Zulu Heart
Page 52
There, he had said it, and now there was nothing but to wait.
“I cannot give you that heart,” she said finally. “It is dead and gone.” She paused. “But I can give you the new one, born this day. I will be yours, Kai, if you will be mine. No Wakil, no royal daughter. No state, no contracts. Two souls. One heart.”
Their eyes locked for a long moment, and then her lips pressed against his, and Kai felt as if his limbs had changed to both water and steel in the same instant.
Their clothes rustled as they fell to the floor.
IziLomo did not leave their room that night.
And although his warm brown eyes saw all that occurred, he made no sound at all.
CHAPTER NINETY
As they had so many times in the past, Kai and Aidan sat on the banks of the stream dividing the woods west of the main house. A thin breeze wove through the trees, rustling leaves, bringing with it a scent of clover and distant pine. Kai spun a rock out into the water, watched it skip and then sink. “This water has always been here,” he said, “and will be after we are gone.”
“Do you think it remembers us?” Aidan asked.
“I don’t know,” said the Wakil.
“Things were so much simpler when we were children, Kai,” Aidan said.
“Men take the actions they do so that their children might lead simpler lives. More peaceful lives.”
“My children’s life will not be simple,” said Aidan, “but they can be better than my own.”
“Insh’Allah.”
“I have another favor to ask you,” Aidan said.
“Name it. Please.”
“I wish to take Tata home with me as well. She and Conair …”
Kai exhaled, some inner knot of tension relaxing. “I had hoped you would say that, Aidan. I don’t even know why I brought her here. But I can’t look at her anymore. Every time I do, I remember how I found her.” He tossed a rock out into the water. “I wonder if her grandmother was one of the slaves my father or grandfather brought here. I wonder how much she fetched. I wonder what toy of mine was bought with the money that paid for her rape.”
“Kai,” Aidan said gently. “You do what you can.”
“No, I don’t,” answered Kai. “But I will. Take her, of course, with my blessing.” He paused. “You asked me once if our men were stronger, or our women weaker.”
“You remembered.”
“Yes, and have an answer. The answer is neither. It’s just custom, and circumstance.” Another pause. “Like too many other things in this world.”
Aidan stared at him, perhaps knowing that Kai had just come as close as he could to saying, I’m sorry. For everything.
“Farewell, my brother,” Kai said. “Thank you so much, for everything. For every day that you’ve been in my life, even before I knew who you were.”
“I won’t say it’s always been a pleasure,” Aidan said. “But it’s always been … extraordinary.”
CHAPTER NINETY-ONE
As often happened, Lamiya, Nandi, and Babatunde were gathered in the main library, enjoying warm after-dinner glow. The fireplace crackled with ginger-scented logs. Aliyah and Azinza were upstairs, watched by their Zulu nursemaids. IziLomo was out at the lake, entertaining and being entertained by the Dahomy, who would leave in another week, carrying with them gold enough to sustain their community for a year.
Kai disapproved of mercenaries but had found nothing to fault in their demeanor, loyalty, or performance. They were not Hashassin, striking from darkness. They guarded, protected, acted in daylight, faces exposed, lawfully engaged in honorable service. The Dahomy were women making their way in a men’s world, and if he could not respect them on their own terms, perhaps he was not fit to be Wakil. They were not as he had been taught women were. But they were women, and that changed his view of all women. Aidan was not as he had been taught whites were. And that changed his view of all whites.
Nothing is as it seems, he thought. But some things are even better.
If their journeys brought them south again, there would be a place for them at Dar Kush.
For now, the pleasures of home and hearth were enough to engage him fully, and few were the times in his life when contentment had felt so complete.
“Aidan has gone?” asked Lamiya.
“Yes,” Kai said. “But he will return in some months to train with my guard.”
“That is good.”
“Husband?” said Nandi.
“Yes?”
“Do you like the name UmNtwana?”
“I suppose.” He looked at her curiously. “What does it mean?”
“Do you think a child born in Dhu’l-Qa’dah will be strong?”
“The month of rest. Certainly. Why? Nandi…?” Kai asked. “What is this?”
“He is a slow one, isn’t he?” Lamiya said, smiling.
“Yes, but trainable.” Babatunde chuckled.
“Ah. Well, perhaps we will have more luck with his son,” said Nandi.
“My … son?”
“Yes,” Lamiya said. “You know, Kai … small, helpless male creature? Trouble in a small package? Lock up your daughters?”
“A son.”
“I believe,” said Babatunde, “that UmNtwana means ‘child of the king.’” Kai stood, stretching himself. Then a sudden thought stopped him in his tracks, and he turned. “When did you know?”
“A week ago,” Nandi said.
Kai’s jaw dropped. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he whispered. “I might have—”
“It must have slipped my mind,” she said.
“Did you know?” he asked Lamiya.
Lamiya continued with her sewing. Kai stood, and poked the fire. Started to say something. Stopped. Looked out over the room. Lamiya. Nandi. Babatunde. And upstairs, his daughter Aliyah and Malik’s child, Azinza.
His family, save only for the man now on the way to his crannog, the man who had risked and won much because he trusted Kai and because Kai trusted Aidan, and both, thank Allah, had proven worthy. This time. A vast sense of contentment descended upon him.
“Did you say something, my husband?” Lamiya asked.
Kai smiled. “No,” he answered. “Nothing at all.”
AFTERWORD
I would like to thank the readers of Lion’s Blood for their hundreds of letters and e-mails. Some chord was touched with that book, one for which the author cannot take complete credit. It is a world created from love and pain and hope. Both Kai and Aidan live in my heart, and it is joyous to know that others have found them as interesting as I. If life is kind, they’ll be back.
Kai’s eating patterns are modifications of the partial fasts observed by Muslims worldwide during the month of Ramadan. To learn more of its theory and benefits, consult Ori Hofmekler’s The Warrior Diet.
Sharp-eyed readers will recognize, amid the chaos of the Djibouti Harbor battle, the narrative of Francis B. Butts, survivor of the sinking of the Monitor.
A very partial listing of the research works contributing to this volume: Tizita Ayele’s Ethiopian Cooking in the American Kitchen, Yahiya Emerick’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Islam, F. Steingass’s English-Arabic Translator Dictionary, Neil Grant’s The Egyptians, A. G. Smith and William Kaufman’s Life in Celtic Times, Marc Frey’s Civil War, Cheikh Anta Diop’s Precolonial Black Africa, and John Laband’s The Rise & Fall of the Zulu Nation.
The physical training techniques utilized by Kai and Aidan, and taught by Babatunde, originate from a variety of African, Asian, and European sources. I would especially like to thank Pavel Tsatsouline for information about muscular irradiation, synaptic facilitation, and the use of the Russian kettlebell. Information about this incredible man’s work can be found at www.dragondoor.com. And thanks to Scott Sonnon for bringing the Russian and Slavic health systems to the West as well as for his theory of the Flow State Performance Spiral.
The combat theory and motion presented in this novel is a mixture of Filipino Kali, Ind
onesian Pentjak Silat, and Zulu knife-fighting, perhaps the most fearsome fighting technique I have seen in some thirty years of martial rigors.
And in closing, I would like to offer three deep bows to Vernon Turner, Kitabu Roshi, for insight into the experience of enlightenment. Your humble author has experienced many awe-inspiring things through the years, but not this.
Hope springs eternal.
Steven Barnes
August 26, 2002
Longview, Washington