Nomvula

41. The Dark Earth

"Do you think Khaya will make a good king?" Anket asked.

Now Asanda was glad she had not stood, because she would have slapped the old man and felt no guilt. 

"Dumani will not kill Ndoda."

"Of course he will. He has the capacity and soon he will have the opportunity."

"Qaqanda--"

"--is the greatest spear-and-club fighter the south has ever produced, but she is old, and she is only training your brother, and for a fortnight at that." Anket straightened. "If anything, that will only fill Ndoda with overconfidence. It is also a two days ride to Qaqanda's hill, and two days back. So Ndoda will spend four days in that fortnight on horseback, sore and tired, and with nothing to do but think on his impending bout. So the truth is he will either be overconfident or frightened. But your brother has a king's ambition. I wouldn't put it past him to be both at the same time."

Asanda's glare was wasted on Anket's back. He was too preoccupied with reappling Wayfarer clay on a faded patch of skin on the Diviner's cheek. But there was a bellows in Asanda's lungs that made her chest swell, and every bead of sweat on her skin was in inverted thorn. When had she come to stand? 

"Ndoda was sent away to buy your mother time to avoid a duel altogether," Anket continued as he massaged the clay with the knuckle of his forefinger. "She tried to do it herself, and failed. She begged after your help and got halfway to success, then you failed her by not being blind. Rather than bear your mountain, you shaved your head out of spite and severed your bridge to your ancestors, whom your mother has always relied on more than you."

Asanda didn't realise how cold the skin over her bruise was until a hot tear cut across it.

Anket's voice was level, rational. "No, Clever One, I do not know if Khaya will make a good king or not. But I do know that your weakness thrust the crown into his lap, with Ndoda's severed head still wearing it."

"Get out."

"I knocked but you didn't answer. I can come back later but--"

Asanda's hand closed around something hard. "I said get out."

"--you don't look too well," Khaya said.

The sweat on her neck cooled and her chest shrunk to the size of a fist. Asanda blinked and found herself bent over the Royal Diviner, a tub of Wayfarer clay trembling in her white-tipped fingers. There was a single tear on the Diviner's lip, or where her lip would have been if the light could touch her skin. It stood there, a pearl on a dark face. Asanda wiped the wet streak running along the side of her nose and turned.

Khaya was only half a head taller than her, but he was wide, thick where his shoulder joined his chest and a little at his gut. His smile was the frailest thing about him, curled just enough to disguise his agitation from a stranger.

Grateful for that very small courtest, Asanda sniffed and squared her shoulders. "Can I help you?"

Shadowless ones, her voice. It was hoarse enough to make her wince, and it completely shattered any polite ignorance Khaya had mustered up. He closed the space between them in two steps and cupped her shoulders. Then he said something only a younger brother would be stupid enough to.

"What did Athi do?"

She smacked his gut half-heartedly, but he only pulled her into a tight embrace.

"Is it your hair? Tell me if he doesn't like it, I'll twist him like a new braid."

"You an imbecile," she said into his shoulder. 

He was silent for a long while, and Asanda was happy enough to lean into his warmth and think.

"Have you ever wondered what the Diviner looks like?" he said after a while. "Do you know?"

"Don't."

"Just a quick smear."

She pulled away a moment before he was ready to let go. "What do you want, Khaya?"

He shrugged his heavy shoulders and put his hands behind his back so he could massage the haft of his shortspear. Worry, then, boiling over the brim.

"Ma won't let me stand in Ndoda's place for the duel," he said. "I need you to change her mind."

"I won't." Khaya almost as good a fighter as Ndoda, and if Dumani kills him, at least the first-in-line Prince will be spared. Asanda bent over and dry-heaved at the thought. "I won't, Khaya."

She motioned him away when he stepped closer, and licked the taste of iron off the insides of her cheeks. She heard him sit down on the spare bed in the middle, the one their mother's body had been chained up on when... No. Not yet.

"If you want to save Ndoda, help me get to the Elephant Plains. I need to speak with Dumani."

When Khaya crossed his arms, the muscle and suet in his chest bunched, but all the tension was in the chord running down the side of his neck. "Why?"

Bare your mountain. "Ma's orders. We're to secretly negotiate the marriage between Jabulani and Ndlovu's daughter."

"Why would Ma--"

"Think."

He did, so he understood. That only made him squirm on the bed. "But even if Ma negotiates a peace with Ndlovu then chains Dumani's lot to that peace through marriage, she still risks uniting her enemies against her."

There were unsaid words there. Ma would be safer wedding herself to Ndlovu. But the Hundred Hills would revolt at the idea of calling a kingslayer King. It would have been shrewder to wed Khaya to Ndlovu's daughter. And again run the risk of tying the Elephant ancestors to the Hundred Hills thrown. Easiest of all would have been to chain Asanda to Ndlovu and have her live out the rest of her days far away in the Elephant Plains. But that would...

It would...

It's the perfect solution. So why hasn't she taken it? It would just be another mountain.

Yes, perfect. Swapping herself for Jabulani stoked more fires than it put out, and put the lion's share of power in the hands of a man who had killed her father. It relied entirely on that man's word. It left the Hundred Hills -- it left her mother's queenship -- as vulnerable as a face under a descending club. The only thing it truly protected...

"...is you," said Anket over her shoulder.

"Asi," said Khaya, "this whole scheme relies on Ndlo--" It took ten heartbeats for the tightness to leave Khaya's throat; when it did, he looked deflated. "On that bastard's word. We have no way to know he will keep his word. And there is no telling what chaos Dumani will cause the moment he's let out of the holding cell."

 "There's one way." 

Will you trust me, advisor? Mama had asked. 

"What, we give Jabulani over to Ndlovu as a hostage?"

Asanda stared down at the Wayfarer clay in her hand. It was a dark hole in the middle of her palm. "Yes, that -- and we steal away his daughter without him knowing."