Black Leopard, Red Wolf

So it come that the King sister, before he become King and before she reach ten and seven, she to give herself over to the divine sisterhood, but this sister not go. Let ugly woman who no man want become divine sister, she say. Why would I push away great meats and soups and breads to eat millet and drink water with bitter, wrinkled dogs, and wear white for the rest of my days? Indeed no man answer her and among them her father. This princess forget that she be princess and start to walk like prince. Crown prince. She ride horse, and strike and parry with sword, and string the bow, and play the lute, and amuse her father and scare her mother, for she grow up to see what happen to woman with will of her own. Even a princess. Father, send me to join the women warriors in Wakadishu, or send me to be hostage in a court in the East, and I will be your spy, she say to him. What I should do is send you to a prince who will beat your thick head down soft, he say to her and she say, But, great King, are you ready for the war that will break when I kill this prince? And he say, I have no wish to send you to Wakadishu or the eastern land, and she say, I know, good Father, but why let that stop you? She quick of wit, something man in the North think is a gift that only come to man, and the King say to her more than once, How much more like a son you are to me than this one.

For here is truth. Before he was Kwash Dara, he flighty, and vengeful, and carry great malice over small things. But he was no fool. It was Lissisolo who say, Consider returning Wakadishu to the southern King, Father, after the elders said in open court it was wise that a king, after war, keep all spoils and spare none to the enemy, for he will think him weak. It is nothing to us, she said. No good fruit, pure silver, or strong slave comes from there, it is near all swamp. Besides, there is sown so many seeds of rebellion that he will lose it without us lifting a finger. The King nodded at such good wisdom and said, How much like a son you are to me, more than this one. Meanwhile Kwash Dara spend day and nights rejecting the fifty women who say yes, so he can rape and kill the one girl who say no. Or whip any friend and any prince who beat him in horse racing, and demanding they cook the horse. Or say to his father at court, The gods whisper it in my ear, but tell me true, Father, will you die soon? And he say these things because there was many to tell him that he is the most beautiful and wise of men.

Then the King change the rule. What a thing that be! He could not bear to see the kingdom without his daughter so he say, You, my darling Lissisolo, shall never have to join the divine sisterhood. But you must find a husband. A lord, or a prince, but not a chief. So she find a prince, one of the plenty in Kalindar, with no princedom. But the seed strong in him and she make four children in seven years, and still take her place at the King side, while Kwash Dara go to follow warriors three days after battle to hiss that slow horses make him again miss the fighting.

Let us make the story quick. The King dead, choke on chicken bone, they say. Kwash Dara, he take the crown off the head of he father, right there in the battle camp, and say, I am King. Regard your King, and worship me. And when the King’s general said, But you are worshipped only on your death, when you become a god, Most Excellent One, Kwash Dara scream at him, but do nothing in front of the other generals. That general dead in one moon. Poison. Not even a year pass by when the people of the empire start to wonder, is it the southern King who mad, or this new King in the North? I not yet serve her, so I not know how it start, first the rumor, then the accuse. But the rumor fly around and land in whispers days before the King, at the assembly of court, rise from the throne, turn, and point straight at he sister, saying, You, dearest Lissisolo, on this my first anniversary, your plot has been found out. Did you think that you could slip it past a King and a god? Lissisolo always laugh at her brother as sport and she laugh as he speak, for how in all the gods this be anything but joke?

And when he walk right up to her and say, The divine King has ears everywhere, sister, she say, Which King he talking about, Lissisolo don’t know since the divine King is their father, who was now with the ancestors. Lissisolo laugh at him and say, You still the little boy in the royal bed, saying what is mine is mine, and what is yours is mine. Even the lords and chiefs who hate him know that was disrespect to Kwash Dara. The King is the throne, and the throne is the King. Mock one and mock the other. He slap her straight across her face and she stagger back on the throne platform, and almost fall off.

“And here comes your Prince consort, from who cares which territory,” he say to the Kalindar prince, who step once, think about what a next step going to mean, and hold back.