Heart of Light (31 page)

The man frowned. “Your friends? There's more than one of you?” He looked over Nigel's shoulder and seemed to notice Nassira for the first time. A look of recognition widened his eyes and a strange, crooked smile twisted his lips.

“Why,” he said, “Nassira, daughter of Nedera, walking with the Water Man. Why am I not surprised?”

Nigel let a sound of despair escape his lips as he jumped back and to the side, trying to shield Nassira. He fell heavily on his injured foot, and felt Nassira's hand on his shoulder as she pushed him aside.

“Don't try to protect me, you fool,” she said in a low, even voice. “These are my people.” And then she stepped forward, saying words that Nigel could not understand.

THE PAST AND ITS REACH

Of all the people to meet on a dark road at night while
she was chaperoning a European, Nassira could have wished for a better person than Mokabi ole Lumbwa.

He was a tall boy—huge—the type who'd always made trouble for his father, his brothers, even his friends. When he was very small and, like other Masai children, had been given the responsibility of looking after his mother's goats and his father's sheep as a preliminary to the cows, he'd often tied things to the animals' tails and forgotten to milk the goats in a way quite unbecoming a future herdsman. To the other children, male and female, he'd been cruel, often throwing rocks at them or stealing their food in the long days in the pasture away from adult companionship.

Nassira knew he was one of the many young men and boys who had complained when Nassira's father had given her his herding stick.

And he was Kume's older half-brother, by Kume's father's right-hand wife. The other two boys, too, were Kume's half-brothers—they had Kume's tall, unencumbered build, his beautiful profile, his proud setting of shoulders. But lacking from their proud, intent gaze was that just slightly hesitant look that had both humanized Kume and made him irresistible to Nassira, who could never turn away the call of one less capable than herself. And Nassira knew there was only one way to deal with this group. She advanced on them, fists closed, pushing aside the Englishmen's ineffectual attempt to protect her. “Go away, Mokabi,” she said. “We have no cows for you to raid, no riches for you to take. This is an Englishman who is on an exploratory mission and I'm guiding him.”

Mokabi grinned. “You're guiding him, are you? Are you bundling with him? I didn't know you went for Water People. What do you like, the skin like tallow or the way he orders people around? Does he have cows, Nassira? Has he promised you cows?”

The only good response to this would be to thrash Mokabi's dumb body until some light entered his befuddled, self-satisfied brain. Unfortunately, should Nassira do that, it would break every remaining custom of her people that she hadn't challenged before. It would bring shame on her parents.

“If my father heard you, he'd give you the beating you deserve,” she said.

He smiled. “But your father hasn't seen you in months, and everyone knows he has disowned you because you left without his permission.” He turned aside and spit on the ground. “Weak men who sire only girls and then prize them above all else often cannot control them. If I had you at my command, you'd learn the proper respect and the proper attitude of a well-brought-up girl.”

Nassira held fast to her lance, knowing that if the idiot tried anything, she was more than capable of stopping him in his tracks. She'd stopped a lion. She felt the lion's ears and tail in the folds of her wrap, where she'd put them. They weren't cured yet, nor turned into proper fetishes, but they were enough to give her courage. However, his words had found their mark in her heart. Her father had disowned her?

She thought of her father's patient, gentle expression, of his delight at her accomplishments. Had he missed her so much that he could find no other balm for his pain but to disown her? She'd never thought that she would be barred from her native village, from her father's home, from her mother's care.

“Oh, lots of people missed you, Nassira,” the man said, his voice harsh, his eyes exploiting the weakness that Nassira had doubtless displayed upon her face. “My brother Kume died of it.” He paused. “You did hear of Kume, did you not?”

Nassira took a deep breath. Mokabi was lying—he had to be. Kume could not be dead. Those quick-glancing eyes couldn't be forever closed. His body could not be nothing more than dust. “How . . . how did he die?” she asked.

Mokabi would tell her some tale of heroism, and then she'd know he was lying. But he just shook his head. “He was so upset over losing you, Nassira, daughter of Nedera, that when you left, he lost his way. In a cattle raid, he got in the way of a flung spear.”

“Oh,” Nassira said, and her world seemed to collapse around her. Somehow, at the back of her mind, she'd always known she was going back to meet Kume. Inadequate as he was, he would have made her a good husband and she could have kept him from showing his faults. She could have kept him alive. But she had left instead, and Kume had died. Sounds and vision and smell seemed very distant, and there was a noise like rushing water in her ears.

“And you take it so calmly.” He looked over her shoulder. “Now that you have your Water Man, Kume does not matter?”

“He's not
my
Water Man,” Nassira said. “And I do not
have
him.” She looked away from Mokabi, unable to bear the way he resembled Kume and yet was so different from him. “I mourn Kume in my heart and I always will, but his death is not on my head.”

“Is it not?” Mokabi stepped forward. “With you near he was strong and accomplished, but he must have loved you too much. For when you left, he couldn't do anything right and eventually died of it. Do you feel no guilt?”

Oh, she felt guilt, but she would never admit it. Not to this proud man with his overbearing tone. She remembered how terrified of him Kume had been. But she could never tell Kume's brother why he'd really died. She could not tell him that Kume needed her for more than his mental well-being. If she did, then she would be betraying Kume in a final way, letting his people know he'd not been a brave, competent warrior, and should not be remembered as such. She could never do that to her erstwhile lover.

“I was doing what I must do for Africa,” she said. She could say no more without betraying Hyena Men secrets. “I am working with people from all tribes, from all over the continent, to rid our land of the Water People who steal our land and bring strange foreign diseases down upon our cattle.”

Mokabi blinked. “Get rid of them by seducing them?” But his heart was not in it. Nassira's decisive tone had shocked him, her words had surprised him. And something else. He blinked again. “Are you with the Hyena Men?” he asked. “They take women?”

“They accepted me,” she said simply.

He frowned. “Yes, but why you, Nassira, daughter of Nedera?”

“Because Africa must be saved.”

“Must it? By you? You're just the spoiled daughter of a foolish rich man. If you'd not abandoned your proper place and taken upon yourself more responsibility than could possibly be yours, Kume would be alive, and your father would be happy. And you would be where you belong.”

Nassira kept up her front, glaring at Mokabi, but she felt a pang of ache and memory, remembering her mother's hut, the smoky fire, the shuffling and mooings of the cows inside the enclosure.

“What do you know of where I belong?” she retorted instead. “What do you know, Mokabi who stays home and like a cow sees nothing beyond what's immediately in front of his eyes? If they lead you to the slaughter, will you also go? Our cattle have died of foreign diseases, our young men have been killed by powersticks. How long till they come and take you away also?”

But Mokabi wasn't paying attention. He seemed to be listening for sounds in the bush. “Are the other Hyena Men around?” he asked. “Your companions?”

Nassira felt her lower lip attempt to curl in an expression of derision. Oh, she should have known what would scare Mokabi. Like most bullies, he feared only stronger physical force. And he would fear these unseen men he'd never met, instead of fearing Nassira and her spear. Which only proved his stupidity, because the only thing keeping Nassira from killing him was the shape of his eyes, the turn of his chin, those features he shared with dead Kume.

“They are just around the corner,” she said. “If I call, they will come. Would you like to meet them?”

Mokabi shuffled his feet and adjusted his wrap around his body. “No,” he said. He looked over Nassira's shoulder again, as though something had called his attention, then turned to his younger brothers. “Did you hear that? I believe I just heard the roar of the lion, that way.” He looked at Nassira again. “We're out hunting a lion that's been heard roaring around the villages for days now. If I were you, I would hurry to the safety of an encampment, before the lion finds you.”

And, oblivious to the fact that this particular lion would never roar again, he gestured with his hand to call his brothers and led them past Nassira and down the narrow path.

A man stepped out of the shadows in front of them. Tall and straight, wearing a red wrap, he was clearly a Masai, and for just a moment Nassira tensed, ready for another confrontation. Then she saw that the man looked concerned.

“Nassira?” he asked, his low voice rumbling softly.

“Yes?” she asked, confused. “Do I know you?”

He shrugged and she thought that by the insufficient light of the distant moon she detected a faint blush on his cheeks. “I am Sayo.”

She blinked at the tall man, with his broad shoulders and sculpted features. He had been the one of Kume's companions, but one she'd never thought about. Though he was Kume's age, or perhaps a little older, he'd been small and timid, lurking in the shadows of his more accomplished and stronger companions.

She cleared her throat. “Little Sayo?”

He grinned broadly. “Not anymore.”

“Are you with them?” she asked, gesturing with her head toward where the warriors had disappeared.

He made a face of distaste. “No. No more than it takes to follow behind and make sure they don't get in trouble. They are not . . . trustworthy. They did not . . . bother you, did they?” He looked anxious.

“They told me Kume is dead . . .” she said. “Is it true?”

“Unfortunately, yes. He didn't have you to save him, Nassira. Without you to keep him safe . . .”

“I know, I shouldn't have gone,” she said.

“No. What you shouldn't have done is bind yourself to someone you needed to care for as if for a child. That's not what a lover is supposed to do, Nassira. You're supposed to be equals.”

The words cut to the quick of Nassira's brain. It shocked her so much that it took a moment to realize that Sayo, little Sayo hiding in the shadows, had seen the truth of her relationship with Kume. “You . . . knew? How it was with us?”

“It didn't take more than eyes to see,” he said, and shrugged. Then smiled at her. “Though you never saw me.”

“You hid,” she said. “You were so small . . .”

“Ah, yes. And you were young. And now you are on a quest I don't understand. Finish your quest, Nassira, and come back home with your eyes open.”

And with that, he was gone, back into the shadows. For a moment she remained still, breathless. Sayo. She'd never thought of Sayo as anything but a trailing child. But he'd seen what she'd been about. He'd understood.

With Englishmen to look after and her oath to the Hyena Men, with a magical jewel to find, with Africa to liberate, Nassira found herself wishing she'd never left her native village—wishing she'd been there to notice that Sayo was no longer a child.

Now it was lost beyond retrieval. There was no use thinking about what might have been. Yes, it might have been better if she'd never attached to people who needed her. But there were so many weak people. Strong Nassira must share her strength.

Nassira resumed walking, not turning to see if Nigel Oldhall followed, but half aware of him by the scraping sound of his shoes on the ground, the sound of his labored breathing fighting back the pain. “When we get to the camp,” she said, “I'll make you a poultice for that foot.”