Warrior of the World Read online

  I ran my fingers over the simple patterns carved into the wood, dark with age. Chains of elephants followed each other in spirals. Flowers bloomed between them, birds darting in and out, carrying garlands. All four posts had the same elephant parade, but three differed in the other elements. One had fish and reeds, another ducks and lily pads, the last lionesses and the mushroom-looking trees of the grass plains. I went from one to the next observing the similarities and differences, as I hadn’t before.

  “For each of their children,” Zalaika said, coming into the area and joining me at the post with the lionesses. She tapped one. “This was their first daughter, Zema, named for the lion queens who roam the plains. They are astonishing to see.”

  “I saw some,” I told her. “On the journey here.”

  “Did you?” She gave me a thoughtful look. “Ochieng didn’t tell me this.”

  Because I hadn’t told him. I couldn’t have, at the time, with my vow of silence intact, but I might not have anyway. The dawn vision of the three lionesses had felt … sacred in a way. I wasn’t at all sure what moved me to tell Zalaika now. Something about the carvings on the pole reminded me of those lions and the way their eyes had glowed as they took my measure.

  “Only I saw them,” I told her. “Just before the sun rose. Three of them. They appeared out of the mist, looked at me, and left again.”

  Zalaika hummed in her throat. “A powerful vision.”

  That hadn’t occurred to me. “I think they were real.”

  She laughed, husky and not unkindly, patting me on the arm. “I’m sure they were. I simply mean that they came to give you an important message, appearing only to you, at that time.”

  “What message?” I asked.

  “Only you can know that, as it was for you. Three powerful females, sisters, maybe. Perhaps that will mean something to you, if it doesn’t already.”

  Sisters. The thought hit me with startling clarity. Could it be about my sisters and me? Inga and Helva had promised to be there when I returned to Dasnaria. I’d at least managed to spare them my fate, but unless they chose to marry—and they would not be forced to, if the emperor and my mother kept their promises—they would live out their lives in the seraglio of the Imperial Palace. Golden blond and lethal in their graceful ways, they could be my sister lionesses.

  What did that mean, though? We would never be together again. I couldn’t return to Dasnaria, and they would never be allowed to leave.

  “We’ve all adopted this tradition,” Zalaika said, running her fingers over the carvings as I had. “When we marry, the couple chooses a set of four posts to make a new room, and they carve it with designs. If children come, the parents add images to represent each child and what we name them.”

  “What images did you carve for Ochieng?” I asked, suddenly curious.

  “The sun, of course,” she replied. Then cocked her head at my expression. “His name means ‘of the sun.’”

  Of course it did. A shiver ran over me, that sense of Danu’s hand.

  “You will have to come see our poles sometime,” Zalaika continued. “They become part of the history of this house, see? The foundation of the home and also of the family.”

  I carefully didn’t meet her expectant gaze. Though I remembered how Ochieng had asked me that about the tree we’d harvested together. He’d said it would make four excellent poles if I’d like to help carve them. I’d nodded agreement and he’d been so happy. With a stab of sheer alarm, I realized that had been his version of an offer of marriage. Zalaika’s gaze weighed on me, making me wonder if Ochieng had told her that.

  It shouldn’t count. Right after that everything had gone to chaos, with the news of Kaja’s death and my late husband’s imminent arrival. Besides, I hadn’t known what Ochieng was truly asking, or I wouldn’t have agreed. Even if I’d wanted to agree, I couldn’t have as Dasnarian women can’t make those kinds of legal decisions.

  Though…I wasn’t Dasnarian anymore. I’d made myself into a widow through my own actions, why not make my own self into a wife? Despite Ochieng’s confident assurances that he could handle me should I descend into madness, I had no such faith. I couldn’t possibly have children, not knowing what uncontrollable violence lay buried in the fetid detritus of my soul.

  “I think I’ll try dancing a bit,” I told her, hoping she’d go away, but Zalaika nodded and surveyed the room, making sure all was ready.

  “How do you dance without music?” she asked. “I’ve long wanted to ask you this. It seems impossible to me.”

  I had to laugh. Zalaika—indeed, all the people of Chiyajua it seemed—conducted every aspect of their lives to music. They sang along with the negombe that pulled the caravan wagons. They sang dinner chants, cleaning chants, elephant chants. The sisters even continued to hum their weaving music under the conversation, interrupting themselves to argue about mold and the river, then picking up the tune again.

  “When I learned, I had music,” I told her. “The women sang and chanted the dance songs.”

  “No instruments?”

  “Where I grew up, I lived entirely with women, and women did not play instruments, so no.”

  Zalaika looked aghast and avidly curious. I should have anticipated that more than Ochieng would have questions about my past—and had answers ready. I didn’t care to expose my family and culture to their judgment more than necessary. Struggling to see what I came from more objectively would be enough challenge without feeling I needed to somehow defend it. But I did know something about directing conversation.

  “It is a wonderful tradition among my family,” I told her, “that we sing the songs and pass along the dances from mother to daughter. The music lives in our hearts and needs no other instrument.”

  Zalaika considered that, pursing her lips. A gleam of understanding in her dark eyes, so like her son’s, indicated that she might see through my gambit, but she also allowed it. “Perhaps you’ll teach us your song then? We shall sing for your dance. Palesa and Thanda! Come in here. Ivariel is going to teach us one of her people’s songs.” She smiled at me with such artless pleasure that I might’ve believed she hadn’t neatly taken control of the conversation again.

  Palesa and Thanda came in, carrying pieces of their weaving, wearing excited smiles, and settled themselves on pillows. Ochieng followed, leaning a shoulder against one post and giving me a questioning look. If I asked him—even by the slightest gesture—he would save me from his mother and sisters.

  As soon as I thought it, the absurdity of my trepidation hit me. These women only longed for diversion. A new song, a dance, to relieve the boredom of the rains. And to get to know me better. They posed no threat to me. Rather the reverse.

  Thinking of the lionesses I’d seen, and of my sisters, I began singing a simple song, one for little girls first learning to dance. Not the ducerse, the demanding dance I’d shown my students, the one Kaja had deemed the most adaptable to martial use. We called this one the Silly Snail. Being a children’s song, it had simple, repetitive words, an easy tune.

  As I chanted the first lines, Zalaika and the others—even Ochieng, to my surprise—singing them back, I caught sight of Ayela peeking from the next room, so I beckoned to her. She came running with a wide smile of delight, taking the hand I offered her and following along with my steps.

  My body protested, those deep muscles not liking the undulating movements of even that easy dance, but it also felt good to move, to not feel so fragile and tentative. More children joined us dancing, and more adults in the singing, until it seemed all the D’tiembos not in the storehouse had pressed in around the first room. They even shifted some stores from the neighboring rooms, tying back the curtains to make more space.

  As the people of Chiyajua loved to do, the adults began embroidering on the refrains, adding in words from their own language. So odd to hear the Dasnarian song of my chi
ldhood mixed with Nyamburan words and sung in men’s voices, too, their clapping and stomping a masculine underscore to the higher women’s melodies.

  They were having so much fun—and so was I, amazingly enough—that, though my body ached like an overstretched length of old leather, and I poured with sweat, I taught them another song and dance, and then another.

  Until Ochieng whispered in Zalaika’s ear and she called a halt for lunch. After which I slept the afternoon away again. Only later, after dinner, did I realize I hadn’t gone to see the elephants. Anticipating me, Ochieng told me he’d gone while I slept. They were fine and Efe sent her best wishes for a full recovery. Violet said to send more melons.

  The voices he used for the elephants’ messages made me laugh.

  It had been a good day.

  “Yes,” Ochieng replied, and I realized I’d said it aloud. “And every day can be just as good, like this.”

  ~ 5 ~

  I stood in the driving rain, drenched to the bone, trying to coax a stubbornly terrified Efe out of the elephant shelter.

  Even though she stood in swirling water up to her knees, the young elephant swung her head ponderously back and forth like ancient Mara back in the seraglio. I could almost hear her querulously refusing tea, afraid it might be poisoned. Of course, in the seraglio, that had been a real fear. Efe was like me—afraid of what she didn’t know.

  “Efe, darling, come on.” I had my arms tangled in her trunk, not exactly pulling on it—try pulling an elephant by the trunk and see what happens—but kind of hugging and tugging at once. She backed deeper into the now empty shelter, dragging me with her. I lost my footing, as knee-deep water for her meant thigh-deep for me, and she kept me upright by pulling me against her, nudging me into the fold of her leg and chest, as if we’d be safe that way.

  “We’re going to have to get stern with her,” Ochieng shouted over the pounding of the rain. “All the others are on high ground. There’s no time left for coaxing.”

  The river had reached Desta’s two more marks and higher. Everyone—except me—had been working the last three days to move the goods in the storehouse to the second level. An enormous storm upstream decided the matter. Debate became moot as the river rose so fast that it surged just below the first level almost overnight.

  I wasn’t allowed to lift anything, even the children running up to take things from me if I tried, but Ochieng gave in when I pointed out that I could at least help with the elephants. Or rather, he succumbed in the face of my imperiously informing him I’d do as I liked, so he might as well go along if he wanted to ensure my safety and good health.

  He’d laughed and held up his hands in resignation, muttering to himself about his poor choices in love. I pretended not to hear. The whole exchange left me warm with an odd burst of affection. It made no sense that I’d be at my happiest in the midst of this crisis. But then I’d been miserable surrounded by luxury.

  It seemed happiness came from something other than easy circumstances.

  The D’tiembos had a system for dealing with the flood waters, and I wore a long rope tied around my waist, anchoring me to the solid storehouse across the way. And I’d grown stronger, too, in the last weeks, practicing my dances while the rains fell without pause, regaining my leg muscles and wind. Though I still left my sword and knives closed in a chest in my room.

  “You can’t hurt her,” I yelled back at him, which wasn’t fair, because Ochieng would never willingly hurt an elephant.

  Lighting cracked overhead and Efe jumped, rearing a little and backing against the rock face. Ochieng cursed and put his arms around me, speaking rapidly to Efe in the patois he used just with the elephants.

  “If it comes to that,” he said in my ear when Efe stopped trying to stomp us, “if we have a choice between binding her and forcing her to come or abandoning her to the floodwaters, which do you choose?”

  It made me unreasonably angry that he posed it as my choice. They were his elephants, weren’t they? “She’s too big to float away,” I said, stubborn as Efe. Her eye, so near mine, rolled with fear.

  “Not if she gives up.”

  “No manacles,” I replied after a moment. “Not ever again. We promised her.” The elephant’s ankles bore the ridged white scars of the manacles she’d worn for her captors. Ochieng’s gaze went to my own wrists, and the similar scars I bore, resignation in his eyes.

  “We don’t even have manacles,” he answered. “I meant ropes.”

  “Absolutely not.” Efe and I, both completely unreasonable.

  “What will move her then?” He asked me, as if I’d know. But perhaps I did, if I knew Efe’s heart like my own.

  “Who,” I replied. “Someone she trusts. We need Violet.”

  He only paused a moment. “Do you want to get her or shall I?”

  All the other elephants had gone up the long path to the mesa that the D’tiembo granite butte thrust out of. I suppose Ochieng gave credit to my greatly recovered strength by even asking the question, though I suppose both jobs would be equally difficult—climbing the steep path or calming Efe.

  Lightning cracked again, followed by sonorous thunder. A bad omen. Efe moaned along with it, doing her best to squinch her great self into a ball. The first day I met the elephants, Ochieng had called them mice in huge bodies. If Efe lost her mind, I’d never be able to stop her from flinging herself into the raging waters.

  “I’ll go,” I told him.

  He gave me a long very serious look, grabbing my hand and holding it tightly. “Do I have to remind you to be very, very careful?”

  I glanced at the new river of water, where there had been the ankle deep mud only weeks before. I never thought I’d miss that mud. “I’m climbing out of the water and going uphill. You’re the one staying here with a crazy and dangerous female.” I petted Efe in apology with my free hand, though she hardly noticed. “I should warn you to be very, very careful.”

  “I happen to like crazy and dangerous females.” He gave me a crooked grin.

  On impulse, I wrapped my fist in his shirt and kissed him. The first time since that morning I woke up. And not a gentle kiss as it had been that day. I opened my mouth and kissed him with all the skill I’d never used for that, stroking the tender inside of his lips with my tongue. He made a sound, let go my hand, and snagged me around the waist, pulling me tight against him as he returned the kiss in kind, his mouth as clever as the rest of him. The world faded into background, the water swirling around my thighs an echo of the surging inside me.

  Hot, dizzying, exhilarating, I fell into the pleasure of the kiss. This, it seemed, I could have with Ochieng, unsullied by memories of the past.

  “We’re working ourselves to exhaustion and you two are kissing in the elephant shed?” Hart yelled over the rain, and we sprang apart, guilty as charged. Hart had traveled with us on the ship from Ehas and familiarity made him easy with teasing us.

  “Calming the elephant,” Ochieng called back with an unrepentant grin. “Cuddling always makes them more relaxed.”

  Oddly enough, Efe did seem less wild.

  “I’ll remind you of that story later.” Hart shook his head. “Desta sent me to tell you everything is moved and the river looks to be surging. We’re to get back to the house.”

  “Not yet,” Ochieng and I said together, exchanging bemused looks.

  “We have to move Efe,” he said.

  “I have to get Violet,” I said.

  Hart looked between us. “You both are crazy.”

  “Go with Ivariel up the butte,” Ochieng told him. “She can use your help.”

  Hart gave him an astonished—and somewhat panicked look. “With what? I can’t ride the elephants.”

  “You can make sure she doesn’t drown,” Ochieng snapped back, uncharacteristically terse and commanding.

  “It’s all right,” I told
Ochieng.

  “Hart is going with you,” he replied, staring down the young man. “He owes both of us.”

  Hart threw up his hands. “Fine, fine. At least it’s uphill.”

  “I’ll be back as fast as I can,” I told Ochieng, wishing I could kiss him again. Suddenly I felt as if I’d wasted enormous amounts of time, not kissing him all this while.

  “You take all the time you need to be safe,” he returned, dark gaze going to my mouth, making me think he wished the same. He patted Efe. “We’ll be fine.”

  The elephant reached a questing trunk to me, and I let her snuffle the sensitive thumb-like tips around my fingers, a sort of elephant kiss. I unknotted the rope from around my waist, retied it to a post of the overhang, and joined the impatient Hart. Without looking back—which would only make me want to stay—I waded with him out the uphill side of the pavilion. There a broad path led from the elephants’ usual grounds, winding up the butte.

  I’d gone that way before, that day Ochieng took me to see the forest on the other side of the ridge. But the resemblance between that hot and dusty road and this had long faded into a dreamlike past. Hart and I waded out of the deeper torrent fairly quickly, to my relief, but the steep path was hardly easier to navigate. A stream ran down the middle, carving a steep gully filled with rushing water. In addition, the rain had stripped away the looser dirt and gravel, leaving larger—and sharper—rocks behind. Pride wouldn’t let me fail in front of him. It helped, too, in the most difficult sections, for one person to anchor themself and help the other up.

  I had no idea how Violet would manage, but I was thinking one step at a time.

  Another good reason to have Hart along—he knew the direction to the upper elephant pasture. I hadn’t been there before, but he had, helping cut hay before the rains. It looked like a small lake rather than a meadow, but there were the elephants, stoically weathering the downpour, snaking up bundles of drowned grass with their trunks and munching as if the storm didn’t rage around them.