The King's Horse (Shioni of Sheba Book 2) (4 page)

O
nce the feasting was
well underway, Mama Nomuula sat Shioni in a corner of the kitchen, pressed a bowl of
firfir
into her hand, and said, “Eat. You’s had nothing all day.” Using the fingertips of her right hand, Shioni scooped up the tasty lentil sauce mixed with
injera
bread and stuffed her mouth until bits fell out as she chewed. “Being hungry’s no excuse to eat like a baboon,” Mama scolded. “Them girls been stealing your food again?”

“I’ll live.”

“Don’t you be stubborn with Mama Nomuula! When you’s done filling that pit you calls a stomach, scat. Don’t want to see your skinny hide till morning. Then you come here early, alright?”

Before Shioni could reply, Mama waddled off, yell
ing at one of the other kitchen helpers.

She applied herself to the
heaped bowl and thought of nothing else until her stomach groaned, deliciously full. Of course Mama was right. What her eagle eye missed in the castle wasn’t worth knowing. Shioni scowled at her meal. The older slave-girls had been stealing her food for weeks now, stopping her from eating all but what she could cram into her mouth between the pot and the nearest bench. Her insides were like a wolf gnawing on her backbone. Surreptitiously, she licked the bowl.

“Shioni!”
Mama’s fat forefinger waggled across the kitchen.

“Just leaving, Mama!”

Reaching up to the counter, Shioni snitched a handful of honeyed sweets and crammed them into her pocket. Then she dashed out of the kitchen and down the corridor, keeping to the deeper shadows lest anyone spot her and decide to give her duties to perform. Hakim Isoke was adept at catching sneaking slave-girls and setting them some horrid task to complete–scrubbing the latrine buckets being her particular favourite.

The feasting had wound down, apart from a group of nobles near the well who were passing around a gourd to great merriment.
Probably
tej
, thought Shioni, a strong honey wine brewed in Ginab village. Someone would have to clean up their mess in the morning. If she played it right she would either be training with the warriors or preoccupied with tasks for the Princess.

She flitted through the main gateway with the speed and
stealth of a bat, and paused. Now, where was Kifle? Finding his watch post was becoming a game between them. Ah… she padded forward as quietly as she could.

“Good evening,” she addressed a
hollowed-out tree stump halfway down to the outer wall.

“Evening,
Shioni,” said the stump.

“Tariku?
” her voice rose slightly. “Where’s Kifle?”

“He said to tell you to try harder,” Tariku
chuckled, not moving from his position. “Girl, you’ve got eyes like an eagle owl. How’d you know I was here?”

“I smelled you on the wind,” she admitted.

“I only had two drinks! And before you ask, I
don’t
drink on duty. Kifle ate something bad and–I’ll put this delicately for your young ears–had to leave his post in a hurry.”

Shioni grinned.
“I can imagine.” But she also realised that Tariku didn’t quite trust her, and was giving his excuse beforehand just in case. A little loose talk from her could have landed him in hot water. “I’m just headed down to the picket line. See if I can help with the King’s horse.”

“The mad biter?
Better you than me. Have fun! Oh, and Shioni?”

“Yes?”

“Take some advice from an old pro–trying to sneak around at night in a snow-white dress doesn’t work. Nor does–”

“What’s snow?”

“I tend to forget you lot are all flat-landers.” He gave a scornful snort. “Me, I was born in these mountains–some ways south of here, I’ll admit–but I know their ways and their moods. You don’t get snow where you come from. Snow is rain that freezes and falls to the ground in flakes, like leaves, until everything goes white.”

Shioni said crossly,
“I’m not that young you can pull wool over my eyes, Tariku!”

“It’s not one of Mama’s
tall tales,” he protested, sounding rather more hurt than she thought he had a right to. “You’ll see. You haven’t seen a proper mountain storm yet, have you?”

“No.
Fibber–and you’re fibbing about Kifle saying I should try harder too!”

“That bit I
did make up.”

Shioni exited the castle
grounds between the gate towers and walked down to the picket line, annoyed that Tariku–whose name meant ‘the story’–had managed to get beneath her skin. Making up tales like a storyteller… snow indeed! Who believed such nonsense?

The
clouds had cleared away to the west to reveal skies sparkling with stars, giving the surrounding peaks a ghostly aura all of their own. As her eyes turned skyward she saw a shooting star streak by and then flash out of existence. Just like the Wasabi–attacking and disappearing almost as quickly as that shooting star. But unlike a shooting star, Zi thought the Wasabi would burn another night. And so did she, Shioni realised.

Kalcha
had revealed something of her plans in that nightmare. Did that mean she had actually been
in
her dream? In her head, even? Impossible! But… then where had it originated, that bizarre vision of hyenas being transformed into men? Was it possible her mind had constructed that whole dream-sequence out of a mere few words, once overheard?

As she approached the picket
line, Shioni sought to push her fears and muddled thoughts aside. She had work to do.

The King’s stallion.
The mad Arabian. The biter. He had many names amongst the slaves. One of the stable hands had told her that when he had been stabled alongside another horse, he had bitten part of its ear off. That was the night they moved him down to the picket line. Now he was tied alone, a once-handsome outcast amongst the shorter, hardier mountain ponies. How did the stable hands manage to move him from place to place?

Her bare feet
crunched across the short-cropped, dry grass. Yes, the horses and ponies had certainly been busy here! Having never owned or worn a pair of shoes had its advantages–her soles were as tough as leather, like the other slaves. However, this was apparently a serious concern for a Princess. Hakim Isoke had lately been forcing Annakiya to wear slippers, much to her disgust; bathe her feet twice a day, and scrub the hard bits off with rock salt and pumice from the bowels of Erta, the fabled volcano that Shioni had decided she would visit one day.

She could dream, couldn’t she?

Her favourite pony, Star, pushed her nose happily into Shioni’s hand in greeting. “Everything well with you, old girl?” said Shioni, looking along the line to where the stallion was restlessly pawing the ground.

Star sent a wistful image of long, sweet grass
near the river. It seemed the pickings were a bit lean up near Castle Asmat–then she laughed! “No, you can’t have the vegetables in Mama Nomuula’s garden, you glutton!”

Shioni imagined General Getu must have hoped to use the space between the keep and the outer wall for defensive purposes, or for stabling horses and housing several hundred warriors, but after
she had broken Kalcha’s curse, the area had begun to sprout such a profusion of herbs and plants that Mama Nomuula had quickly commandeered ‘her garden’ and–well, in Mama’s unique way–that was the final word on that. Watering the garden became a new duty to grumble about. Just the last week, an eye-watering variety of flowers had begun to blossom, as if by magic–a phrase of late so much over-used by the castle’s servants, with much winking of eyes and sly nodding of heads, that it was becoming a standing joke. Shioni had noticed that colourful creepers and white climbing roses were spreading up the hitherto bare stone walls of the keep at an astonishing, not to say magical, rate. Very suspicious.

Short of a royal decree, it seemed Mama would have her garden.

Mama had also marked off an area of the ancient terraces for growing vegetables and lentils. ‘Hundreds of hungry mouths to feed,’ she explained to anyone who would listen. She had General Getu muttering under his breath as he drew up plans to irrigate Mama’s new terraces, and assigned slaves to rebuild the low stone walls and prepare the soil. ‘As if a moat and a river aren’t enough!’ he groused. ‘Moats won’t water my flowers,’ Mama replied tartly. ‘Flowers won’t feed my troops,’ he said. ‘No, but the vegetables you’re going to plant for me will. And it’ll save on your budget, you’ll see.’

Shioni, serving the General and his Captains coffee during this now-legendary exchange, had the temerity to giggle as Getu
flung a scroll across the room after Mama Nomuula’s departure. An afternoon spent stitching clothing for the warriors had been her reward for that indiscretion. But it had been worth it to be a fly on the wall!

Star was nosing Shioni’s pocket.
“Ah, those weren’t for you,” she chuckled, thinking about the General losing his temper. Only Mama could rile him like that. “But I’ll spare you a couple. You deserve a treat.”

She let Star pick a couple of the sticky sweets off the palm of her hand.
“Listen, I’ve got to go talk to the stallion over there. Any advice?”

An image of a horse strutting down the main street of Takazze came to her senses.
Foals gambolled ahead of the horse, spilling soft leaves from sacks upon the cobbled road so that it would not strike its hoof upon a stone. The street was lined with other horses all whinnying and cheering and bowing to the high-and-mighty one, who was robed like the High Priest in all his majesty. An elephant moved alongside the horse, holding up a huge umbrella with its trunk to give it shade.

“Wow, you think that, huh?
Very funny!” Star nuzzled her pocket again. “Oh fine, for making me laugh, you can have one more!”

A
month earlier, Shioni could only have imagined such a conversation. The strangeness had started at the cave where Anbessa lay wounded, then a cat which had vented its irritation at her, and then the Chief Elephant had done something crafty to her mind–oh yes he had, she thought crossly–and then fobbed her off with a glib excuse about her ability to understand animals having been there all along! She had spent enough hours in Takazze’s royal menagerie to know that was a lie! Or at least, that her newfound aptitude had only emerged since her arrival in the mountains.

Since then, she had be
en learning how to translate animal speech, thought-pictures and feelings, into terms she could understand. And so a whole new world unfolded to her senses. Yes, her knack with animals had changed into something entirely more surprising, entertaining, and downright dangerous. She knew what people would say. Powers were evil, powers belonged to witches, and witches were usually kicked out of towns and villages. At the very best. The worst might involve a parting of ways between her head and her shoulders, or a swift shove off a cliff…

Shioni moved on to the stallion, but stopped several paces shor
t of his position on the line. Best to be wary. He was not looking well. His coat was rough and his head hung low. She could have counted his ribs with her fingers.

How should she approach him? She settled for,
“Hello. What’s your name, boy?”

With a violent snort, the stallion stuck his nose in the air. He sent her an image of herself–as a pale and loathsome insect that had just crawled out from beneath a rock. Something that should better be crushed with a hoof than see the light of day.

Charming. As charming as a hyena’s backside, Shioni decided. So this was how horses saw her, a white-skinned ferengi slave?

“Want a sweet?
I’ve got something tasty for you.”

The stallion’s
lip curled in a precise imitation of Captain Dabir’s habitual expression. “If you think bribery will move me, you are even more brainless than the rest of your kind,” he neighed.

“You can talk?
”

“
You
can talk?” the horse mocked in return. “Naturally, I am highly skilled in the arts of refined conversation.”

“No, I meant the other horses use images to communicate.”

Something like interest sparked in the stallion’s eyes, but only for a second. When he spoke, it was to address the air in haughty tones. “
You
are a lowly slave of Sheba.
Your
ability to speak a civilised animal tongue, while remarkable, is of vanishingly minor consequence.
My
sire and grandsires before him were kings amongst horses, purebred from time before memory–not short-legged, shaggy-maned workers such as these. I myself have graced the finest stables of Arabia. Light and airy places fit for a well-bred stallion, strewn with fresh hay and wildflowers, with plentiful cool clear water and harpists to grace the fragrant night-time airs with gentle, tinkling music. The hands of princes and kings groomed my silken coat with golden brushes, whilst I dined upon hot mash and the freshest, sweetest grasses selected for me by five slaves–unlike this pitiful mountain straw that neither sustains nor nourishes a beast.”

Shioni
was not about to tinkle any harp for this overbearing, stuffy creature! Instead, she said, “You will find that not many humans speak to horses.”