It took the greed of one termite to topple a tree, and the spark of a stone thrown in anger to swallow a tinder-dry forest.
Nomvula emerged under the enormous arch of the manse's front entrance, neck clammy with sweat, and winced. The noise she had heard in the passageway found a new voice in the drinking yard.
A guard was separating two men brawling in one of the five ponds. Toppled casks, platters of trampled meat, and ash from the cooking fire littered the surrounding lawns. White-hot embers burned scabs into the once pristine grass as three young girls doused them with water. Elders huddled in startled packs, packs of dogs sniffed for scraps while children tried to call them back. Young men threw insults like pebbles and pebbles like insults...
Nomvula looked past it all.
Two Inner Plainers knelt in the shade of the furthest palm tree. A third man lay between them, his teeth bared in agony in a black-and-grey beard. His white embroiled sarong had a dark pool to one side, just below the knee.
"Nomvula!" one of the elders yelled acrossed the yard. "That dog insulted your son!"
Nomvula stepped around a trio of woman nailed to the spot in shock. The old man's blood left a long trail from his seat by the fire to the shade of the palm tree.
Asanda, hurry.
"He spat on him for not serving him first!"
"Eh, Ma!" one of her younger inlaws added above the chaos. "That drunkard grabbed Ndoda by the loin and kicked at him first."
Nomvula clenched her jaw, stepping aside a boy scavenging for liver. She almost slipped on a thick puddle of beer.
"Ndoda should have jumped on both his legs!" another yelled.
"Shut your pig mouth!" came the reply from the Inner Plainer's side of the yard. A new scuffle broke out there and three guards took off towards it, clubs in hand.
A dark, lean guard fell in line with her, shoving loiters away with his hide shield.
"Athi," Nomvula said to him, "get the children inside and kick out any of our people involved in the fighting."
"Mamkhonto," Athi said respectfully, head swivelling, club at the ready, "it was the Inner Plainers who start it."
"And here I am, ending it." If Lifa dies here, by my son's hand, it's war tomorrow and not a day later. "Go. Now."
"I've heard." He broke off.
She was starting up the small hill at the base of the palm tree when one of the Inner Plainers cut her off. The angle of the slope would have made General Dumile a tall man, but the King's cousin was a giant on level ground too.
"No further, Queen." Dumile sneered, arms crossed over a thick, bare chest.
"Your King's brother is dying," she said, taking another step up.
He levelled a spear at her, angling the steel tip between her eyes. "And whose fault is that?"
"It'll be yours if you don't let me save him, General."
"We've tied the leg off at the thigh, Mamkhonto." Dumile's voice had the rumble of a landslide closing a cave. "We will take him to our medicine man back home, and if Lifa's ancestors see fit for him to live, he will."
So he will die, if they see fit.
Nomvula wrapped a fist around the spear and pulled it away from her face. The yard was suddenly quiet. Too many eyes burned into her back.
"If he leaves this manse, I know it will not be his ancestors who decide his fate," she said in a low voice so that only he heard. "And if he dies, you will be the one to explain to Jabulani's father who stood in the way of his brother's aide. But more than that, General, this is my land, and you'll answer to me first. Now move."