Idube frowned at the glass sphere, turned it over. “And, as far as you can tell, this is all it does?” she asked, tapping it.
“Yeah,” said Applejack. “I mean, with magic, it might do somethin’ else, but I can’t use magic. At least, not like that.” She shrugged.
“Hnng.” Idube turned the sphere over again and looked at it from different angles, as if that would make it change in some way. The light inside remained solidly pointed at Applejack. “Although this does most likely confirm my suspicions,” she said. “They are after you and, most likely, Zecora as well. I do not know why, but if this-” She tapped the sphere. “-can track you, then the rider was presumably sent after you.”
“So… what’re we gonna do?” Applejack asked.
Idube had snorted. “Not change our plans in the slightest and keep moving. We can see further attackers coming, and the Bonde Kubwa is near. There, at least, we will have safety in numbers and witnesses. Out here…” She looked around at the almost-bare plains. “We would simply vanish.”
“That ain’t gonna take a real long time, is it?” Applejack rubbed one hoof against another. “I don’t wanna be out here, just waitin’ for someone else to jump on us.”
Idube looked at the sun, the first shreds of which were poking above the horizon. She rubbed her chin for a moment, then said, “Just after midday at the absolute latest. More likely, an hour before.”
“Ah. Alright.” Relief began dripping back into Applejack. She could live with that. “And from there, how long’s it gonna take to get to Kulikulu?”
“That depends on traffic in the Bonde Kubwa, but we should reach it around sundown. We will be fine.”
Sunset. All she had to do was survive until sunset. And immediately, Applejack wondered if she was overreacting a bit; “survive” until sunset? It wasn’t like they were being besieged by foes on all sides. But at the same time, all the other problems they’d had during the trip had been natural ones, not a zebra deliberately, personally trying to kill them.
“In any case, I doubt they are well-organized,” continued Idube. “The impundulu lacked armor. When iimpundulu are properly prepared for battle, armor is one of the first things checked. We should count ourselves lucky that we did not need to deal with an armored aerial bombardment.”
“If it did have armor, could we’ve brought it down?”
Idube shrugged. “That would depend on the armor. At best, yes, but with some difficulty. Thrown spears still have a good amount of penetrative power.” She frowned and said to herself, “Can mercenaries even afford impundulu armor? It is quite expensive…”
Zecora didn’t know what the two objects were, either. “I’ve never seen things of this kind,” she said, squinting at the earring thing. “They’ve no more functions you can find?” She held it up to her ear, then flinched and pulled away as the static blasted out again.
“Nope. Me and Bhiza thought they might do somethin’ if we had magic, but…” Applejack shrugged. “She’s a zebra, I’m an earth pony.”
Zecora nodded. “That is quite a logical guess; a shame it’s one we cannot test.” She handed the earring back to Applejack. “And you get no results from an unperformed test, so do not let this cause you much undue distress.”
Zecora was right, Applejack reflected, but that didn’t make her any less nervous about the possible functions of the artifacts. She glared at the earring, trying to make it reveal its secrets, then sighed and dropped it in a saddlebag. She needed to help clean up the last of the camp so they could get moving.
Unfortunately, while they didn’t run into any more bandits, the long walking gave Applejack plenty of time to think things over and stew about them. Reaching the Bonde Kubwa shortly before noon, just as Idube had said, reduced Applejack’s fears a little, but she’d spent so much time thinking about them during the trip that it didn’t do much.
“Applejack,” said Bhiza.
The caravan was taking a break on a ridge above the Bonde Kubwa. Applejack was sitting right at the edge, staring down at the enormous valley below. It looked beautiful, with its winding river and its network of towns, but she couldn’t get the attack out of her head, no matter how much she tried. Just… why? Why would someone try to kill her? Technically, she wasn’t even the diplomat, she was just an aide. Who hadn’t done anything yet, even.
“Applejack,” said Bhiza.
And what was Twilight doing? She could handle herself, obviously, better than almost anypony in Equestria, but Applejack couldn’t help it; she was still nervous. Half of her brain told her that Twilight was perfectly okay, and much better off than she herself was, but the other half told her that Twilight was, at worst, dead, and, at best, alone in the middle of Kulikulu with no allies and somebody attempting to kill her. Hay, if Livingstone had been killed, she’d barely even be able to speak the language.
“Applejack,” said Bhiza.
Of course, they were close to the end now, close enough that she could see Kulikulu from across the valley, a large city blanketing an area of the mountain slopes beyond. She’d be seeing Twilight in a few hours. Eight or nine? Something like that. That wasn’t a huge amount of time, but it wasn’t exactly tiny, ei-
“Applejaaaaaaack!” bellowed Bhiza.
“Whaaaaat?!” bellowed Applejack, whirling on her.
Bhiza tilted her head. “You worry too much.”
“I know,” Applejack muttered. “Can’t help it.” She sighed, folded her ears back, and looked back down at the valley.
“What do you worry about?”
“Everythin’,” Applejack said. “It’s- That attack, it hurt two zebras, and it’s all ‘cause of me. If-”
Bhiza smacked Applejack in the face. It was a light smack and didn’t hurt, but a smack to the face was a smack to the face. Applejack eyed Bhiza as she rubbed her cheek. “Just what in tarnation was that for?”
“It is not because of you,” Bhiza said.
“Sure it is. I-”
Bhiza smacked Applejack again. “Is not.”
“If I say it is, are y’all gonna smack me again?”
“Yes.” Bhiza raised her hoof back.
Applejack sighed. “Fine. Why ain’t it my fault?”
Bhiza put her hoof back on the ground. “What did you do?”
“…Say what?”
“If it was your fault, what did you do?”
Was this some kind of joke? “I… I didn’t do anythin’, Bhiza. You know that. They just showed up an-”
“So you could not do something differently to change it.”
“Well, no! It’s-”
“Then why is it your fault?” Bhiza asked, her forelegs spread wide.
“Well, it’s- I-” At a loss for words, Applejack stammered to a halt. “It’s- That rider came for me! If I hadn’t been there, neither would they!”
“What did you do to make them come?”
“We went over this,” Applejack said, rolling her eyes, “I didn’t do nothin’, th-”
“Then it is their fault,” Bhiza said, lightly poking Applejack in the chest, “not yours. You-” Poke. “-did-” Poke. “-nothing.”
Applejack batted Bhiza’s hoof away before she could poke again. “It’s-” She cut herself off and looked Bhiza in the eyes. There was nothing there but indignation and worry. No lies, at any rate. “…Thanks,” Applejack said quietly.
“What more?” asked Bhiza. “That is not all, yes?”
“Not much,” Applejack said, “but there’s that… that ball and that ear thing. Just, what if they do somethin’ bad? I mean, they ain’t yet, and they probably won’t, but…” She shrugged.
“Why are you worried about this?” Bhiza asked, pulling out the sphere again. “It is just-” Then she froze and started staring at the sphere.
“What’s the matter?” said Applejack. But she took a look at the sphere and immediately saw the matter.
The light pointing at Applejack was still there. But another one had appeared; it was faint, barely visible in the sun, and yet it was definitely there. Instead of Applejack, it was pointing off in a random direction; not even at anybody, since it was angled slightly up and away from the ground.
Applejack decided to look down the line at the same time Bhiza did and they smacked their heads together. After a few quick back and forths of “I’m sorry, you go.” and “No, I am sorry, you go.”, Applejack decided that she’d go and look. Placing her head behind the sphere, she followed the line to see that- “It’s pointin’ at Kulikulu.”
“It is?” Bhiza took her turn to look. “Huh.”
“So where’d that come from all of a sudden?” Applejack knew what Bhiza would say — I do not know — but she was just voicing her own thoughts on the matter. Where had it come from?
But Bhiza didn’t say that. She didn’t say anything. She was still looking, and she was a lot more focused than Applejack had been. After a while, she said, “It points to… to king’s house.”
“To the palace?”
“Yes. Palace.” Bhiza took a few shuffling sideways steps, keeping a close eye on the light. It didn’t change position at all, as far as Applejack could see, but if it was pointing at Kulikulu, it shouldn’t. “Is Twilight in palace?”
“I… I dunno. She might be. Right now? Can’t say. Why? Y’think it’s pointin’ at her, too?”
“I do not know.”
“And why now? Why not out there, in the Serembarti?” Applejack took another look at the sphere. Aside from its dimness, the second light didn’t look at all different from the first. “And why’s it so faint?”
“I do not know.” Bhiza clicked her tongue a few times, then her ears went up. “It points to magic,” she said, turning to Applejack with a grin. “Zebras are not magic. You are. Twilight is. This is pointing to you and maybe Twilight. It does not point to zebras. This…” She wiggled the sphere under Applejack’s nose. “…points to magic.”
“That…” Applejack tapped the ground a few times. “Yeah, that really might work. And the rider on the impundulu has it beca-”
But Bhiza took over. “Zebra that wants to kill you-” (Applejack cringed; Bhiza didn’t notice.) “-gives this to rider. They find you in Serembarti with it. They kill you.” (Applejack cringed again.) “Easy!” Then Bhiza frowned. “But where do they first get ball magical?”
Applejack already had an idea. “Didn’t you say there were these, I dunno, abadas or whatever, and they had magic? Maybe your zebras asked them for a magic tracker.”
“Yes,” Bhiza said after a short pause. “Maybe.” She looked at the sphere again, thoughtful instead of curious. “And lights bright or dim?”
“I dunno. Range? Power sensin’?” Applejack shrugged. “Twilight’s real powerful, so maybe she can set it off before I can, even if she’s real far away. And her guards are pegasi; they might show up on there as we get closer.”
“Ha! Yes!” Bhiza dropped the sphere back in her saddlebags with a grin. “That is it. We are smart, Applejack.”
“I dunno,” Applejack said with a shrug. “We just fol-”
“Wait,” interrupted Bhiza. “Your guards were pegasi?” she asked slowly.
“Um. Yeah,” Applejack said, blinking. “Wh-”
And then Bhiza was right up in Applejack’s face. “You did not ask them how they can stand on clouds?” Her voice was borderline mournful.
“No,” Applejack said as she shuffled away from Bhiza. “It’s, it’s just somethin’ they do. I ain’t never thought about it.”
Bhiza made a sound like wet metal scraping on wet metal and buried her face in the ground, muttering Zebran nothings. Applejack huffed and went back to staring out over the valley.
The trip down into the Bonde Kubwa was easy and safe. The slopes were gentle, and it wasn’t long before they had paved roads. Untamed nature wasn’t bad, far from it, but when it came to cart-pulling, Applejack had never realized just how much she missed paved roads.
One thing she hadn’t missed was zebras staring at her. It started small; they only met a few other zebras on the road, but they all stared at the small orange equine they hadn’t seen before. That was easy to ignore. But as they got further and further into the valley and the traffic grew denser and denser, more and more zebras were staring at her and it got harder and harder to ignore. It wasn’t that they were aggressive or insulting; they were just always there and Applejack didn’t like being the center of attention. She started wanting to pull her hat over her eyes, lower her head and disappear. But she held on and kept her head high (relatively speaking); if she was going to do any actual ambassading, she’d have to get used to it.
Bhiza noticed the first part. “Hide in cart,” she suggested. “I will pull you.”
“Bhiza,” Applejack said with an eyeroll, “I ain’t hidin’ just ‘cause some zebras ain’t seen me before.”
“…Why not?”
“‘Cause I’m supposed to be an ambassador, and that ain’t what ambassadors do! If I keep hidin’ all the way, it’ll be like, I dunno, like I’m scared to be an ambassador.”
“Are you?”
“Sure, but not in that way. I can live with a few stares.”
And so Applejack didn’t hide in the cart, and zebras kept staring, and she adjusted. She’d never be able to fully ignore it, not completely, but at least it wasn’t malicious. Bhiza still kept trying to get her to hide in a cart, though.
Once they were actually a good ways into the valley, Applejack was struck by how much it felt like Equestria; the jungle and the Serembarti had felt alien to her, but this was the precise opposite. Ignore the monochromatic inhabitants, ignore their stripes, and Applejack had been in several river valleys not too different from the Bonde Kubwa back home. Smaller, to be sure, but they were still regions with their inhabitants clustered into a series of communities focused on a river, with a web roads of varying degrees of maintenance connecting them and farms in the spaces between.
The farms in particular stood out for her. Crops aside, they felt exactly like farms in Equestria, with their general air of productive toil. When Applejack managed to catch a quick look at some of the tools, they even looked nearly identical. Zebras used them in the same ways. They tilled and watered the fields the same way.
It gave Applejack pause. When she saw something like this in Equestria, she didn’t think about how much it was like Sweet Apple Acres. Why was she comparing everything to Equestria? And she didn’t do anything like this way back in Bandari Mji. It wasn’t her not caring about the zebras’ culture; hearing about what Zebrabwe was like from Bhiza was one of the best parts of the trip for her. And yet, here she was, completely ignoring it all in favor of comparisons to Equestria. Why?
They stopped for a while in one of the first towns they came across, a small riverside one called Idolobha. It had a hospital, and Idube wanted to get the two wounded zebras to a place to recover. They weren’t going to die, far from it, but they’d be better off with professional medical treatment. As the wounded were getting their places arranged in the hospital, the rest of the caravan dispersed a little throughout Idolobha.
Applejack and Bhiza found themselves on a small balcony-type thing right next to the river. Lots of zebras were staring at Applejack, but she didn’t notice. She was staring at the river, across the river, at her shore, at the opposite shore, thinking, trying to figure out why she was so fixated on Equestria all of a sudden. And then she got it.
“You are worrying again,” Bhiza noted.
“It ain’t that bad this time,” Applejack said. And it really wasn’t. “I think I’m just a bit homesick.”
“Homesick?”
“I miss Equestria.”
“Oh.” Bhiza shuffled her hooves back and forth for a moment. “Do you… not like Zebrabwe?”
“No!” Applejack said quickly. “No, I like it just fine. I just miss the little things from back home. The things that make it home, y’know?” She kicked a loose pebble into the river. “All the lands’re unfamiliar to me. All the critters’re unfamiliar to me. Even a lot of the plants’re unfamiliar to me. I ain’t seen another pony in days, and, yeah, y’all’ve accepted me, but zebras’re still a bit big and intimidatin’.”
“You are strong magically and I am not,” Bhiza said with a giggle, “and I scare you?”
“It’s easy to forget y’ain’t magic, and every last one of y’all’s still bigger’n me. You don’t scare me, just…” Applejack scratched her head. “You make me feel small.”
“Oh.” Bhiza paused, then smirked. “You are small.”
“Thanks for remindin’ me.” Applejack swatted at Bhiza with her hat. “But I mean, it’s just, it makes me miss home, you know? It ain’t bad, but it also ain’t home.”
“Ah. I understand. Do you have family you are missing?”
Applejack nodded. “Three of ‘em. There’s my granny, Granny Smith, my older brother, Big Macintosh — he’s even bigger than some of y’all-” (Bhiza whistled.) “-and my little sister, Apple Bloom. They’re all doin’ alright, though.” She looked at Bhiza. “What about you? You got any family in these parts?”
“No siblings, but my parents are still Wokhala. I see they sometimes, but they are… nomadic, so I do not know when.”
“Oh. That’s interestin’.”
“Yes.”
Silence.
“This ain’t workin’, is it?” Applejack said with a sigh.
Bhiza kicked at the ground. “No.”
“Shoulda known. You can’t distract yourself from home by talkin’ ‘bout home.” Applejack looked at the river. “I guess what I really need is for you to distract me with not-home stuff somehow.”
“…Applejack?”
“Yeah?” Applejack asked as she turned to Bhiza.
Applejack’s hat was knocked off as Bhiza grabbed her and pulled her into a forceful kiss.
Bhiza may not have had an earth pony’s strength, but she was still strong, pressing their lips together hard, and she wasn’t the least bit shy about it. Applejack’s brain stalled; she was too shocked to do anything besides flail, and whenever she tried to form a coherent thought, it stalled again. When Bhiza broke off a few seconds later, she was grinning. “Are you distracted?”
Applejack started blinking a lot and coughed. “Just… just what in the hay was that?”
“Distraction.”
“I didn’t mean like that!”
“Did it work?”
“Well… I-I guess, but-”
“Then you are distracted. What is problem?” Bhiza continued grinning like a loon.
“Y’don’t just- just go and do that!”
“But I did.”
“B-but…” Applejack picked up her hat and slapped it back on her head. “I, I don’t even like you that way! You’re just makin’ things awkward!”
Bhiza laughed. “I have known you for days four only. I do not like you that way, too.” Then suddenly her face turned ultra-serious and she leaned right up next to Applejack, her voice low. “Or maybe… I do and I am lying to kiss you without you knowing my feelings.” She started grinning again and spoke in a stage whisper. “Or maybe not. I will never tell!”
“But… Bhiza, c’mon. That ain’t cool.”
“It is not warm, too.”
“No, I…” Applejack groaned and rubbed her forehead. This was not what she wanted at the moment. Of all the silly things Bhiza could’ve done… “Okay. So you’re distractin’ me. Couldn’t you have done somethin’ else? Somethin’ not so personal?”
“No! Yes! Maybe!” Bhiza laughed. “I will never tell! Never.”
Applejack groaned again. “Fine, then. I’m distracted. Not the way I wanted, but I’m distracted. Just don’t do it again, alright?”
“No promises!”
“Seriously, Bhiza, you ca-”
“Come. We should go back to others.” Bhiza broke into a brisk trot and quickly vanished into the crowd.
Applejack bolted after her. “Bhiza!”