The King's Horse (Shioni of Sheba Book 2) (2 page)

Growing mad, too.
She had to warn the General about what she had seen.

Shioni worried her lower lip with her teeth.
She would rather have baited a leopard than have that conversation with General Getu.

“Well now,” said Zi, gazing at
Talaku’s retreating back with a calculating look completely at odds with her simpering silliness just seconds earlier, “between your dream and this morning’s antics, Shioni, I feel a nasty little vibration in my wings that says our lives are about to become very exciting indeed.”

“P
ooh! Shioni, you stink
worse than a vulture’s breakfast!”

Princess Annakiya, immersed in
scented, steaming water up to her chin, peered over the edge of her bathtub and grinned impishly at Shioni.

“Thanks. I love it when my friends tell me
exactly
what they think of me.”

“O most fragrant of slaves, can you heat the water just a little more? Please?” She fluttered her eyelashes.
“Pretty please with vulture droppings on top?”

Shioni grasped a pair of long metal tongs and transferred several logs from the brazier to a bucket half-buried in the floor beneath the Princess’ bathtub. It was a new arrival, a birthday present from Annakiya’s father, and she seemed determined to use it daily.

“Princesses are supposed to be sophisticated and charming,” Shioni told her, with a sideways grin. “You are gross.”

Annakiya chuckled, but her expression changed again like the weather over the mountains, from sunny to pensive.

It must be so hard for the Princess. In four weeks the King of West Sheba still had not recovered from his fall, sustained during the Wasabi attack on Castle Asmat. Her movements, her sighs, and her long unseeing looks out of windows, all spoke to how she grieved at her father’s plight. While he seemed asleep, and his chest rose and fell regularly, everyone knew he might never awake again.

Every day, new whispers pervaded the castle.

So many things were different now, Shioni thought. Before the West Shebans had arrived to repair the castle, Kalcha, witch-leader of the Wasabi, had prepared a wicked plan. She had imprisoned Azurelle in a bottle and secreted it in a grotto beneath the castle, guarded by a great, enchanted python. Having stolen the Fiuri’s powers, she corrupted them into a terrible curse, causing many Shebans to die as a result of snakebite and accidents. Soon after, at the full moon, she and her Wasabi warriors descended from the peaks like a sudden mountain storm, intent on destroying the castle and its inhabitants.

Shioni had killed the python and foiled the witch’s ambitions, but the cost to Sheba had been dear–not least to Princess Annakiya, who might lose her father.

“Let me guess with my nose–stables again today?” teased Annakiya, clearly unaware of what Shioni was thinking. “I really should dream up some more ladylike tasks to keep you from dirtying your fingernails.”

“A slave’s work is a slave’s work,” Shioni said, annoyed at the heat stealing into her cheeks. She wished the Princess would not provoke
her quite so often about her slave-girl status. Or maybe she should be less sensitive?

“Now you sound just like my brother.”

“Ugh, not Prince Bekele!”

“Sorry.” Annakiya stuck out her tongue as though she had tasted something vile. “Since he left with his ridiculous procession of priests and nobles, there’s been nobody to imitate that peacock strutting in the gardens.”

“There’s a peacock now?”

“
Since two days ago,” she replied. “Oh, I should like my brother more, Shioni. But he’s
basking
in all the attention. He seems delighted that Father is out of his way. He boasts of conquering all Abyssinia.”

Too true.
Shioni had overheard several cutting comments around the castle. It seemed the Prince’s overenthusiastic leap into his father’s shoes was unpopular–violently so. Several fights had broken out between young warriors supporting one camp or the other, father or son. Mama had joked: ‘the Prince’s boot-lickers got themselves a licking’. Ever since, every time Shioni saw Bekele amongst his group of close friends, she pictured them all crawling about licking his boots and fawning like anxious puppies jostling for a scratch behind the ears from their master.

But that image cut her too. She had once been forced to lick Captain Dabir’s boots. Ever since, every time she smelled cows, the awful taste of dung filled her mouth. If wishing could only change the past… Mama said she was making herself miserable. But wouldn’t imagining a nice past make the present more bearable? Was it so awful to be Annakiya’s slave? Many of the girls were openly envious of her
station.

“The castle is looking beautiful, isn’t it?” said Shioni, trying to turn both of their thoughts to happier paths. “Zi keeps prattling on about the enchantment taking effect. But I don’t think the General is pleased.”

“Nobody who saw this ruin before we set to work could argue the change is anything but pure magic,” Annakiya enthused. “The flowers! The herbs! The scents! Even the baobab tree has sprung to life. Mama’s like a child discovering honey for the first time. She says she’s found eleven new herbs in the garden already, herbs she can’t even name. Zi keeps sampling different nectars and describing their tastes and properties to me–in great detail. I know more about nectar now than I ever needed to know. Don’t you want to listen to her instead?”

“I think I’d fall asleep...”

The Princess stood up, steaming in the cool evening air. “Your turn, stink-beetle. Pass me my wrap, would you?”

“I’m supposed to bathe in the river
with the rest of the slaves,” said Shioni, placing the wrap around her friend’s shoulders and helping her down the stepladder.

Rivers inhabited by birds and mad giants. She shivered. How could she even begin to tell General Getu about what she had seen that morning? She knew it would hurt him; even a man rumoured to be tougher than boot-leather and more dangerous than a leopard lurking in ambush. First, she should tell the Princess about her dream…

But Annakiya gave her a quirky look that robbed her of words. “Don’t you find it awkward, sometimes? Us being friends,” she said. “No, I didn’t mean it like that, you silly chicken–I meant, I could issue a command… you know. You’d understand if you owned someone, I guess.”

“Anni, I understand.” Shioni waved her over to the brazier. “Sit where it’s warm or Mama will
cook me up for breakfast.” She stepped up and dangled her foot carefully in the water. “Ooh–my life, that’s much nicer than the river!”

But she touched her slave’s metal necklet self-consciously as she sank down into the bath. ‘
Property of the Kingdom of Sheba’, it said. Maybe her best friend and owner would truly understand if she was owned
by
someone–although there no greater chance of that than of a monkey climbing to the moon! The only thing Shioni liked about the necklet was that it was embossed with an image of the Lion of Sheba, which reminded her of the lion she had met and spoken to: Anbessa, Lord of the Simien Mountains, he who had clawed four furrows into her shoulder and then ordered her to wear the mark with pride!

Her shoulder still ached, often. The huge lion had laid her flesh open to the bone. Although the terrible wound was healed over now, healed by the lion’s magic,
she would wear a reminder of their encounter for the rest of her life. What it meant, however, remained a puzzle. Would she be able to help him and the lion-kind, one day, as much as they had helped her? It was his roar during Kalcha’s attack that had prompted her to find the Fiuri, and the Fiuri’s blood which had pierced Kalcha’s enchantment, thus saving the Shebans…

The bath was sized for one person. It was a tall metal tub, reached by a wooden stepladder, and heated from beneath by a fire bucket. A person sat on the wooden platform within, which protected against the fire-heated metal. It was a real luxury, as good as anything in the palace at Takazze, the capital of West Sheba–and in Prince Bekele’s mind at least, that included all of the highlands of Abyssinia.

“As you smell like the nasty end of a stable,” said Annakiya, breaking in on Shioni’s pensive thoughts, “that reminds me–whatever happened to Father’s horse? You know, the mad Arabian.”

“Oh, drat! I completely forgot. They’re down valley this week looking for fresh grass. The stable hand said, ‘’E’ll be back tomorrow, miss, just you cool your heels’. I
simply
must
go talk to him.”

“
I still can’t get used to the idea of my slave-girl talking to animals,” the Princess mused. “Can’t you teach me… hush. That’s Mama. Let’s play a trick on her. Quick, hide under the rim.”

“Er… okay.”

Shioni slid downward as Mama Nomuula breezed into the small bathroom. She took half a glance at Annakiya, seated in the shadows so close to the brazier her wrap was almost smoking, and launched into a diatribe: “That Shioni! I’ll tan her hide to boot-leather, leaving you stewing in the bath! I’ll box her ears till they ring like bells! No telling her about your chest cold, oh no, she’s dreaming up in them mountains with the lions and–well, God knows what else. Come, honey, climb out now! Let’s get you warm.”

Mama Nomuula clearly had no idea who was seated in the shadows.

Annakiya jumped off the stool. “Here I am!”

“Oh!” screamed Mama, her hands flying to
her heart. “Oh, oh… you’s a wicked, wicked girl! What a beastly turn you’s a-given me!” She fanned herself like a heavy buzzard trying to take off. “Who’s in the bath? Oh, you’s a pair of cheeky monkeys, you is! Don’t you be tricking your old Mama like that!”

Shioni felt ashamed. “Sorry Mama. It was her idea.”

The Princess glowered back. “Stab me in the back, why don’t you?”

“Girls!”
Mama Nomuula caught Annakiya up in her huge arms. “Silly squabbles get nobody nowhere. You’s friends, right? Next you’ll be throwing hairpins across the room like you was two years old.”

Annakiya was laughing now. “That’d be a sight! But
Mama, how’s Father?”

Mama hung her head.
“Sorry, my pet. His own physician says he can’t do nothing more. Waiting and hoping’s our job now. He’s a smart man–though he don’t like me none. He’s figured a way to get food down the King’s gullet, like feeding a baby bird.”

“I wish there was more we could do.”

“Me too, Annakiya. Them head injuries is bad news.” She shrugged massively. “Maybe with good feeding he’ll grow stronger. I’s made him a nice, nourishing chicken broth with lots of healing herbs–my very best. It’s all I could do.”

“I
knows you’s done your best,” said the Princess, doing a poor imitation of Mama’s accent. It brought a brief smile back to her face.

Shioni knew Mama Nomuula well enough to sense the depth of her unhappiness. That’s what came of having such a big heart–she cared almost too much. It was her way. She had once heard a slave joke–affectionately–that the only thing that could possibly be bigger than Mama’s backside was her heart. She had a marvellous capacity for love. What she didn’t heal, she fed, and what she didn’t feed, she loved to nurture.

Mama too was a slave, the very heart and soul of the King’s kitchen. She came from a land to the south of Abyssinia, a land that clearly grew women of immense size and stature. She was taller than most of the Elite Warriors! And wider than any three of them stood shoulder to shoulder. If the old saying ‘never trust a thin cook’ was true, Shioni had decided that Mama Nomuula must surely be worth ten cooks, and could be trusted to the very ends of the earth. Could it be she cared too much? Was that even possible?

The bath was so
heavenly, it was becoming difficult to think clearly.

“How’s our General, Mama?”

Mama’s big hands flew into the air again to emphasise her words. “If the silly man would stay put, Shioni! Better his bed were in the dungeons, I’d lock the door and hide the key! Popping up here and a-popping up there like he was a rock hyrax pinching vegetables from my nice gardens! Let’s dry your hair, Annakiya, or you’ll catch yourself a beastly cold.”

“When I took him his dinner yesterday,” Shioni
remarked, “the room was full of warriors. He’s hiding the building plans under his pillow. He’s trying to run the whole castle from his bed.”

Mama Nomuula started laughing so hard it squeezed tears down her cheeks. “God save us, he’s like a little boy hoarding
honeycomb he pinched from my kitchen!”

“Don’t tell him I told you!”

Mama’s chocolate brown eyes appraised Shioni as though she had a hundred questions stored up but didn’t know which one to choose. “Very well,” she said, “you’s saved him a hiding. But I’s giving you one for stealing the Princess’ bath!”

“I made her,” Annakiya said hurriedly.

“She made me.”

“Now
you’s behaving like real friends.” Mama drew a deep breath. “Right–Shioni, the soap’s not just for looking at. You stink like a–”

“–Vulture’s breakfast!” they chorused, and fell about laughing until Mama scolded them into letting her in on the joke.