Asanda adjusted the tray on her hip and knocked on the last door in the hallway. 

"Who is it?" Buhle asked.

"It's me."

"Am I a Seer? Who is 'me'?"

Holle eat the world. "Asanda."

"There are at least eight girls named Asanda in this village alone."

She sighed. "The quiet one who doesn't like marula."

"Oh." There was the sound of a chair scraping and footfalls, but the door didn't open. "What do you want?"

"To kick this door down," Asanda muttered, rolling her shoulders. The sound of drums and ululation was a dull pulse through the walls of Ndlovu's house; the welcome party had started in the afternoon and it was a good three hours after midnight now. "I brought tea and conversation."

"Will the tea be good at least?"

Holle eat the entire world. "It'll be hot. Please open the door."

There was more shuffling in the room beyond. Asanda shifted the tray to her other hip and tried to iron out as much of her scowl as she could. She smelled of smoke and mutton grease and sweat, but the party and the mini-tours she had been dragged along to had been a good excuse to scope the manse. Khaya stood guard at the end of the hallway, ready for her signal. Ndoda and Athi were hidden somewhere just beyond the outer walls of Buhle's room. Now she had to do her part.

Buhle opened the door. Half her hair was braided in fine sojourn rows, the other half combed out and glistening with oils. 

"May I come in?"

Having never been the tallest in the family, Asanda didn't put much stock in having to look up at Buhle, but there was still something churning behind the Elephant Princess' stoicism that made her want to reach into her pocket for her broken comfort rune. 

Her gaze dipped down to Asanda's tray then up again. "The water in that pot looks cold."

"It is, I wanted to show you something."

Distrust folded a crease into Buhle's brow. "What?"

"I can't show you out here now can I?" Asanda rubbed her eye with the back of her free hand. "Look, I've had to dance and sing and act happy to be here for half a day. I'd like to spend a moment with someone who's at least as miserable as me."

Buhle's brow smoothed, but she only opened the door a tiny fraction wider. Small victories. The corridor had a terrible draft, but the windows in Buhle's room were opened to the balmy night and the swelling chants in the yard beyond. Only a mud wall separated the private quarters from the communal lawn, barely high enough to mask the tips of the bonfires. High enough that Asanda had decided not to wait until everyone had retired to put the plan in action, but if Buhle screamed...

"Here, put the tray down." Buhle cleared a shortspear, a sheepskin cloth, and a set of iron tools to one end of a small round table. She sat on the only chair, keeping the table between them.

The tabletop caught Asanda's eye. The carvings were shallow so the surface remained relatively even, though someone had cut low hills and village clusters in the valleys. A river, roughly a handspan wide, wended down the middle of the table. The wood was still unvarnished and some of the hills had better finishing than others, but the design was immaculate, though inaccurate... well, half inaccurate.

Asanda set the tray down on the floor and examined the south-west side of the river. There the populace clusters were logically spaced around water points with roads that connected to three inner clusters, which connected to one central village. The northeast side made less sense. The design of someone who knew the lay of the land, but not the general art of populace planning.

"Your woodwork is outstanding," she said, running her fingers along twin crags next to a watering hole.

Buhle's hand froze with the oilcloth halfway down the spear haft, then she continued polishing it. "Thank you."

"How many days have you poured into it?"

"All of summer and most of the previous spring," Buhle said. "An hour or two a day."

"Slow but true."

"There's no other way to work."

"There's only imbalance in a single method of... Nevermind." Asanda pointed at the north-east side of the river. "The Hundred Hills don't look like that, though, or at least they haven't in thirty floods."

Buhle set the spear down with enough force to make the table rattle. "Did you come here to insult my work?"

"No, but art is creation and critique--"

"Stop talking about it," Buhle said, nostrils flaring. "Now."

Asanda took a step back and pursed her lips. "I'm sorry."

There was a long silence that didn't last nearly long enough. Eventually, Buhle's shoulders relaxed, but her face did not.

"People say Queen Nomvula's daughter is a botanist. How do you feel about people pointing at flaws in your garden?"

"My garden is immaculate," Asanda said. "And they can't critique because no one is allowed to see it."

Buhle's laugh was such a surprising sound that Asanda flinched, but it was the tired, hoarse variety that seemed to die out too soon. Asanda didn't realise how soon until her own smile followed it to an early grave.

It wasn't softness that touched Buhle's face, but it certainly lacked the sting of her earlier glare. "I hid the second chair behind my bed."

"Hid?"

"I'm not sure I like you." Buhle picked up her spear again. "Too chatty."

"A rare accusation." 

Buhle's room wasn't particularly large. It was built in the old circular style with a cabinet on one side, and a bed beneath the shuttered window on the far side. Sparse, a place to sleep rather than hide away. Though she'd always kept it orderly, Asanda's was cluttered by comparison. She found the second chair and sat across from Buhle again, putting the tray on the table.

"So what did you want to show me?" Buhle asked.

"Alchemy."

She looked uncomfortable all over again, but she adjusted her chair so she was facing Asanda square on.

"There are unfavourable rumours about you here, you know. They call you a hedge witch."

"I'm spiritually-inclined," Asanda said, putting the clay teapot to one side, "so witch isn't inaccurate, but 'hedge' is offensive. I'm too clever for hedge spells."

Buhle crossed her arms. "With all your silence, I didn't realise you had a sense of humour."

"About what?"

"Nevermind."

Asanda set two cups between them, and the small citruswood box to the right. She opened it briefly to check if the one remaining teabag was secure. Spiking Ndlovu's beer without being detected had been hard enough, spiking it twice to make up for his bulk had been costly. She hesitated. That was a thought her mother would have.

"What's wrong?" Buhle asked.

"Nothing." Asanda shoved the tea box back into her pouch. "I brought terrible tea, anyway."

Buhle arched an eyebrow. "So you just brought cold water, then?"

"I suppose I did."

The night had been far too long. Asanda rubbed her face, and in the brief moment she closed her eyes she almost fell asleep to the sound of crickets and distant drums. A tiny, rational (irrational?), inhuman part of her demanded she make the tea and put the Elephant Princess to sleep. It told her that they had maybe three good hours before dawn, and if they were still in the Elephant Plains at first light, they would be hunted down before they could reach the ships. But for all that voice said, it was small, and it wasn't her own.

Asanda turned her chair so that she wasn't facing Buhle square on, and began fishing in her pouch again. "How long have you had waking terrors?"

She felt Buhle's gaze on her, but after a moment, she turned her chair too so they were sitting shoulder to shoulder. She picked up her spear and oilcloth again.

"What are waking terrors?"

Asanda pulled a slim golden flute out and set it on the table. "Different places use different names. Godfever. Flutterheart. Anxiety. They all mean slightly different things, but at the heart of it, it's... not worry, but something adjacent, and it seeps into the body like an illness."

"Elephant pat. How could worry make anyone sick?"

"It's not the worry, or fear, really, though it is." Asanda dug at the bottom of her pouch for a small leather folder. "For me, it's the feeling of being locked out of any rational thought, or my chest caving in while the blood in my head boils, or standing in a garden where all the thorns are facing you. I suspect it's different for everyone."

Buhle was quiet as she dabbed her oilcloth in a brown gel, but her scowl had deepened. "I don't have your waking terrors, and you don't know me."

"No, I don't. I know hands that need to keep busy or else they tremble, though, and the body-wide itch of a stranger in your personal space."

Buhle squirmed in her seat. "You don't threaten me."

"It's not a threat to you, but to the safety of your sanctuary." Asanda tossed the leather folder onto the table. "There's a reason I don't let people see my garden."

"Then you should have known better than to say anything about my table."

"I should have. It's lovely, by the way."

Buhle said nothing but the night had plenty of sounds. There were drums and logs cracking as they blackened in ten-foot bonfires, the clink of baubles as Asanda rummaged through her purse, and the soft rasp of an oilcloth running against the dark grain of ebonwood. Briefly, Asanda thought she heard a bush rattle just beyond the far window.

"A tusk does not bend, and neither does the will of the Elephant,'" Buhle said. "I don't know what you say in your soft farmer lands but that is the creed here. Waking terrors have no place in that creed."

"We say 'the bone that does not bend shatters and cuts from within.' Well, Ma does, anyway."

Buhle scoffed. "So even Queen Nomvula has been made soft by the Hundred Hills. All the south knows that the Sunlands breed a fierce and hardened people."

"It's a Sunland saying."

Asanda had a good long history of people throwing her sidelong glances, but Buhle's was a new variation. Her mother's spirit was fast fading, but it told her to look at the Elephant Princess and find the anger in her tight jaw, the tension in her shoulders, and the... the... concern? No, the tiredness that had softened her features earlier.

Her mother wasn't particularly hated in the Hundred Hills. She had brought prosperity in trade, and harvests that made the summers long and the winters short. But she had gained a reputation for her paranoia. Her chief councillors were her own children, she entertained no other friendly company besides her own mother, and she had an odd (Anathi-shaped) penchant for knowing just about everything that happened under her roof. Asanda understood it now. It was tiring, reading faces and actions when you were born to a land that told you to expect war more than the dawn. Understanding didn't mean forgiveness, but she understood.

She sighed, twice as tired as when she had stood in the hallway. "Do you want to see that thing I was planning to show you?"

"You clearly have nothing better to do." Buhle flinched. "I mean, sure."

They shared a rough but not entirely uncomfortable silence as Anathi prepared one of her more convenient tricks. She opened the leather flap and pulled out a finger-length pin of black iron. There was rust speckled near the tip -- it'd been a while since she'd attempted anything this simple. She let the back of her knuckles hover over the pin. A soft vibration ran through the bones in her fingers, changing frequency as the moved her hand down the length of the pin until... There. The natural hum of her spirit synced with the pin. She flicked it, and the iron transmuted to jade. 

Buhle watched this with a good deal less fear than most people who didn't at least have a passing knowledge of Simple Alchemy. If anything, she only grew more curious. That was refreshing.

"Rune magic isn't as mythical as people think," Asanda said, picking up the jade pin and the gold flute. She began etching three rough circle along the flute. "It's just energy being moved around natural barriers, like how rivers form. The path of least resistance."

She blew the gold flakes off and hastily refined the circle circumferences with a more intricate N pattern. "It's like finding a puddle in mud, and drawing your own channels to move the water around the way you like, but imagine the shape of your channels changing the water. One shape might make it freeze, another might turn the water into its different vapours, or make it boil."

Buhle shook her head. "It sounds too simple."

"I'm oversimplifying it, to a degree that, frankly, offends me. But all you need to know--" Asanda held the pin between her lips as she pulled a small jar of powdered firestone out of her pouch and set it down on the table, then she got back to etching the fail-catches "--is that energy manipulation is three things: extraction, redirection, and counterforces."

Asanda opened the jar of powdered firestone and dipped the pin in quickly before closing it again. She tipped the powder on the pin tip into one of the three groves over the first circle. She repeated this process twice before Buhle started tapping her fingers on the table.

"Keep talking."

Asanda looked up at her, then back at her work. "All you need is an energy source -- like firestones -- the appropriate rune channels -- high-low thermal, in this case -- and a couple of fail-catches to keep you from blowing your fingers off."

"That's all, is it?"

"This charge takes a competent acolyte an average of ten hours under the best conditions but yes, that's all."

"How long does it normally take you."

"I'm done." Asanda pulled one of the cups towards her. "Can I borrow your oilcloth?"

Folding the cloth three times over to protect her fingers, Asanda picked up the flute and held one end over the closest cup. 

"Could you pour the water for me?"

Buhle arched her eyebrow again, but she did so reaching for the teapot.

"Slowly," Asanda said. "Speed counters pressure."

"I know how to pour water." 

Buhle tipped the snout into the flute, and for the first time since Asanda's arrival, her hands didn't tremble. The water hissed as soon as it made contact with the gold, and the flute began to vibrate like a hive of hornets trapped inside a giant's fist. The water that came out the other end was boiling.

When both cups were three-quarters full, Buhle set down the pot and Asanda dumped the flute into the pot a moment before it burned her fingertips. It made a bubbling hiss as it hit the cold water, and the oilcloth had been burned onto the outside of the flute.

"As impressive as that was," Buhle said, flicking her cup, "it does nothing to make water taste like tea. I saw you put tea back in your bag. Bring it out."

"I have a better idea." Asanda fished in her pocket and whipped out the broken calming tile. 

It was splintered right down the middle of the rune, and even the world's most incompetent hack could have made a panic tea just by dumping it in hot water. She frowned at the rune a moment, turned it upside down, then sketched a few experimental exit channels and cupped them with a reverse loop. For a little bit of flair (and flavour) she tugged a few leafs of sage from the bushel she always kept on her. 

Asanda dumped the leaves and the rune in her cup first. The depressants in her custom teabag had been carefully measured. She only had a vague clue on how strong the altered rune was, and it held a day's worth of her panic, which was more than most people could produce in a week. The only thing she was confident about was her off-the-cuff runework. When she thought she had taken most of the sting out of the cedarwood, she used her jade pin to push the wooden tile into Buhle's cup and pulled a few more sage leaves.

"You know," Buhle said, "if you didn't want to share your special tea, you could have just boiled water and asked for leaves in the kitchens."

"This was an excuse to prove to you that silence isn't rotten and not all conversation is combat."

Buhle scowled. "What do you mean by that?"

"I got the impression earlier that you didn't like me."

"What told you that?"

Asanda blinked.

Buhle rolled her eyes. "I'm about to be bargained off to the most annoying "man" I've ever seen. You want me to smile?"

"And you took that out on me by force-feeding me my least favourite fruit?"

"Please." Buhle pointed to Asanda's hands. "You nails are soft and you have the beginnings of a fever. You need better fruit."

"Oh." Asanda covered her left hand with her right. "We have plenty of citrus in the Hundred Hills, you know."

"Those sour things? A marula is worth three oranges."

"I... I'll need to look into that."

Buhle smiled and took up her tea.

"Careful with that," Asanda said. "I mean, slowly. It's hot."

Buhle rolled her eyes again and sipped. "Not bad."

Asanda held her own cup in her hands while she tried to push back against that familiar knot tightening in her chest. Buhle had lied earlier, she didn't hate silence. As far as Asanda could feel, this was the most peace her spirit had felt all day, though much of that peace only came after she had started sipping her tea.

Waking terrors were a strange thing, but in the end, energy was energy. And she had oversimplified it. If you reversed the flow of water, it was still water. But to reverse the ethers of anxiety, to turn a storm into the concentrated essence of calm was something beyond simple nature, and there was some beauty to be found in that. But more than anything, it was pure horror. To an alchemist who worked to understand the nature of nature itself, as someone with the power to touch and take spirits, what she had done was no less frightening than cleaning another's infected wound with her own blood.

Gradually, she felt the violent frequencies of Buhle's spirit ebb and soften and recede, until they were the gentle tremors of a noon tide.

"I'm sorry," Asanda said before she could stop herself. She almost cursed her own concious before Buhle's cup dropped onto the table with a dull thud.

The tea soaked into the Hundred Hills side of the table, and if someone didn't clean it soon, it would stain. She stood and adjusted Buhle's head so that it wasn't slumped on her chest. At least she had fallen asleep with a genuine look of ease on her face. Asanda knocked three times on the door, three times on the window shutter, then set to packing up her equipment.

She was halfway done when Khaya opened the door and peered inside.

"Is she asleep?" he asked, rubbing his left eye.

"Just about, but we need to hurry. Wrap that shawl around her shoulder, will you?" 

Asanda rushed to the window and knocked against the wood again. Three quick wraps, Ndoda's signal. She ducked as a couple walked past the window. Ancestors eat us all. She closed the shutter most of the way and cut across the room back to the table to finish her packing.

"Which shawl do you want?" Khaya asked. "The black one or the black one?"

"Khaya this is no time for--"

The door opened, and Ndlovu's massive frame filled it.

Every organ in Asanda's body dropped an inch, but Khaya's club and spear were already in hand as he stepped to her side.

Ndlovu's eyes were red from the night's drinking, but there was no mistaking the lucidity in them, or the suggestion of a smile crawling beneath his beard. His eyes flicked to his daughter, then back to Asanda.

"Whatever potion you put in our drinks, at least I know it wears off." He ducked under the frame and shut the door behind him. "But have a seat, children. Let's have a conversation about kidnapping and the lies we tell as families."

"You would have done better bringing a few guards," Khaya said, any hint of humour burnt clear off his face. He crouched into a lower stance.

"Why?" Ndlovu laughed as he sat down on the floor and rested his back against the door. "Every guard here knew what you wanted to do a day before you crossed the river."

"Horseshit," Khaya said.

Asanda put a hand on his shoulder to keep him from doing anything stupid. She straightened and relaxed, outwardly at least.

"Who told you?"

Ndlovu drummed his fingers on his knee as he regarded her sideways. A drop of pity leaked into his look. "Who else but the one person in the world I told you to hate."