Nomvula

30 - The Glass Lids

Asanda climbed the ladder leading up to her roof garden, leaving Anathi to secure her mother with iron chains. Her twisted locks brushed against the orange mountainstone of the ceiling, one of the few available resources stable enough for runework, other than citruswood and black iron. Her alchemy tutor had lobbied the Queen for weeks for the expensive task of replacing an entire bedroom ceiling with mountainstone. Asanda never brushed past it without silent thanks.

The underside of the ceiling held the runelights that illuminated her bedroom so she could work in the early and late hours, two dozen disks of alchemical scroll-work in total. The roof side supported the garden, and only one rune, though it was large enough to cover most of the garden floor. Asanda laid her palm flat against a piece of the sun-drinker rune as she pushed herself through the trap door. Not only did it power the runelights inside, but it was just warm enough to ward against frost in winter.

Anket sat in the nearest corner of the garden, on a plush chair with a mug of water at his feet and a pencil in his hand. His brow furrowed as he pored over the numbers and interlocked geometric shapes on his whitestone tablet.

"How is your mother?" he asked her softly.

Possessed by a demon I stand to inherit as her first born. Bruised and in some places broken.

Vomit almost pushed into Asanda's mouth as she thought of her mother laying in that bed like a woman on death watch. It's not fair, she had almost said when asked about the rune-eye. You shouldn't have to beg Khaya or me for help, you should be standing upright and pointing where we need to go.

Anket looked up at her when she did not answer. "I apologise."

Asanda saw the tremble in his hands on her way to the iron box she kept under a bench of overgrown fireleaf ferns. She spared a glance at his tablet as she passed.

"A-joint, you'll get sixty degrees with third theorem," she said, pushing away fireleaf ferns by the stem to avoid the red-edged leaves. "But only if C-joint is brought down to thirty five. If you're stuck on why the angle at AE joint isn't perpendicular, increase the circumference of pivot D by two centimetres if you're using steel chord."

"Oh?" Anket had a special way of making his smiles heard. "What if I'm using nylon?"

"You're not an idiot." Asanda ducked beneath a swaying branch that brushed the top of her brow. A hot line of fire chased it, spreading down her cheek. Her eye started to water, but she kept peeling the branches back. "My mother is not an animal, so why are you making her a snare?"

"Stray Cloud, I adore your mother for all the countless reasons she has given me to, but for the swift action of your ghost guard, Queen Nomvula might have levelled Third Hill in half an hour." Anket's old hands scuffed his stone tablet as he made his adjustments. "Back home, we called these snare-and-sinks. Nile-side villages used them to catch the giant crocs that strayed inland when the river feeding was poor. It is a safe way to hold dangerous... spirits, so we may release them safely downriver."

"Mama is not a crocodile," Asanda said. Having finally cleared a path, she pulled a wax-leather pouch of iron filings from her belt and sprinkled some onto her fingers. "A third of the plants in this garden are for making the milkwater that burns her cuts shut, and the unguent that sealed the wounds." She knelt and felt under the citruswood bench for the ridges of one of the two runes native to the Hundred Hills. "So long as she does not bleed, she is Mama, Anket. Mama and nothing more." And nothing less.

"I understand," he said, sincerity riding low on his soft voice. "When a princess speaks, only a Queen may disapprove. Shall I erase it?"

"Yes, it's unstable and built to hold animals without clever fingers or strong limbs. Tonight, we will work on designs that might hold Mama safely and not accidentally drown her."

Her fingers brushed against the rune, instantly heating the iron on her fingers. Asanda flicked away the filings as the circuit of the cloaking rune broke. A black iron box appeared under the bench, the identical rune on its lid catching the mid-morning light as Asanda dragged it.

She took a deep breath before flipping the lid open. The box held three items: an iron knife with a wooden handle, the head of a sledgehammer wrought entirely out of thin glass that glowed yellow with the faint light trapped inside it, and a single-string necklace of black beads holding a pouch woven from human hair. Asanda was already preparing the walls of her mind for their most difficult containment task yet as she took the necklace and flipped the lid shut.

"I'll be back by noon," she said to Anket as she crawled backwards under the waiting edges of fireleaf ferns. "If Mama's body stirs, Khaya or Anathi can help you apply the unguent. If that doesn't work, drip a quarter thimble – a quarter thimble, Anket – of milkwater into her left eye. If that doesn't work, Anathi will know what to do – don't get in her way."

Anket looked at his stone tablet and sighed. Asanda stopped halfway to the trap door and for the first time in her life contemplated taking the iron knife out of the box. It was a foul, vicious thought born of the type of selfish fear only a parent's violence could produce. She walled that fear off and started down the trap door, the remaining two thirds of her mind focused on the task ahead.