Guarding the Princess - By Loreth Anne White Page 0,1

ailing father. This had been her destiny from the day she turned five. She accepted it, but tonight, on the eve of her success, Dalilah was having trouble with the idea of letting go of the things that had come to define her, of losing her freedom.

But the marriage would forge a powerful political and economic alliance between the two oil-rich kingdoms, one in Al Na’Jar in the Sahara, the Sa’ud across the Red Sea in Arabia. It would boost her own country’s economy. It would help her brothers, one of whom was king.

It’s what her dead father had wanted.

And at least, after this deal was signed tomorrow, she’d be leaving a legacy for hundreds of villagers. It would be a tribute to the freedom she’d enjoyed, and in which she’d prospered.

Most of the serious talks with China had been conducted over the past fortnight in Harare, and now the delegates, including Dalilah, had been flown to a high-end game lodge near Victoria Falls as part of the president’s show of hospitality. His largesse stuck in her craw when she thought of the country’s starving and disenfranchised citizens, but dealing with the devil was a necessary evil if she truly wanted to help. It was like this in much of Africa, and Africa was her speciality. Having been raised in the Sahara, Dalilah understood the precious commodity that was water on this continent, and she understood the complexities of government and corruption.

As she listened to the Chinese delegate, she sipped sparkling water from a glass held in her carefully manicured hand. The evening air was warm against her bare shoulders, the sun sinking to the horizon in a blood-orange ball, colored by haze from surrounding bushfires brought on by drought. The acrid scent of smoke tinged the air, and she could hear drumming from a nearby village. It carried an undercurrent of foreboding, something primeval that lurked under the layers of feigned civility.

“The fires smell close tonight,” said a delegate from the Czech Republic as he sidled up to Dalilah and the Chinese representative. The Czech’s pores sweated the smell of metabolized booze. He mopped his forehead with a kerchief and pointed his glass of vodka out toward the treed gardens where sprinklers threw graceful arcs of water over lush lawns. A family of warthogs grazed on the grass near the river, and tiny white lights pricked their way through the dusk, marking pathways to the thatched guest cottages, each of which was decorated in different African themes. Lanterns hung in trees where the monkeys chattered.

“At least the wind is blowing away from us,” he said. “Our guide said it’ll turn tomorrow, but we should be gone before that.” He tossed back the last of his vodka, standing too close to her now. “At least we will be safe.”

“Yes,” she said. Too bad about all the villages and wildlife in the path of the fires.

“It’s incredible to think it’s so dry out there when Victoria Falls and the massive Zambezi is just a few miles away. All that water.”

“It is,” Dalilah said, swallowing her real thoughts. The Czech Republic was a cosigner with China on the deal—she had to play nice, only until tomorrow. Once this was signed, she was going to take a long hot shower and scrub the schmooze off her skin.

“A most spectacular waterfall,” the Czech said as he waved for a waiter to bring him more vodka. A man in a red fez and white button-down shirt approached quickly with his silver tray and filled the man’s glass.

The Czech raised his full glass to the darkening sky. “Here’s to Dr. Livingston for discovering the falls!” Then he tossed back the entire glass.

“The locals call the falls Mosi oa Tunya,” Dalilah responded quietly. “It means the smoke that thunders. They called it that well before Livingston ever arrived.”

He shot her a sharp look, and she cautioned herself. Be nice. Tomorrow it will be a done deal. But the stress of the week was taking its toll on Dalilah. Earlier in the day, after a game drive, a whirlwind visit to the falls and a lavish lunch, she’d tried to steal a few moments alone, seating herself on a bentwood bench along the high riverbank that ran along the lodge property.

The riverbed was dust-dry, apart from a few deep, lingering, brown pools, and to her delight, a family of elephants had come down on the opposite bank to drink from one of those pools.

Dalilah had watched them for