Warrior of the World

by Jeffe Kennedy

  A disconcerting sign.

  And then Ochieng called over Hart and another man to help me unharness the elephants, while he went off, telling me he’d be right back. I spotted him a bit later, on the second level of the storehouse, talking to Desta. I might not know every dialect of the Chiyajuans, but I could read the alarm in the lines of their bodies. I rather thought he would be a while.

  The sun had started to decline behind the ridge, and I was tired and mud-splattered. Now that he’d put the idea in my head, I really wanted that hot bath.

  Deciding not to wait for Ochieng, I climbed up the steps to the house. Already I could do it so much better than the day Ochieng had had to carry me back up. Looking back on that day, I seemed so overly dramatic, feeling so sorry for myself. Of course it had taken me time to heal—and it would take more time yet—but I could climb the steps without having to stop and rest. It seemed entirely possible that one day I’d be back to where I’d been before my marriage.

  A new start might be within my grasp and the thought made me feel like the optimist Ochieng had named me. Perhaps the damage at Chimto had been exaggerated and the fears of attack would prove groundless. From my room, I saw the elephants wading into the river, indulging in their clear-weather sunset ritual, Violet and Bimyr hastening to join them.

  Efe had even gone with them to the river, and she didn’t always, so that seemed to be a positive sign. It seemed impossible that such a beautiful, peaceful scene could be disrupted. After all, I’d used myself as a decoy to keep the Dasnarians from coming here and destroying it beneath their armored fists. What could these Chimtoans do?

  Someone had left clean clothes for me on my little table, and I nearly whimpered with pleasure. Zalaika, Palesa, Thanda and most of the children had been working nonstop, also, but in washing all the woven cloth that made our clothing and curtain walls. They used collected rainwater in barrels as the river ran too fast still for anyone smaller than an elephant to go in, and then hung the things to dry in the sun.

  They’d been working from the inner rooms out, bringing everything that could be moved into the sun to dry thoroughly before it could mold, and I looked forward to having my curtain walls clean and dry again. With my room being on the outer edge of the house, it would no doubt be a while yet. So it made me especially delighted to have clean clothes that smelled of sunshine instead of damp.

  To avoid smudging my treasure, I pulled out one of my travelling bags to carry the fresh clothes in, surprised to hear it jingle. Setting the clothes aside, I looked in the bag to see what it might be.

  Oh, of course. How astonishing that I hadn’t realized immediately. The dull metal of the replacement wedding bracelets my late husband had locked on my wrists when he recaptured me—saying I’d have to beg him for jeweled ones again—shone with a menacing gleam in the slanting light. And attached to the right hand one by its chain still, the obscenely huge diamond he’d returned to my finger.

  I’d been unconscious when someone—Ochieng most likely, though I’d never asked—had cut the bracelets off me, then slid off the ring, leaving it dangling by the chain. They’d been waiting for me on a table when I awoke, and one of the first things I’d done when I could get up again was stuff the vile reminders in one of the traveling bags I didn’t intend to use again.

  It said something about the D’tiembos that such a valuable ring could just sit there while I lay unconscious, and expected to die, and no one took it. Possibly such things had no tradeable worth in Chiyajua, though I doubted that. I’d left it behind when I fled—after having my original, bejeweled bracelets cut off—because I knew the diamond would be too recognizable. An icon of the Arynherk ruling family, the massive marquise diamond always decorated their queen. An irony, in that the diamond remained constant in that scenario, while the women themselves came and went like petals blown by winter winds.

  It said something about Rodolf and his arrogance that he’d drag such a precious heirloom halfway across the world just to wrestle it back onto the finger of the young wife who’d hated him enough to make herself into a willing exile from everything she’d known just to escape him. Of course, it had never been about me. I could see that much more clearly now. When they married me to him, I’d known that winning the emperor’s firstborn daughter represented a political triumph for him and Arynherk.

  But I’d been caught up in my mother’s careful manipulations, believing the match to be a triumph for me, that I would realize my maternal family’s ambitions in the alliance. Not that I’d had any real choice, but I’d embraced the opportunity that marriage represented.

  I’d also—in a dazzling display of naivety, in retrospect—believed myself to be wanted. The pearl beyond price. Beautiful, unblemished, perfect in grace and manners. The glint of the cold diamond seemed to mock me for being such a stupid girl. Rodolf had never wanted me. I wasn’t sure if he’d ever even seen me as a human being. Instead I’d been a doll to him, a trophy to hang jewels on and parade about. No wonder he’d been so cruel to me in his sexual attentions.

  He’d said that to me all the time, hadn’t he? All the while he’d lashed, cut, tortured, and humiliated me, he’d spoken of his rage against the emperor. Everything he did to me, he’d done as revenge against the man he could never touch.

  Feeling ill, I stuffed the diamond and the bracelets back in the bag, shoving them deep into the bottom and knotting the ties to close it, as if to keep them from escaping again. I only wished I could shove down those thoughts and memories as easily. But I couldn’t, which was why the rage festered in me—in stupid, betrayed Jenna—leaping out to kill in a senseless fury.

  Shaking with reaction, I grabbed up the clothes, no longer caring if I muddied them, and slunk around the edges of the house to take the back steps down to the hot pool. I’d be really happy when they restored the steps down the front of the butte, the ones eaten by the river in her voracious hunger, though I understood those were a lower priority.

  Funny—I’d once commanded armies of servants to supply my least whim, except freedom and the ability to chart the course of my own life; now I had all that freedom, endless possibilities with Rodolf dead, and it annoyed me to be inconvenienced. Another way, perhaps, that I was fundamentally lacking. Another deep crack in what should be a smoothly packed road.

  Ochieng and Desta, along with a number of the other men, had clustered together, clearly having a serious discussion. They reminded me at that moment of my own brothers, and the other men at my debut parties, talking relentlessly of war, hunting, and other conflicts. It could be that men everywhere shared that fascination.

  I can move silently and unobtrusively when I try, so I slipped around the edges of sacks of meal and stacks of hay, all still tightly packed in from being moved to the higher levels. Ochieng was turned away from me—the long queue of shining black hair trailing down his back, a stark river against the white shirt, his strong profile just visible—so he didn’t see me pass. Which came as something of a relief, with all the poisonous thoughts running around in my head.

  Why did he want me? He said he was in love with me, but I had no idea how anyone knew that. Besides, no one marries for love. If it was even a real thing, which I doubted, rather than something for naïve girls to sigh over—and to make the ballads of tragic romances all that much more poignant. Maybe love had been invented as a lure to make young girls like I’d been more pliable. We didn’t have a choice over who our fathers and brothers married us to, but it went easier for the family if we jumped in willingly, eyes shining, hoping for some mythical bliss.

  Especially a second time, knowing what we did about how handing our bodies over to our husbands would be. What could possibly entice a woman to do that, but for the promise of something like love? Well, and children. Having children might be worth it, if the bed sport could be endured. It might be possible, with a gentle man.

  It can be joyful, a mutual sharing of p
leasure. Not submitting or giving yourself, but partaking. Like eating or drinking—it’s a way of feeding ourselves. Ochieng had said those words with great sincerity, as he did everything, so I knew he believed it, at least.

  But if so, he could have that with any woman—and clearly had, the way he spoke about it—so none of this answered the question of what he thought he’d get out of marriage to me. He certainly harbored no ambitions for political power in the Empire of Dasnaria. Despite my dour thoughts, that image very nearly made me smile. He said he found me beautiful, and I suppose my face still was, more or less. Rodolf had called me beautiful, also, and that did not mean he cared about me.

  I wished I understood what Ochieng wanted from me. Children, perhaps. That I could believe in—that children brought joy and pleasure, even a kind of love, though a different sort, to a woman’s life. I’d observed that.

  I didn’t know anyone who’d been in love with their husband, did I? Deep in thought, I strolled along the path to the hot pool. Princess Adaladja, who I’d met at my debut ball, had expressed affection for her husband, saying she missed sleeping with him at night, separated as their chambers had been at the Imperial Palace. And there had been the married couple on the Robin who’d traveled with us to Chiyajua. They’d seemed to enjoy each other’s company at least. But was that love?

  In the end, it didn’t matter. Love was demonstrably not necessary for marriage, or to produce children. So, I needed to disregard that part of Ochieng’s proposal. Whatever he believed, this idea that he loved me had to be subsidiary to his true reasons. I would have to find out what they were.

  I would not go blindly into marriage again, naïvely hoping for some joyful state of bliss. I’d been ignorant before, which might not have been entirely my fault, but my eyes had been opened—brutally and painfully—and I would not willingly close them again.

  ~ 8 ~

  Feeling resolved in that determination, if not exactly lighter in spirit, I rounded the spur of rocks to the hot pool. Then skidded to a stop when I found it occupied.

  Before I’d come to Nyambura, the custom had been for the D’tiembos to stop on the far side of the rocky outcropping and call out to find if the hot pool was occupied—and whether they were amenable to more company. To accommodate me and my vow of silence, they’d gone to hanging a flag at the rocks, affording me the privacy I preferred. They’d found it odd, but as in all things, they accommodated my foreign quirks.

  I realized, too late, that not only hadn’t I seen the flag, the pole it had hung on had disappeared. Washed away in the rains, no doubt. And I’d failed to call out, having never been in that habit.

  Blushing furiously at my gaffe, I stammered an apology to Zalaika, Palesa, and Thanda. They’d jumped at my unexpected arrival and now laughed, fanning themselves over the start I’d given them.

  “I’m so very sorry,” I repeated, and hastily turned to go.

  “Don’t be silly,” Palesa called out. “Join us.”

  “Yes,” Thanda added. “It’s right you should join us for the first celebratory soak.”

  I turned back cautiously, trying not to see the three naked women all smiling at me. In the seraglio, of course, being all women—except for the small boys—we’d all gone naked as often as not. But with the D’tiembo matriarchy, seeing them so felt like an invasion. Also, in the seraglio, the emperor’s other wives would resent any intrusion on time they spent tutoring their daughters. All of my private meetings with my mother had been zealously guarded, on pain of flogging for anyone who’d dared to interrupt us.

  “Please do join us,” Zalaika said, and it sounded like a command, despite the polite phrasing. “This is our annual ritual, to savor the fruits of our labors, to be the first in the hot baths.”

  “And to don the clothes we cleaned,” Palesa added, Thanda nodding in vehement agreement.

  I realized I still clutched the clothes they’d left me and hadn’t thanked them. What an ungrateful, unmannered thing they must think me. Silence had been easier. “Thank you so much,” I said, bowing a little, “for the clean clothes. I was delighted to find them and in my haste, thought only of getting clean and putting them on. I won’t intrude on you.”

  “You’re not intruding, girl.” Zalaika sounded impatient now. “I’d tell you if you were. Of course you want to get clean and dry. Get out of those muddy things and get in the water.”

  “Or we’ll drag you in.” Palesa grinned in mischief, turning to Thanda. “Remember when we did that to our cousin?”

  Thanda burst out laughing, a sound very like Ochieng’s. “And she’d just done her hair because she was flirting with that boy. She had a fit!”

  “Yes,” Zalaika said repressively, “and I was the one who had to make it good with her mother. Cost me a length of indigo-dyed cloth to appease her.”

  “Sorry, Mama,” Palesa said, sounding contrite, but her eyes still sparkled with amusement and Thanda unsuccessfully smothered a giggle.

  Desperately I tried to think of a polite way to refuse them, but Zalaika had me skewered in place with her dark, knowing gaze. “I’m going to say this plain to you, Ivariel. I know you like your privacy, but I suspect some of that comes from you wanting to hide what was done to you.”

  Rooted with horror, my insides going to water, I couldn’t say anything.

  She nodded knowingly. “We’ve seen your scars—the old and the new, you know.”

  “We sponge-bathed you and changed your bandages while you were ill,” Palesa said more gently than her mother. “We three,” she tipped her head at Thanda, who shrugged a little, as if it had been no great effort.

  “What Mama is saying so badly,” Thanda said, “is you don’t have to worry about us seeing you, because I know your skin as well as my babies’ at this point. And if you want to get clean anywhere nearly as badly as I did, then you should get in here immediately.”

  I knew when I’d lost. So, I set my precious clean clothes on a rock ledge next to theirs, and stripped off my muddy things, leaving them in a heap, also with theirs. They’d gone back to chatting, affording me the privacy of not watching me undress, and made room for me as I got in.

  Closing my eyes, I tipped my head back on the rim and pretended I was alone. Which lasted about half a minute.

  “Dunk your head, Ivariel,” Palesa said, “and I’ll soap your hair for you. We all already did, and that will give time for the suds to clear.”

  I’d noticed they all had their hair down and wet, making them look softer than they usually did, with their locks efficiently tied out of the way of their work. Obediently—and unwilling to inconvenience their bath more than I had—I slid under the water, scrubbing my fingers through the short hair to dislodge the worst of the muck.

  Palesa was ready with a bar of the soap they made, a spicy strong-smelling variety, nothing like the lavish jasmine-scented soaps and oils I’d grown up with. Even the memory of the smell of jasmine had my already queasy stomach turning over. I wished I hadn’t dug out that diamond ring.

  “Your hair is so fine,” Palesa was saying, massaging my scalp as expertly as my old nurse Kaia had ever done. “This ivory color—is it natural?”

  “Yes,” I replied, somewhat surprised. “The black was a dye, to disguise my appearance.”

  “She means,” Thanda put in, “we wondered if it came from being frightened. There’s stories like that, of people going through terrible grief and coming out with their hair turned white as an old granny’s.”

  “I am not old, thank you,” Zalaika said with considerable tartness. The silver threads in her black hair added drama and sparkle to my mind.

  “Nobody said you were, Mama,” Thanda replied blandly. “So, if it’s not that, Ivariel, do all of your people have hair your color?”

  “I didn’t invite Ivariel to soak with us so you could badger her with questions,” Zalaika said.

 
“It’s all right.” I splashed my face with water to remove the stinging soap, and opened my eyes. This I didn’t mind talking about. “Dasnarians are all fair-haired, it’s true, but my hair color is unusual. Just like my mother’s and she’s famed for hers. My sisters have hair that’s much more golden in color.”

  “Sisters,” Palesa murmured. “You have sisters.”

  “Two, yes. Inga and Helva, younger than me.”

  “And how old are you?” Thanda pressed, ignoring her mother’s cluck of disapproval.

  “I’ll be nineteen on my next birthday.”

  They were all quiet a moment. “You’re practically a child still,” Zalaika finally said.

  I returned her sorrowful gaze evenly. “I haven’t been a child for a long time.”

  She nodded slowly. “I can see that.”

  “Do you want me to cut the black off for you?” Palesa asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence, fluffing my hair as she poured water through it. “I assume you’re growing it out now, since you haven’t dyed it again.”

  Was I? “I don’t know. Ochieng asked me the same thing.”

  They exchanged looks, rolling their eyes meaningfully. “Men always like long hair,” Thanda declared with some aggravation.

  “Dasnarian men do,” I agreed.

  “All men.” Palesa sounded both mournful and amused.

  “My hair used to be very long,” I offered. “It nearly touched the floor when I stood.” Encouraged by their murmurs of surprise, I continued. “I’d wear it in these very elaborate styles, lots of braids, with pearls.”

  “The pearls would be pretty,” Palesa observed. “The same color as your skin and hair.”

  “Contrast is better,” Thanda argued. “We should put pearls in our hair, and give Ivariel those polished onyx combs in trade.”

  “Silly, she doesn’t have any pearls here.”

  “But I do,” I said. I had all the pearls I’d pried from the gloves and my old wedding bracelet, the ones Kaja hadn’t traded into coin for me. “I’m happy to share them.”