Asanda heard Ndoda's unmistakable whistle long before he showed up at her door. She looked up from her desk, and Khaya looked up from his seat on the window sill.
"Sounds like trouble," Anket said, inspecting the pool of milkwater on the dais. The old man had convinced her to leave it open -- just in case.
"That can't be him," Khaya said. He set down both the whetstone and the spearhead in his hand when the whistle shrilled again. "Shadowless."
Asanda ignored her brother's casual curse as she went back to inspecting her table. Ndoda was back, so be it. He was the reason for this mess, for all this. She had spent the morning grinding poppy, apple seeds, and witchroot for a powder even white-alchemists considered unethical -- and for some reason, she couldn't get the taste of botanical spirits out of her mouth. Using a knife to push the three tea-paper pouches into a small citruswood box, Asanda tried to ignore Anket's disgusted sigh.
"Be careful with that," Anket said.
"I know what I'm doing."
"Not really -- you're guessing at chemistry. For all you know, you could have made anything from a light sedative disguised as a teabag to a death powder."
If worst comes to worst, then Ndlovu will at least be glad to discover that his death tastes of mint and citrus rind. He can tell Papa all about it in the afterlife.
Ndoda burst through the door without knocking, hard enough to make the doorframe rattle.
"Eh," said Khaya with one leg still swinging from the sill, "what's fouled your mood?"
What little Asanda remembered of her father's features were in his wide nose and tall walk. She could see the hot blood under his dark skin, the twitch in his jaw from his teeth gnashing. He fixed Khaya with a look that could cow a charging elephant, but Khaya only laughed.
"Qaqamba really gave it to you then." He swung off the window sill and landed with a lightness of foot that went against his heavy frame. "Either that or you rode with your saddle lose."
"Khaya. Not now."
"Is that a bruise on your wrist?"
Ndoda's jaw twitched again, just as his left hand curled into a fist. "You're still a boy, so don't even think I won't--"
"Don't start on him," Asanda said to Ndoda. "If your fist is itchy, go take it out on that damn bastard we've been bending over backwards to keep you safe from. Elsewise shut up or greet properly."
Ndoda startled at her words. "What did you say to me?" He stepped up to the desk.
Asanda's body told her to flee, not because she feared Ndoda, but because he was suddenly not her brother but a drunk old man charging at her with club in hand. She planted her trembling hands on the desk and bent over because her gut suddenly seemed too tight. A bead of sweat rolled off her nose and darkened a small spot on the desk between her hands.
"Breathe," Anket said. "That's Ndoda."
"Step away from my desk," Asanda said. She looked up. Her brother had a princely anger about him that refused to clear, so she straightened and struck at the middle child in him. "Get out, little brother. Go fix your rage and affront elsewhere. I'll call you back when it suits me."
A deep crease cleaved Ndoda's brow in two. "Don't ever speak to your king-in-waiting like--"
"And Bakhonto help me if I ever think you are unready for that title, I will have it ripped so fast from your hands your palm will bleed." Asanda slammed the cedarbox shut. "Test me, Ndoda. Do it."
The surest way to get mauled by a lion is to roar back, the Inner Plainers said. The surest way to survive is the same. Call the lion, and let the brave and the unfortunate sort themselves out.
To her surprise, and perhaps to his, Ndoda backed away. He had enough grace to walk out with his back straight and his temper bayed, but he still nearly tore the door off its hinges with how forcefully he shut it. Asanda made a point of not exhaling too hard.
Khaya was still staring at the door. "Would you be surprised if I told you that he's mellowed?"
"Don't goad him, Khaya."
"Ndoda would never lay a hand on either of us."
No, but he's broken a man's leg for lesser insults. "Go make sure he doesn't do anything brash."
"Again."
Asanda stared at him.
"You know, you and Ndoda were never fun to begin with, but now you're both actively ruining my mood." He was much gentler in opening the door. "You want me to bring you breakfast? Khulu made shortrib this morning."
Asanda rubbed the cold spot in her temple. "I'll be fine. What time is Dumani's trial?"
"After lunch. Ma probably wants the elders fed before she presents her case, just to remind them who grows their food and who's currently threatening it."
He's picking up on her tricks too quickly. "Ndoda. Brash. Go."
Finally alone -- or as alone as she could be with the Diviner and Lifa sleeping sedated on the other side of the room -- Asanda cleared her desk. She stored what raw ingredients could be stored, burned what couldn't in a fumeless burner for later disposal, and scrubbed her chopping board clean with drinking spirits. As she knelt by the basin in the corner, she examined the Wayfarer clay she had smeared her hands with and frowned.
"You have an idea." Anket's tone was almost accusatory.
"I heard you working on something last night."
"Ah, yes. I don't mean to sound rude in saying it but your mother's cage."
"And?"
"It's an atrocious idea."
Asanda got to scrubbing her hands. "It's necessary."
"I didn't say inhumane -- we agree on that part. But a cage is impractical. What if the spirit overtook your mother and she didn't have the control to drag herself to a pool of milkwater? No, we'd need something portable."
"Portable means small and light." Asanda pulled a wooden pin from the window sill above the basin, scraped the clay out of her nails, and tossed the pin into the burner. "Small and light means weaker, even with premium material at our disposal."
Anket's smile was far too self-satisfactory. "Come with me."
Asanda followed her tutor up to the rooftop garden. The midmorning sun had burned the dew off most of her plants, except those she kept in permenant shade. The usual fist-sized birds poked their heads through the wire mesh, hoping to get at the berries she used for distilling botanical spirits. One half-empty bottle stood proudly in the middle of the work table and next to it...
Anket hooked his fingers through the two interlocking gold rings on the table. "When the Sunspear overtakes your mother, she seems to come across some considerable strength."
"Lore dictates that the Sunspear gains the strength of half a man with each generation." Although at this point they were past lore or theory. "Ma's possessed by the twenty-third incarnation."
"Ah, so not considerable strength, then. Better to say monstrous."
"I prefer not to think about it, if I can help it."
"You certainly aren't possessed by an ancient war god, yet you are her first child," Anket said, slipping his hands through the two gold rings; they hung loosely on his wrists. "Have you never wondered why you were spared?"
"Get to your point, Anket." Asanda squeezed the bridge of her nose and tried to lick the dryness from her mouth. "Please."
"Very well. There's something else that happens to your mother when she is overtaken, isn't there? I saw it in the way she moved and when Anathi tried to push her into the pool. There was an unnatural heaviness to her."
"All spirits have a physical presence. Powerful ones like Anathi and the Sunspear can manifest greatly enough to influence the matter around them. Anathi can move clay. I suspect Ma's bones and flesh become denser, possibly to keep her new-found strength from breaking the vessel."
"I note that you don't refer to this vessel as your mother's body."
"Anket."
He held up his hands, and the rings jangled down to his elbows. "In any case, the Sunspear manifests in the flesh, strengthening it, but also making it more susceptible to spiritual wards like gold and glass."
Asanda's stomach heaved when Anket tapped the glass bottle of botanicals. It made a chiming sound against the gold rings.
"Not wards," Asanda said, sitting down opposite her mathematics tutor. "People have the wrong conception of how the spiritual plane interacts with certain minerals. They know to keep iron in their homes, and gold and glass when they cannot afford it, but that reduces any item to a superstitious trinket."
"Superstition and belief is a powerful thing."
"So is a half-ton demon. Now listen." Asanda pushed the fragrant bottle of spirits to the far edge of the table. "Iron is useless against ethereal spirits, but where the spirit possesses flesh, iron is the only mineral that will cause physical pain."
"Hmm." Though his field was calculus and geometry, Anket nodded as if he were goading her towards an answer he already knew.
"Gold weakens, so it works best for subduing rituals. Glass is strange. All that the books I've read know is that no spirit possessing flesh can break it, not even a thin pane of pig glass."
"Interesting," Anket said in a way that suggested his big flourish was near. He shifted the rings back up to his wrists and slammed them on the table.
Only then did Asanda notice the delicately-structured sliders. Each ring was made of four separate parts that overlapped when they made an impact against the table. Some clever counter-mechanism send hooks shooting out the opposite direction, locking the rings firmly around Anket's wrists.
"How long did that take you?"
"I cast the pieces yesterday morning and assembled them last night."
A fine effort, but... "Even so weakened, the Sunspear would still be strong enough to break apart a soft metal like gold."
"Ah, a fair critique." Some trick of Anket's middle fingers slipped the hooks, and the rings sprang back to their full size. "I considered black iron, but we also wouldn't want to burn your mother's wrists off. In any case, gold works because it indeed weakens, but the point of the rings is not so much to contain her as it is to contain this."
Anket slipped the rings off and handed them to Asanda.
Clever man.
Two parallel grooves ran along the inside of each ring, though the line between them was cut diagonally at regular intervals. Each groove was lined with thin glass filaments, each around a thumb's width long. When Asanda squeezed one of the rings closed, the two parallel grooves broke apart at their intervals and inverted so that the glass filaments interlocked, forming a single woven band along the inside of the ring. Somehow, Anket had found a way to braid glass.
"Anket this is brilliant." Although if it were complete, he would have brought it this morning. "What's missing."
He looked uncomfortable at the prospect of bringer her an unsolved problem, but that should have been the least of either of their problems.
"The Sunspear may not be able to break glass, but so long as these filaments are individual pieces, the bonds between them may as well be paper."
"And any physical binder would be obsolete."
"My engineering skills are more than competent, but between us, you are the alchemist and spiritual expert."
Asanda let the ring pop back to normal and squinted at the filaments. "These holes at the bottom of the grooves, they're for injecting a binder?"
"If we ever find the appropriate one. It's pressurised"
"Wayfarer clay." A perfect solution, but when had Asanda ever been satisfied by mere perfection. "With a distilled milkwater solvent to keep it viscous."
"And to further weaken the spirit?"
"Not by much but yes."
Anket smiled broadly. "Serendipity."
Asanda's stare trimmed the excitement from his face. "Of a sort. We're still talking about a way to chain my mother up like a rogue elephant, Anket."
"Should we ever need to. Do you want me to fashion another set for her ankles."
"It's the last thing I want, but it's what you need to do." Graveless ancestors, how often had that sentiment floated around her this past week? "I'm going to take a nap. Wake me up an hour before Dumani's trial."
A four-hour nap had never felt shorter. Asanda woke up with the same stone-heavy grogginess that came whenever she slept during the day. Despite not shifting around much, her sheets were barely warm and her hands were stiff from being slept on. Splashing water on her face did no good, it just made her aware of how hot her ears and neck were. And her mouth was dry again. What she needed was food and a strong mug of koffee.
By the time she changed out of her wrinkled work robes into a respectable house frock, Asanda could open her mouth without her jaw groaning and the throb in her hands was mostly gone. She spared Lifa and the Diviner a quick inspection and made a note to bring them soup when she returned. Anket, ever the frustrating houseguest despite his year here, didn't ask for anything as Asanda left him in her room, so she made a note to bring him something too.
Generally, when the manse was as full with guests as it had been since Jabulani and General Dumani arrived, most of the cooking happened outside. Asanda was thankful for that much, because when she walked into the inner kitchen, the long rows of ovens and work stations were mostly empty. The only two people here were her grandmother and a woman who somehow looked even older than her. They sat on a kneading counter beside a red hot clay oven, talking over bread and tea.
"Asi!" Grandmother used her grandmother voice, high and sweet and made for calling children inside to eat. "Come here, child. Do you remember who this is?"
Asanda eyed the old woman next to her grandmother, and the look she got back made her itch to be elsewhere. Flinty eyes seemed to sift through the pores on her face, searching for something intangible and still finding her wanting.
"I couldn't tell when she was little," the old woman said, "but now she looks too much like her mother. A girl should look like her father. Don't frown at me, child, that's wisdom -- a son who imitates his father picks up his bad habits first. The same for a daughter and her mother. Switch them around and the opposite is true."
Asanda kept her tone respectful. Barely. "I can't help how I look, old woman."
"Of course you can." Those grey eyes didn't laugh, but there was some sharp wit in them that cut. "Stop standing like your mother, all hunched and ready to whip someone with your frustration. Your brother has you beat there."
"If it's a bad habit, then how did my brother pick it up from his mother?" Asanda asked.
The old woman laughed, a cheery sound that went against those scrutinous eyes. "That's your father's wit but you make a weapon of it like your mother. Come here, child."
Asanda hesitated. When the old woman stood, she was a tower. A frail, worn, grey tower, but her shadow was long. Glancing at her grandmother only earned Asanda a reassuring nod. If it came from Khulu it was enough, so she stepped forward.
The old woman lifted Asanda's chin with strong hands. "Good, good. You're a woman made. "
"The poor girl, Qaqi, you're frightening her," Grandma said. "Ndoda is angered and then frightened. Asi is the opposite."
Qaqi. Of course. Asanda dipped slightly and bowed her head. "I'm sorry for not recognising you, Khulu Qaqamba."
"Ah, there it is. A father's grace." Qaqamba stepped back, and the oven coals rimmed her right eye with fire. Asanda couldn't be sure, but she thought the old woman offered some sort of approval with her smile. "And don't you dare apologize. I've earned these grey hairs on my chin, I would have been offended if you recognised me."
"Come sit with us, Asi," Grandma said, "unless you're headed to the trial."
"I'll only go to the meeting hall when the elders give their punishment." She didn't say judgement, because that implied a chance at innocence. "I just came to get some things. Do you know where Ndoda is, Khulu?"
"He's been in a foul mood all morning. There's only one place he could be."
Asanda found him on Ma's patio. He sat on the tiles with his legs dangling over the edge, staring out at the Wayfarer as the afternoon sun burned his back.
"It's a fine autumn day," Asanda said, shifting her parcel of hot bread from one arm to the other. "We don't have too many of them left."
He turned his head towards her, but his gaze was on the tiles. He went back to staring at the distant river. "They'll come again."
Asanda crossed the patio and sat down next to him. She set the parcel down between them and spread the cloth out. "Doesn't matter if better days are just over the horizon, not when there's a real mountain between you and them."
"Seasons and geography? You're mixing your metaphors."
"Meteorology."
His mouth twitched in annoyance. "What?"
"The study of seasons falls under meteorology. But yes, I'm mixing my metaphors. I'm having a bad day."
"Incredible how you and Khaya are allowed to have those."
"We all have our struggles." Asanda tore a hank of bread, opened a small bowl of olive oil, dipped it. "Khaya and I aren't first sons or kings-in-waiting. The mood of the house is not tied to ours. When we are angry, we are allowed to be angry by ourselves. When we are scared, we go to our own corners to cower." She salted the bread lightly. "Khaya's struggle is that he is nearly as gifted with the spear as you or in the mind as me, though he is close on both counts. But just as you aren't allowed to have a bad day, he is not allowed to walk in either of our shadows, lest the world think he is a lesser child."
Ndoda's scowl was implacable. "And you? What were you denied?"
"I'm the eldest and a daughter." Asanda held out the dressed bread to him. "Over and above my own struggles, I'm not allowed to give up on either of you."
She held that bread out for a long moment, but Ndoda eventually sighed and took it, though he didn't move to eat it.
"You think I don't see the sacrifices you and Ma make on my behalf," he said. "I do. But when those dwarf my own, how can I stand tall between you?"
"It's not about who struggles the most, Ndoda. In family..." Monster. Mother. Matriarch. Only one keeps the wolves away. Asanda sighed. "In family, it's about who does the ugly, silent work for the next person. You're allowed to hate your family on occasion, and you're allowed to hate yourself on occasion. You're forbidden from giving up on either. Absolutely forbidden."
He was silent even longer now. Asanda feared that she hadn't gotten through to him, but when she looked up, she saw tears brimming in his eyes, as clear as the Wayfarer. She wiped his right eye with the back of her fist. Then she got up and walked to the back of the patio so he could feel whatever he was feeling in peace. His back was still for a little while, then it shuddered, then it stilled again. By the time he stood up, the sun had shifted a bit in the sky.
Without a word, he wrapped up the bread parcel with greater care than Asanda had ever seen him give anything that wasn't a weapon. He straightened, looked at her, and suddenly seemed at a loss for words.
"Walk me to the trial?" she asked.
He nodded, and she took his hand.
Asanda was just getting used to her brother's silence when they left the final corridor for the front entrance. With the giant double doors thrown open, the commotion of the drinking yard poured into the lobby.
Bakhonto, what now? What the ever-damning earth now?
She and Ndoda were sprinting by the time they bumped into Athi, who stood just at the edge of the yard surveying the crowd. Most of the Third Hillers were still seated, with Ma standing alone in the wide circle at the crowd's centre. Most of the noise was coming from the other side of the yard, where twenty of General Dumani's personal guards beat their shields and hurled naked insults at Nomvula. A couple of the house guards had sprinted across the yard to restrain Khaya, who had his club out and his bloodshot eyes set on the jeering Inner Plainers.
Asanda grabbed Athi's arm. "What happened."
Athi turned around, as casual as you liked. Then he spotted Ndoda. "Eh, big man, welcome home."
"Focus," Asanda said.
"Ah, it's nothing big, just noise from the desert lice." Athi stroked his chin as he turned back towards the crowd. "Your what I don't get is why your Ma pardoned Dumani and all his bachelor cronies."
Asanda's mouth had gone dry again. Ndoda tensed beside her. Ma, why? said a distraught voice in her head. Think, came another.
If Dumani was pardoned, the Inner Plainers would have a field day painting her mother as a weak and incompetent ruler. She would also have to contend with her own council of elders, who would still want to see some punishment come to at least the man that had struck her daughter. Contend with her elders...
That might take a whole day. Maybe two if both sides were stubborn -- and they were especially so.
Two days, maybe. And in that time Dumani would have to remain in custody.
"Your mother could have had a case," Athi said in that way that made her think he was only talking to himself. "I would have testified to, and fought all the bastards if it came to that."
And that was the point, wasn't it? To avoid bloodshed?
"I won't lie, Asi, your mother bought Dumani's freedom for him."
No. Asanda looked at her mother over the seated crowd. She was a lone pillar surrounded by dark glares from both friend and foe. She wasn't standing particularly defiantly, just standing. Accepting. She bought us two days, two days to do the impossible and steal a princess right out of her father's castle. And come what consequences dare.