A Woman in Good Company

The elephant screamed while Senamé climbed the watchtower. Its voice shook the ladder before reaching her ears. Birds burst from the southern canopy. Kékéli launched from her shoulder as something large cracked through the forest below.

She caught the railing. Branches thrashed below the ridge, then shook again impossibly far east. Touching the grey bead, she called Kékéli. He circled high above her and folded towards the tower.

“Show me.”

His forehead touched hers.

Her heart accelerated beyond any human rhythm. Air pressed beneath her belly; she raised her arms and feathers opened instead, green deepening to blue on the left, sunlight burning through gold and red on the right. She felt each feather adjust against the current. Kékéli tipped one shoulder and she tipped with him, the pleasure so sudden she nearly laughed.

Then the ground fell away.

Azara’s bridges threaded between trees below their breast. Pools flashed through the leaves; gates shrank to gaps in paths. Kékéli caught an updraft and climbed beyond the southern protection.

The Ajatado opened beneath them.

The country of a thousand villages: from here, a thousand seemed the point where someone had tired of counting. Red roads joined wells, kilns and dye yards. Irrigation channels cut blue lines through fields. Canoes crowded river landings with baskets and cloth, while an embankment carried cattle and traders over wet ground towards a walled market town.

Antelope streaked around a field. Monkeys leapt through branches with the confidence of thieves never prosecuted. Crocodiles darkened sandbanks; beyond the palms, long-necked animals browsed above the scrub. Elephants crossed a clearing with the certainty of things too large to hurry.

Rivers flashed between unnamed villages, fading into the hazy hills. Senamé understood Afiwa with painful clarity. Beyond Azara there was simply more world.

Kékéli banked hard.

Wind swept across Senamé’s belly, and the horizon rolled. Then he folded his wings.

The river rushed upward. Senamé’s stomach seemed to remain in the sky while the rest of her plunged toward a broken footbridge, three elephants and a woman trapped against the near bank. One elephant collided with another. The smallest stumbled, recovered badly and kept running. Something blue flickered behind its ear.

Senamé tore herself back into her own body with both hands locked around the tower rail. Her knees had bent without permission. Her lungs felt enormous and clumsy after Kékéli’s.

She seized the pale alarm horn, familiar from brush fires and boundary breaches, and blew two short notes followed by one long.

The call crossed the southern terraces. At the next post, a guard turned and answered. Another whistle picked it up deeper inside Azara. Senamé pointed toward the river, dragged the rescue rope from its peg and hooked the iron grapples into her belt just as Kékéli returned.

“There’s a woman below the bridge,” he said.

Senamé looked at him. The voice was his own.

“She won’t reach the trees.”

“Tell them where I went.”

Kékéli glanced toward the boundary.

Senamé climbed onto the railing.

“So will I.”

She jumped.

Sakpata’s protection crossed her shoulders like cold water, briefly holding Azara’s forge smoke and medicinal scents before releasing her. She landed on a broad leaf, slid down its spine and caught a vine before gravity finished its argument. The next branch bowed and sprang her farther downhill.

Below, the woman at the river tore away her travelling cloth.

White flashed between the trunks: a gold-edged bodice, a wrapper gathered clear of her ankles. The broad-hipped woman looked accustomed to having chairs brought to her. Pearls covered throat, wrists and waist, amber beside blue, violet beside cream. Deliberate, beautiful, and completely improper by Azaran standards.

At Azara, women covered their pearls before strangers. This woman had made an outfit of them.

The largest elephant lowered its head.

She fitted smoked lenses over her eyes. A pearl rose from her breast into a slender crown of light. Three syllables, one step, and she vanished from the charge. Mud exploded where she had stood; her white hem settled several paces away.

The grey bead at Senamé’s throat warmed. Pressure gathered against her skin, vanished, then gathered again when the woman moved a second time.

Senamé dropped to a lower branch and stopped thinking about the spell.

The youngest elephant was running wrong.

Azara’s oldest hunting families had tracked elephants for ivory, learning where a leg would fail and how long a wounded animal could travel. Later generations made killing routes into protected crossings. Hunters became keepers. Their lessons now taught Senamé what never to damage.

Angry elephants committed; frightened ones broke rhythm. These did both and neither, feet landing too close beneath their weight. The smallest tried to shorten its stride and lurched forward anyway.

The woman raised her hand.

“Stop.”

Gold settled across the elephant’s forehead. Its body checked so abruptly its hindquarters nearly overtook its shoulders. Relief passed through it for half a breath.

Blue light flashed beneath the skin behind its ear.

The elephant screamed and surged forward.

Senamé dropped into the road.

The animal swung toward her, ears wide, eyes wet. Its thoughts hit her without language enough to become sentences.

Hot.

“Easy.”

Legs.

“I can see them.”

Too fast.

Its trunk swept toward her. Senamé vaulted a root, ducked and landed beside the reeds.

“You keep this up, you’re going to break yourself like somebody’s drunk uncle chasing a wedding drum.”

The elephant shuddered.

Hurts.

“That part I believe.”

The woman appeared beside a tree, one arm tight around a flat object wrapped in dark cloth. A thin line of blood marked her lower lip.

“You know elephants.”

“We used to know them for uglier reasons.”

Something in the woman’s expression sharpened behind the smoked lenses, but another elephant screamed before she could ask.

She pointed to a reed hollow between two trees. She had lost a sandal in that mud and spent half a day retrieving it: Azara could defend women from armies without purchasing enough spare sandals.

“Can you keep them behind you until you reach those trees?”

The woman followed her hand.

“Yes.”

“When I tell you to move, move.”

“And what exactly are you planning?”

Senamé was already running.

“Something irresponsible with rope.”

She drove the first grapple into the fork of a root and pulled until the iron bit. The second line went over a low branch. Behind her, the stranger spoke those same three syllables. Senamé felt the rhythm strike the grey bead in three warm pulses.

Later.

As the youngest entered the hollow, Senamé dropped behind it with an open loop. Only fools offered several tons of muscle a fair contest. She needed its speed, the mud and one good angle.

She passed the rope low behind its hind legs and sprang away from a kicking foot. The loop tightened with the animal’s next stride. Senamé caught the hanging line and its own momentum ripped her from the ground. She swung across its flank, hit the opposite trunk feet first and bent her knees against the impact.

“Now!”

The woman turned and raised one hand.

Senamé pulled.

The loop shortened the elephant’s stride. It staggered into the reeds, but Senamé let the line run through her palm guard rather than arresting it. The animal turned, lost another measure of speed, sank deeper. Only when its feet entered the softest ground did Senamé take the slack.

Its knees dropped into the mud.

Across the hollow, the stranger’s incantation died halfway through a word.

Senamé saw the lifted hand stop. The golden crown above the woman’s brow flickered once. Behind the smoked lenses, her attention shifted from the elephant to the girl on the rope.

The largest animal came straight at Senamé.

She jumped onto the root beside it, caught the base of a tusk and let the upward swing of its head throw her over. Her sandal touched the broad slope of its shoulder for less than a heartbeat. She launched toward the branch above, dragged the second rope across its forelegs and landed on the far side.

The line tightened.

The elephant kept coming.

Senamé let it.

Its first step pulled the rope across the root. The second changed the angle. Its own weight drove the line lower.

Senamé planted both heels.

Now.

She dropped backward.

The elephant’s momentum crossed the restraint before its forelegs could compensate. One foot slid through the wet reeds, then the other folded beneath it.

The stranger’s mouth opened.

No spell came out.

The elephant crashed into the hollow hard enough to send muddy water into the lower branches. Senamé hauled the line closer, lungs burning.

“Easy.”

The third animal tried to climb around the fallen one.

“The loose rope!”

The woman caught it.

“Around the stump!”

She obeyed instantly. Senamé vaulted the largest elephant’s trunk, took the line from her and closed the loop while the third animal searched for footing. Its hindquarters slid into the soft bank. It went down sideways with a bellow that emptied the nearest trees of birds.

For a few seconds the hollow belonged to breath, mud and ropes pulling against wood.

Senamé spat a reed from her mouth.

The woman was staring at her.

“You pulled it down,” the stranger said.

“It did most of the work.”

“That is an elephant.”

“Yes. Can you help it?”

The youngest strained once against the rope. Pain reached Senamé before the thought did. She crouched beside its head and placed a hand beneath the ear.

Legs.

“I know.”

Hurts.

“I know that too.”

The trunk found her wrist and curled around it.

The woman knelt beside them on firmer ground. Her white wrapper had turned brown below the knees, the gold border dark with mud. Up close, Senamé could see sweat trapped between the pearls at her throat.

“Keep its head still.”

The central pearl brightened into a golden crown. The others answered: amber, blue, violet. That central light belonged to the woman in a way the surrounding strands did not.

She placed two fingers behind the elephant’s ear.

The blue mark became visible beneath the skin.

Senamé frowned.

“What is that?”

“Something I would rather remove before naming.”

The elephant jerked. Senamé braced its cheek with her free hand.

“Go on. Insult me. You’ll feel better.”

Heat and confusion came first.

Then, weakly:

Small nuisance.

Senamé smiled.

“Terrible. You’ve had years.”

The woman turned her wrist. A thin blue thread rose beneath her fingers like a thorn being drawn from flesh. It stretched once, resisted, then came free. She closed her fist around it.

The elephant sagged into the mud.

Its trunk loosened around Senamé’s wrist.

Oh.

“Yes,” Senamé said. “Oh.”

Kékéli arrived before the second animal was treated, skimming over the reeds with several borrowed voices competing for space in his throat.

“They’re coming. Guards. Healers. Someone brought the salve.”

“Which salve?” Senamé asked.

“The expensive one.”

“Good.”

Kékéli landed above her.

“Kpénahi knows.”

Senamé stopped untying the rope.

That was less good.

Guards and healers arrived with dressings, water and the heavy green elephant salve. Kékéli had guided them from the alarm to the exact spot.

Which meant Senamé could remember what she had done.

She had left her post without permission.

One of the guards looked at her hooks, then toward the ridge.

“You sounded the alarm,” the guard said.

“Yes.”

“And then crossed the boundary.”

“There were three elephants.”

“There was also a woman.”

Senamé glanced toward the stranger.

“She was about to become part of the riverbank.”

The guard’s eyes moved over the pearls at the woman’s throat, then settled on the wrapped object beneath her arm. Whatever lecture she had prepared lost a little confidence.

“Take her to the Command. You can explain yourself there.”

Senamé began coiling the rope.

“Gladly.”

“Kpénahi is already waiting.”

The fear reached her stomach with the clean efficiency of paperwork.

The woman checked the youngest again. The healers worked around her without asking permission, an experience she appeared to tolerate rather than enjoy.

Senamé tightened the rope against her shoulder.

“What should I call you?”

“Tassi.”

The name meant nothing to her. The pearls did: one rubbed smooth on a single side, another seamed beneath its nacre, a blue bead older than its cord.

Senamé nodded toward them.

“Those aren’t all yours.”

Tassi touched one with her thumb.

“No crown is.”

Senamé looked at her for a moment, then bent to retrieve the second grapple. That answer would survive comfortably inside the Command.

“And the thing under your arm?”

“A reason to arrive alive.”

Yes. She was going to get along with the councilwomen beautifully.

Kékéli hopped along the branch above them.

“Post. Post. Post.”

“I know,” Senamé said.

“Post.”

“Thank you, conscience with feathers.”

Walking back meant giving Kpénahi longer to phrase her accusations. Leaving Tassi with the patrol meant letting strangers report the morning before Senamé could ruin the explanation herself.

Her gaze dropped to Tassi’s feet.

“That quick step.”

Tassi’s expression changed at once.

“No.”

“You don’t know what I’m asking.”

“I have watched you work with rope.”

Senamé touched the bead and separated the borrowed rhythm: weight gathered, distance released, a pause to choose the next foothold.

Tassi saw her concentration deepen.

“No,” Tassi said.

“It only carries one person.”

“Yes.”

“That seems wasteful,” Senamé replied.

“It seems safe.”

“Hold your parcel.”

Tassi stared at her, then slowly reached into her bodice and put the smoked lenses back over her eyes.

“That sentence has made me significantly less comfortable.”

Senamé widened the interval.

Light spread beneath both their feet.

Tassi looked down.

“Where did you learn that?”

“From you.”

“You cannot simply watch someone and take a working.”

Senamé held out her hand.

“We can discuss my manners after Kpénahi discusses my crimes.”

Tassi did not take it.

Senamé heard the distant answer of another watch whistle from the ridge.

“Kpénahi,” she repeated.

Tassi put her hand in hers.

Her heels lost the ground; her knees braced for an impact that never came. Air punched between her teeth. Tassi’s hand became a firm, angry weight as the spell gathered them into the same release.

Then the forest rearranged itself.

A trunk appeared where Senamé expected open air. Space opened where she had expected roots. She corrected too sharply, and Tassi’s arm jerked once in her grip.

“Left,” Tassi said.

“I know.”

“You were going right.”

“I changed my mind.”

“That is worse.”

The original working paused to restore balance and direction. Senamé kept those pauses and lengthened everything else.

Leaves snapped against Tassi’s lenses. Each stride up the ridge landed more cleanly, the spell settling dangerously quickly into Senamé’s body.

At the southern boundary she raised her free hand.

Sakpata’s protection recognized her touch. Cold resistance passed over her fingers, shoulders and chest, then encountered Tassi and thickened for half a heartbeat.

Senamé pulled.

The boundary yielded.

Bringing a stranger through without clearance would be recorded. At this point, Senamé hoped whoever held the stylus had stretched first.

Azara flashed around them. A hanging bridge. Dye cloths snapping overhead. A startled woman with cassava. A child who had just enough time to point.

Senamé shortened the final stride.

The air struck her beneath the ribs.

Not hard. Soft.

That was worse.

Her stolen speed folded around her. Something warm and invisible caught her with the humiliating patience of an aunt’s waiting cushion. She sank through it onto one knee in the courtyard.

Tassi landed beside her.

Standing.

Of course.

Nan Loló stood several paces away with one hand raised. Her clothes had not moved. Neither had her expression.

“Senamé,” she said, “when you bring trouble home, use the gate slowly enough for the trouble to introduce itself.”

Afiwa had stopped beside the fountain with a guava halfway to her mouth. Kékéli dropped onto a roof beam, feathers flattened backward by the journey.

“Slowly,” he said.

Tassi lifted her smoked lenses. Her eyes watered from the speed, and one gold ornament had fallen over her brow. She put it back into place before looking at Senamé.

“Next time, you will allow me to finish speaking.”

Afiwa looked from Tassi to the route behind them.

“You went faster than me,” Afiwa said.

“I cheated.”

“With what?”

“Magic. You use your legs.”

Afiwa considered the distinction.

“That still counts.”

Senamé pushed herself upright, already looking toward the Command for Kpénahi.

Nan Loló was no longer looking at her.

Her attention had moved behind Tassi.

Coolness ran across the paving. Dust hung beside the fountain. Young guards looked about in confusion; older women adjusted their spears towards empty places around Tassi.

Nan Loló tilted her head.

“Move the stool.”

A guard obeyed.

“Farther.”

The stool scraped across the stones. Loló watched the space it had occupied until she seemed satisfied.

Tassi’s hand tightened around the wrapped object.

“You see them?”

“Enough.”

Loló inclined her head toward something beside Tassi’s shoulder.

“One gentleman objects to being kept standing. He wears a ring on a finger he no longer possesses.”

Tassi went completely still.

“How many?”

Nan Loló smiled.

“Enough to make our courtyard crowded.”

An unseen hand tore a young guard’s spear from her grip and planted it point-first in the paving. Behind Tassi, weapons disturbed the air. The older guards lowered their spears.

Kpénahi appeared beneath the Command’s portico just as the last dust from Senamé’s arrival settled across the courtyard.

“Who have you brought into Azara?”

Senamé opened her mouth, but Nan Loló raised two fingers.

“Not her.”

Tassi straightened the ruined white cloth across her waist. Mud streaked one calf, gold caught the afternoon light, and the pearls at her throat had gone still.

“I came to speak with those responsible for this refuge.”

Kpénahi’s gaze moved to the wrapped object beneath her arm.

“Put that down.”

Tassi did not.

Kpénahi held her position. Loló descended the final step, examining the unseen company around their guest.

“The crown of Abomey has crossed our threshold.”

Afiwa stopped chewing.

“Hangbé,” said the Intendante. “Mistress of the Pearls.”

Senamé looked at the queen she had dragged through the forest: ruined white hem, pearls, that parcel protected through everything.

Hangbé adjusted it beneath her arm and let the silence settle before she spoke.

“Now perhaps we may discuss why I came.”

By the time Senamé reached the council room, the mud on her calves had dried into a second skin. Someone had washed the queen’s feet. Nobody had offered to wash hers, which seemed a poor distribution of gratitude considering who had carried whom.

Four chairs waited around the table.

She counted them twice before taking the last.

Beyond the open wall, Azara was settling back into its afternoon. Pestles struck their mortars; a child protested whose turn it was to fetch the wash water. The forest had swallowed the elephants’ screams, and already the women below were discussing supper. Senamé could still feel the bridge giving way beneath her.

Hangbé spared her the task of describing it.

“The crossing was broken before she reached me. Without her, I would not be here.”

Kpénahi examined the bent grappling hook on the table. Senamé had brought it as evidence and now regretted how thoroughly she had ruined it.

Nan Loló poured water for their guest.

“Your escort?”

“I came without one.”

That answer cooled the room more effectively than the breeze. A queen did not arrive alone by accident. Senamé watched Hangbé drink, trying to reconcile the woman with the figure who had clung to her above the ravine. Clean water and a chair had restored something to her. Even in a borrowed wrapper, with blood drying at the corner of her mouth, she made the table feel like an audience chamber.

“I need women I can trust,” she continued. “A guard attached to my household.”

“Your kingdom has soldiers,” Kpénahi said.

“And every officer has a patron. A creditor. A cousin who finds my orders inconvenient.”

“You expect our women to have no loyalties?”

“I expect to know what they are.”

Senamé liked that answer. She liked the idea of the palace even more: gates opening at their approach, a room prepared before she arrived, work important enough that nobody would interrupt it to ask whether she could warm the baths.

Then Kpénahi began asking what such work would cost.

The queen offered wages, a fixed term of service and the right to bring grievances through an Azara representative. Kpénahi wanted to know who would hear those grievances if the queen died. Who could dismiss a woman. Whether she could refuse an order. With each question, the palace in Senamé’s imagination acquired another locked door.

“Oya raises the tribute whenever we find the means to pay it,” Hangbé said. “I intend to have a choice when the next collector arrives.”

“And when he returns with an army?”

“Then I would prefer not to begin looking for allies that morning.”

Kpénahi’s sword rested against her thigh. Senamé noticed the queen’s attention settle on it, briefly, before returning to its owner.

“You are asking us to enter your quarrel.”

“The quarrel already buys grain in your markets.”

For the first time, Kpénahi leaned forward.

“The women you want teach our children. They patrol the roads. When one leaves, another takes her watch and somebody else takes hers. You see warriors because you need warriors. I have to see who remains.”

Below them, a baby began crying. The sound rose through the floorboards while the queen considered her answer.

“And the women who wish to go?”

“They may ask,” Loló replied.

Senamé looked at her.

She had asked often enough to wear a path through the word.

Hangbé must have noticed, because her gaze moved between them. She did not pursue it. Instead she asked whether a woman already serving could return home before her term ended.

“With your permission?” Kpénahi said.

“No commander can promise that soldiers may abandon a battle.”

“Then we should stop discussing this as employment in your household.”

The queen’s expression hardened. Senamé waited for the argument to break open, almost eager for it; surely someone would finally say what everyone meant.

But Hangbé had survived a palace. She knew how to leave a refusal standing without kneeling before it.

“Consider what I have offered.”

Kpénahi promised provisions for her journey and a safe departure in the morning.

That was all.

Senamé followed the queen towards the lift, disappointment dragging at her more heavily than exhaustion. She had brought a queen home and somehow ended up exactly where she had started.

Hangbé paused beside her.

“Come and eat when they have finished with you.”

Senamé had not realized anyone was still waiting for her to finish anything.

Behind them, Kpénahi called her name.

The screen closed before the lift reached the ground.

On the table lay a travel register, open beside a purse. Senamé recognized her name halfway down the page. Afiwa’s followed it.

For a moment she thought she had misunderstood the meeting.

“You will accompany her,” Kpénahi said. “Afiwa will scout the route and establish a way for your reports to reach us.”

Permission should have felt larger. She had spent years pressing against it; now that it had moved, she nearly stumbled.

“Reports about what?”

“Who sent her here alone. Who benefits if she does not return. Whose instructions are obeyed when hers are ignored.”

“And what she wants from us,” Loló added.

Senamé glanced at the sword.

The queen had come looking for protection. Perhaps she had also come looking for something that could cut through whatever protection Oya possessed.

“Yesterday I wasn’t fit to leave.”

“Yesterday,” Loló said, “we had no reason to place you in the queen’s household.”

Nothing in Senamé’s body had changed. Her wrist still hurt. Beneath her clothes, the scales still pulled when she bent. Yet the same women who had kept her behind the boundary were now discussing how best to send her through it.

She wanted to be angry before she was pleased. Pleasure won.

Kpénahi pushed the purse towards her. Four pieces now, eight on her return; food and lodging would be provided separately. Senamé had never earned enough at once to make a purse sag.

Then Loló named the house beside the western cistern.

“Your name will be entered with the women of that courtyard.”

Senamé knew its crooked shutter. She had shaved the wood herself, kneeling outside while supper passed from hand to hand beyond the window. Nobody had thought to send her away; nobody had thought to call her in.

Now Loló was offering her the other side of that wall.

The room furnished itself before she could mistrust it: her mat beneath the window, oil enough for an evening lamp, a washing cloth that she would not have to ask permission to use. She could leave something unfinished and find it waiting when she returned. Until this moment, she had not known how much of a home consisted of things nobody cleared away.

Her hand drifted towards the register. Yesterday they had needed a bowl, three readers and a duel to decide she could go nowhere. Today a queen wanted her, and there was a house.

“If I find nothing against her,” she asked, “do I still get it?”

Kpénahi’s gaze settled on her.

“Yes.”

Senamé asked for the reed and wrote the house beside the payment. Hope had already carried her through its doorway; she wanted the promise written down before anyone could bring her back.

Loló drew the lambi from beneath Senamé’s collar. Her pearl warmed against the shell while she breathed into its mouth. A low vibration entered Senamé’s chest, like a voice heard through a wall.

“When you call, listen before you speak. And if remaining puts you in danger, leave. Afiwa will know the roads.”

Kpénahi waited until Loló had finished before producing a small packet wrapped in worn cloth.

“This is separate.”

Inside lay copies of records. The oldest had split along a fold and been stitched to a backing. Senamé recognized the royal mark before she understood why Kpénahi would have kept it.

“My father was taken by royal gendarmes. These are the places where his name appears.”

An arrest. A detention. A transfer.

After that, nothing.

“My mother went back until there was nobody left willing to speak to her.”

Senamé smoothed the repaired edge with her thumb. Someone had preserved these pages through years in which the person they described had ceased to appear anywhere.

“What do you want me to find?” Senamé asked.

“The order. Who signed it. Where they sent him.”

“I could ask the queen.”

“First find out whether the record still exists.”

Kpénahi released the cloth. Without it, her empty hand looked briefly unfamiliar.

Senamé packed the papers beneath the register, where rain would have to pass through everything else to reach them.

Hangbé had kept a plate covered for her.

The smell of pepper and smoked fish reached Senamé before the welcome did. She ate too quickly, burned her tongue and pretended she had not. Across the little table, the queen’s ruined white cloth hung from a rail, dripping into a pail. Without it, she looked less like somebody who belonged in a song and more like a woman who had had an appalling day.

Senamé explained the arrangement: she would travel to Abomey, remain at court and help Azara understand the queen’s circumstances.

It sounded respectable enough to make her uncomfortable.

“Do you wish to come?” Hangbé asked.

“Yes.”

The answer escaped before discretion could dress it.

“Good. I have had enough reluctant company.”

Senamé smiled into her food. She told her about the house, then wished she had sounded less astonished to be offered one. Hangbé congratulated her without asking why she did not already have it.

For a while they ate in a peace Senamé had done nothing to earn.

Later, Hangbé asked after the elephants. Senamé described the youngest’s efforts to persuade the healer that nothing was wrong with its knee. Her imitation of the animal’s offended stillness made the queen laugh and press a finger to her split lip. Senamé apologized, laughing too, and pushed the water closer.

She was reluctant to spoil it. But the scales had begun catching against the edge of her seat, and the woman opposite her wore enough living magic to make the air feel crowded.

When the attendant left, Senamé closed the door.

“Could you look at something?”

Hangbé put down her cup.

Senamé brought the grey bead out from under her collar. Explaining it took longer than she liked: the examinations, the borrowed workings, the way everything she could do became less impressive when somebody asked her to do something of her own.

The queen listened without reaching for it.

“Can you give it light?”

Senamé knew six ways to make light. Seven, if she counted the one that had set a basket alight.

“Without repeating a working,” Hangbé added.

Of course.

She cupped the bead. The familiar shapes offered themselves immediately, each with its proper sequence, its little certainty. Beyond them lay the same blankness she had been made to visit all her life.

She pushed.

Pain caught beneath her ribs. Her breath shortened; the scales along her hip tightened as though her skin had been laced from the inside.

“Enough,” Hangbé said.

Senamé stopped before the command could become another failure.

“Where does it hurt?”

“Don’t call anyone.”

The queen waited.

“I’m allowed to go now.”

Understanding altered her face.

“I will not call anyone.”

Senamé loosened the cloth at her hip.

The scales had spread since morning. In the lamplight they looked almost beautiful, which offended her. Something doing this to her ought to have the decency to look diseased.

Hangbé asked before touching them. Her fingers were warm; the answering ache travelled deeper than the skin.

“How long?”

“They used to go away.”

She could manage that much without her voice changing.

The queen withdrew her hand.

“In Abomey there are instruments we do not have here. Records, too. I cannot promise they will explain this.”

“But you’ll look.”

“Yes.”

Senamé covered herself. She had imagined departure as distance: hills crossed, roads taken, Azara growing small behind her. Now it offered something more dangerous. Somewhere ahead, there might be an answer that did not end with her being told to try harder.

“My mother was Ablawa.”

Hangbé’s attention sharpened.

“What have they told you about her?”

“Enough to keep finding fault with me. Very little I can ask her about.”

“Bring whatever you have of hers.”

Senamé looked down at the bead.

Outside, the attendant asked whether they wanted more water. Hangbé answered before Senamé could decide how to hide herself, giving her time to straighten her clothes.

They finished the meal with the door open.

At dawn, Afiwa repacked the bag.

Senamé watched her remove three useful objects and replace them with the blue cloth.

“I might need those.”

“You will certainly need to look as though someone knows you.”

That silenced her more effectively than any argument about luggage.

The forest smelled of damp ash and crushed leaves. Breakfast smoke threaded between the houses; above it, the first sunlight touched the upper branches while the paths remained blue with shade. Senamé had seen this hour from her watch post so often that leaving it felt almost like neglect.

Near the boundary, the elephant waited with a travelling seat strapped across its back.

Hangbé stopped.

The animal’s trunk explored the provisions, found nothing worth apologizing for and reached towards the queen.

“It seems to remember you,” Senamé said.

“I had hoped to make a different impression.”

Afiwa concealed a laugh in the baggage.

Mounting proved less dignified than Senamé had intended. Kékéli repeated the noise she made while hauling herself up, then repeated it more loudly when she threatened him. By the time Hangbé joined her, several women had found reasons to linger nearby.

From that height, Senamé could see the western cistern.

The house stood just beyond it, its troublesome shutter open to the morning. Someone had hung washing beneath the window. She tried to imagine her own cloth among it and found she could do so with painful ease.

Kpénahi approached, the sword at her hip.

“Your first report when you reach Abomey.”

Senamé touched the lambi.

“And the papers?”

“Safe.”

Kpénahi nodded to the women at the boundary. Roots loosened beneath the path, drawing back with a smell of wet earth. Afiwa went through first, already lengthening her stride towards the road.

Senamé turned for one more look at Azara.

A branch struck her across the forehead.

Hangbé caught it before it could catch her again. For a moment the queen held the forest aside while Senamé rubbed her face, furious at the laughter rising in her own throat.

Then the elephant carried them through, and she had to turn forward to see where they were going.