Nomvula

43. The Colliding Stars

It was a long, silent walk to the bottom of Third Hill. Nomvula passed through the manse with her jaw tight and her gaze set on the grass in front of her. Those who had lived on the hill long enough to see her grow from a stoic bride to a mettlesome ruler knew better than to disturb her in those rare moments when she became "the woman from the Sunlands" again. Ma walked beside her with an equally heavy silence, if not one with fewer thorns.

Lukhanya, of course, had only started frequenting Third Hill a year ago, when Khaya had caught her eye. Nomvula saw her approach from under the bowed branches of a goat tree, her stone mill still in hand. Whatever look was twisting Nomvula's face, it made the girl stop in her tracks and turn around. Only belatedly did she realise she was still holding her father's shortspear. 

She left the early morning noise of a household preparing itself, walked past the broken kraal she could barely bring herself to look at without shuddering, and passed under the threshold of the fore-gate with hardly a glance at the man standing guard. 

Passing under the gate was like shedding a light cloak. She felt immediately more exposed as she passed the border of Anathi's presence. Her spirit was still an ambient thing Nomvula could feel as she helped her mother negotiate the hillside steps, but her skin felt thinner now, and the Sunspear sensed that enough to flutter open one sleepy eyelid before it curled back into a deep slumber. 

The damn thing didn't want to awaken out here. All the danger was either in the holding cell under the manse, or across the Wayfarer. 

Such was their slow progress that they only reached the bottom of the hill a few moment before the leading horse. Nomvula slipped her free hand into her apron's pocket as she watched Ndoda's mount eat up the grassland between them. Ma pulled a tile of chocolat out of hers.

She held it up to Nomvula's mouth. "Eat this, it'll fix your face."

"My face is fine, Ma."

"Not for greeting Qaqamba, it's not." 

Nomvula pushed her mother's hand away, but she massaged her frown into a neutral line all the same. Third wife status aside, she was Queen of the Hundred Hills, but it was a title she had borrowed after the death of her husband and his first two wives. Before her claim to it, she had been a daughter to the Sunlands -- and among Daring Qaqamba's brightest and most troublesome students. An old ache teased her jaw at the sight of the second horse trotting far behind Ndoda's. 

It took a bold teacher to smack a student in front of her father. It took a legendary one to threaten the Chief with similar treatment if he didn't get his daughter in line.

When her son rode close enough for Nomvula to make out his expression against the sun rising behind him, a second ache rocked her. Ndoda had always been tall and lean; he wasn't a son who could get by on looks inherited from his maternal family like Khaya, but he had his father's presence about him, always drawing the eye as a spear did when it lay among clubs. His face was a mask, but there was a black fire banked under his brow, a readiness.

Nomvula had played with doubts up until now, but that look sealed it. There wasn't a sliver of fear in her son's eyes. Dumani would kill him, if he got the chance.

"She broke him," Ma said. Her voice barely cut through the thunder of hooves. "She was meant to strip away his arrogance, not harden it."

Nomvula ran her thumb over the engravings of the fireglass spear. "It won't matter now."

Ancestors bless and curse that woman, she's doomed us all.

Ndoda reined in his black mare just as his long shadow touched Nomvula's ankles. His dismount was stiff, and the mare's flanks were lathered with a foamy sweat. Asanda would beat him senseless for overworking his horse, and risking all six of their legs with hard riding before dawn. Qaqamba was still far in the rear, walking her mount for the last two hundred paces.