by Julia Ember
The General continued to stroke the foal’s baby fuzz. The unicorn gradually relaxed under his touch, sucking on the man’s gnarled finger as if hoping his new friend might feed him. Zuberi’s attendant crept forward unbidden and positioned the stool so that the General could rest again. “My mind keeps returning to these creatures. Arusei has wanted to take power for years. He believes that I’m too old and that the chiefs have too much autonomy. The railroad is worrying. Arusei has always looked to the North for help.” He cast a glance up at Kara. “One of the reasons we do not allow foreigners here, is so that they can’t map our capital. But the use of the creatures, why? It seems like a lot of trouble to go through. Yes, they are powerful, but horses are easier to come by and elephants are stronger. Why these specific animals… unless they are needed for more than building. I fear whatever weapon he plans to bring into this country.”
“We should act quickly,” Father said, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “Arusei doesn’t have that many men yet. Although he has slaves, I doubt they will fight for him, especially if they see their General and know they have a chance to get away.”
General Zuberi passed the foal back up to Kara. He stroked his chin and one of his legs tapped the earth as he thought. “It will take me a few days to give orders to the commanders here. I can be ready to leave in two days’ time. Until then, you will have a place here as my guests. Your men will be housed comfortably in city lodgings, and you can take up residence in the guest’s cottage at the base of the mound.”
“Two days?” I demanded, ignoring the sharp look my father gave me. “Tumelo could be dead in two days.” If he wasn’t gone already…. “Can’t we leave today? It’s still early, not even noon. If we left now, we could reach the poacher’s camp by sunset.”
The General scowled. “I was not asking for your input, Miss Ohakim. I know my armies and my commanders. We will strike at dawn, not at night when our torches will let them know we are coming. Without more information on the weapons, we must do it that way. I have been a military commander longer than you have been alive. I am sorry that your cousin is a prisoner, but if you had come to your father first, instead of foolishly trying to infiltrate a serious criminal operation, you would not have these concerns. Dismount. My attendants will see to you.”
My face went hot with shame.
He raised an arm and a herd of servants, hiding in places I’d never noticed, appeared in the courtyard. Each of them was dressed in simple black shifts with a red scarf wrapped around their heads. Zuberi made his own way inside, leaving us in his servants’ capable hands. I dismounted, my dress clinging awkwardly to the horn on my saddle.
As soon as my feet touched the ground, my father grabbed me by the arm and shook me. “What possessed you to speak out to the General in such a manner?”
I pulled my arm away but could still feel the places where his fingers had been as I cradled it against my chest. “Tumelo. Even if Arusei doesn’t kill him, who knows what he is doing to them right now? The sooner we get them away, the better.”
“Do you think I like the idea of my nephew languishing in that traitor’s cage? I hate it. But the General will want to do things thoroughly, not rush in and hope everything works out,” he hissed. I looked away. We had rushed in, and it had cost us, but part of me worried now that the cost of moving too slowly might be worse.
One of the General’s attendants approached and took Elikia’s reins from my hand. She moved to take the foal, but Kara held the bag against her chest and shook her head. Another servant raised her hand and spoke in Echalende, “The ladies will come with me. I will show you to a room and a hot bath. We apologize that you will have to share. All three of the General’s wives are in residence at this time, but General Zuberi does not feel it appropriate for you to stay in the warriors’ barracks.”
As we turned to walk away, my father pulled me to face him. He leaned down and pressed a warning kiss to my cheek. “I expect to find you still here when I return tomorrow.”
THE ATTENDANT led us to a room at the back of the General’s enormous villa. For me, having my own hut with a bed and a bath at Tumelo’s camp had seemed like a luxury after a lifetime of sharing a room with my family. This room had a bed framed in gilded iron, large enough for a whole family to sleep on a single mattress. A fire roared on the hearth, bathing the space in warm, orange light. A basket of fruits lay on the side table, piled high with guavas and bananas. The floors were covered with plush velvet rugs in blue and silver—the General’s war colors. At any other time, I would have rolled into the bed’s feather softness, enveloping myself in the crisp new sheets. Instead, I just stared at the basket of fruit and wished I were back at the camp, swiping bruised mangoes from Tumelo’s cracked bowl.
“I should take the animal to the stables for you,” the attendant sniffed. “He will make a mess of the room. The only beast we keep in the house is the General’s pet phoenix.”
“We’ll clean up after him,” I promised. I didn’t want the foal or Kara to panic.
The servant raised her arm stiffly and backed out of the room.
“Well, this is a beautiful prison,” Kara said when the attendant shut the door behind her. “I understand that the General wants to be cautious, but two days? Who knows what could happen to them in two days.”
I nodded and flopped over backward onto the bed, looking up at the blue ceiling. “That’s what I tried to tell the General. As you saw, he didn’t listen. He’ll leave when he chooses to, no matter what I say to him.”
“So is that what we’re going to do?” Kara took the foal out of his bag and let him wander the room. He licked one of the guavas and drew his head back in disgust.
“You don’t think rushing into things has gotten us into enough trouble already?”
The foal lost his balance on the slick wooden floor, slipping and bumping his chin. He whinnied miserably, drawing his spindly legs under his body. Kara knelt to help him back to his feet, bracing him with her hands so he didn’t fall again. “I can’t live with myself, sitting here, doing nothing, while those thugs might be torturing my father. And you can’t live without Tumelo.”
I hesitated, picking at a stray thread on the bed’s cover. If we left now, Father and the General would be furious. Arusei could catch us sneaking around his camp again, and once he had all of us in his clutches, what was to stop him from killing us? By the time General Zuberi arrived with his forces, we could be dead, and if we weren’t then Zuberi could very well have us horsewhipped for disobeying him. Being a foreigner wouldn’t save Kara from the lash. I shuddered. The whip would shred her soft, creamy flesh, leaving her back a pulpy mess like the inside of a fig.
My father’s scolding rang in my ears. We had been rash and stupid. “What will we do once we get there?” I asked. “If they’re alive, they’ll be locked in that cage. And you can bet Arusei will keep the keys on him.”
Kara shrugged. “What will we do here? Just sit here and worry? Arusei has thirty armed men at the most. Why does General Zuberi need two whole days to get ready?”
“He probably wants to make sure he can give a real show of force. To put others off the idea of trying something like it themselves.”
“And what about the legends? With the way you lied to the General out there, we can hardly tell him now, ‘oh look, we mysteriously stumbled upon Arusei’s moonstone’—if he’s made a weapon out of the unicorns, shouldn’t we find out? Shouldn’t we warn them? If the General marches straight into a death trap, what will happen to Tumelo then?” When she widened her blue eyes at me, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to kiss her or strangle her before she could tempt me into any more trouble. “We won’t ride up and investigate. We can find a place to watch, and if we get the opportunity to free them, we take it. Otherwise, we can map out the area. And if there is nothing we can do, I promise we’ll wait for General Zuberi to arrive.”
“You know we could get whipped right? I’m not saying we will, but it’s illega
l to disobey a military order.” I swung my legs off the bed and went to stand behind her, tracing my fingers along the perfect curve of her spine. She shifted, turning toward me to return my affection. Before I could think about stepping away, her arm snaked out, wrapping itself around my buttocks and pulling me to her with sudden aggression. But for the first time, I felt my body yield at her forwardness, my stomach pressed against her.
“Where I come from, we’d get shot.”
I shivered. Barbarians. “The whippings aren’t something to laugh at, though… some people’s backs never recover.”
She looked up into my eyes. “I know you want to protect me, but I know what I’m getting myself into. We started this. We can’t let your father walk straight into a trap too.”
FOR THE second time in a week, I found myself staging an escape before the sun came up. We tiptoed through the villa, holding our shoes and trying to remember how to get out of the enormous house without opening the door to General Zuberi’s bedroom. As we crept through the kitchen, I imagined Zuberi greeting us at the door—feet bare, rubbing his eyes to clear the sleep, using his rifle as a cane. The moonstone weighed heavily in the pocket inside my shirt. It would be too easy for him to take it from me.
The unicorn foal wasn’t helping my nerves, but Kara refused to leave him behind. Although he was currently sleeping in his carrier bag, belly full of mare’s milk, there was no way to tell him he had to be quiet. If he woke up and started whinnying, we’d be in trouble.
“This is insane,” I whispered as Kara wedged the front door open a crack. My feet kept moving, even as I protested. We slipped through the opening and left the door slightly ajar, too afraid to risk the sound of closing it. We were going to get caught before we even made it down the hill, which was just as well, maybe, since I was still working on what to tell the guards and the stable master. At least if we were caught in the house, maybe we could invent a believable excuse.
Kara nodded but didn’t stop as she half skipped down the path to hide behind a tree. I studied the ground beneath us, following the line of hoof prints leading away from the courtyard. I motioned her back over, and we jogged along the line. My heel came down on a sharp rock, and I had to stifle a yelp, hopping a few steps and biting down curses.
General Zuberi’s stable block looked like a small village. Enclosed by a low wall, the stables were made up of a collection of brick buildings, each larger than my family’s house. The buildings bordered a courtyard with a well and an exercise arena. A pair of stable boys stood on the edge of a stack of millet, sorting it into piles to distribute to the animals.
We hugged the tree line, sneaking around the boys in a wide arc. My heel was bleeding, leaving drops of blood on the gray gravel.
“We’re never going to find our horses down there. That place is huge, and if we hang around looking for them, we’ll definitely get caught,” Kara said as she ducked under a low-hanging branch. “I say we take the first two we find and go.”
My mouth hung open, and I glanced sharply at her to see if she was joking. She crouched low against the tree, not even looking at me. Steal horses from the most powerful man in Nazwimbe? Now I knew she’d lost her mind. Perhaps grief and fear had driven her insane. And what did that say about me? Since I was still following her.
“We can’t steal from General Zuberi! Are you crazy?” Even if we only found one of our horses and had to ride double the whole way, it would be better than stealing from a warlord.
Her hand reached back and found mine, giving it a squeeze. She turned to me, a strange gleam in her eye—I couldn’t decide if it was insanity or mischief. “You said yourself there are only three penalties in Nazwimbe: whipping, fines, or the Pit. We haven’t committed a blood crime, so they won’t throw us in a well. And we’re already disobeying a military order, so we’ll probably already get horsewhipped like you said. I’m sure your father will get the horses back later. So, what else do we have to lose?”
The rest of our skin, an extra quart of blood, our dignity, our reputations—fuck it. Tumelo was worth all of that. I sighed and then nodded.
We snuck into the first of the stable buildings. In the flickering torchlight, I peered over stable doors to consider the horses inside. While Kara scanned the stalls, I looked around for our own horses. The barn was quiet, and I wasn’t going to add theft to our growing list of transgressions unless we absolutely had to.
A low, metallic moan echoed through the barn and a pool of blue, outdoor light flooded into the stable block.
“Someone’s here. Stop arguing with me. Pick a horse and let’s go!” Kara urged, tugging me closer to the stalls.
Small, perky white ears poked out from above the first door, and a playful child’s pony nipped my shoulder, kicking at his stable door to be fed. In the next stall over, a chestnut roan nibbled the top of the unicorn foal’s head when Kara backed too close to him. The baby let out a shrill, irritated whinny.
“These will have to do,” Kara said, grabbing the bridle on the peg next to the roan’s door. She unlocked the door and thrust the bit between the pony’s teeth, vaulting aboard. The pony was so round that his stomach wobbled when she nudged him. Her feet hung down to his knees.
The white pony bit me again, and I cursed. Riding a miniature beast with an attitude problem into a savanna full of predators was not part of the plan. Not that we’d had much of a plan to begin with. And with the way things seemed to be going, these brats probably belonged to the General’s granddaughters. The morning just got worse and worse. I could almost feel the whip against my back.
I snatched the white pony’s bridle and went into his stable. He stomped gleefully and turned circles in his enclosure. I seized him by the muzzle, glaring deep into his playful stare to let him know I was not in the mood to play. The pony lunged, intent on nipping me on the thigh. As soon as his mouth opened, I shoved the bit into it. The little horse stilled in surprise.
I climbed aboard. His back was broad and he felt more solid than I had expected. Kara pressed the roan forward and the white pony followed on instinct. I grabbed a handful of his long mane to steady myself against his short, choppy gait.
When they saw us cantering over the gravel, the two stable boys dropped their pitchforks and ran after us. Something about the way the ponies accelerated, ears pricked forward with delight, made me think that this was not the first time they’d been chased. I wondered how often they escaped without riders. The stable boys began shouting, and I heard doors opening behind us as servants and guards stumbled out of their huts.
Kara did not lead us down the gravel path like I expected. Instead, she galloped into the wooded gardens, making use of the ponies’ small size to weave in and out of trees. There was only one gate. The rest of the complex was surrounded by a low fence, chest height at the most. I gulped, knowing exactly what she was planning to do.
We galloped downhill, reaching the base of the mound in minutes. The wall loomed ahead, looking much larger than it had the day before when I’d looked at it from the height of Elikia’s back. If the pony stopped, his neck was too short to catch me. I’d sail over his head alone and break my neck on the wall.
“Kara, no!” I shouted too late.
With a gleeful snort, the pony took off like an antelope, tucking his delicate feet against his enormous belly. He cleared the wall by a foot, bucking triumphantly when his hooves touched the ground on the other side. I nearly slipped off his round sides. Kara pulled up next to me, face wind-whipped and flushed.
“That was brilliant,” she breathed.
Brilliantly crazy. Brilliantly stupid. Her lips crushed against mine.
IN THE quietness of the early morning, the rest of Mugdani seemed like a ghost town. The throngs of merchants still slept in their beds, and the warriors who guarded the street corners hadn’t yet come to their posts. No children lined the roads to stare at us as we cantered through the empty streets.
After their mad dash to freedom, the ponies were alrea
dy struggling for breath. They were soft and unfit, used to an easy life with too much grain. We had no choice but to stick to the main road as we left the city behind. I didn’t know the area and couldn’t hope to guide us back to Arusei’s camp from here. All I knew was that if we headed east along the road, we would pass through towns I recognized. Then I could find my bearings again.
For now we had no choice but to gallop. Even as the ponies started to wheeze, we had to press them forward until we reached the mountains surrounding the city. The valley itself was flat and dry, and we needed somewhere to hide.
The General’s guards would chase us. Zuberi would never let us just gallop to freedom on two of his horses without at least trying to stop us. Especially when he’d specifically ordered us not to leave. If we’d been riding our own horses, we could have used the advantage of our lead, staying ahead of them until we reached lands I knew. Then we could have disappeared by following the rivers. But on these ponies, we would struggle. Their strides were too short, and we were too heavy.
At the base of the mountain foothills, I spotted an abandoned set of farms. The fields were overgrown and the thatched roofs on the huts were black with decay. Many of the local farmers had moved into the city or out into the neighboring plantations, where they could earn more money.
I pointed to the buildings. “We should hide there and wait until the General’s guard passes us. Once they’ve gone past, we can follow the road for a few miles east, until I can figure out how to lead us away through the brush.”
We trotted across the weeds and long-dead stubble of crops. Old straw covered the floor of the first hut, and I decided to tie the ponies there to let them rest. I gave the white terror a few handfuls of water from my canteen, wishing the farm had a trough or a forgotten bucket we could use.