This was a small disaster, and not just because the principles would inflict grief on those who made light of grief. You simply couldn’t show any kind of want or need in front of Kindalana. You couldn’t mention that you were hungry, or sad, or lonely, because Kindalana would try to fix it. She would get you the melon you’d idly wished for, or fetch you a primer in Uburu because you kept whining about not knowing any. Tau-indi hated this. In Tau’s opinion, complaining about your problems was a necessary part of life, and should never be confused with actually trying to fix them, a separate and much more private matter.

“What is it?” Kindalana sculled closer. Tau-indi wanted to dive away but she reached out for them. “I promise I won’t tell Abdu. What’s wrong? Why did you put the ash on?”

Tau-indi put their mouth and nose under the water and looked up at Kindalana shyly.

“Oh.” Kindalana frowned in disappointment. “You already told Abdu about it.”

“Sorry,” Tau muttered.

“It’s all right.” Kindalana glared at Abdumasi’s receding ass, racing down the beach after his frog quarry. In the distance a Bosoka sentry watched them from her high post. “I suppose he’s jealous.”

“Jealous of what?”

“Our future, of course. He knows he’ll have to spend the rest of his life moving money around and going to fancy parties, while we argue with mayors and chiefs and get malaria and worms and finally die of heatstroke in service to the Mbo.”

Yes, good, Tau-indi thought. Tell me more about how we’ll travel together as Princes, solving problems. “He’ll be very sad when we’re gone.”

“He will,” Kindalana said, and the space between her eyes wrinkled up in worry. “Poor Abdu.”

Tau-indi sank underwater, down toward the lake-floor, and leapt back up off the bottom. Briefly Kindalana was a wavering dark shape against the watery light.

“It’ll be hard for him once we’ve gone,” they said, when they came back up. “We’ll have to keep in touch with him and make sure he’s all right.”

Kindalana looked at Tau-indi with warmth and pride, Prince to Prince. “You do listen to the griots,” she said, “you do remember what they tell us. Nothing’s better than helping someone get what they need.” And she hugged them wetly so that Tau-indi had to protest and laugh and flail.

But then Tau-indi remembered Abdumasi saying, we’re mbo people because we help other people get what they need. And it was like Abdumasi owned this moment, this moment that should have been between them and Kindalana.

Kindalana looked proud of them. Pride was for children. Adults got respect.