Black Leopard, Red Wolf

I turned to walk away. Mossi paused for a second, looking at Sogolon, then turned.

“It right there. Read it. Everything right there. Now you waiting on me to put it together for you like your name is child.”

“Be a mother, then.”

“Pretty prefect, read that line again.”

Mossi pulled the papers out of his pouch again.

“Lords of sky. They no longer speak to—”

“Jump over that.”

“As you wish. Mark the god butcher, for he marks the killer of kings.

”

“Stop.”

Sogolon looked at me as if she’d just made everything plain. I almost nodded, thinking I must be a fool to still not see it. I would have left it there too.

“Your little boy is a prophesied assassin who will kill the King?” Mossi said before I could say it. “You want us to find the boy fated by some fool to commit the worst crime one could ever commit. Even this talk right now is treason.”

He was still a man following his uniform, even now.

“No. That would take least ten more years, if it was true. A bad slave and terrible mistress? Why you think it say take him to the Mweru, where no man come back from alive? And to Go, which no people ever see? Killer of kings mean killer of the depraved line, rejected by the gods, or else why would the Spider King join so close to the god butcher? The boy not here to kill no King. He is the King.”

Both Mossi and I stood silent, the prefect more stunned than me. I said to Sogolon, “You trusted this prince to a woman who sold him as soon as she had the chance.”

Sogolon turned back to the window.

“People are deceitful above all things. What can one do?”

“Give us word on this boy. We will have it.”

This is what Sogolon told us in the room. The girl was standing at the door, as if guarding it. And then the old man was in the room, though neither I nor Mossi remembered when he stepped past the girl. Sogolon told this story:

When the ewe drummer want to send you tidings good or bad, he pull the drum strings tight to the body and pitch the voice high or pitch the voice low. Through the pluck, through the pitch, through the beat, lie the message that only you can hear if it meant for you. So when Basu Fumanguru write the writ, and decide he going to send the first to the marketplace, the second to the palace of wisdom, the third to the hall of grand elders, and the fourth to the King, he fashion a fifth, to send to who? Nobody know. But nobody even get send the writs and nobody know what they say. Not even those he tell he was going to write. All we know is that we the sisters who serve the King sister was going to the western hall to pour libation to the earth gods since where we live was in the earth, and the gods of sky was deaf to we. And coming up to us was the sound of the drum.

Mantha. The mountain seven days west of Fasisi and north of Juba. From afar, to the eye of warriors, and travelers, and land pirates, Mantha be a mountain and that is all it be. It rise high like a mountain, have rocks like a mountain, and wild bush like a mountain. Cliff, and rock, and bush, and stone, and dirt, all with no plan. You have to go behind the mountain, and to get behind the mountain take one more day, climb for another half day to see the eight hundred and eight steps, cut out of the rock as if gods make them for the gods to walk. In a time older than now, Mantha be the fortress from where the army could see enemy coming close without the enemy knowing they being watched. That way nobody ever take the lands by surprise and nobody ever invade. Over nine hundred years Mantha gone from being the place to watch enemies, to the place to hide one. Kwash Likud, of the old house Nehu, before the house of this King, would send an old wife to Mantha as soon as he married a new one, or if she produce no boy child, or if the children ugly. Right before the Akum dynasty, the King, once they crown him, would banish all brother and man cousin there, a royal prison where they would die, or become the new King if the King die first. Then come the Akum dynasty, and kings who do as the father do before. And Kwash Dara no different from Kwash Netu. And Netu no different from his great-grandfather, who made it a royal decree that the firstborn sister must join the divine sisterhood, in service of the goddess of security and plenty. And so it be again, that kings all follow the way of Kwash Moki, and violate the true line of kings and give the crown to the son.