The Mad Giant (Shioni of Sheba Book 3) (4 page)

S
o, waiting for the
General’s all-clear was evidently an opportunity to have the Princess’ official portrait painted. Shioni battled a fierce desire to scratch her nose and kept her smile pasted in place..

Standing out in the blazing sunshine
in Mama’s rose gardens was the problem–well, the heady fragrance of the climbing roses, to be exact, was creating an unbearable tickle in her nostrils. She sniffed discreetly. Mama said some of the roses must have been imported years ago. The size of the roots and stems told her that several of the plants were hundreds of years old. And according to Princess Annakiya, the pretty pale Abyssinian roses were also poisonous, used by the desert warriors of the Afar to tip their arrows for hunting and fighting. She winced. Beautiful and deadly. Did that make her appreciate the roses more, or less?

Holding the heavy, gold-brocaded umbrella aloft to shade the Princess from the intense heat, Shioni let her eyes wander over to the Archivist.
He was poring over his painting. It surprised her he could even see the Princess from ten feet away. He kept squinting and grumbling under his breath like an elderly dog guarding a choice bone, and when he applied himself to the frame-stretched cowhide, it seemed he would almost wet his nose in the paint.

The roses were
her favourite feature of the gardens. The dense sprays and huge clusters of creamy climbing roses had quickly overwhelmed the trellises Mama ordered to be constructed for them, and were spreading up the side of the keep and two of the towers as if intent on burying them in an abundance of flowery splendour. The slaves muttered distrustfully. Magic? Shioni had no idea how fast roses should grow, but just four months after appearing from barren, cracked soil, they had flourished to their current glory. When questioned, Azurelle said, ‘The castle is enchanted, Shioni. Learn to listen to her.’

Listen to
her?
A feminine castle? There was nothing overly delicate about the keep or the massive defensive wall! But sometimes–just on the odd occasion–Shioni did imagine she could sense something unusual about the castle. Call it a presence. A heart. Or… she shook her head as though she had a mosquito buzzing around her ear. Or an overexcited and fanciful imagination much preoccupied these days with how it was even possible to speak to animals. That was more likely.

She wondered again: w
as she going mad, like Talaku? Where could she draw the line between reality, magic, and imagination? Just a few months before, she would not have dreamed a Fiuri even existed! And now? She had daily conversations with horses and elephants!

Shioni wrinkled her nose as the tickle crawled up her
left nostril as if an insect had decided to go exploring. She rather enjoyed the Archivist. Everyone else called him ‘eccentric’ or ‘that odd man’. But she knew he was a slave of Sheba too. A slave who could afford lashings of frankincense and robes to outshine the magnificent High Priest himself? It was he who had once called her ‘the famous Shioni’ and opened her eyes to some of Sheba’s strangeness.

Annakiya said that since he had taken over responsibility for Sheba’s record-keeping, the King had declared himself very pleased with his work. He was especially pleased at how Sheba’s trading profits had improved… at which time Shioni had nodded and forgotten the rest of their conversation. Annakiya and her love of minute historical detail!
She was surprised the Princess’ nose did not have a permanent ink-stain on its tip, the way she constantly kept it inside a scroll…

The
sneeze finally seized her and rattled her frame from head to toe. Three, four sneezes in a row. Shioni dropped the umbrella in order to wipe her nose. “Sorry.”

“I need a break anyway,” said the Archivist, rubbing his eyes
with the knuckles of both hands. “Same time tomorrow, Princess?”

“Same time.”

The Archivist’s face broke into such a mass of wrinkles that it seemed his smiling eyes would be swamped by successive waves of crinkly, parchment-like skin. “Never thought I would be painting
you
,” he said to Shioni.

“The greatest umbrella holder in history?”

Shioni glared at the Princess of West Sheba as she cut in. “I dare you to hold one of these up for hours...”

“That’s what I have you for,” she said
primly. “And to fetch drinks, carry my scrolls, paint my fingernails, fluff my pillow, choose my clothes for the day–”

The Archivist
’s bow was as stiff as a gnarled tree. “Until tomorrow.”

Annakiya inclined her head, every inch the Princess, Shioni thought crossly.
Cool and composed. Her hair was dressed in traditional
shuruba
braids, which had taken three slaves from the break of dawn until noon to prepare. Her own hair was braided too, so tightly her scalp felt as though it was being stretched away from her skull. Hakim Isoke would approve. She would say, ‘I am delighted you actually look like a Princess today’, or, ‘I see that lazy slave-girl of yours finally learned to braid hair properly.’

“And you can
just wipe
that
look off your face.”

“What look?”

The Princess sighed. “Look, I’m sorry I treated you so badly. Alright? I’ve been looking for a way to tell you for three days, but you’ve been under a thundercloud. Stop!”

Out of sheer
force of habit, Shioni stopped stomping away from her friend–but decided to keep her back turned. After a moment she heard a light footstep on the path behind her, and then stiffened as Annakiya’s arms unexpectedly encircled her waist. “You will accept my apology and stop acting like an elephant with a stomach ache. That’s a royal order.”

“Oh… Anni!”

“Now there’s a sound of healthy frustration!”

How could she tell her friend it went much deeper than just a few words?
It was… everything. Everything about being a slave, about her daily life… Annakiya was asking where she had skinned her knee.

“Yeshi tripped me!”

She made a disgusted noise in her throat. “Look, Shioni… do you want me to dismiss her? I have the power, you know. One word, just one–”

“No!
I mean… no. Thank you, but it would make it worse.”

“What’s worse than intolerable?”

“I’m alive.” She hesitated, entering uncertain ground now. “Thank you, Anni.”

Annakiya linked her arm through Shioni’s.
“Alive, like our castle? Walk with me. Take a turn around the gardens, as the Hakim would say.”

Arm in arm, t
hey meandered slowly along the paths between the roses–great patches of yellows, pinks and reds, and the cream climbing roses–down towards the aromatic, equally delicious scents of Mama’s crowded herb garden.

“I’ve made absolutely no progress on your stele, I hope you know that.
” Princess Annakiya’s gentle brown eyes regarded her as though she had wanted to say something more meaningful, but could not summon the words. “General Getu posted a whole squad of warriors down in the juniper forest. I’m told two warriors tried the tunnels. One came back with a spear through his shoulder, and the other is still missing.”

Shioni sucked in her
cheeks. “Ouch. What did Zi say about the stele’s inscription? And Shuba?”

“Shuba has been sitting in one position staring at a scroll for two days now.
Meditating, I suppose. And Zi has been working with me whenever she can. Between this stele and the inscriptions and symbols in the chamber beneath the baobab, we really aren’t making much progress.”

“You’ll crack it, Anni.
You always do.”

“What I always
do is develop a headache!” Annakiya tapped her head like a woodpecker madly burrowing into tree, and laughed as Shioni pulled a droll face. Then they both startled as a trumpet fanfare split the still afternoon air. “Oh, look, here comes the procession for the final blessing. I suppose I had better take part. Sorry.” She squeezed Shioni’s hand. “I do so adore talking to you, my friend. We should talk more often.”

“Me too.”

Maybe Annakiya did understand after all. Shioni felt grateful to be back on a good footing with her friend. Even if a Princess could never bow to her slave’s level, she cared. Openly. So why was that not enough for her slave-girl?

Princess Annakiya ran quickly toward
the entryway to the main keep. Hakim Isoke would have clucked her tongue like a hen laying eggs. ‘Princesses of West Sheba do not run!’ Shioni could imagine her outrage. But this was a special day.

Today, the Chief Priest himself was going to rename the castle.

A procession of priests dressed in ceremonial robes was issuing from the main gate of the keep. They were quickly joined by the nobles, the senior warriors, and the elders of the nearby villages, followed by the inhabitants of the castle. The slaves who ordinarily worked on the building had been given a day’s rest, but they were being kept outside the defensive wall in their camp. Shioni touched her necklet self-consciously. She was not invited. Not this time.

All
the celebrants apart from the priests and deacons were festively dressed in elegant white cotton clothing, loose fitting trousers and shirts for the men, and flowing dresses with filmy white headscarves for the women. Shioni stroked the beautiful cotton of her dress between her thumb and forefinger. The Archivist and Annakiya had insisted she wear the finest slave’s outfit they could find for the painting and the occasion, which meant a purchase from Takazze. There was nothing so lavish available locally.

Not that her outfit was lavish compared to the priests!
They wore layers of thick velveteen material in deep red, bright blue and avocado green, thickly trimmed in gold brocade and worked with golden thread until the folds of their robes appeared as stiff as a peacock’s tail. Each priest carried a staff topped with a large golden cross in his right hand, and a ceremonial horsehair fly-whisk in his left. A posse of deacons processed alongside and behind the priests. They too were sumptuously arrayed in sweeping, tasselled robes, bearing golden crowns upon their heads, and carrying golden hand crosses in their right hands, but in their left hand each deacon bore a wide, ornate umbrella to shade a priest.

T
he Chief Priest processed front and centre. Carefully balanced on his head, wrapped in layers of thick cloth-of-gold, he bore the holy
tabot
from the great church in Takazze, the copy of the Ark of the Covenant that rested in the Holy of Holies for most of the year and only emerged on the most special of occasions–such as today.

This gaudy procession was winding slowly down
the hill towards the main gate towers, as yet unfinished, that served the outer defensive wall.

Shioni was amused by the antics of a group of small boys
–probably those selected to become deacons and then one day, priests–dashing about like a nest of overexcited ants, scattering freshly cut grass on the stone path ahead of the priests. The grass symbolised newness and hope, she knew. It suited the occasion well!

Now, to the throbbing
beat of the massive, man-high
kebero
drum, and the jingling of sistra and clapping of hands, a troupe of perhaps a hundred girls came spilling out of the keep, dancing and singing and praising God in a frenetic excess of energy. At once the gathering crowd began to sway, clap, and sing in time with the drumbeat, to cry out and ululate to encourage the dancers to even greater exertions and contortions.

Her
gaze was drawn aside to the sight of Talaku dancing a strange, limb-twitching dance in the midst of a group of children. His eyes rolled back in their sockets, fluttering and showing only white. The children thought he was hilarious.

But a group of parents swooped on the children and dragged them away from the dancing giant.
His cheek began to twitch–once, twice... and then Talaku shook himself like a wet dog, turned his back on the proceedings, and slunk into the keep. Shioni shook her head sadly. She could not hear what those parents had said above the din, but their intent was clear. Poor Talaku!

Suddenly,
a thunderclap of silence descended.

Shioni saw that the Chief Priest
stood with his arms upraised. He was said to be the holiest man in West Sheba. With slow, rhythmic movements of his hands, he sprinkled holy water from a golden censer around the foundations of the gatehouses. His voice, resonant with power, carried up the hill: