What the Record Kept

The clerk had nearly finished the sentence when Senamé put her finger on the page.

“You’ve missed the amount.”

His pen stopped against her nail. Across the table, Olúṣọlá continued closing the little compartments of his case, pressing each mineral fragment into its padded hollow.

“The assessment is attached.”

“The new one. Where’s the one we paid?”

Several people behind her found something else to look at. The clerk tried to draw the sheet toward himself, but her finger travelled with it.

Olúṣọlá shut the last compartment.

“This is a record of the Crown’s refusal.”

“Then put down what she refused.”

“Senamé.”

Tassi had not raised her voice. Senamé took her hand off the paper, leaving a small crescent of ink beside the unfinished line. For one unpleasant moment she expected to be sent away.

The queen extended her palm.

“The register.”

The clerk consulted Olúṣọlá with his eyes.

Tassi kept her hand out.

At last, the book crossed the table. She read the sentence, turned back to the completed inventory and placed the two pages beside one another.

“You have acknowledged the full delivery required by our agreement. Your report will include it.”

Olúṣọlá spread his hands, rings flashing.

“Majesty, I cannot certify a settlement while a balance remains,” Olúṣọlá said.

“Certify what you received,” Tassi replied.

“And the outstanding amount?”

“You may record my refusal in whatever size of handwriting pleases you. You will first record its cause.”

A porter near the gate let out a breath through his nose. His companion nudged him sharply. Senamé had to press her tongue against the inside of her cheek; the queen caught the movement and returned the book before either of them could make matters worse.

Olúṣọlá did not take it.

Instead, he beckoned to the officer standing beside the scales.

“Secure the outstanding value.”

The officer’s men moved toward the nearest stack of cloth. For a moment Senamé thought they meant to count it again. Then one of them caught the porter by the wrist and turned his arm behind his back.

The bundle fell open. Indigo spread across the paving.

“He’s carrying your cloth.”

The soldier tightened his grip. The porter rose onto his toes, making a thin sound between his teeth.

Olúṣọlá addressed the queen.

“The labour accompanying an unsettled delivery may be retained against the balance.”

“He isn’t accompanying it anywhere.” Senamé stepped around the table. “He brought it from that gate to this one.”

The officer moved into her path. Up close, the hooked emblem on his shoulder had been worked in dark metal, its inner edge stained almost black. She remembered the same turn of the line beneath an elephant’s ear. Her stomach tightened before she could stop looking at it.

He noticed.

“Stand aside.”

Behind him, another soldier uncoiled a length of cord.

Tassi came down from the raised paving.

“Release him.”

The officer bowed just enough to make the refusal worse.

“Imperial property remains under imperial protection.”

“Then protect the cloth.”

Senamé reached past him.

She caught the soldier’s thumb, folded it toward his wrist and brought his hand off the porter’s arm. He tried to wrench free. She continued the movement until his knees bent, then let go before the joint broke.

The porter stumbled behind her, clutching his elbow.

Every spear in the entrance lowered.

Kossiwa caught the second soldier’s cord before it could close around another wrist. A black sheen passed over the fibres. The loop contracted on itself, knotting so tightly that he could neither open it nor pull his hand away.

“Leave it.”

He obeyed her.

Senamé heard the first crack above her shoulder.

The officer had drawn a narrow rod from his belt. White fire crept between its metal bands, too bright to look at directly. Around the courtyard, the little hairs on people’s arms lifted.

Tassi’s hand opened.

The paving rose beneath the soldiers’ feet. Not far: the height of a step, enough to spoil their balance and draw a clean ridge between the porters and the lowered weapons. A spear struck it, skidded and buried its point in the ground.

“Akínjídé.” The queen’s voice cut through the scrape of iron. “Put that away.”

The officer’s eyes remained on Senamé.

“She has laid hands on an imperial escort.”

“She has released a man you were ordered not to touch.”

Behind the ridge, Yétundé pulled the porter toward the covered passage. Two women abandoned their trays to help her clear the others. One old man refused to leave a spilled sack; Yétundé took him by the back of his collar and removed the difficulty.

Senamé would have laughed if the air had not begun tasting like a coin held too long beneath the tongue.

Akínjídé turned his rod.

She heard the working catch.

A narrow pull passed through the bands, gathered at his wrist and reached for the spearhead lodged beyond Tassi’s ridge. The spearhead lay beside Yétundé’s ankle.

Senamé kicked it.

Lightning struck the moving metal.

For an instant the whole courtyard became white. The spear burst against a pillar, spraying chips of stone into the passage. Tassi swept her arm across the opening; the flying fragments crumbled in the air, showering the women with pale dust.

Yétundé disappeared behind the wall.

Senamé could no longer hear her own breathing. Something hot ran down the side of her neck.

Akínjídé was already drawing another charge.

She knew the shape now. The bands did not make the lightning. They gave it a destination.

Across the table, Olúṣọlá snatched his correspondence plate out of the path of a falling tile. The paired seals on its face flashed once.

Senamé’s eyes followed them.

One mark here. Its answer elsewhere.

She seized the brass weight from the abandoned scales and hurled it at Akínjídé’s feet.

He shifted out of its path with an expression of contempt that lasted until she struck the ground.

Her palm split against the paving. Beneath it, she pulled at the working she had just heard, caught its repeating turn and forced another answer into the place meant for the spear.

The grey bead hit her breastbone.

Pain drove up her arm.

Akínjídé released the charge.

It came at her face, white at its centre, spreading into crooked fingers. Senamé held the correspondence together with everything she had. For a sickening instant the lightning refused the new route. Her elbow buckled. Heat climbed beneath the skin of her ribs, and she knew exactly where it would go if she lost the pattern.

Then the brass weight answered.

Pink light tore across the courtyard.

The impact struck at Akínjídé’s feet and split the paving beneath him. He lurched backward as the ground opened around his boots, sinking him to the shins. His rod flew from his hand. Senamé’s shoulder struck the table hard enough to overturn the ink.

Silence came back in pieces.

A clay bowl rolled beneath the scales. Somewhere in the passage, a woman was coughing. Akínjídé hauled at one leg, his face no longer arranged for an audience.

Senamé tried to stand straight.

Her knees had a different opinion.

Kossiwa caught her beneath the elbow.

“Don’t do it again.”

“I wasn’t planning—”

“You’re still holding it.”

Senamé could not feel her hand. Kossiwa pressed two fingers into the inside of her wrist, hard enough to make her gasp. The borrowed pattern broke. At the far end of the courtyard, the brass weight went dull.

Akínjídé reached toward his fallen rod.

Tassi put her foot on it.

“That will be enough.”

He looked up at her. The queen’s wrapper was powdered with stone dust; a fine cut marked one cheek. She had not bothered to wipe it.

For a moment, no one moved.

Then the guards of Abomey advanced.

Senamé’s fingers would not uncurl.

She hid them in the fold of her wrapper while Tassi ordered the imperial escort back to its quarters. Olúṣọlá objected to the word escort when applied to the palace guards who would accompany them. The queen allowed him to choose another.

He chose nothing.

“The agreed delivery remains yours.” Tassi pointed to the untouched rows beyond the scales. “Your people may remove it under supervision. No person leaves with those goods against their will.”

Akínjídé had been pulled out of the broken paving. One of his soldiers offered him an arm; he struck it away.

“You will answer for this.”

Tassi bent to pick up the rod. White light twitched between its bands and went out beneath her fingers.

“When your emperor asks why you discharged this among my household, I suggest you have a better account than your clerk.”

She handed it to her guard captain.

Olúṣọlá returned to the table.

Senamé watched him retrieve the correspondence plate. A pale branching stain had appeared along one edge, delicate as a root beneath the metal’s surface. He rubbed it with his thumb. The mark remained.

His eyes lifted to her necklace.

She tucked it beneath her collar.

This time he did not ask.

The clerk gathered the wet pages with shaking hands. Tassi stopped him before he could close the register.

“You have more to write.”

He found a dry sheet.

The porter whose wrist Senamé had freed stood beside Yétundé in the passage. Tassi called him forward and asked his name. Then she asked whether he had consented to leave with the delegation.

“No, Majesty.”

The pen moved.

“And the first discharge?”

His eyes went to Akínjídé.

The queen waited.

“Toward the passage, Majesty.”

“Write that.”

Senamé’s vision contracted at the edges. She fixed her eyes on the clerk’s moving hand and refused to let the courtyard tip any farther.

Someone behind her began to clap.

It was one of the women who had dropped her tray. Another joined her, then the porter with the injured wrist. Within a few breaths the sound had reached the gate, where people unable to see what had happened were trying to find out whom they should be cheering.

Senamé managed a grin. It hurt the cut beneath her ear.

Kossiwa’s grip tightened.

“Walk.”

“I think they like me.”

“You can enjoy it sitting down.”

She got Senamé into the passage before her legs gave way.

Yétundé cut the sleeve rather than pull it over the burn.

Senamé objected on behalf of the cloth, received a look and decided the cloth could defend itself. Her palm lay open in a shallow pan of water. The water had gone pink around the heel of her hand.

Beneath her loosened wrapper, the scales had reached farther up her side.

She covered them before Yétundé turned back.

Kossiwa stood at the doorway, keeping curious servants out with a courtesy that allowed no misunderstanding. When Tassi arrived, she stepped aside at once.

The queen dismissed neither woman.

She crouched beside the pan.

“Can you move your fingers?”

Senamé moved three. The fourth followed reluctantly.

“Most of them.”

Tassi took the clean cloth Yétundé offered and held it beneath Senamé’s wrist while the servant poured fresh water over the wound. Her hands were steady. Senamé watched them instead of the blood.

“The man?” Senamé asked.

“His wrist will heal,” Tassi answered.

“And the others?”

“No one was struck.”

Her chest loosened so abruptly that she had to lower her head. Water dripped from her chin into the water. She had not noticed she was crying until Yétundé quietly gave her another cloth.

Tassi waited until she could breathe properly.

“I am sending a request to Azara. Today.”

Kossiwa shifted at the door.

Senamé lifted her face.

“For what?”

“A meeting with the women empowered to negotiate. I need to know whether they will stand with us, and on what terms.”

“And the sword?” Senamé asked. “Kpénahi won’t part with it.”

“Then she must decide whether she will wield it beside us.”

“You’ll have to ask her yourself.”

“That is what I intend to do.”

Kossiwa came closer.

“The request should carry your seal. I can prepare the outer protection.”

Tassi agreed. Kossiwa left to fetch what she needed, already asking a passing attendant for a clean writing board.

Senamé followed her with her eyes. Somewhere beyond the passage, the cheering had become an argument about what colour the lightning had been. One voice insisted it had been red. Another woman called him a liar with such conviction that Senamé almost smiled.

Tassi settled the bandage around her palm.

“What did you change?” Tassi asked.

“The destination,” Senamé replied.

“The lightning was his?”

“Until it wasn’t.”

The queen examined the blood seeping through the first layer of cloth and added another.

“You frightened him.”

Senamé looked toward the courtyard, where a servant had begun sweeping the broken tiles into a pile.

She had frightened herself. Under the bandage, something moved against the inside of her wrist. She pressed her hand to her lap before Tassi could see it.

“Good.”

The word came out steadily. She was grateful for that. Outside, a runner passed the doorway carrying the imperial dispatch. The register was staying in Abomey, with the names and the corrected account. Olúṣọlá’s message was already leaving.