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Much later, Tiyana lay awake in her bed at the Beit Almovaar. Despite the entreaties of the more tradition-minded members of the Degen Jassi, she had refused to sleep at the palace this night. She could not bear the thought of spending the night in her father’s bedchamber. As it was, sleeping in the bed she had shared with Keshu carried its own complement of sorrows. But here, at least, she could wrap the sheets she had hoped to share with him forever tightly around her body, and she could still feel him and smell him as she slept the sleep of one who was completely drained, both physically and emotionally.
The burdens of her new position had not eased after the pledges of fealty were finished. After the Degen Jassi had departed, Kyroun had taken her aside and told her all of what had transpired in Khambawe during the time she had spent in the Uloan Islands. He told her about the continuing progress of the rebuilding, and the re-establishment of the links that had once held the Empire’s territories together. He told her about the unexpected departure of the Tokoloshe.
And he told her the tale brought to him and her father by the kabbar Eshetu, who had seen survivors of the second Fidi ship among the Thabas, far to the south. He had discussed the implications of the latest Thaba incursions under their formidable chieftain, Tshakane, who appeared well on his way to becoming an emperor in his own right among the cattle-herding tribes of the highlands. And he told her how he and Gebrem and planned to act upon this convergence of events.
As well, he suggested ways in which she could quell the disquiet rampant in Khambawe in the wake of the tsotsis’ treacherous attack, and how she could reassure the Matile that their Empire would retain its newfound stability and momentum even in the face of the assassination of Gebrem. And he had discussed how vengeance could be exacted against the perpetrators of the killings. The shadows, as it seemed, had not been sufficient.
Tiyana had only half-listened to him. She understood the gravity of his words well enough. But she could only vaguely attach what he said to herself, or to the future. As well, part of her harbored an unfair resentment toward him because he was alive and her father was not. And another part was mortified that she could wish death on the man who had saved the Empire.
Sensing the extent of the conflict within Tiyana, if not its exact nature, Kyroun brought the one-sided conversation to an end.
“We are all weary,” he had told her. “Better that we get whatever rest we can. But heed this, Tiyana – the responsibility that has passed to you is yours until the day you die. It is what defines you now. I know you wish that did not have to be so. Yet so it is, and you cannot change it. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Tiyana said in a voice devoid of feeling, as though someone other than herself had spoken the words.
Kyroun had departed from her then, and Tiyana had returned to the Beit Amiya. Now she finally breathed in the slow rhythm of deep sleep, the white cotton sheet bunched and tangled around her body, which was curled into itself like that of a frightened child.
She was in her familiar bedchamber ... yet, at the same time, she was somewhere else ...