Nomvula

42. The Coming Sun

Sleep wasn't an easy thing for Nomvula to fall into on her best days. And this being the day of Dumani's trial -- his release, really, she had nothing substantial to hold him with -- sleep had been a distant hope, if not a fool's errand.

First light found her on the library patio, watching the ship lights that speckled the Wayfarer like fallen stars. There was barely a pink thread of sunlight over the top of the eastern mountains that marked the far border of the Elephant Plains. Not enough light to put a sheen on even a deeply polished steel blade, but when had a Sunlander, even one so averse to bloodshed as Nomvula, ever lowered themselves to anything so crude as a metal weapon?

The shortspear in her hand had a shaft of heavy ebonwoon. The top half was engraved with two dozen vignettes of battle, which made it awkward to grip after a point, but the head was a simple, razor-edged leaf of fireglass. It had been tapered and sharpened with a diamond grind over two years, or so the family myth went. The spear was an even older heirloom than the Sunspear sleeping under her skin. When Nomvula held it up to the brightening dawn, it threw rainbow bands of light around the patio as incandescent whorls ghosted through the smoky glass.

Most lands had their own form of decorative weapons. Pretty things that were useless in battle but awe-inspiring around campfires and over mantels. Lore devices, really, to tell pretty stories to impress brittle soldiers. And what was prettier, more impressive, more brittle than glass?

And so the Illiri saying went, Bury the ostentatious, the foolish, and the gullible with glass.

Nomvula twirled the shortspear once and threw it down into the patio floor. The fireglass tip shattered the mountainstone tile and bit into the soft earth beneath, barely a handspan from her bare foot.

She heard the Sunspear mocking her through its grogginess. Daring her. Just one nick on the skin, a single bead of blood touching the morning air would be enough. Then she could rest and let her ancestors take over.

She stepped forward so the spear was behind her and squinted at the horizon as though a perfect solution would grow behind the mountains if she just stared hard enough.

"You must really doubt Qaqanda if you're willing to go as far as giving Ndoda your father's spear."

Nomvula felt herself grow smaller, calmer. Ma's feet made hushing sounds as they shuffled along the rough stone, and the smell of fried pork and citrus were afterscents to the scent of the lia root she used to scrub her clothes. There was a unique awareness that came with knowing someone your entire life. Oh sure, even with eyes closed, she could sort her children out by how they smelled in the evening, but to be someone else's child... it warped the size of the world around you, blunted the edges of it. All well and good, when you weren't juggling lives. So Nomvula made a point to ignore her instinct to turn at the presence of a parent.

Ma came to stand at her side, smiling at the dawn in that way that deepened her wrinkles but cleared her eyes. "I haven't seen you pick up a skinning knife without so much as frowning in disgust, and here you are playing with your father's things."

The tray in her hands wasn't especially laden, just a plate of buttered shortrib and two bowls of blood oranges crusted in brown sugar, but Ma's hands were trembling enough to make the bowls clack against each other.

Nomvula knew better than to acknowledge this. "We can eat later, Ma."

"Suit yourself." 

Ma bent to set the tray down on the floor, and pinched a blood orange from Nomvula's bowl for her troubles, but when she tried to stand up, her knees seemed to lock in place. It was the silence of her helplessness that tilted Nomvula's stomach off its axis, but rather than insult her mother by scrambling, she offered a hand and held still while she pulled herself up.

"You only make shortrib when you can't sleep," Nomvula said.

Ma sucked on the blood orange a moment, brow set low in thought, then spat out a pip. "I usually leave them in the ovens and go to sleep, but that son of yours gets up early and eats them all before I wake up for breakfast."

"I know. He brings the plate to my room sometimes."  Nomvula curled her first earnest smile since Jabu's arrival, then it faded a moment too soon. "If Khaya wasn't the first to the kitchens this morning, then I'm more worried about what kept him up last night."

"You know very well what. Asanda convinced him about your little plan."

Oh, yes. That.

"What I don't understand," Ma continued, "is why you didn't ask Khaya yourself. The boy is no Long Walker, but he would drink the Wayfarer dry if you asked him to."

He would, and that was half of the reason why she didn't ask him too. Not directly, anyway. Sneaking into the Elephant Plains wasn't an uncommon thing for her spies, but Khaya didn't have their experience. He needed to hear it from someone he could refuse, and if he did, Nomvula would simply have to find another way. But Asanda had never needed much to convince her younger brother of anything, be it learning a new language so he could translate Illiriot glyphs for her or going unprotected into enemy lands. Asanda had been the true test, and Nomvula felt an especially deep sense of grief that she had passed it so swiftly.

"Who told you about the plan?"

Ma spit out another pip. "Anathi. She doesn't miss much, being a house spirit, though I understand that if you'd wanted me to know you would have told me yourself. Do not hold it against the girl for having a conscience."

Nomvula said nothing.

"Grab me another orange slice, will you, Veli? This one's almost lost its flavour."

Veli. Nomvula bristled at her childhood nickname, but all the same she stooped to grab a blood orange slice. Ma's hand settled on Nomvula's head, keeping her at a crouch.

"Never forget what the world looks like from this angle, Lang'engaveli. Children don't. Tyrants do."

Three conflicting answers were racing to the tip of Nomvula's tongue when a glint between two hillocks caught her eye. The hills were still dark-green silouhettes in the early dawn, but there, halfway between Third Hill and the Wayfarer, a tiny light winked again. And again. And again. As Nomvula rose, she made out the rough shapes of two riders on horseback against the lighter shadows. The light was coming from the rider on the left, a tiny star hanging from a neck. 

There were only three fireglass artefacts in the Hundred Hills, and only one was a necklace. Nomvula had no doubt that the pendant would be carved in the shape of a sun, the highest possible medal of excellence to a servant of the Sunlands.

Ma must have spotted it too, because she cursed under her breath. Then she laughed, a dark chuckle that suggested everything but humour.

Even as a distant shadow, what shocked Nomvula most was how graceful Qaqanda still was in the saddle, even in her late years. But of course, shock was the mind's forewarning against more pressing matters. Her gaze went to the second rider.

"Looks like Ndoda's home a few days early," Ma said.

Shadowless ancestors. Not now.

Ma spat out a third pip. "And just in time for Dumani's release."