Zulu Heart

by Steven Barnes

  And into whose hands would the office fall?

  Which was the second most powerful family in New Djibouti? Who had watched the creation of dynasty from across the lake, with possibly envious eyes?

  Who had discovered Chalo’s body? And who did Kai know, in his heart of hearts, to have no chance of defeating the young Zulu in single combat? Who was a master drummer, but only a middling swordsman?

  A fissure seemed to run from the front of Kai’s head to the back, a crack that widened and widened until it engulfed him, a lifetime of images shattering and rearranging as everything that he thought he had known about his oldest friend was cast in a new light. Inevitably, that destroying light engulfed him as well, an entire universe of shattered mirrors reflecting him.

  So many of them gone now: father … brother … uncle …

  Oldest friend.

  All gone, and the few precious connections to those who remained not enough to keep the entire structure from falling, his very sense of identity suddenly, shockingly, swept away, the entirety of his self crashing without sufficient support to sustain it, until in a glorious, terrifying, utterly unique moment …

  A child you were, a boy of softness born into a world of strength. You have struggled with it, and excelled, but the armors you have donned, the weapons mastered, are not you. None of them you. They are what you learned that you might one day put them down.

  You are not a warrior. Not a scholar. Not father, or husband, or sinner, or saint. These are merely masks that you have worn, attempting to hide from My light.

  Kai existed in a world without walls, without symbols or sounds. No Dar Kush. No earthly obligation. No politics, or father, or uncle. You are all these things, and more.

  And less.

  Merely existence, as the thing itself. Nothing but Kai, and his soul, and his God.

  And for the first time in his life, Kai heard His voice.

  Tears fell from his eyes, and there, kneeling in the rain, he was made whole.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT

  Kai sagged kneeling in the downpour, head bowed. He looked up, his face relaxed, his eyes soft. In a curious paradox, he seemed at that instant to be both younger and older than his years.

  “Kai…?” said Lamiya.

  Lightning crackled above his head. He looked down at Nandi. Kneeling in the mud, eyes still cast down, shivering, awaiting death. He shook his head. A sensation like fog dispersing in a chill wind wound through him. Rage, he thought, was not all that clouded my senses. I have been drugged. The calmness of the voice in his head surprised him. It was not his father’s voice. Nor Malik’s. It was his own.

  Then he turned and screamed into the rain. “Fodjour!”

  “He is gone, sir,” Ganne said.

  “Gone where?”

  “He said he would check the grounds for Hashassin.”

  “Yes,” said Kai grimly. “I think I shall, as well.”

  He nearly killed his horse, but it took only fifteen minutes for Kai to circle Lake A’zam, his guard close behind him. The guard at the Berhar residence met him at their gate, and saw the Wakil and his coterie bearing down on them with pale and singular purpose.

  “Who goes there?” they were asked.

  “The Wakil, on official business.” Those were his words, his voice. But the calm and strength in them was beyond crediting. “Stand aside.”

  They could feel that there was something terribly wrong, but had received no orders to the contrary, and opened the gate.

  Kai halted his horse before the front door of the great house, and fired his pistol into the air.

  “Fodjour!” he screamed. “Come out! Son of a pig. You ate at my table, and fought at my side. You have betrayed everything that you claimed to hold dear. Come out! I would have an ending to this!”

  There was a pause, and then the front door opened. Moving gingerly, Djidade and Allahbas Berhar appeared. Djidade Berhar looked as if he were already sleeping in a grave.

  “Our son is not here,” Allahbas said.

  Kai felt as if he were watching himself from above. “Where is he?”

  “He has gone away on business,” Allahbas said.

  Kai stared at her, suddenly, clearly seeing what he had not, ever before. “You were behind this, weren’t you? Your husband is a corpse,” he said dismissively. “Fodjour hadn’t the brains for it.”

  Her gaze met his squarely, without explanation or apology. “As you haven’t the heart to be Wakil.”

  Kai nodded. “This talk of hearts makes me thirsty,” he said.

  Fodjour’s younger brother Mada appeared from behind her, lunging at Kai with a sword he could barely keep aloft.

  “Mada, no!” Djidade screamed, as Kai took the boy down and planted his foot on Mada’s neck.

  “Please, Kai,” the elder Berhar said from his wheelchair.

  “Did you know?” Kai asked. “They poisoned my daughter. Attempted to induce me to kill my wife. My wife! Drugged me in my own house. Soon, Djidade, you will stand before Allah. Tell me the truth. Did you know?”

  His sword hovered above Mada’s face. Allahbas trembled, Makur’s blade at her breast.

  “Did you know?”

  “Not all,” Berhar whispered. “Some, not all. Mada was blameless. He knew nothing. Please.”

  With such speed that she hadn’t time even to flinch, Kai brought his blade to rest against Allahbas’s smooth throat.

  “I am the Wakil,” Kai whispered, yet his words were loud enough to be heard against the storm. He struggled with the fire in his veins. “I am the law. I will drag your house into the gutter and burn it. I will find your son and parade his severed head through the streets, his zakr sewn into his mouth. Do you hear me?”

  She trembled, but did not reply.

  “Arrest them,” Kai said to his men, then turned and stalked away.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE

  While Kai’s guard searched for Fodjour, Kai began the ride back to Dar Kush, the longest of his life. Unwilling to meet so much as a servant, he slipped through a side door and took back passages to his rooms on the second floor.

  He did not emerge until the following day. As the effects of the drug wore off he brooded, hovering on the edge of one of the massive depressions that haunted the men of his family, wanting terribly to reach out to Nandi, but simultaneously too ashamed to face her.

  Stress. Anger. Fear. All disintegrate the harmony of your structure. Alignment, motion, and breathing for the physical, psychological, and emotional.

  And for the spiritual … prayer.

  Babatunde’s voice. So, then. Malik lived within him, and always would. But so did his father. And so did the Sufi. And perhaps it took the three of them to make him human.

  What is a man? Father? No. Malik had not been that, through most of his life. Babatunde was not, still. Politician? Again, the Sufi had no such leanings. The power of the external world was not for him. And Lamiya knew more about politics than Kai ever would.

  Warrior? Then how to explain the Dahomy? They were superb, and yet women.

  None of those things, then. Then what?

  And did it matter? And if not, what did? If dualities did not matter …

  What did?

  It was not until the next evening that Kai could bring himself to enter her rooms.

  He dressed in white, the color of death, for he understood that there are acts one cannot undo. There was no coming back from the precipice, the marriage was over. Nandi would return home, and perhaps it would be best if, after bringing Fodjour and the Berhars to justice, he retired from his office. This was not his world. He could retreat into prayer and raise his family, and allow other men the dubious pleasures of authority.

  But first, there was one last honorable action to perform, and it could no longer be delayed.

  So he took the long, long walk along the second floor, past Lamiya’s apartment and down the hall to the southeasternmost section of Dar Kush.

  He raised his hand to knock
on her door.

  Even before he had knocked, he heard IziLomo’s howl, a cry of rage and fear, and he heard the voices as they sought to quiet the monster.

  Allah preserve him. How had he come to such a place in his life? He knew now: he had been a fool, a turtle in the midst of a fire, believing that it could pull into its shell and be safe from the flame. He saw so much now, so clearly. How sad that that clarity had come too late.

  But so often, that was the way of the world.

  Baleka, Nandi’s nurse, opened the door. “The madam is not in—”

  “No, Baleka,” he heard Nandi say. “Admit him.”

  The door opened wider, and Kai entered. Three of Nandi’s retainers, the stern Zulu women who had accompanied her to her new home, stood between Kai and Nandi, but they were not the ones who captured his attention.

  IziLomo crouched at the side of the room, watching him carefully, teeth bared. Not growling. Not moving forward. Watching.

  “You are dismissed,” Nandi said, gesturing to her ladies.

  “But Nkosikaz,” one of them began.

  “You question me?” Nandi said. “There are things to be said between my husband and myself. They are for no other ears.”

  “Princess—”

  “Go!”

  Glaring at Kai, the women began to file out.

  IziLomo seemed to watch Nandi questioningly. Now, the smallest trace of emotion creased her face. “IziLomo may stay,” she said.

  The women filed past Kai, but at this last proclamation of their princess, seemed to take a grim and stolid satisfaction.

  The door closed behind him, and now it was just Kai, and Nandi, and the Zulu ridgeback.

  For almost a minute the three of them watched each other. Nandi stood by IziLomo, the dog still crouching, every muscle seemingly relaxed, only its brown eyes alive and burning.

  “I know not what to say,” Kai began.

  Nandi was silent.

  Cursing himself for a fool, Kai continued. “I made a terrible error, the greatest of my life. I have no reason to think that you could ever forgive me. Or trust me. But I can show you that I trust you.”

  “How would you propose to do that?”

  “I will give you the means to destroy me.”

  Finally, he seemed to have engaged her attention. “Yes,” she said. “I would like that.”

  Kai dropped his gaze. “Three years ago, at the mosque, my brother disobeyed Shaka’s orders, and Shaka killed him. In vengeance, I slew Shaka in turn.”

  She stared at him. Whatever she might have expected him to say, this was one of the least likely. “You lie.”

  “It is truth. Fodjour and Makur were there as well. If you can find them, you can ask them.”

  “You … murdered Shaka?”

  “I was in front of him. His spear was in his hand. His eyes were open, and he had just slain my brother. Call it what you will.”

  She said nothing.

  “Under military discipline, I am guilty of the murder of a superior officer. There are witnesses. If you tell of my deed, I die.”

  He paused, and then continued, “I think perhaps that it is time for you to pay a visit to your family. I think a month will be sufficient, don’t you?”

  She stared at him, disbelieving. “You would let me from your sight carrying such a secret?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love you, and do not wish to live unless you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”

  Nandi turned from him, and stared out of her window. Who was she? She had been raised from childhood to be the bride of a great man….

  And was she not?

  “May I speak freely?” she asked.

  “You are my wife,” said Kai. “I would expect nothing less.”

  “So. I doubt I need to say that the events of the last days have been the most hurtful of my life.”

  “My sorrow and shame knows no bounds.”

  She held up a hand, as if to silence him. “And your mistrust of me, and near taking of my life, is more than hurtful: it is a dishonor that, if it ever left the confines of this estate, might well trigger war.”

  “I know.”

  “Nonetheless,” she said, “under the circumstances you describe, suddenly everything makes sense. In fact, I would not wish as husband a man who would react in any other fashion.”

  She stood, moved away from him, wrapping her silk robes around the body that had embraced his so fervently.

  “You are my husband, Kai. But more than that, I love you, and have since first I met you, fifteen years ago. I think now that I understand many things … including the fact that my father knew you slew Shaka, and intended to use me for his own purposes.”

  “What purpose would that be?”

  “Vengeance,” Nandi said. “Power. He wanted me to spy upon you, even as he would not tell me all that he knew, or suspected.”

  “I see.”

  “So. You avenged your brother, as you were honor-bound to do. As my father was bound to avenge his.”

  Her face twisted venomously.

  “But he should not have whored his daughter to do it!”

  “Nandi—”

  “I am tired of being a tool. Abu Ali trothed us for politics. You married me from obligation. I was given to you by my father, who cared not in whose bed I lay, or what it might cost my heart to lie there.”

  “Nandi—”

  When he tried to comfort her, she twisted away. She was shaking in a way that he had never seen before, the white heat of her passion, fear, and need melting her resolve. He could see to her core.

  “I disown my father,” Nandi said, “and I free you from any obligations to me. No longer need you fear me, or from such fear maintain pretense of love.”

  She looked at him, such searing longing mixed with her tears that it seemed her very heart poured from her eyes. Then she turned away.

  “Go. Please.”

  He stood there, uncertain what he should, or could, do. If he left, it was ended. If he didn’t … what?

  And then the question was answered.

  IziLomo’s long dour muzzle pointed at his mistress, and then at Kai, and back again. He stood, and pressed his massive head against her leg. She did not move. The dog looked at Kai again, then back to his mistress, and then shook himself.

  Then walked across the room toward Kai.

  Kai could barely breathe, unwilling to disrupt the moment, unable to make a sound. IziLomo stopped in front of Kai, looking up at him. And very slowly, Kai lowered himself so that he and the dog were eye to eye.

  He could see every vein in the eyes, the white hairs among the black on IziLomo’s muzzle, smell the meaty wetness of his breath. The white teeth shaded to yellow at the gums.

  Kai opened himself, went back to the place that he had found in the rain. Kai did not exist there, only his soul, his essence. The dog’s head tilted sideways slightly, almost questioningly. Not knowing how he knew to do it, Kai extended his hand. IziLomo sniffed it, and made a whining sound deep in his throat. He looked back at Nandi, who was staring at them both.

  Then the ridgeback licked Kai’s hand. Once. Whined. Then walked back to his mistress’s side.

  Nandi stared at him, then down at her four-legged courtier, and exhaled. She drew herself up as if composing herself for a ceremony. Confused she might have been, but Kai thought she had never seemed more regal.

  A queen without a country, perhaps, but a queen nonetheless.

  “Nandi,” Kai said. “There has been a terrible mistake. Many of them. Some have cost lives, and will cost more. I do not know what lies ahead for our people. But I do know one thing.”

  He paused.

  “Once upon a time, you showed me the extent of your father’s lands and cattle, and said they were yours to share with the man you married.”

  She tilted her head up, so that the light seemed to flow over her. Exquisite. “And you said to me, further, that a man would
be a fool to turn you away, even if you were penniless, even if you were not the daughter of Cetshwayo, the niece of great Shaka.”

  The set of her jaw was firm. Kai came close behind her, and took her shoulders with his hands. Warmly. Softly.

  “And I thought at that moment that I had never heard truer words in my life.”

  Her eyes suddenly softened, her cheek tilted down a fraction of a degree, as if to rest itself against his hand. Then she seemed to remember herself, and straightened again.

  “I have been a fool,” he said. “I married you because my father arranged it, and there was no safe and honorable way to retreat from that arrangement.”

  She stiffened.

  “But if I had not been Wakil, and you had not been the daughter of Cetshwayo—if I had merely seen you on the avenue, had grown to manhood hearing your laughter, marveling at the clarity of your mind, thrilling at your utter vibrancy—I would have wanted you, but never dreamed that I could be your equal. I would have thought, ‘Kai is a simple scholar’ or, ‘Kai is a herdsman,’ and that a woman like you could never want someone without so wild a heart as yours.”

  Her shoulders tensed beneath his hand. “You hesitated to send for me because of what happened to Shaka?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that is why you married Lamiya?”

  “No,” he said. “I love her, and always have. When all was lost, she gave me light.”

  “I would have healed you, Kai.” Her voice was very soft.

  He turned away from her, toward the window. “How could you want me?”

  “If I were a man, I would have done as you did. If I were a man, I would wish to be as you are.”

  The silence between them stretched for an eternity. Kai felt as if his throat was closed. “If I were truly a man,” he managed to say, “I would take you in my arms, now, and find a way to show you that all the stars of heaven have no light to exceed that I see in your eyes. That I would discard all I own if we two could start anew, and I could come to you with just my heart and my sword, pledging both to you for all my life. If only you would forgive me, and love me as once you did.”