Warrior of the World

by Jeffe Kennedy

  In the seraglio, no one ever died. Not even our pets, who came and went. Instead of death, we had a pleasant vanishing. I’d never seen anything dead until I killed a man. And that had seemed so unreal.

  It hadn’t been real to me until I walked in the funeral procession, the dirge rolling with the wheels of the cart and the solemn scuffing of the elephants. Even they seemed to understand death better than I.

  For some reason I thought of the dolls, how one lay inside the other. Perhaps in the smallest one should be a gray seed of death. No—that wasn’t right. It should be a gray veil, enveloping the oldest doll. In truth, the biggest and oldest doll should’ve been an old woman, and I didn’t know why it hadn’t been.

  Strange, circular thoughts, stirred by the cycling dirge for a child who should’ve had his whole life to live.

  We reached the beach, where an odd sort of raft had been drawn up on the rocks as far from Capa as possible. She still lay as she had when we brought Efe to her. And Efe still stayed with her and some of the other elephants not in the procession. She looked skittish to my eye, not at all certain why so many people were invading her beach.

  Still, she stayed near Capa, stalwart at least in her determination to help her fallen sister. Efe forgot her own fears when another needed help, which I could likely learn from.

  Much as I would’ve preferred to go be with Efe and Capa, I followed the others to the raft. They halted, the women dismounted, and then Nafula and her husband went to the cart and lifted the pallet holding Femi between them. Ochieng and Desta had helped Zalaika down, and they and Palesa and her husband now followed as Femi’s parents carried him to the raft.

  Zalaika seemed so old, walking with pained steps between her sons, their hands supporting her elbows, nearly staggering on the uneven stones. But when she drew near the raft holding Femi’s bier, she straightened, then lifted the front of her veil, rolling it up so it caught on the pins holding it in place. The breeze off the river caught it, so it seemed to float behind her like morning mist.

  Palesa and Nafula echoed the gesture, like a dance they’d long practiced together. As they turned so I caught glimpses of their faces, I nearly gasped aloud. Amidst all the soft grays, they’d painted their faces a startling crimson. Their eyes shone like dark stars in a field of freshly spilt blood.

  A shiver of the numinous thrilled over my skin, like breath of fire and chill of ice at once. It was a sensation I’d associated with Danu’s presence in the past—back when I’d mostly believed that Danu had accepted my vow and set Her hand on me and guided my footsteps.

  Kaja’s faith in Danu had been utter and absolute. She’d never doubted that Danu led her to help me—and that the warrior goddess of the bright blade and unflinching justice had taken her on her next mission. Had she doubted, when she faced death? No, I’m sure she hadn’t. I could almost see Kaja grinning in my mind at the foolish thought.

  It seemed she looked at me out of Zalaika’s dark eyes, which had fixed on me.

  “We send our child into the next world,” she intoned. “Too soon. Too young. The next world has gained the brightest of spirits—and now owes us a debt. Who shall claim this debt?”

  Boom boom. The drums rolled out the demand, the peoples’ feet stomping with it. “We will,” they averred, voices deep as the drums.

  “Who shall claim this debt?” Palesa demanded, her eyes also finding me. Kaja and Danu, staring me down, expectant.

  Boom boom. “We will!”

  Nafula had been staring down at her dead son, but now she raised her head, staring at me, Danu in her gaze also. They were the dolls, black eyes full of rage and grief, but ranged together as on the shelf. I felt as if I’d sprung from them, wrested from inside their darkness. I realized I’d folded my hands over my belly, as if to protect the seed that had not yet been planted.

  Danu’s hand lay heavy on me and I realized She’d never left. The goddess had simply lightened Her demand while I healed. But I’d vowed my sword to Her and She hadn’t released me from that promise. I’d thought She’d led my footsteps here as a gift.

  Now I understood I’d been sent to the D’tiembos to do Danu’s work, and the goddess expected me to take up my sword.

  Nafula spoke clearly, if softly. Speaking directly to me. “Who will claim this debt?”

  Boom. I stepped forward and the drums missed their second beat.

  “I will.”

  ~ 21 ~

  “This isn’t your battle,” Ochieng said, yet again. He’d followed me to his—our—room, leaning against one of the four poles with his arms crossed, watching me lay out the contents of my bags on his painstakingly crafted wood floor.

  “Your mother, sister, and niece spoke to me with the voice of Danu,” I replied, marveling at how serene I sounded. “It is my battle. My goddess summons me.”

  “You told me you’re a fraud. Not a true warrior priestess at all.” His voice sounded tight, and I glanced up to find his face and jaw equally set.

  “And you wanted me to take up my weapons again,” I pointed out.

  He threw up his hands, the violence of his frustration propelling him off the pole. “So you would feel more like yourself again. So you would live instead of drifting about like a ghost of yourself.”

  Unfolding my leathers and brushing them out, I considered that. Ochieng’s sunniness concealed worry that he never showed outwardly. If I survived to become his wife, I’d have to learn to look for what he didn’t show or say. “I owe your family a debt of life,” I replied calmly.

  He made a disgusted sound. “Ridiculous.”

  I glanced up at him again. “Your family saved my life. Do you deny I would’ve died out there if you all hadn’t ridden to my rescue?”

  He opened his mouth to retort, but for once words escaped him. I nodded. “You know it’s true. Ochieng, I have been rescued three times now. First Harlan risked his life, lost his rank, and destroyed his future to help me escape. Kaja helped a strange woman, for no other reason than because it was the right thing to do. I wouldn’t have survived, or at least escaped recapture, without her help. And you and your family risked yourselves and the elephants to save me from my late husband’s men. That’s three I owe, if not directly to your family, then to Danu.”

  “All of these people acted out of love for you or for their own reasons. That doesn’t mean you owe anyone anything. Those actions were gifts, freely given,” he bit out.

  I reached into the bag, pulling out the plain wedding bracelets my late husband had forced back on me, their broken ends where Ochieng had had them cut off me ragged and sharp. The diamond ring I tucked in a pocket of my fighting leathers. The bracelets, still dangling their chains, I held up. “Do you know what these are?”

  He frowned. “Of course.”

  “No, I mean, I want you to understand what it means that I twice had wedding bracelets locked onto my wrists—and twice someone else cut them away for me. I’m grateful for that, but I also feel I owe a debt, perhaps to Danu and Her sisters, for all the help I’ve received. It’s time for me to help someone else. And I’ve been asked to do it. I cannot turn away from that call.”

  Ochieng was silent a moment, then came over to squat in front of me. “I thought you said you weren’t even sure your goddess existed, that you didn’t truly believe as an acolyte should.”

  I lifted a shoulder and let it fall, feeling very Dasnarian in that moment, full of fatalistic lack of expectation. If anyone can be filled with an absence, it’s the Dasnarians. “Kaedrin, a Warrior Priestess of Danu who helped Kaja train me, said once that many people think they must believe in a god or goddess, and once they do, they’ll follow the practice they demand. The followers of Danu believe in practice first, as the foundation. You learn the forms, you practice diligently, and uphold Danu’s law. This creates the framework for faith to fill.”

  He regarded me thoughtful
ly. “I don’t think I understand.”

  “I’m saying it doesn’t matter what I believe. I need to do the work. And I haven’t been. I need to act as a Warrior Priestess of Danu, which was the bargain I made with the goddess in exchange for Her protection.”

  “Maybe the bargain has been fulfilled,” he said quietly. “She protected you and brought you here, to me, to all of this. You can’t tell me you don’t love it here. I can see it in you.” He took my hand and lifted it, laying it on his chest over his heart, so I could feel the steady beating beneath. “This. This is real, Ivariel. Not faith, or belief, or what you think you owe.”

  I curled my fingers a little, sinking into the feel of him. “You call me ‘Ivariel’ so easily, but under this woman that you met on a sailing ship lies another. I’m still Jenna. I wasn’t able to save myself, I was too late to save Femi, but I can do this. I can save others.”

  “What are you going to do?” He demanded, holding my hand hard against him with both of his, dark eyes as sparking fierce as the women’s had been. “Will you ride off alone and demand the Chimtoans bring Femi back to life? No amount of faith can bring him back from ashes. Will you draw blood to balance our blood lost? Because that only means more people die.”

  We stared into each other, each trying to see into the shadows. Even now the burning raft with Femi’s body floated down the river, becoming ash that would become the current that went to the great sea beyond. And the elephants stood vigil, Capa still lying half in the water, a forest of legs protecting her.

  I gently withdrew my hand from under Ochieng’s, took up the leather roll of daggers and unlaced it, spreading it open so their lethal edges gleamed in the lantern light. Then I set my sheathed sword beneath them. “I don’t know yet. Danu will guide my feet, my hands and my sword.” And maybe Kaja, who’d promised she’d act as Danu’s handmaiden, keeping an eye on me. All I knew was that I had to do this—that I’d been called to—and I had to find my own way.

  “And you call me impossible,” he said under his breath, standing again and glaring at me with crossed arms. I didn’t think I’d ever made Ochieng angry at me before and it hurt me on a strange level.

  I stood to face him. “I don’t know how to do this. How do people who love each other fight?”

  He turned his head slightly, as if he hadn’t quite heard me correctly. “What did you say?”

  “I asked you how do I fight with you about this? I don’t like making you angry with me, and I feel sure you won’t beat me to exact my obedience, but I must do this thing that you don’t want me to do, so—”

  Ochieng held up a hand, stopping my explanation. Then laughed a little. “There was a time I wouldn’t have predicted you could be so full of speeches. Back up. Did you say you love me?”

  I paused there, considering him. “I must. I thought you knew that.”

  “No.” He shook his head slowly. “You’ve never told me so. I’d remember.”

  “I showed you, earlier today. When I pleasured you, as I’ve never done for anyone. You said I don’t know how to recognize love, so I could be wrong, but… it hurts me when you’re hurt, and it bothers me greatly that you’re angry with me. And even through all of that I still want to touch you and have you touch me so…” I lifted a shoulder and let it fall.

  “It’s traditional,” he said, a line between his brows as he searched my face, “to make something of a declaration of it, not to assume the other knows.”

  “You told me you loved me while standing in waist-deep flood waters holding onto a crazy elephant’s child,” I pointed out.

  His frown cleared and he grinned abruptly. “True are your words. It appears you and I are quite non-traditional.” Then he uncrossed his arms and held out his hands. I took them, and he drew me closer, which felt much nicer than him glaring at me. “My Ivariel—do you really love me?”

  “I agreed to marry you, didn’t I?”

  He quirked a brow. “Given your history, that’s not a definite correlation.”

  I had to laugh, surprising myself that laughter and my former marriage could occupy the same space in my mind. “True are your words,” I returned. “But yes, if love is what I think it is, then I do love you. And Efe, and Violet and Capa. Probably Ayela, too.”

  He laughed, shaking his head at me. “At least you put me at the top of the list.”

  “I told you I don’t know how to do these things.”

  Tugging me closer, testing for my hesitation and finding none, Ochieng pulled me into his arms, cupping my head so we were cheek to cheek, his breath in my ear. “I love you beyond all imagining,” he whispered. “I couldn’t bear to lose you.”

  I turned my head and kissed his ear, tracing the sensitive part of the elegant shell of it that I’d found aroused him terribly. Sure enough, he shuddered, hands tightening on me. “Then I shall have to be sure to return to you.”

  He tensed, then set me away from him, holding me by the shoulders. “I’m coming with you.”

  “No.” I said it very firmly. “This is mine to do. I must go alone.” As Kaja would have. The certainty filled me. Danu’s voice? I didn’t know that, but I knew this was mine alone to accomplish.

  “That’s insane.”

  “Possibly. I’ve been trying to explain to you that I’m not all in my right mind.” I laid a finger over the mouth he opened to argue with me. “I cannot risk having anyone with me, because if I lose myself and kill all around me, I would never forgive myself if I hurt someone I love. Like you.”

  “The words are not sounding so sweet to me now,” he replied with some bitterness.

  “If I’m to pay this debt and return to some semblance of a happy life, I won’t be able to if that happens.”

  “I won’t let you hurt me.”

  “I can’t take that chance. If you won’t promise to let me go alone, then I’ll steal away and not say goodbye.” I waited, watching his face, and knowing full well that I’d laid that threat tightly against his most sensitive wantings. Ah, Hulda, how well you taught me.

  “I’ll follow if you do,” he replied, raising the stakes.

  I shook my head, smiling. “You know I can move without leaving a trace. There will be no trail to follow, and,” I interrupted him again before he could argue, “I swear to Danu that if you follow me, I will never come back here and will never be your wife.”

  He regarded me with some astonishment—and more than a little betrayal. It hurt my heart to see it, to know I caused it, but not as much as it would if I returned to my senses to find him dead at my feet, killed by my own blade. I held fast to that horrible image, using it to bolster my determination.

  “I didn’t imagine you could ever give me such an ultimatum,” he said softly.

  I stepped out of his hands and gave him a deep and formal curtsy, the gray gown and veil oddly like the klúts I’d worn when I’d last done that. “Her Highness Imperial Princess Jenna Konyngrr, at your service.” I straightened. “I come from a family of ruthless people, on both sides. I wouldn’t blame you if you decide you can’t love that after all. In many ways, you don’t truly know me.”

  He pressed his lips together, stricken. “I want to truly know you. If you go and don’t return, how can that happen?”

  I smiled, relief that he still wanted me like the sunshine after the rains. “If I don’t do this, we maybe wouldn’t have the time anyway. I’ve heard Desta talking, the other men—even you when you thought I wasn’t listening—all of you think we cannot withstand the forces the Chimtoans can muster. We could lose all of Nyambura—the homes, our stores, the elephants, all the children. We’d have no time to know each other then, either.”

  Regarding me somberly, he pinched his nose between his fingers and thumb. “I had no idea you possessed such a ruthless view of the world.”

  “I am Dasnarian,” I reminded him.

  “A
nd I love you,” he said on a long sigh. “Which means I must accept this plan, however crazed. Is there nothing at all you will let me do to help you?”

  “Yes, there is.” I eased closer to him again, laying my palms flat on his chest, savoring the heat of his skin through the thin cloth, the crisp resilience of his chest hair. “In case I should live but be unable to return for some reason, I’d like you to plant your child in me.”

  ~ 22 ~

  He looked at me with such a combination of horror, arousal, despair, hope, and sheer bewilderment that I nearly laughed. I might have, if it wouldn’t be so cruel. I might be like my mother in many ways, but not in that. Never in that.

  “How?” he finally managed to ask, which was not the answer I’d expected.

  “I thought you understood the mechanics,” I teased, but he didn’t smile back.

  “I won’t rape you,” he said, flatly, and removing my hands from him, stepping out of my reach.

  “It wouldn’t be rape if I ask you to do it,” I pointed out, a bit terse with annoyance that he’d make me fight him on this.

  “So now, all of a sudden, you’re certain you can enjoy bedding me? That you could take me inside your body and feel joyful?”

  “Yes,” I replied stubbornly. I could fake joy, pretend long enough to get through it. It would be worth it, to have his child, just in case.

  He eased closer, a strange glint in his eye. “You’ll just strip naked and open your legs for me. Lie back and let me mount you, pressing you down with my weight, thrusting my cock into you and—”

  “Stop!” I had my hands over my ears, cringing as if he’d indeed beaten me. My stomach heaved, and if I’d eaten more than a few bites of fruit I might’ve puked right there.