The Price of Coming Home

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.