Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [236]
"No." Kaneka smiled. "Not yet, I think."
In the morning, we rode to Debeho.
By unspoken accord, we rode in procession. Tifari Amu and Bizan took the lead, wearing embroidered capes over snow-white chammas and breeches, their horses prancing as if at parade. Kaneka, clad in her Akkadian robes with a dagger at her waist and her war-axe slung across her saddle, paced behind them, and Joscelin and Imriel and I followed. Behind us came the good-natured bearers and the donkey-train, laden with the Lugal's gifts.
Debeho was a collection of thatched mud huts along the river.
But to Kaneka it was home, and home is a powerful thing. We were spotted long before we arrived, and I saw the dark forms of children jumping and pointing, shrill cries of excitement carried on the breeze.
The village turned out to meet us, for good or for ill, weapons and scythes clasped in weathered hands. At Tifari's command, we raised our arms in salute, baring the passage-tokens of ivory and gold cord bound at our wrists.
And they rejoiced.
We were spectators here, all of us but Kaneka, and we hung back accordingly as she greeted her people, majestic as a queen, tears running in rivulets down her stern, dark face as she ordered the treasure-chests thrown open and her goods dispersed. There—that tall man with greying hair and shoulders like an ox; he must be her father. And the young one, who wept and kissed her hand—her brother, I thought. No mother, I noted—but there, a bent figure leaning on two gnarled sticks, her face wise and creased; surely, it was her grandmother.
It must have been, for proud Kaneka knelt. And the woman, the ancient woman, laid her knotted hand upon that bowed head, trembling, tears in her dark eyes.
Kaneka was home.
The celebration lasted for days, and I must own, they were the happiest I had known in longer than I can count. Debeho was a simple village, but I learned great fondness for it. The mud huts I had eyed dismissively were well-kept and clean, pleasantly suited to the hot clime of the plains. The villagers grew cotton and millet and a hardy strain of melon, and kept cattle as well. Wild bees produced honey, whichJebeans ferment into a heady drink. Spices were prized; some gathered from the fertile mountainous regions, where a particular strain of tiny, hot pepper thrived; others garnered in trade, for Debeho was not so isolated that it never saw traders. There were weavers in the village, and tanners and ivory-workers, for the plains afforded good hunting.
And there was Shoanete, Kaneka's grandmother, the storyteller.
if I had to name her equal, it would be Thelesis de Mornay, who was the Queen's Poet and my friend beside. She had been in seclusion these last few years, her ill health preventing her from carrying out her court duties; it is Gilles Lamiz, her one-time apprentice, who has assumed her mantle. He is gifted, Messire Lamiz—he was the first poet ever to dedicate an epic to me, and I am grateful for it—but the world does not stop and hold its breath when he recites his work. Although she always maintained my lord Delaunay was the superior poet, Thelesis de Mornay had that quality.
Shoanete of Debeho had it, too.
I know, for I spent many hours in that village seated at her feet while she recited tales of the Melehakim, the descendants of Saba, of Shalomon and Makeda and their son, Melek al' Hakim, who was anointed Melek-Zadok. And each one held me spellbound.
'Twas my interest, I will own, that made the subject so compelling; but this did not hold true for the children—yes, and the adults—of Debeho, who gathered round to hear her, listening to her cracked voice give forth the ancient tales. And cracked or no, there was somewhat in it... a resonance, a power, that brought her words to life.
"Here," she said, tracing an area along the Ahram Sea on Ras Lijasu's map. "Here is ancient Saba, Saba-that-was. And here is