Women Of Steel | ✔

XX

Alabi marches to the front defiantly, a shout on his lips, he reaches for slaver and spits right in the man's face. There is a sudden startled silence, I flinch and Zahir murmurs something in his language that I don't understand.

"Foolish man." My father whispers softly.

The smoke drifts higher to the sky and I only take one moment to gaze at it in alarm and when I look back at the slaver, he is running a sword through Alabi's chest. Somebody screams, or maybe it is several, I cannot tell, maybe one of those screams even came from me because Zahir is gripping onto my shoulders in support.

His body staggers backwards, and then falls in the sand.

Atop her horse, Remilekun flicks him a distasteful look, she glances at her army and the slaver steps back with a swiftness that speaks of his respect to his leader — or maybe it is the fear that courses through all our veins that he feels.

Remilekun nudges her horse forward. She smiles.

"There needn't not be any blood shed."

Yet Alabi's body bleeds onto the sand.

"I am no tyrant."

Yet our fear cloaks the air at her presence. On their own accord, my fists clench.

"This is my land, and I will do what so ever I wish with it." She continues, voice ringing clear like a sweet melody. "If you had only waited to listen, yes, your village and camp is set ablaze but there was no life lost, every soul was evacuated and only those who fought back were burned."

My shoulders sagged in the slightest, unconsciously, I glance over my shoulders, past Zahir's. The fire remains, but no one is unharmed, they shouldn't be.  .  . Unless they fought back.

The cold shiver sweeps down my spine.

"I will wait no longer, you leave my lands tonight."

"You risk angering the three kingdoms with your claim on a land that belongs to them?" I don't realize my father has left my side until I blink and see him right in front of Remilekun. His back is turned away from me and I almost feel sorry for Remilekun, braving the face of a god.

"Let them come," She says coolly. "And if you choose to fight me here, then do so, we already know how much you care for mortals, fight me and they burn. You might be powerful, but you cannot save all here."

He doesn't say a word. I want him to pummel her, I want to pummel her but I settle for digging my nails into my palm until they draw blood. Is this the mother you stand for, one oppressor in exchange for another? I want to scream at her army, a few of them young women like me, looking anywhere but at the dead man before their mother.

But I was once them, seeing no evil in evil, growing up in it that I turned the other cheek even as it slapped me in the face. It is not their fault.

I look for Arewa among them and I don't see her.

"I am merciful, I let you go your ways with your skin attached to your bones, go and spread the word, tell them that a new queen is here." Remilekun says.

"Tell them that nothing will stand in her path."

"Tell them that I await their war."

* * *

There is no party at the night bazaar, only men and women in chains, blood seeping into the sand and loud cries as a naked girl in chains weep over the body of another girl, she lets out wrecking sobs that remind me of the cry of vultures with how guttural it sounds.

Bile rises in my throat and I remember the promise I made to free this girls. I failed and they are paying for it. Somehow the merchants protesting must have decided to leave earlier than our own group, they must have gotten to the slavers, they must have freed some girls and then they would have met a resistance.

With the thud of my heart reaching my ears, I search for that familiar stall among the ruins of other torn down ones, I don't find her first, Zahir does.

He freezes, people behind us brush past him hurriedly not wanting to be close to Remilekun's men in horses that march us out of their lands.

She is lying face down, her arm stretched out as if looking for something to hold on to. A spear protudes from her back. Maami.

The slave girl lets out another cry, Zahir is still looking, still standing, still frozen.

I remember one of the last words I heard her speak, I am a merchant first.

I wonder if she saw her own death and chose to brave it rather than run.

"They're coming, you can't stand there, please, Zahir." I plead with him, somehow my voice is detached, cool even. I tug at his arm until he snaps out of whatever trance he was sinking into.

"I can't even bury her." He breathes as I grip his arm and force him to walk.

"Talk to me about her." Desperation seeps into my tone as anger lights his eyes. I don't want him changing his mind and fighting the soldiers, my father had stared down at Remilekun until he was forced to back down after she held his gaze with steel. He commanded us to leave, to do as Remilekun wished, and then he wandered away from us, with only an ominous last word.

"I have to find it." He'd said. The slavers had tensed but none dared to run after the man with the glowing gold eyes and body that towered over all of them.

"Please, talk to me about her." I repeat as the soldiers draw closer.

"Maami wanted nothing of this, she had been married three times before coming here and those three times, her husbands died. She was branded a witch and banished here, she said this place was her home," He says weakly.

He looks at me, breathing heavily. He stumbles in my grip and I swear under my breath, a filthy word Gbadamosi used to repeat so often, the first and the last time I spoke it in his presence, he slapped me so hard that the rings on his fingers cut a wound on my face.

Even now as I speak it, I glance over my shoulders in fear.

"Now they've taken this home from her." Zahir is saying.

"Where are we going, Zahir? Your uncle is not here," I break off, thinking of everyone left behind in the camp, everyone Remilekun said she didn't lay a finger on. I wonder if that is what my father has gone back for. "My father —"

I pause but he has already heard it, he doesn't register it now but he will later and he will ask me for it.

"You have to lead us," I say firmly, giving him a little shake. "Now, where do we go from here?"

Prince Zahir Al Kabir doesn't say anything for the longest time, he glances behind every few seconds and I know who he is looking at.

He swallows and looks back at me.

"Ile Wura, we have to warn the nearest king."

***
Thank you for 10k reads. Ily and sorry for the deaths in this chapter, lol.