Redemption in Indigo (20 page)

'This is not my way of doing things,’ Kwame muttered to himself.

He bypassed the entire drama and slipped down a side alley. It was walled off at the end, but there were green, leafy branches hanging over a corner of the wall, hinting at gardens beyond. He climbed the wall and discovered a small footpath that led to another road, but he ignored that, choosing instead to jump lightly down into the adjacent garden. The divisions between the back gardens were low and flimsy, so it was only a matter of a hurdle, a quick sprint from an angry dog, and a rolling dive over a fence before he was in the back garden of the late Ansige's residence.

The gate there was shut up tightly, just as he had expected. Paama was sitting on the back doorstep with a knife in her hand and a bowl in her lap, trimming string beans. She froze and stared at him warily for a second before throwing the knife into the bowl and scrambling up hastily.

'Sister Jani and the others sent me,’ he explained quickly, getting to his feet and spreading his hands to show he was harmless.

'How do I know that?’ she challenged, hesitating on the threshold.

'Sister Carmis dreamed me. And I see you're still wearing your headband, but I don't see the brooch.'

Paama slowly relaxed, or at least became less tense. ‘I should have sent a message to them when I got here,’ she admitted. ‘But first I was taking care of Ansige, and then this?'

Shifting the bowl into the crook of her elbow, she rolled her eyes to indicate the noise of the ongoing mayhem at the front of the house.

'That's Ansige's lawyer they're tearing apart. I had to give him a good portion of my gold before he would agree to settle the debts and the estate for me. I've done what was expected of me, and I don't want to do any more.'

'Didn't your husband leave you anything?'

'Anything that wasn't already collateral for a greater debt? No. I suppose they will have to sell off the house to pay off everything. No matter. I wouldn't have wanted to stay in it anyway.'

'Will you be coming home, then?’ Kwame asked.

Paama's mouth twisted. ‘I must stay for the funeral at least. That's the last of my duty. Then back to the House of the Sisters to tell them my news and to Makendha for my sister's wedding. After that, who knows?'

Kwame nodded. ‘I know. Sometimes grief can only be cured by wandering. I have done it myself. Then again, I have often wandered for the sake of wandering, so I suppose it would be hard to tell the difference.'

She smiled. ‘Wandering for the sake of wandering. I like the sound of that. But tell me, young man, do I
look
grieved?'

He paused and examined her. ‘You look tired ... a bit fed up, which is understandable given the descent of the vultures ... and a little bit sad, but not as if bereaved, though. As if you are missing something. Or someone.'

She did not lose her smile, but whatever humour or cheer there had been in it seemed to fade out, as if a cloud had dimmed the world.

'Something or someone indeed, and possibly both,’ she replied. ‘And neither of them are Ansige or anything to do with him. I left him more than two years ago, and there was plenty of time for me to finish my grieving then.'

She seemed to shrug to herself, as if pushing an old burden off her shoulders. Then she looked at him sharply. ‘How did you know to find me here? As you have already noticed, I had to set aside the brooch a while ago.'

'I guessed,’ he said simply. ‘I asked questions, I made assumptions and I acted on them. I believe the Sisters thought I was very impulsive, though.'

She raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘It was a very good guess. Did the Sisters tell you why they thought I might be elsewhere?'

Kwame shook his head, amused at the memory. ‘I think they tried, but getting information out of them was like extracting gold from ore—a lot of labour and time, and why bother to do it when you know there's a store just around the corner? I figured that if I was wrong, I had at least eliminated the obvious, which is the first duty of a tracker.'

She smiled again, this time with more brightness. ‘I'd say that chance brought you. The obvious would not have helped you in this situation.'

Then, without warning, she began to cry.

There are a few men in the world who are unmoved by tears from a woman. Kwame was not one of them, but at that moment he wished very much indeed that he were. He came up to her, without a handkerchief, without anything useful and soothing to say, and patted her arm with clumsy concern.

She started to laugh through her tears, which unnerved him even more.

'I am so sorry. It's just that I've had a very??trange time recently. Are you a good listener? I don't even know your name, but it would help if I could talk to someone.'

He smiled. ‘My name is Kwame, and in my type of work, one
has
to be a good listener.'

She sat on the doorstep again, set the bowl in her lap and absently returned to her previous work as she told her tale. Kwame leaned against the door post and watched her as she talked. She told him the whole story of how the Stick had been given to her and how her life had been transformed thereafter. From time to time she glanced at him anxiously to see if disbelief or scorn was showing on his face. Kwame did not have to dissemble. It was no hardship for him to keep his face calm—except for when he looked stern at the cruelty of the indigo lord; awed at the story of the bandit treasure hid beyond human reach; sad at the plague deaths; stirred at the sailors’ courage and the general's integrity; and amused at the naughty little boy who learned how terrible a thing it can be to be beside oneself.

In fact, he reacted in much the same way as I hope you did when you heard it for the first time—and perhaps even more so, because although Paama did not have a storyteller's skills, she had the advantage of having been the one to suffer through the tale's adversities first hand. Kwame listened and felt for her. Compassion is a great amplifier of empathy, and at times it is the only thing that can make a dull story interesting.

When she finished speaking, he remained pensive and silent, so silent that she grew embarrassed.

'Well??t is not an ordinary tale??o doubt you think me mad,’ she said, awkwardly trying to laugh while her knife flashed and nipped off the last of the string beans in a fury of desperation and chagrin.

'I think it is indeed an extraordinary tale,’ he agreed, and then he looked straight at her with eyes that did not judge, and continued, ‘I also think that you are an extraordinary woman.'

The knife hung immobile for a moment as they stared at each other. Then Paama blinked and bent her head over the bowl, drawing her fingers repeatedly through the mass of beans to see if any were left untrimmed.

Kwame cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps I can send a message to the Sisters on your behalf?'

'Yes, thank you. That is something I must do at once,’ she said.

But she did not get up, and he did not move from his position by the door post.

'If I may,’ he said tentatively, ‘it might be a good idea for you to have someone about. The lawyer has enough on his plate, and I fear that others may try to harass you.'

'Yes,’ she acknowledged sorrowfully. ‘I would feel safer with someone else about, but I don't want to drag my family into this. They have already suffered from my marriage to Ansige, and I??ell, it might be foolish, but if I could spare them this last bit I would be thankful.'

He shook his head. ‘You don't have to trouble them. It would take a while for them to travel here, perhaps too long. I was referring to myself. After all, I'm already here, and if you have any concerns you can ask the Sisters about me??hey can vouch for me?'

'Oh,’ Paama said, and she looked lost and deeply disappointed. ‘I??hank you, of course??ut I have to be careful. I have to watch my money—I wouldn't be able to pay you for your time.'

Kwame looked very serious. He knew instinctively that he had to be very careful what he said next, for a woman's sense of honour and pride and independence was in many ways no less fragile than a man's.

'I wouldn't worry about that if I were you. I've already been handsomely paid.'

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There is not much more to tell. Paama was the principal mourner at a poorly attended funeral. The worth of Ansige's property was enough to cover the debts, but the crafty lawyer played the claimants against each other by promising swifter consideration of their claim if they paid him a large enough stipend. In reality, he dragged out the process for far longer than was necessary. Paama quickly extricated herself from the situation by formally relinquishing all claim to any part of Ansige's estate, and returned to Makendha.

We have already heard her immediate plans—debriefing the Sisters, attending her sister's wedding—so let us travel through time and skip the boring parts. Let us go forward a year or two and see what is happening in Makendha.

When a young man marries a recently widowed woman a few years older than himself, eyebrows are knowingly raised and tongues wag. However, when an enterprising, up-and-coming young man with a successful tracking business marries a poor widow whose worthless husband has left her nothing, not even children to take care of her in her old age; and when said widow happens to be one of the most amazing cooks to be found the length and breadth of the entire continent??ell, then people mutter enviously about the sheer luck that some people have, and move on to something more scandalous so they can gloat happily over another's misfortune.

Naturally it was Neila who thought she had made the prize catch with her merchant prince, who had by now retired from business and was making a fortune with his published poems. And, to tell the truth, Tasi and Semwe were thoroughly relieved that they had married her off so well to a man willing and able to treat her in the manner to which she thought she was entitled. Yet parents always have their secret favourites, and while Alton was the one that outsiders oohed and ahhed over, Kwame was not only their son-in-law, but the son of their heart. His steadiness and his dedication to Paama proved him to be everything that Ansige was not, and Tasi gave thanks daily that her prayers for her daughters had been answered with such accuracy and to the benefit of all concerned.

Kwame combined his savings with the remnants of Paama's bandit gold and built a house on the edges of Makendha, halfway between the House of the Sisters and Semwe's residence. However, a small village like Makendha could not provide enough work and challenge for a master tracker. Soon he was travelling out to get work and Paama, who was still interested in seeing new places, started to accompany him. Tasi was worried at first, but Paama promised her that they would return often, and that when grandchildren came, they would all settle permanently in their Makendha home.

Did Paama ever see a djombi again? It is certain that she kept her ability to ignore the whispers of the tricksters, and perhaps she was a little more aware than most of the reasons for someone seeming a little stranger than usual, but she did not see such marvels as in those few days of madness when she held the power of chaos. As for Kwame??ou may think that he had only been humouring her when he listened to her tale, but in truth he did believe her. Paama never spoke of it again, but the habit of trust was well established after that heavy proof, and never was it broken.

One of the enjoyable parts of travelling was that Paama was able to visit the places she had seen so briefly before. Sister Elen was able to deduce the names of almost all the towns and cities she had seen by matching their appearance with current events—or, in the case of the raided town, history. The only place she had not seen was the house where the baccou-ridden boy lived. As for Paama's dream of the prison camp in the heart of the savannah, she and Sister Carmis agreed that it might be a dream of a possible future, and it would be better not to probe it too deeply. Savannah land was all too common in their country, and the idea of a coming war was comfortable to no-one.

So Paama got to walk through the town that had endured the plague and the fire, and even saw the
Tragedy of Olen and Mara
(and yes, she guessed who and what that was about). Though she looked and looked, she could not find the street she had known in the former quarantine area, because the fire had changed all but the greatest landmarks.

She even got to sail on a ship, fortunately in far better weather. The city where she had watched the djombi eat chocolate cake and read the newspaper was on the other side of the world, but Kwame had been eager for the adventure. The oasis with the ruined town was almost as difficult to get to, but worth the challenge. Kwame wistfully asked her whether she could remember the spot where the djombi had taken her underground to get the gold, but shifting dunes had already changed the landscape and they were forced to travel on, enriched by experience rather than treasure.

Kwame used his time, talent, and opportunities wisely and set up a network of junior trackers so that he was able to delegate work and take contracts farther and farther afield by using his foreign connections. Paama worked as a cook wherever they went, and even when she started off in a small restaurant, she would usually end up the private chef of some rich noble who would pay her extravagantly to stop her from going to work for anyone else. They returned to Makendha periodically for vacations, and they used their money to quietly improve their modest home and its surrounding lands.

As promised, they came back permanently when their twin sons were born, a fortunate decision, for Semwe passed away a few years later, victim to a seasonal fever that was often fatal to the old and the very young. Much to Paama's surprise, Neila invited their mother into her household in the suburbs of Ahani, and Tasi went willingly??erhaps to bribe her with the promise of free caregiving if only she, too, would provide her with a grandchild. Their childhood home was rented out until it would be needed again, and Paama took over the lands and livestock.