Noon found Asanda deep inside the Elephant Plains. Ndlovu led them through a stony passageway between two crags, shutting the sky off to a pale blue ribbon. The trail was barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast, so their contingent stretched: Ndlovu -- whose shoulders were wide enough for two anyway -- led the way, while Khaya and Jabulani guarded the rear. Well, Khaya guarded, Jabulani sulked. That left Asanda at the centre with the Elephant Princess. She would have been annoyed that the men had wordlessly worked to put her in the middle, but it at least put her between Ndlovu and Khaya, and gave her an excuse to observe the Chief's daughter up close.
And she was being watched too. She felt Buhle's gaze shift to her every now and again. It was always when Asanda inspected her bag, or looked down to mind the loose stones on the path. She would have never noticed had some strange instinct not told her to be most aware of those moments, a feeling she hadn't managed to shake since carrying her mother's spirit. It was a seed of distrust wrapped in cunning, left behind by a foreign weed.
I'll do my utmost to see you live long enough to hate your mother, Ndlovu had said. Hate didn't quite capture that lobsided thing sitting over her heart. It was too simple. Hate alone lacked the weight of helplessness she had felt in that commune, and the thorns that wrapped around memories that made you bleed when you tried to move them.
"Are you sick?" Buhle asked.
Asanda looked up at her. She had to, given her height. "Why?"
"It's a warm day and you're shuddering."
"Just a frightening thought."
When she stared down, Buhle had the weight of her father's gaze, and a hint of contempt all her own. "Who is frightened by thoughts?"
"A thinker," Asanda said. She tried to keep the words casual, but she saw the knots of muscle in Buhle's shoulders tighten.
The Elephant Princess pursed her lips and focused on the path in front of them. She navigated it a lot better than Asanda did, stepping lightly where she had to and not minding the gravel under her bare feet. It was a sore reminder that Asanda spent most of her days either on the paved floors of her mother's manse or the soft grass outside. Throbbing feet alone made her want silence, but then she'd have to listen to shifting rock followed by the smack of flesh on stone followed by Jabu's muttered curses. Even Khaya had stopped being amused by it.
"There's a city called Essar," Asanda said, drumming her satchel. "Far to the north and a little east. It's said they praise silence there and treat quiet reflection as communion with their gods. Ever since I read that, I've wondered why our people are so scared to spend time with their own thoughts."
"Silence doesn't mean you're smart," Buhle said. "It just means you're a bad talker."
She meant it as an insult, but Asanda shrugged. "I am a bad talker."
"Keep to your thoughts, then."
She slowed so that Asanda had to walk in front, and that was the end of that.
They cleared the tunnel to a landscape that wasn't much different from the Hundred Hills. Asanda caught the trick of her mind in the way she perceived the Elephant Plain hills to be rockier than the lush hillocks on the other side of the river. A small, subtle bias told her that the grass was sparser here, the gravel underfoot sharper, but after the joint tactics of the Chief and his daughter, it was a bias she cared very little to correct.
Ndlovu sat on a flat rock just left of the tunnel clearance, chewing on a marula. Buhle went to her father's far side, leaving Asanda at his right hand as Khaya and Jabu made their way out of the tunnel.
"Why've we stopped?" Asanda asked.
Ndlovu wiped the juice from his beard and pointed to a watering hole that was more mud than water. A small herd of elephants bathed themselves there, one matriarch and a couple of calves. Two senior aunts plucked fruit off a nearby marula tree, snacking in the shade as they flapped their ears in lazy swishes.
"We can go around them," Jabulani said, stomping tiny stones out of his sandals. "They won't see us."
Buhle rolled her eyes.
"Elephants can smell you from two leagues away," Asanda said.
"Three or four," Ndlovu said. "The older ones know we're here, they just don't care yet."
Khaya leaned against the tunnel entrance. "There's a rumour that you can walk through a herd and not be harmed. I'd like to see that, Chief."
"Anyone can walk safely through a herd of elephants if they're raised right." Ndlovu pushed the remaining half of his marula through his beard and licked his fingers. "You three weren't raised right. Besides, there's something I want at that pond."
"Unbelievable. So what, then?" Jabu asked. "We sit around and wait?"
"You're welcome to stand, Prince. In fact, seeing that we are here to barter your future away... Buhle, take the prince to go pick some more marula for me. There's a tree behind that crag."
Jabulani's eyes widened with his nostrils. "I am of the royal desert blood, and you want me to pick fruit for you?"
"I haven't eaten all day," Ndlovu said, "and the bread I was offered this morning was full of mould."
"It was freshly made!"
"The mould was from the hands that made it." The Chief rolled his shoulders with the quiet power of a thundercloud folding over itself. "Now go, you two, and should you find something to like in each other on the way, you will have made this whole trip easier on a father with better things to do."
"But--"
"Just go, Jabulani." Asanda squeezed her stress tile. If they were going to leave the Prince in Ndlovu's custody, the last thing they needed were reasons for Ndlovu to make his stay uncomfortable.
A protest bubbled all the way up to the back of Jabu's throat, down again curiously. It was only when he slumped his shoulders and started trotting after Buhle that Asanda noticed the tension on her own face. It seemed to take an age to smoothe out.
Ndlovu was stroking his beard, revealing more silver hairs. "I doubt I can convince you to go with them, boy."
"Pick your own fruit," Khaya said, then belatedly, "Chief."
"You have great confidence in that spear of yours, don't you?" Ndlovu regarded Khaya over his shoulder. Asanda saw only amusement on his face, but the shade of her mother's spirit dug under it and found the taint of sadness there. "Do you think you could kill me?"
"We are your guests," Khaya said. "I would never bring harm to a host."
"I didn't ask if you wanted to, I asked if you could, say, if circumstance called for it."
Khaya folded his arms, his club and spear clacking against the small of his back. "What kind of circumstance?"
"A man doesn't need to know the enemy in front of him, boy, only his own capacity for action and for restraint." Ndlovu shifted to the side of the rock. "Sit with me, Elder Child."
Asanda looked at her brother, the Chief, her brother again. With a sigh, she took a seat on the rock and made a small gesture that politely told Khaya not to do anything his older brother would do.
"I haven't crossed the river in over ten years," Ndlovu said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. "How do the Hundred Hills compare to the Elephant Plains?"
Now that she was sitting down, Asanda resisted the urge to rub her feet. "It's the same land, Great Chief, just with water running across it."
"No, even from across the Wayfarer I can tell that your grass is greener, longer."
"Ah. A botanist from one of the far lands sold her the seed for it. Its longer and lusher, but it's for grazing first and beauty second."
"It's for choking the native shrubs and hiding snakes."
"And yet our goats are fatter, Great Chief."
"And sometimes your goats are bitten."
"A small price."
Ndlovu nodded. "A small price. Give me your hand."
He held out his own first. It was meaty, the skin tough and earnest. When she set her own on his, with fingers splayed, it was barely larger than his palm.
"Tender hands," he said.
The truth, but an insult nonetheless, on both sides of the river.
"Chief--"
"Don't take offence. For a nation to thrive, there must be rough hands and tender ones. There must be fists to break and clever fingers to build. Your father was clever and tender-handed." Ndlovu tapped Asanda's smallest finger with his thumb. "These are his hands."
Asanda could keep the anger off her face, but her fingers twitched on the Chief's palm.
Ndlovu looked over his shoulder and the creases around his eyes returned. "And there on your brother's wrists, your mother's fists."
"Ma may have been born in the Sunlands," Asanda said, "but she's a pacifist."
"Pacifists don't walk with the spirit of a war god inside them."
Asanda shook her head. "The Sunspear is exactly why Ma looks for peace in all things."
"There are different ways to look for things," Ndlovu said, turning back to stare at the watering hole. "Take the monkey. When it is hungry, it will climb a tree and pluck fruit from a branch. The elephant will do this too, because when things are within easy reach, peace is easy. But when the only fruit left is too high for its trunk, well..."
Ndlovu pointed with his chin at another tree, someway to the right of the pond. It lay on its side with its trunk cracked in two, dusty roots wilting under the sun.
"You must never hate a thing for its nature, Elder Child. But you must be honest about what it is, and what you are to it. That is why we walk safely through elephants here."
Asanda took her hand back. "Maybe that's why Ma works so hard to keep the grass and trees and fields as bountiful as they are."
"Ah, it is true then. You are the clever one of the four."
"I only have two siblings."
Ndlovu's laugh was little more than a deep grunt. He was on the verge of saying something when Buhle reappeared with marula fruit bundled in her skirt. Jabulani came up the rear, chewing with a single fruit in his hand.
"Right," Ndlovu said, taking two marulas as he rose to his feet. "We're halfway home. Let's not waste any more time."
"Here," Buhle said, standing in front of Asanda with her makeshift basket.
"I'm not hungry, but thank you."
Buhle waited. Asanda sighed and took two.
"Come, Elder Child," Ndlovu said, already ten paces ahead. "Walk with me."