Khaya leaned on the ship railing. "You know, I thought there'd be more Elephants."
Asanda drummed her leather carry pouch with her free hand. The midmorning sun burned against her scalp and shone an awful glare on the Wayfarer's slow waters. Ndlovu's army counted somewhere between three and five thousand if Long Walker reports were to be believed. There were only two people on the opposite bank waiting for the skiff that rowed out to meet them. One was the Elephant Chief himself, large and imposing even half a river away, and a much smaller figure next to him. Either an older girl or a young woman.
"It could be a show of trust," Asanda said.
Khaya spat over the railing. "Or to show that he doesn't fear us."
"Does it make a difference?" Jabulani stood with his buttocks against the railing, arms folded. "You two aren't being married off like some prized bull. You have no stake in this so shut it and just don't antagonise him."
No stake? Asanda thought.
"Prized bull?" Khaya scoffed.
Jabulani glared at Khaya's back but said nothing. Asanda doubted the Inner Plainer Prince would start a fight with her brother on a good day, but Khaya had his spear and his club strapped cross-wise to the small of his back, and his forearm was thicker than Jabu's calf.
Asanda kept drumming her pack. Her other hand was in the pocket of her travelling dress, where she rolled a small tile of citruswood between her fingers. The calming rune carved into it was cold against the wood, absorbing some of the warmth in her hand and a little of her anxiety with it, which would be stored in the tile. She made a note to dissolve the wood in alcohol when she got the chance, lest some lesser hedge witch find it and brew a panic tea with its stored ethers.
Hedge witch? Asanda clicked her tongue at her own superstition and pressed her thumb against the icy rune. When her thumb was cold enough to burn, she breathed a little easier.
"So have you figured out what you're going to tell your uncle?" Khaya said to Jabulani. The question was laced with mischief. "You know, after you marry into the Elephant Plains against his knowledge."
Asanda frowned. It would not do to make Jabulani anxious. There were enough frayed nerves on the ship, with the archers lining the upper deck and the captain pacing by the bridge's window. The off-duty crew had come to stand on the lower deck, pretending at dice or casual conversations. Those with knives had them sheathed, but the sheathes were unbuckled. The less subtle simply sat cross-legged as they gambled, their shortspears laid across their laps or on the floor beside them.
It had dawned on Asanda that a lot could go wrong long before she had boarded the ship. But to be here on the deck, in the eye of a building storm, was a different matter -- she was responsible for things going right now, and there was no mother to turn to, no Asanda to guard her back.
She shifted her bag to the other shoulder. "Leave him alone, Khaya."
"Why? We're in this mess because of him."
Jabulani looked away, perhaps ashamed -- no. He clicked his tongue, disgusted. "You're here because your hot-headed brother broke my uncle's leg."
"For the insults your uncle gave, Ndoda should have broken his back."
"Khaya." Asanda looked over her shoulder. A dice game that had momentarily paused resumed. "Enough."
"No, it's not," Jabulani hissed. "You three children are as arrogant as your mother, going around like you're solving everyone else's problems so you can feel better about yourselves."
Children? It dawned on Asanda then that Jabulani was eighteen, only a few months younger than Ndoda -- he had already gone through his rite of passage and earned his manhood. In her mind, he had been a junior to even Khaya.
"Shut it, the both of you."
"The Plain Prince has a mouth for two," Khaya said, still leaning on the railing. "Tell him twice."
Jabulani slapped him. Well, he tried. He aimed a stinging backhand to the back of Khaya's head. With a movement so casually fluid his weapons didn't even rattle, Khaya leaned out of the way and caught Jabulani's wrist. The lower deck stilled in that way that only happened when twenty whispered conversations died at once.
Half the Prince's hand disappeared inside Khaya's grip, and a lesser, prouder, more bitter man would have broken it. Instead, Khaya set the Prince's hand down on the railing and patted it gently, all without taking his eyes off Ndlovu.
"I don't like being touched by people who don't know me," Khaya said. Somehow, there wasn't an iota of a threat in the words. "But now that you've proven yourself unreliable, best you stay in the background when the Elephant arrives. His hands are probably bigger than mine."
Ndlovu had boarded the skiff, along with his daughter. The skiff was halfway back to the ship before Jabulani excused himself to the upper deck.
Asanda moved to the railing next to her brother. "No theatrics. I mean it, Khaya. Fix your face."
The skiff rounded the ship to get to the portside boarding ladder, Asanda fished the cold, stale loaf of bread from her bag. She turned, then waited. Then the Elephant came.
When Ndlovu climbed onto the deck, it was like watching a mountain rise out of the earth. His shoulders were impossibly broad, his gut like the round, hard belly of a beer keg. There were bracelets around his wrists that were wider than most anklets, and his beard was a dense, wild thing that covered half his chest. And for all his weight and bristles and broadness, some uncompromising god had given him height too, and on either side of his thick nose, two eyes dark with intelligence.
Not a single bone die was rolled in the loose gambling rings. Those who had been crouched over chamberlain tiles slowly rose at the Elephant's presence. On the upper deck, the archers watched on nervously, and above them, the crew on the rigging. More hands than Asanda would have liked settled on knife hilts, and Ndlovu's eyes seemed to see them all, and they dared.
Khaya had turned to sit on the railing. "Nice beard, asshole."
Idiot. Asanda pulled the hand of the nearest man off the hilt of his rigging knife.
Ndlovu looked over the thirty heads on the deck, right across the ship and into Khaya. Dumani would have had a biting remark ready. Ndlovu only stood. If his mouth moved under the mass of his beard, Asanda would have never known, but a bead of sweat turned cold against her spine when he did not laugh off her brother's brazenness. She stepped around two men with spears in hand and stood directly in Ndlovu's line of sight.
"Be welcome, Great Elephant," she said. "Thank you for meeting us."
Ndlovu was still staring at Khaya, though he spoke to her. "So you are Nomvula's oldest, then. The one that she trusts."
Asanda heard her brother's footsteps behind her. She put out an arm to stop him as he came past, but he stopped a step or two behind her shoulder.
"I am," she said. "Though if my brother is here too, know that it is because she puts faith in him too." However dangerously he juggles it.
Ndlovu's beard twitched. When he looked at Asanda, a subtle weight settled on her shoulders. There were a dozen tests in his look, and she could feel herself passing some and failing others, but there was nothing to be done for that. She had sensed the same thing from Qaqamba in the kitchens, and there, the biggest question was whether or not she would give in to the need to impress. Qaqamba would have hated that, so would her mother, so what business did she have giving in to someone who hadn't earned a tenth of their respect?
After a moment, faint creases formed on either side of Ndlovu's eyes. The suggestion of a smile, or at least an amusing thought. "Yes, there's been a lot of trust thrown around lately. Know this, though, Elder Child, nothing valuable is given out of desperation."
"There we agree, Great Elephant."
"But let us not think words are actions." Ndlovu stepped to the side and gestured to the rope ladder that disappeared over the side. "Prince. Will you help my daughter board?"
This time Khaya didn't move.
"It is not a small thing, asking the son of my nemesis to aid my child," Ndlovu said. He clasped his hands behind his back in a token gesture of peacekeeping, but there was every sort of warning in his deep voice. "For our bloodlines to touch without malice would be something that has not happened in fifteen years."
"Chief Ndlovu," Asanda said, "we genuinely don't have time to waste with games."
"If you want to talk about games, Elder Child, look at the peace bread in your hands, which will grow stale and mouldy until it is fit only for pig slop. Prince Khaya, my daughter requires aid." This time, she saw the smile buried in his beard. "Do not make an old man bend over."
Asanda squeezed the loaf hard enough to crack the crust. "Go, Khaya."
To Khaya's credit, he showed more grace than Asanda thought he could manage in that moment. He unhitched his spear and club, handed them to her, and walked to within two steps of Ndlovu. They were crude imitations of each other, though Ndlovu was a head taller, a shoulder broader -- a mountain smiling down at a hillock. Khaya stared at the Elephant Chief for only a moment longer than he should have, then he knelt and extended a hand down over the side of the ship.
It was all well and fine preaching calmness to a wily Jabulani, but who knew what went on in the minds of sons when they stood eye to eye with their father's killer. And now Khaya knelt in his shadow, and Asanda realised that if Ndlovu wanted to -- no, if he decided to -- he suddenly had a very easy opening at killing her brother.
Instead, while Khaya helped his daughter up, Ndlovu walked over to Asanda. It took every ounce of nerve to keep her feet planted, and she kept having to tilt her head up the closer he came. He stopped a step and a half away, with her perhaps just outside his massive reach, perhaps just inside. Either way, he had stepped from having Khaya at his mercy to her in a matter of seconds.
"You look like you mo--"
"I know," Asanda said.
Ndlovu stroked his beard, revealing a few white hairs buried in the black. "Why do none of you children look like your father?"
"It is difficult to model yourself after a dead parent, Great Elephant."
Was that sympathy in his eyes? His ancestors could choke on it, every last shadowless one of them.
"There's no truth to that," Ndlovu said, and when his daughter gained the deck, Asanda saw why.
She had her father's skin, the proud deep brown inherited from northland ancestors. Unlike Asanda, who had taken her mother's fullness, Ndlovu's daughter was slim and tall -- and all the while Khaya helped her, she kept her eyes to the deck. Beyond her father's flesh and his height, only their name chained them as blood.
Ndlovu was scrutinising her again, that same way Qaqamba did. "Children become what they think their parents are, Elder Child. Then when they see their parents for what they are, they spend their adult lives correcting that foolishness. I only say that because when I look at you, I see the Nomvula half, bright and clear. Beneath that, I only see the raw, blank parts where your mother has spent your whole life scrubbing your father's image away."
"We're going to break this bread," Asanda said, carefully, the whole deck had stilled to watch after all, "and then you are going to take us to your homestead. Let us not make more of it than either of us wants, Great Elephant."
"That Nomvula half again." Ndlovu laughed. "Did your father have sunspots on his cheeks or not? Do you remember?"
Before Asanda could answer, he half-turned and smiled at Khaya, who walked back with the Elephant Princess, a respectable man's width between them.
"Good man," Ndlovu said, then he chuckled. "No, not a man yet. You still haven't undergone your rite of passage. In any case, Youngest Child, I trusted you and you rewarded that trust -- that makes you man enough for now."
Khaya came to stand at Asanda's shoulder again and took his weapons back. "If it comes to blows, don't think I'll look to any man on this deck to help fight you."
"I don't doubt that." Ndlovu looked down at Asanda, all mirth wiped from his face. "Command everyone to clear the deck, Elder Child. Including your brother."
It would have been a stupid, rash, bold, brave, testing, sly thing to do. A great risk for only the promise of a little bravado. A very Ndoda thing to do, and Khaya's mouth was halfway to cursing when Asanda lay a hand on his shoulder.
"Clear out," Asanda said. She looked up at the forearcher on the upper deck. "All of you."
"Asanda," Khaya started.
She stared down his protest. "All of you."
So she said, and so they did. The archers retreated out of site, the off-duty crew shuffled belowdecks, and after a long moment of hesitation, Khaya escorted Ndlovu's daughter to the upper deck. Only the Captain and the men on the rigging were visible now, and neither were in any position to jump in if Ndlovu decided... if it came to that.
It dawned on Asanda that she hadn't been expecting Ndlovu to come alone. She could technically order his daughter seized right now, but she'd have to seize the Elephant Chief along with her, and he'd go down killing. And she couldn't very well steal both members of another royal family without sparking the cold war between their lands back into a blaze. And there was the matter of leaving Jabu on the opposite border.
Well then. Follow through, she must.
Ndlovu started ambling across the deck, and Asanda was forced to follow.
"You don't fear me then, Elder Child?"
Asanda rolled the calming tile in her pocket between two fingers. "I didn't say that."
"Then why trust me?"
His gait was long, but he slowed so that Asanda wouldn't have to try too hard to keep up.
"Because you're still on my mother's ship. You could kill me but you would die too."
"Shallow reasoning."
"And after this, we travel into your territory. This is also only chance I'll have at observing you before I lose all control of my environment."
"So you are testing me then."
"Breaking bread is a robust gesture, but strong men can break robust things."
"There's the first wise thing you've said today."
Ndlovu stopped in front of a stain on the deck. No, the whole deck was stained from years of sun and rain and tar and boots. This splotch on the deck was clean wood that had been faded by a very strong agent. There were scars in the wood from a wire brush.
It was strange to see Ndlovu kneel. He didn't quite have Khaya's talent for moving a heavy frame with grace, and he grunted when his knee gave a soft pop. He ran two thick fingers over the scoured wood.
"Dumani killed one of my own here. I mourn that."
"I am sorry for the man who died here," Asanda said. "But I couldn't care less how you feel about it."
"Boy, not man. He was your little brother's age." Ndlovu's mouth worked inside his beard again, and some strong thought had taken the focus out of his eyes. "Almost as cocksure, too."
Asanda tapped the bread in her hand with an agitated finger.
"He didn't bleed much. Just a single bead, in fact, but sailors are a superstitious lot. If I spent my life on waters so powerful and indifferent to their tiny lives, I might scrub the floor where a dead boy lay too." Ndlovu wrapped the wood with his knuckle. "Would you believe I mourned your father."
"No," Asanda said quietly. Something about Ndlovu encouraged her to truth, perhaps it was that she thought the truth could hurt him.
The skin around his eyes creased again, but this time the smile looked pained. "Oh, you will have a hard time growing into your womanhood, Elder Child. Peeling back all the secrecy and deceit your mother wrapped around you... it will be like a snake trying to shed iron skin."
"I'd like to break bread, Great Elephant, and be on our way."
He looked up at her, which was a strange thing given how large he was. "Did you not hear what I said? A hard time growing into your womanhood. I vow you will be safe. I have no intention of doing you harm on this visit. If anything, I'll do my utmost to see you live long enough to hate your mother."
Long enough? Asanda had already known hate towards her mother, and she'd forgiven. But under Ndlovu's words there was the promise (the threat?) that there was more to forgive, once it boiled to the surface, and he was dead sure it would shatter her.
Asanda took her hand out of her pocket. The calming rune had pulled so much heat from her fingers that they were shivering. She didn't bother trying to doubt his words. Doubt required mulling over their meaning, and her skin was still too thin for that.
"Break this bread, Chief Ndlovu, and solidify your vow so we can get going."
"Come now, Elder Child." He rose to his full height again, took the loaf out of her hand, and tossed it over the side of the ship. "I don't make my vows with things I can eat and shit out. I vowed to kill your father at the height of our friendship. On his life, I will spare you and yours."