the King.
“But you bound. Just like me.”
“Boy, you have anything to show me but surrender? No.” A bitter laugh is what she give him.
“You a divine sister now. No man can touch you again,” he say.
“You have any purpose for seeing me other than to make every bad feeling worse?”
“Girl, I not trying to make you suffer.”
He pull something wrapped in linen from inside his tunic, look over his shoulder, then hand it to her.
“Take it.”
“What you giving me?”
“Don’t open it. Not here.”
“I not taking anything from you.”
“Is a dagger.”
“What? What you know?”
“I don’t know anything. Roads are treacherous, Sogolon. People too.”
“They searching we every morning. Where you think I going hide it?”
“You don’t want to go to Mantha without protection, Sogolon. Find a way.”
“You deaf? They search we every day, I say.”
“Then hide it where they won’t check.”
“They check there too.”
“I say hide it where they won’t check, Sogolon.”
“I don’t have no use for damn knife. If you want to help me, tell them you want me to be your second wife.”
“What? No, it’s too late.”
“Too late for who?”
“Sogolon, what you mean?”
“I say take me for your second wife, or third, or whoever.”
“I can’t—”
She step toward him, he step back.
“Everything about you is what you can’t. A whole day waiting for when you can.”
“Sogolon.”
“I can be good with the wife things. I not no little girl.”
“What is this? Who is this?”
“You think I don’t see how you look at me? Every time me turn to look at you, you looking at me first. Tell them that you find me agreeable and want to have me for wife. Tell them.”
“It not going to make any—”
She step closer. He don’t step back.
“Tell them, oh. You think me can’t do the wife things? You already have bitch to cook and clean, me can give you other things. Stop looking for a little girl, she gone. The woman you waiting on right in front of you.”
She move up to him, almost pressing into his chest.
“People teach me woman things. Thing you don’t need no big breast for.”
She do it. She reach out, push through the front of his armor, and grab his crotch, too hard, then squeeze too hard, then caress, too slow.
“I can’t go with them, Keme. I won’t go. I won’t go. Don’t make me go.”
“Is not by my hand—”
“I won’t go, you hear me? Take me, move me, hide me, I don’t care what you do, you want to sell me too? Sell me to a good man, give me to your father, or your brother, or somebody, anybody. I can’t go to this place I can’t go I can’t go I can’t go.”
Keme pull her hand out of his crotch.
“You mistress did say you are late of a whorehouse.”
Sogolon stop with everything, her thinking also.
“Told me that one morning when she thought I was taking a liking to you. So collect yourself and find the girl who just vanish. She must be around here some—”
Screaming wind storm from behind her, knocking down a young tree, breaking off new flowers and ripping their petals apart, and punching Keme into the air and spinning him head over heels and flinging him right off the landing.
“Sogolon!” he yell.
But he don’t fall. He still in the air, spinning in the sky, shouting at her to help him. She doing it, she don’t know how and yet she know is she. For more than a blink she just watch him, feeling her mind race and him spin, her mind calm and him slow. He still yelling, and if he make any more noise somebody will come running. Sogolon think about a gentle wind coaxing him back to the ground, and that is what bring him back. When he land, he stagger, almost fall, coughing twice. Sogolon reach for his shoulder.
“Don’t touch me, witch,” he growl as she pull back from him. “Make distance between you and me.”
Sogolon run off.
Later, in the night, she discover his gift on her windowsill, still wrapped in linen. The knife is no knife, just a piece of wood like a stick. She go to curse Keme and grab the thing to throw it when a sharp and shiny blade shoot through from the tip. Sogolon drop the blade and wince at the noise. She pick it up and see a blade so shiny that she is looking at herself. The handle firm, like ivory, but the side sink when she grab it, like she is clasping a wrist. She examine the handle, rolling it around in her hand, and touch the pommel. The blade vanish back inside so quick that she drop the dagger again. She put the pommel to her hair, her elbow, and neck. Nothing. She touch it with her finger, and the thing, shiny like a mirror, stab through the dark.
* * *
—
Both women wake up surprised that the night didn’t pass in troubled sleep. Emini say she take it as sign that over her has come everlasting peace. Sogolon take it as warning, about what, she don’t know. Sogolon tear away a strip of the bedding and wrap the dagger around her arm. The caravans leave at dawn. Emini scoff when she see what the caravans be, two carts with a wooden box built on top of each, with a door with a cut out window and a cloth roof. Everybody else is on donkey, mule, and horse. She shout her demand for two horses, one for herself and one for Sogolon. You ever been on a horse? she ask, but before Sogolon answer, the woman who yell submission into them before—she recognize the voice—shout at them to get in the first wagon. Sogolon go to climb but Emini go to defy, shouting that she is not going to lie in someplace that men sleep with their lice and fleas and ticks. This woman, who is about to ride a horse, approach the two of them. She swing hard but Sogolon jump in the way and take the slap meant for the King Sister. She don’t know why she do it. The woman look at her perplex before she shout that they both get in the wagon.
“Why you take my slap?” Emini ask.
“I don’t know.”
Inside the wagon everything is white, even the runes marked all over the covering. Too low to stand without bending over, even for a woman. Furs, two cushions, and a jug that smell foul, that is all what inside the wagon. All for a trip that she hear would take a quartermoon traveling at this pace. Sogolon pull back a drape at the front to see seven riders ahead of them, all horsewomen. They are the first divine sisters she see with weapons, brandishing sword, dagger, and spear. The cart hit a bump that pitch both of them forward and knock them down, where they stay. Downhill they go. Sogolon only need to look at Emini to know they gone past the final gate.
But then all around her again, a monstrous stink. And not no flash of rankness that mean they passing it by but one that go on and on, so endless that Sogolon turn to lift up the covering.