Nuru ran off to the side of the room. Everything inside of her was swirling with worry and fear and doubt. From the time she was very little Hadhi had always made Nuru avoid the king. When Queen Imara fell ill and Hadhi and Asha were tending to her. Nuru begged to go with them and Asha was willing. Even Baba was willing, but Hadhi wouldn’t take her along. She’d said she would refuse to go if Nuru was sent; it was the only time she’d openly defied Baba and she was punished for it, going three days without food, sitting in the center of the courtyard day and night. Asha tended the queen alone until relented.
Nuru remembered Baba early on the morning of what would have been the fourth day of Hadhi’s punishment, walking out to the courtyard where Hadhi was forced to sit. Nuru had been sneaking out to give her sister food since she knew no one else had and she was looking weak. Nuru was annoyed with Hadhi for taking the stance, but she didn’t want her ill. Then she saw Baba coming and hid. He’d crouched in front of Hadhi. She jerked upright, for she’d been slouching and swaying a bit. He smiled at her.
“I thought at first you were afraid for yourself, monster, but that isn’t it, is it?” Baba asked, sounding amused. Hadhi didn’t move a muscle, staring straight ahead. “You’ve got your Baba’s will, don’t let anyone tell you different. It is past time you started setting limits.” He stood, throwing his last words over his shoulder as he walked towards the wall around the house. “Fine, Nuru stays safe at home. Get cleaned up and go nurse the queen. Your sour-face is safe enough.”
At the time Nuru, had been so annoyed that she would be denied a chance to go to the palace that she hadn’t really thought about his words or how odd it was that he relented. But now.
A woman of Maltuba can be married to a cheetah or a gazelle.
Nuru watched her sister being pulled around the floor with the king. Hadhi didn’t like this dance, the escálaa; you were too close to your partner for her, and Hadhi hated being touched. She was stiff and awkward even when Nuru had taken over teaching her from Sabra. But watching her now, she looked even worse. Her eyes were burning and she kept jerking as if to get away when the king leaned in and whispered.
Nuru shuddered as her sister jumped in his arms. Hadhi was never afraid. Never. She’d been mauled, but she just went back into the jungle to hunt with some of her wounds still stitched shut and her jaw not strong enough to chew meat. She wasn’t afraid of anything, but she looked afraid now.
Nuru kept reliving all of the fights she and Hadhi had had today. They never really fought. But when she’d told Hadhi she looked at all men the same...Hadhi had looked at her the way she looked at Asha. Like she resented her. Like she almost hated her. Nuru watched her sister now and realized she had been wrong. That look she’d taken for indifference to men was, in fact, a quiet distrust. Right now, there was nothing quiet about it. She hated the king. She was afraid of him, and...Baba had known the reasons she might be afraid but sent her into his sphere anyway. Why would he do that?
Nuru spotted Shafira again, slipping out onto the balcony. Uncle Kafil’s question came back to Nuru: would Baba have consulted them before accepting an offer of marriage? She knew he hadn’t given Sabra a choice. Did any fathers give you a choice? Nuru moved towards her cousin. Maybe Uncle Kafil had listened to Nuru; maybe that was why Shafira was here.
Nuru crossed the room, hugging walls and caught bits of conversation between people watching Hadhi or Mzaa.
“I wouldn’t be salivating if it were my daughter he was holding that way,” Tabia said.
“No, but then Hadhi isn’t like other girls, is she?” Oni asked lightly.
“No one deserves to be treated to his sort of attention,” Neema hissed. Nuru had not even seen her enter the ballroom. When had she come in? Nuru appreciated her defense of Hadhi, but felt a strange shudder at the tone and the expressions the other women exchanged.
Nuru’s heart was pounding hard as she moved by them.
“Abiola overheard her in line. She says Hadhi claimed that not only did Zuberi want her scarred, but he didn’t even kill the second cheetah like he claimed,” Isoke whispered to a pair of women, none of them taking their eyes off of Hadhi long enough to see Nuru behind them.
“That sounds like Zuberi,” Nia, Sade’s mother remarked, her daughter stood beside her silently, with wide eyes and clenched fists. “Hadhi and Sade used to play together. She was a sweet girl, if not that bright. Then overnight, she refused to leave her mother’s or her sister’s sides and wouldn’t speak to anyone. I asked after her, and Zuberi said she was finally learning her place. And look at Jauhar just grinning as Enzi drags her child around like the newest addition to his menagerie. Poor girl.”
Nuru bit her tongue and felt tears stinging her eyes as she finally reached the veranda. She wished she could just run away, run home. She didn’t want to hear these things anymore. Nuru ducked out and saw her cousin climbing over the veranda wall to shimmy down a tree.
“Wait,” Nuru called out. Swallowing her tears, she rushed forward. “Are you leaving?”
Shafira hugged the tree with her arms and legs. “Baba will want to know this.”
“Did he tell you why you must avoid the king?” Nuru asked quietly, leaning out of the railing so no one could hear her.
Shafira’s eyes darted over Nuru’s shoulder, back towards the palace, then she looked up and down the veranda. “He said...he likes hurting people, and if I was caught, he would hurt me too.”
“Then...” Nuru swallowed, touched and also a bit saddened by the thought of her cousin risking injury for them. “Why did you come?”
“Hadhi would have come to watch over me. Remember when we ran away into the jungle?” She grinned. “We thought we were so brave, until it was dark and we didn’t know which way was home. And something took our food, and there were snakes—“
“And Hadhi rescued us,” Nuru said flatly. Hadhi had come; she’d probably been following them the whole time, even though Nuru had shouted at her about not being any fun. Even though Mzaa and Baba and everyone had said no to Nuru going into the jungle, but it was Hadhi saying no that made Nuru angry.
“I have to go,” Shafira said. She shimmied lower slowly. “Don’t let the king find you alone.” She advised as her feet hit the ground ten feet below Nuru. Shafira spun around and raced off in the direction of the mansion.
Nuru watched her go a moment, then turned around to see the king leading Hadhi to Mzaa. Something had happened to Hadhi’s gown; the sash at her shoulder was missing. Had the king done that? Nuru’s stomach dropped, she thought she might be ill. A cheetah or a gazelle. Nuru shuddered, biting down on one of her fingers to keep from crying. The sash had been shaped into a flower, right where Hadhi’s scars were. Now they were left in the open, and all Nuru could think of when she heard her mother’s words in her mind was her sister mauled—over and over again.