Everfair (43 page)

Gathered in a rough semicircle around the bowl of burning plants, six hollow logs stood on legs like sawhorses, draped in veils of soft-humming bees. Josina glided toward her around their backs, her dreaming smile gradually melting from her face as she met Daisy's eyes.

“Yes,” said the queen. “You are the problem.”

“I?” Daisy looked around. Her guards had retreated to the door to the steps. Several bees detached themselves from their clumps and flew lazily toward her.

“You. Sit with me and we'll figure out how to solve you.”

A small, round, thatched pavilion rose at the roof's other end. Its wooden floor came to Daisy's knees. Sifa jumped up there, passing pillows to Lembe, who tucked them around the queen as she perched on the platform's edge, well under the thatch's overhang.

The queen patted the spot beside her. “Poet, I invite you twice.” Daisy joined her and let herself be similarly becushioned. The bees accompanying her settled nearby.

“They won't sting you,” Josina assured her. “Unless I command it. Which I will not.”

“Thank you.”

The queen bade her attendants withdraw to the roof's parapet. “You are my sister's lover.”

Daisy didn't know quite how to respond to that statement. Most of Everfair's African peoples were as accepting of sexual inversion as the Fabians tried to be. She ought not to feel shame or worry. Assuming by “sister,” Josina meant Lisette, she ventured to say, “We—we love each other, it's true, yes. But—”

The queen interrupted. “But you are estranged. Living apart.” She shook her head. “This won't do. My sister suffers. Importantly, so does the work she performs for me.”

Something—probably the brazier's trailing smoke—had got caught in Daisy's throat. She cleared it. “I want to be with her. In some mysterious way, though, I've failed her expectations. I've asked her what I did. She won't tell me.”

“Then you must tell yourself.”

Daisy opened her mouth to object that this was impossible, but no words emerged. A bee flew in between her lips and flew out again before she shut them.

In an odd way, what the queen said made sense. If love lived in Daisy's heart, she could let its sense rise to her brain and permeate it like heavily scented smoke. She need only open her nose and inhale. She need only suppress her fear of choking on hard-to-swallow knowledge.

Bees swooped over and around Daisy's head. Her hair stirred gently. So gently. As if touched by Lisette's long-fingered hand. The insects landed on her cropped curls, forming a crown of wings. Their buzzing shimmered in her bones.

Josina nodded. “The bees accept you. They'll help. Retire with them to reflect, and you'll reach an understanding of the imbalance you've caused in my sister Lisette's life. Then do what must be done to right it.”

The city's walkways carried Daisy home—or so she believed. She never saw them. Before her was the past: what she'd thought. What she'd said. How very stupidly she had behaved.

How she had insulted Lisette—her love!—with careless and ignorant remarks on the ostensible crime of miscegenation. No crime, but the sweetest of gifts, the blending of life's songs.

Within her apartment she found paper and pen, but all her ink had run dry. So long since she'd composed even a single verse …

As bees crawled questingly along her shoulders, she took a horn of crimson dye from Rosalie's stored supplies and thinned it to suitable viscosity, making it look all the more like blood. Well, she would be drawing the words of her apology directly from her veins.

 

Kisangani, Everfair, July 1918

Queen Josina trusted her sister Lisette almost completely. She had not just accepted her invitation, she had dismissed Lisette's guards once they arrived at the river's wharf. As additional proof of her trust, she had left Sifa and Lembe behind there, along with her own group of well-trained, well-armed fighters.

Josina had also entrusted her daughter, Princess Mwadi, to her sister's care over a year ago, with no serious ill consequences. Perhaps a slight loosening of the girl's allegiances, but that was to be expected of someone so headstrong and inexperienced. Time would provide the remedy.

But time now conspired to discomfit the queen. It took her further and further from those she'd left behind. The buildings on the Lualaba's banks had become blurred by distance. “Where are you bringing me?”

“To Kamina.” This was obviously a joke. Lisette wore only a light smock and trousers, unsuitable for the mountains. She'd brought no luggage.

Josina pretended for a moment it was the truth. Oxun loved laughter. “But that's far! What of my duties?” She paused as if picturing the route in her head. “Do you have your own aircanoe? How do I not know about it?”

“My own watercanoe.”

“This?”
Josina looked in real disbelief at the small dugout in which they sat. “But there are waterfalls—will it swim up those? Or climb them?”

Lisette patted the tiller she held in her left hand with her right. “No, not this one. Though its engine is a smaller version of the one powering
Sidonie
.”

The queen had long known her sister cared unusually deeply for mechanical devices. Some reports that Josina had skimmed had speculated this machine might prove stronger than it appeared. And indeed they went smoothly and swiftly up the rapids, passing all other vessels, even those without rowers, which were probably powered by waterfire batteries.

They rounded the point and came up alongside a larger boat. In addition to the normal canopy, it had a curious little structure like a spirit house filling its stern. Lisette attached ropes to the dugout's ends and started the crank that lifted it out of the water, then ducked into the house's low entrance for a moment. The heavy growl of a big engine struck the air. She ducked back out of the spirit house, climbed to sit on top of it, and pulled the long lever protruding from the roof from left to right.

Slowly they sailed forward. Still Josina was sure she wasn't being carried away to Kamina, as Lisette had joked. Her sister's confidential air suggested the two of them shared a secret. But what that secret was, she could only guess. Was it connected with
Sidonie
's engine? In the quickening of the conflict between the king and Everfair's whites, Josina had neglected reports not immediately focused on these troubles. Now she saw with her own eyes that though the boat's length was the usual, that of seven tall men, and its widest width that of two men with their arms stretched to touch fingertips,
Sidonie
was something special.

Where, for example, was the paddlewheel? Standing carefully, Josina walked to where she should have been able to see it. Of course it wasn't there, any more than it had been when she boarded. But something—something loud and issuing a trailing plume of sweetish smoke grey as dagga's—something moved them. Something new and strange. Something with which she should be more familiar. Something which she had no cause to fear: she knew from carefully analyzed auguries that her final hour would remain distant for some years.

The queen could have her sister return them immediately to Kisangani. Then, however, she would learn nothing. Such as why the invitation had been given.

With a caress, Lisette's fingers released the big lever and clasped what must be the boat's tiller. “Are you going to come up here? Do it now, please—I will need to demonstrate
Sidonie
's best feature to you soon.” Her sister held out a hand to assist Josina onto the little house's wooden roof.

Kneeling as Lisette did, but facing in the opposite direction, Josina leaned over the roof's far side. The water behind them churned around a spinning, many-bladed knife. Only glimpses showed, but Josina knew that gleam, those bright, sharp edges. Longer and thicker than those she'd seen on the engine of the dugout, yet basically much the same.

“She will run on the waterfire batteries or the Bah-Sangah earths. But Chester and I have devised a new system employing palm nut oil which—”

“Is it for this you've lured me away from court? To display your newest fascination?”

“Where else may I talk to you alone?”

The roar of the approaching cascade grew suddenly louder than
Sidonie
's loud engine. Josina turned and saw that they were very, very close. The wind shifted and wetness wafted across her skin, a cool kiss.

Like a giant woman lying beneath a blanket of hissing lace, the Lualaba's lowest cataract stretched from bank to bank. Along her white curves the scaffolds of the fisher tribes staggered, skeletal lovers.

But—were those black and red poles made of metal? Yes. Part of a new style of fishing scaffold? A man's head appeared, then his chest and arms; he waved at them. Someone she knew? Before Josina could decide,
Sidonie
jerked beneath her and reversed. She fought to keep her balance. Then, with
Sidonie
's stern pointing upriver, Lisette shouted at her over the rushing water to please take her seat again.

From a bench near the boat's prow, Josina watched her sister lean over the stern as she had done before. She seemed to be tugging at something. Presently, she lifted and set aside what must have been a section of the spirit house's wall. The man on the metal scaffold was Chester! He threw down a coil of rope. It landed where Josina had just been kneeling, a loose end running back up to Chester where he clung to the wet red poles. Lisette shouted once more. Josina couldn't understand what she was saying, but the tone was urgent. She deserted the bench and came nearer to hear better.

Her sister seized her by her arm. “I'm sorry, but I need your help to execute our upcoming manoeuver. Though I am devastated to inconvenience you”—she placed the queen's hand on the tiller—“it won't be for long. You must keep us steady as you can.” Again she vanished inside the spirit house.

Josina simply couldn't hold
Sidonie
in one spot. She settled for keeping the boat in the same area—roughly twelve mats in size. Twelve mats of rock-filled foam.

She wasn't going to die. Not here.

In only a few moments Lisette emerged again. “My thanks!” She reclaimed the tiller. “You'd better go back—and hold on!” She seemed to be enjoying herself hugely, an unmistakable grin replacing her earlier hide-and-seek smile.

Another horrible jolt shook
Sidonie
. Josina gripped the bench on either side. She said nothing, yelled nothing. She was not going to die. Not on water. Her destiny had been divined. This wasn't it.

Slanting and lurching in the water like a drunken fish,
Sidonie
backed up the low cascade from the bottom to the top, to the red and black metal poles. There she halted. Twisting on the bench, Queen Josina looked back over the bow. The waterfall was short—only the height of a half-grown maiden—but it was a waterfall, nonetheless. This remarkable boat had climbed it.

The noise of the engine died. “Did you see? Did you
see
?” Lisette came out of the little house crowing with delight, arms spread wide to embrace her joy. “I wanted to show you, and I did! We
could
go to Kamina, all the way—Let me set the anchor, so we may talk.”

It took both of them to heave the anchor, a heavy stone, over
Sidonie
's side. Another breeze, less water-laden, sprang up.

“I have nothing to offer you to eat save this,” Lisette said. From a pouch on her hips she produced a metal box. Josina opened it and the lovely aroma of chocolate, too deep to be merely sweet, spilled forth. Hundreds of pieces of roasted and cracked cacao beans were piled up in a tiny, potent mound. Josina would eat a little now, to show appreciation. A good gift.

Wading carefully toward Chester with the rope over her shoulder, Lisette returned shortly with a jug of tamarind and honey, cool from the river, and a precious bottle of
ovingundu,
the mead made by Josina's father's people.

They drank. As promised, they talked. As the queen had expected, their talk was of the conflict splitting the country. A third war loomed in their future.

The king hadn't anticipated that. Who was there to oppose him? The Europeans and Americans were distracted by their plague, the new illness to which many Africans, Chinese, and Bharati seemed immune. Elsewhere in the world, people died by the thousands. So Josina's spies said. Everfair's whites and Christians would have fought in protest of their exile, but lacking foreign support, they shouldn't have any choice in the matter—if General Wilson hadn't so surprisingly taken up the Christians' cause.

“You couldn't have predicted it.”

“At any rate, I didn't.” Josina knew she must take the blame. “His loyalty is of an excellent quality.” As was the
ovingundu
.

“His loyalty! To whom? The other blacks?”

“To whom has he sworn it?”

“To Jesus, it appears.”

“No, I think not.” The queen was reliably informed that the general served Loango. “Or, if so, he has withdrawn his promise there.” She shook her head. “What matters is that many of his fighters will follow him instead of the king. This is dangerous—for the general. He may die.”

“It's dangerous for everyone. He won't be alone.”

“No. But I will be.” She hadn't meant to say that. “Not alone. There is the king. But without you. My sister. You will be gone.”

“You can visit—”

“Of course.” It wouldn't be the same.

“My queen—”

“Say ‘sister.'”

“My sister, I have another present for you.” But Lisette held nothing but a full gourd of tamarind. Josina gazed about for an appropriately wrapped parcel.

“I give you
Sidonie
.”

“Oh!”