Warrior of the World

by Jeffe Kennedy

  Palesa and Thanda squealed, but Zalaika intervened with a firm. “We’ll discuss that.”

  “I think I would like you to cut off the black,” I told Palesa, “if it’s not too much trouble.”

  She smiled in delight. “It will be fun. Soon we’ll have the festival of kuachamvua and we’ll find a way to fix the combs in your hair. Ochieng will be dazzled.”

  Thanda clapped her hands, singing a few notes of agreement.

  Chagrined, I realized that—in my terrible self-absorption—that I hadn’t told them the news. They’d likely not heard yet. “Ochieng said the festival of kuachamvua might have to be canceled this year. News came from downriver.”

  They indeed hadn’t heard, having come straight to the hot pool on finishing their final chores for the day. If I’d expected them to show the same consternation the men had, they reassured me with their calm and careful questions. They asked me to repeat the encounter with the messenger, then relaxed back in the water.

  “I apologize that I didn’t tell you right away,” I said.

  Zalaika waved a hand, dripping with water droplets. “It’s important news, but hardly that urgent. We are not canceling the festival of kuachamvua, I can tell you that.”

  “But Ochieng and Desta said—”

  Zalaika raised her brows, silencing me. For all the ways, obvious and subtle, that she was unlike my mother, she shared the ability to assert herself with the smallest gesture. “Are my sons the head of the D’tiembo family? Are my daughters, for that matter?” She glared owlishly at her daughters, who had the temerity to giggle like girls. Another vast difference: I never, ever would have dared laugh at my mother. “No,” Zalaika told them. “Not yet. And while I yet breathe, we live our lives to enjoy and celebrate what we have—not to fear what we might lose. That is the D’tiembo way.”

  ~ 9 ~

  We soaked a while longer, speaking little after that. I found myself relaxing, the hot water soothing away all the aches of my recovering body. I’d worked more in the past couple of days since the rains finally stopped than I had since… well, since Kaja trained me so relentlessly at the Temple of Danu.

  We only got out when the men called from beyond the rockfall, wanting their turn. Zalaika sighed heavily and stood, water sheeting off her strong, dark-skinned body. She bore lighter stretch marks on her hips and belly—and grinned when she caught me looking. Splaying her hands over the spider-webbing of the marks she nodded at me. “We all bear scars of one sort or another. May the ones you gain from this point forward be as joyfully acquired as these.”

  Drying off and dressing quickly, we passed the men, lounging in various attitudes of impatient waiting. Ochieng looked surprised to see me with his mother and sisters, but didn’t detain me or castigate me for not waiting for him. Instead he exchanged good natured taunts with his sisters and brothers, each claiming the others hogged the bath more.

  It involved a great deal of hooting and name-calling—and would never happen in Dasnaria.

  “Come on,” Palesa took my hand and dragged me toward her family rooms when we reached the house. “We have a little time while they’re occupied. I’ll trim your hair and that Ochieng will be sorry he ever called you an ikkap.”

  “I didn’t know what that word meant,” I confessed, going along. Palesa and her husband and four children had a set of five interconnected rooms, one of them set aside as a family gathering area. It was unoccupied at the moment, with her husband down at the hot pool and the kids off with Thanda’s oldest daughter, helping to prepare the evening meal.

  “You speak our language so well I forget you don’t know all the words.” She laughed at herself, spreading a white cloth over the grass floor, and setting a stool there. “Sit, if you will. Do you trust me?”

  With my hair, which I’d chopped off myself with a knife and zero remorse? Sure. “Go ahead.”

  Using a comb made of ivory—which she showed me, saying it exactly matched my hair—and very sharp small knife, she set to work trimming. The black ends floating around me like feathers, drifting to the white cloth.

  “An ikkap is a very large fish that finds the shallow pools in the eddies of the river,” she explained. “They’re fat and lazy, sometimes not stirring from that spot for days. When he was a boy, Ochieng decided Thanda and I were like the ikkap for soaking in the hot pool so long. He was a very bad little brother.” But she laughed as she said it, so I didn’t tell her what a truly bad brother did to his sister.

  Instead I asked, “What was Ochieng like as a boy?” surprising myself with my sudden curiosity.

  “Bad!” She shook her head as she laughed. “Not really. But mischievous. Always getting into my and Thanda’s things and giving them to the elephants. He said they looked prettier wearing our scarves and sparklies than we did. And his stories! Oh, that boy could make up stories from the moment he learned to talk. Before he learned better, he lied dreadfully.”

  I caught my breath a little. “He was dishonest?”

  Palesa had moved in front of me, trimming the hair around my face, and paused, frowning. “Not like you mean. I think it was more that he imagined everything so vividly that his stories became as real to him as the truth.”

  “Oh.” It still didn’t sound good.

  “He grew out of it, Ivariel,” she said, lowering her comb and knife, holding my gaze. “Never worry about that. You won’t find a man with more integrity and honesty in all of Chiyajua, maybe in the whole world.”

  I nodded at her, uncertain why that made my throat knot up as if I might cry. If she noticed, she pretended not to, studying my face and carefully shaping the fringes around it. Only bits of white fell now, like the snowflakes of my wedding journey sifting to cover the black.

  What would this third face I wore be like?

  * * * *

  Palesa loaned me one of her shifts—if you can call insisting I put it on as “loaning”—one in a blue she said matched my eyes. When I protested that she’d already given me clean clothes, she rolled her eyes at me. “Pretty new hair deserves a pretty new dress. Oh! And a little bit of cosmetics, too. You’ll be so beautiful my brother won’t know what to do with himself.”

  Matchmaking, I realized. They all were, not-so-subtly, pushing Ochieng and me together. That could be part of his reason to want to marry me. Here all of his siblings had been married for some time, with children—and even grandchildren in Palesa’s case—and he’d remained a bachelor. It would’ve been unthinkable in my family, so I could imagine that they’d told him the time had long since passed for him to take a bride. Zalaika had said something along those lines.

  That would mean I’d been convenient. It could be that Ochieng had exhausted the possibilities in Nyambura and the surrounding communities, not finding a woman to his taste. He’d met me on a sailing ship and invited me to visit his home. He might’ve had this plan all along. From the moment he saw me, he’d said.

  Of course, at that point, he hadn’t realized what damage lay beneath the attractive surface.

  So, I nearly balked, feeling like I shouldn’t encourage his attentions—and his family’s persuasions—by prettying up for him. But Palesa had been so kind that I couldn’t find it in me to refuse further. I came very close to asking her why she thought Ochieng wanted to marry me. But, though the questions tumbled against my lips, I stilled them with silence. I maybe didn’t want her to confirm my theories. Being honest with myself turned out to be quite an effort.

  Palesa shooed me along, saying she would check on the children. When I emerged, Ochieng looked up from the biah he sipped with Desta and a few of the other men. His face went still. Setting the biah down, he walked away from Desta while his brother was still talking, not seeming to hear him call after him. Ochieng came straight to me, taking my hands gently, an arrested expression on his face. The men laughed at some remark of Desta’s and I blushed.

&nbs
p; Ochieng didn’t give them a moment’s attention—it was all on me. “I feel like I’m seeing the real you,” he breathed in wonder, eyes wandering over my face. Then he winced. “That probably sounded all wrong. I meant that…” He didn’t finish, searching for an explanation. My Ochieng, at a loss for words? Perhaps Palesa had predicted correctly.

  “I know what you meant,” I said, because I did. One by one, my disguises and layers of protection were falling away. All I’d need to look like the person I’d been all my life was to grow my hair long, wear a few more jewels, and lose quite a few scars. But that was surface, and who I’d become inside—this third self—couldn’t ever be restored, certainly not as easily as trimming my hair and painting my lips.

  Ochieng squeezed my hands lightly, sobering, his touch careful, as if he read my thoughts. “Come and have some biah? I understand the meal will be ready soon, such as it is.”

  With that cryptic remark, he tugged me to join them, pouring me a cup of the cold and sparkling brew also. The other guys nodded at me, then returned to their conversation. Ochieng led me down the terrace a short distance, then held up his mug in a private toast between the two of us. “To finding our real selves.”

  I clinked my mug against his, automatically replying in Dasnarian.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It translates as ‘true are your words.’ A traditional Dasnarian reply to any toast that isn’t an insult.” I smiled at him and he returned it. Companionably we drank our biah in the last of the sunlight, slanting from the sun setting behind the butte.

  * * * *

  We ate out on the terrace that evening, the first time since the rains ended. As a family, that was, as we’d all been grabbing food between tasks and sitting out in the sun as much as possible. Then it took me aback, that I’d thought of us as a family—and me a part of it.

  I sat cross-legged on the still warm stones, Ochieng on one side and Ayela on the other. She and the other kids had done a fantastic job making something of a feast for us. It was nothing on the scale of the welcome feast they’d all made when I first arrived—a welcome for Ochieng, not me—but they’d taken advantage of foods that had been hoarded in case the rains lasted even longer, and could now be replenished. The dishes also seemed more fun somehow. Lots of sweets and fancy breads, and bite-sized savories.

  “We call this the ‘children’s feast,’” Ochieng said, reaching across me to tap Ayela on the nose. She blinked sleepily at him, smiled, then yawned in a jaw-cracking O. “Because all the adults are so busy, the kids do the cooking, and they get to make whatever they want. Which tend to be their favorite foods. We’ll get back to having better meals soon.”

  “I like it.” Bemused, I surveyed the array of foods on my plate. In the seraglio, we’d had no distinction between food for children and food for women. But then, we also hadn’t had many formal meals, as such. My sisters and I had met for breakfast most mornings, from the time we became young women with earnest intimacies to share. Occasionally we’d had guests, or special celebrations. For the most part, however, we’d simply snacked on tidbits the serving girls brought us. Enticing treats like these.

  They’d fed us like children.

  The realization rolled through me without much bitterness, however. Perhaps I’d used up most of my emotional angst for the day. Ayela leaned heavily against my arm, too tired to sit upright, so I shifted to let her lay her head in my lap. She smiled in her sleep.

  “She’s worn out,” I said to Ochieng.

  He tipped his head in acknowledgment. “Everybody is. These first days after the rains end—there’s so much to do and everyone bursting with restless energy to do it. How was your bath?”

  “Wonderful!” He laughed at my enthusiasm, and I wrinkled my nose at him. “It felt so good to get completely clean, all over, all at once—and then dry off!”

  “So true. And you soaked with my mother and sisters, eh?”

  I slid him a glance. Ochieng often made easy conversation, but he rarely asked pointless questions. “Yes,” I replied blandly. Then waited.

  He chewed his food, pretending to listen to some story Thanda’s husband was telling, but I could tell he itched to ask me more. Probably he hoped I’d offer more, but I’d learned the business of extracting and keeping secrets from a master. Whatever he asked me next would give me clues to what he really wanted to know. I surprised myself by enjoying the game.

  Whatever it was, he never got to it, however, because an argument broke out over the festival of kuachamvua. Zalaika raised her voice and put down her foot.

  “We are having the festival of kuachamvua. One week after the rains stop, we always have this celebration and this year is no different.”

  “This year is different, Mama!” Desta’s face had set into hard ridges. He gestured to Ochieng. “We’ve all heard the news from downriver and we know our family-that-was. History repeats itself. They will be coming to us to fill their storehouses.”

  “Perhaps we should,” Thanda put in, silencing everyone with what was apparently an extraordinary suggestion. “Perhaps we should send them food and other supplies. We have plenty and it would be the kind thing to do.”

  Desta looked at her with disgust. “The kind thing? These are not kind people.”

  “No?” She sprang to her feet and stood nose-to-nose with him. “The little girls like Ayela—they are not kind? Or the babies in their cradles? What about the eldsters with no fire to sit by to ease their aching bones—are they unkind?”

  Desta set his jaw, a gesture that reminded me of Ochieng, though he would never get so angry. Ochieng always smiled, always yielded the argument cheerfully. Something, I realized, I greatly valued about him. Feeling a burst of affection, I slipped my hand into his. He glanced at our hands, then my face, in surprise—then squeezed gently.

  “If we send them supplies,” Desta was saying with exaggerated patience, demonstrating how very little patience he felt, “then they will know we have plenty and they will come for it.”

  Thanda threw up her hands. “Because they don’t know it now? Why are we worried about them raiding upriver then, if you’re so sure they’ve forgotten us?”

  “We have to be smart, not weak with sympathy,” he shot back.

  “No, we have to be the best of who we are, follow what we believe in, not become a reflection of them. What’s important is what our intention is, regardless of the outcome.”

  “That is ridiculous, meurra,” he shouted.

  Beside me, Ochieng chuckled, surprising me. He leaned his head toward me. “It’s always a bad sign when they trot out the childhood insults.”

  “What does ‘meurra’ mean?” I murmured back just as quietly.

  “A donkey,” he told me in Common Tongue. “You know this animal? Very stubborn, thick skulled.”

  I suppressed a smile, though I could see it as an apt description of the strong-willed Thanda.

  “Ivariel, what do you think?” Thanda rounded on me, making me very happy she hadn’t caught me laughing at her. Everyone looked at me, and I had no idea what to say.

  “What do I think about what?” I asked carefully.

  “What would your people do in this situation?” Desta asked. I found it most interesting that he supported his sister in asking me, when he’d been railing at her a moment ago.

  “I am only a woman,” I explained. Which, it turned out, explained nothing at all to them. “Women are not involved in discussions of politics or war in Dasnaria,” I clarified.

  Thanda frowned at me, perhaps not believing me.

  “But you know your people,” Ochieng inserted, caressing the back of my hand with his thumb. “What do you think the men like your brother Kral would say?”

  That was easy. “Attack,” I said simply. They all gaped at me with various expressions of shock and horror. I wanted to laugh so I did. “In Dasna
ria it doesn’t matter if the children, the babes, women, and elders are kind. The warriors run the empire and they have no compassion, no mercy. Those are regarded as weaknesses to be eradicated. They would prepare for war—and likely attack first.”

  Thanda had finally closed her mouth, giving me a long and canny look. “So, you agree with Desta—we should not send help.”

  I looked back at her. Odd how some small moments bring clarity. A turn happened inside me, like changing the color of my heart. “I agree with you, Thanda,” I said, “for I am no longer in Dasnaria. This is Nyambura.”

  ~ 10 ~

  It felt good to declare it. Even better, they all smiled at me in approval. Feeling like I belonged to a family again, that I’d earned their approval, fed something deeply hungry in me. And encouraged me to crave more.

  “It is settled then,” Zalaika announced. “Thanda will coordinate sending what we can spare downriver. Desta, you work on fortifications and a defense plan for the town. Perhaps working with other villages nearby?”

  “Happily, Mama.” Desta threw a triumphant glare at Thanda, who serenely ignored him.

  Zalaika smiled. “Palesa will—”

  “I will assist Desta in preparing a defense,” Palesa interrupted. “We need to get the elephants back into training anyway, we should work to sharpen their skills. I noted a number of us were quite rusty when we rescued Ivariel.”

  “As you will then, Daughter mine.” Zalaika inclined her head. “I noted myself in that battle that I am not the young woman I once was. I shall hand Violet over to you, to lead the herd.”

  “A moment,” Ochieng said quietly. “Ivariel has been working with Violet.”

  “Ivariel can work with Efe. She’s best with her anyway.” Zalaika bestowed a fond smile on me and I nearly preened with pleasure.

  “Yes,” Ochieng persisted. “But Efe will not be ready for battle any time soon.”