However, a year into her command, Siya had taken to reacquainting herself with herself after battle. The warrior and the woman, the fighter and the femme. The shift happened when, on a rare day of relaxation where they were not strategising, she and Maadi had gone to the market. He was her closest friend now, her tentative confidant. They fought side by side, balanced each other and read each other easily. He had watched her quietly eyeing some colourful gowns in the market. Siya’s elegant hands, that in another life had always been intricately patterned with black henna, swept across the jewellery, the lip dyes and the eye paints longingly.
Maadi had said, ‘Tell me if I am speaking out of turn, Commander . . .’
Siya smiled as her eyes lingered on a long gold chain with a delicately designed bird of paradise pendant. ‘Maadi, please. You can never be out of turn with me. What’s on your mind?’
‘You are lovely.’
It was blunt and completely devoid of any cloying sentiment. Siya removed her hand from the chain and stared up at Maadi, her smile melting off her face in shock. While it was true Maadi was kind to her, he had always been careful not to say anything that could be interpreted as untoward. They moved around each other with mutual respect, warmth and even companionship, but they never addressed the fact that she was a woman who desired men and he was a man who desired women, or that, when they trained together, her eyes lingered on his bare chest longer than was seemly, or that, when he assisted her stretching to help her ease her aching muscles after a particularly vigorous drill, there was a crackle in the air between them. They never addressed how Siya discovered that Maadi played the kora. How, late one night, when the terrors hunted her down, she’d ventured out onto their balcony and found him plucking a tune, heart-twistingly beautiful, his hands flying over the strings, manipulating them the same way she manipulated nature. She had said she didn’t know he could play, and he had said that playing helped him unwind after battle, because it proved there was beauty in the world, that there was hope. He’d lost himself in his explanation before halting with an abrupt stop, embarrassed by too much feeling. They had no time for feeling. Siya had smiled. She’d said it was beautiful. She’d said she liked hearing it; it made her feel at ease. She’d sat down on a lounge chair and listened and then drifted off to sleep. She had woken up in her bed. Ever since, whenever she would hear the faint song of a kora, flowing through the air beneath her door, she would feel her pain loosening and diffusing, creating a space for something more. On those nights, she would rest easy and sleep deeply. They never discussed it.
So, at the market, Siya had blinked at Maadi in shock, rattled by the confrontation of something unsaid. Maadi cleared his throat.
‘I say you’re lovely as a fact. Irrespective of what I think. It just is. Inside and out. Even when you try to hide it. You’re good at a lot of things, Siya, but you’ve failed at that.’
The corner of his mouth kicked up slightly and Siya laughed and shook her head, hoping to diffuse the rush of blood to her face. ‘I miss it, sometimes. My old life. Dressing up with my friends, the courting parties but . . . now I’m a commander. I am not that girl any more. There was a time when I could wrestle a man to the ground and dance in a pretty dress, a time when those two people could co-exist, but . . . that’s no longer the case. I need my army to respect me.’
‘They respect you for who you are, Commander. Strong and intelligent and passionate.’ Maadi’s eyes glinted, his voice more forceful than Siya had ever heard it. ‘That will always remain true. What matters most is that you feel like you are you at your fullest.’
Siya was stunned into silence as Maadi briskly clipped something about having to get back to their headquarters. Later, hanging on the door handle to her chamber, she found the gold chain with the bird of paradise.
Siya clasped it around her neck the evening after the sixth battle with Bida. It slung down her chest, accentuated by the low cut of her deep purple robe, which hugged her body. There was a slit in the fabric that revealed the round of her thigh and the firm length of her leg. Now, beautifying herself had become part of her post-battle ritual. A woman whose primal power shifted through multiple modes, a sensual assassin. This was when she felt the most herself. Before she entered her war room, she doused herself in perfumes and adorned her locks with golden, woven hair cuffs, letting her softness and strength greet each other as friends.
The six soldiers who formed her cabinet rose as she entered the room, their conversations halting and their triumphant joviality petering out. They respected and liked her, Siya knew, but the nature of her role meant there was some distance between them. She could not sit and drink with them or join in with their bawdy post-battle play. Her mind always had to be one step ahead, seeing beyond.