The Shadowed Sun (Dreamblood) (36 page)

“No,” he whispered. He could not think. He could hardly breathe. “No.”

Then Inmu remembered the carriage, and the woman. Singing her lullaby.

He tore away from Nijiri and sprinted down the street, running
as fast as he could with no regard for the noise he made or the peacelessness of his movements. What did it matter that his sandals slapped against the bricks, that he was sobbing as he ran? No one in the houses around him would ever wake.

He reached the street where he’d last seen the carriage and stopped, trying desperately to still his panting so he could hear and track the wheels of the carriage.

But all around him, there was only silence.

Just after dawn, Hanani went into Mni-inh’s tent and sat down. He, newly awake and bleary-eyed, took one look at her face and came fully alert. “What happened?”

Hanani told him of the Prince’s first lesson, though she omitted her moment of panic afterward. When she spoke of being hurtled into the realm between, and the vision of herself committing violence, Mni-inh’s eyes widened.

“It was a child,” she said, her hands knots in her lap. “A toddler, or a very small older child. I would
never
harm a child, Brother. I know the things in Ina-Karekh are reflections of ourselves, but what I saw was
not in Ina-Karekh
. We were in the realm between dreaming and waking. Have you ever heard of this before?”

“Not precisely.” He scratched at his chin, where a scattering of stiff hairs had grown overnight; the sound was very loud. “What you experienced sounds like a true-seeing—a vision of something that will actually happen”—Hanani’s belly tightened further at this, but Mni-inh quickly shook his head—“but I’ve never heard of that happening in the realm between. Only the Goddess can create worlds, whether in waking or dreaming. The realm between is eerie,
but should be
empty
.” He sighed. “But this fits something else I’ve suspected.”

“Which is?”

“Well…” He sat back on his cushions, a half-rueful look on his face. “I’ve heard, in roundabout fashion, that there is a reason the Hetawa supported the Sunset Lineage these many years. King Eninket was not the first to disgrace the line, after all; they’re men, with the same weaknesses and failings as any other. But it has something to do with
them
, that lineage, in particular.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” He gave her a wry smile. “There are some secrets that only the Council and the Gatherers are privy to, and—Well, you know what the other seniors think of me.” He sighed. “But I’m told that, years ago, no one was surprised to find that Ehiru—who was given to the Hetawa by his mother, to save him from Eninket—turned out to be one of the most powerful narcomancers in recent memory. And I do find it interesting that Nijiri, who has been one of the chief voices counseling appeasement of the Kisuati all these years, changed his tune when Wanahomen began his campaign.”

And Gatherer Nijiri had been particularly interested to see that Wanahomen had tried to save her, Hanani recalled.
Perhaps his lineage is worth salvaging after all.

“I also find it interesting,” Mni-inh said, “that every Prince we have ever had—
every one
, so far as I can tell—has had the dreaming gift in some measure.”

Hanani blinked. “Even King Eninket?”

“Oh, yes. His gift was weak, but there. And a handful, including First King Mahanasset, were quite powerful, and mad as rabbits before the Hetawa aided them. We took some of those, like Ehiru, for ourselves—but not all. You watch that Wanahomen.” He waggled a finger at her. “He hides it well; may not even be aware of hid
ing it. But with a gift like his, his soul must wander between waking and dreaming all the time. He can’t help it.”

Hanani smoothed out invisible wrinkles in her skirts, contemplating. She felt calmer, at least. “I don’t believe what I saw was a true-seeing,” she said. “Only Gatherers have those.”

“He
is
a Gatherer, Hanani, in essence. However much he might hate it.” As Hanani blinked, Mni-inh sat up and stretched, working out the kinks from the night’s rest. “And by touching his dreams, you can be dragged along by his power, so be careful. This is why each path trains its own, frankly.”
And why I tried to warn you off training him
, he did not say, but that argument was done. For the sake of peace he would not bring it up again, for which Hanani was grateful. “Keep your soulname and wits about you, and be prepared for anything.”

While Hanani considered that, Mni-inh got to his feet. “How I miss the Hetawa baths! The gods put hot water and fragrant oil in this world for a reason, I tell you.”

Hanani could not help smiling at that—which surprised her, for she had not felt like smiling for days. The omnipresent guilt remained and might always, for she had taken a life without bestowing peace and there was no higher sin in all the Hananjan faith. Yet the lingering, irrational fear seemed to have faded at last.

I have the Prince to thank for that, I suppose. The gods are not without a sense of irony—

“I’ve bathed already, Brother, forgive me for not joining you,” she said, also rising. “I need rest, since it seems teaching the Prince will be even more challenging than I first believed. But may I come and share the eveningdance with you, later?”

Mni-inh paused and stared at her, then a slow smile spread across his face. “I would be delighted,” he said. “We haven’t prayed together in ages. At sunset, then.”

Hanani touched his hand as she passed him to leave. He caught her hand and squeezed it, encouraging, before letting go. It felt good to smile again, so she did it all the way back to her tent.

*  *  *

A change in the ambient noise of the camp woke Hanani. Drawn from a pleasant dream of a steaming, sandalwood-scented Hetawa bath, she returned to the waking realm and through the walls of her tent heard—

Angry shouts. Calls—for Unte, for Tajedd, for other important folk within the tribe. Jeers and laughter, edged with hatred. And corruption.

Someone drummed on the flap of her tent. Rising to open it—she always kept the laces tied tight now—she blinked as Yanassa poked her head in.

“You’re still here? Good. Stay in here ’til tomorrow.” The Banbarra woman’s expression was uncharacteristically hard and cold. “Wana has caught us a spy.”

Hanani started. “I thought—I thought his patrol was a punishment, just for show.”

“That may have been what was meant. But no one expected a Shadoun to be so bold as to walk right into our territory.” She shook her head, then threw the flap of Hanani’s tent closed with such force that it slapped loudly, much to Hanani’s surprise. “They’ll pay for such disrespect!”

Gingerly, Hanani eased the flap open and peered out. Beyond Yanassa, she could see a great gathering of folk near the center of the camp—a shouting, gesticulating mass. Children ran past, giggling and excited. Two of them carried sticks.

Hanani felt a sudden, terrible chill. “Yanassa. What will happen to this Shadoun?”

“Nothing good.” Abruptly Yanassa sobered, looking hard at her.
“But it’s no business of yours. Just stay in the tent ’til morning, and pay no mind to what you hear.” She reached to close the flap again.

Hanani caught her hand. “What are you saying? Will there be violence?” That was a stupid question; violence hovered like a heat-haze in the very air. “Yanassa—”

In the background the crowd parted for a moment, and Hanani got a glimpse of the Shadoun spy.

The
female
Shadoun spy.

It was hard to tell, at first. Hanani was used to seeing women adorned in face paints and jewelry; this woman wore neither. Like Banbarra men, she wore loose desert robes and a headcloth, which obscured many of the details of her face and body. The headcloth had been yanked half off, revealing straight black hair chopped short, and a face that was not so very different from that of a typical Banbarra. Her features were more rounded, her eyes a lighter hue—pale green in this case—and her skin a deeper shade of brown, closer to that of western folk. But she had the same fierce hauteur.

And she was smiling, even as she was dragged along by two warriors of Wanahomen’s hunt.

But that was not half so troubling as the grim anticipation in Yanassa’s manner. “Tell me what you plan to do with her!” Hanani demanded.

Yanassa scowled and finally stepped into the tent, pulling the flap closed behind her. “It isn’t up to me—or at least, not me alone. The hunt will give her to Unte. Unte will probably give her to the tribe. Specifically, the tribe’s women. It is for us to decide another woman’s fate.” She folded her arms. “Some of us are angry enough to tear her apart ourselves, or throw her from the cliffs, but most likely, we’ll make a gift of her to the tribe’s men. They’ll see that she suffers long enough to satisfy all.”

Hanani stared at her, too revolted for words.

Yanassa sighed and looked away for a moment, a whiff of shame in her eyes—but she was angry too, and it was the anger that made her turn back to glare defiantly at Hanani. “It’s what they do to our women, when they can!”

“And that makes it right?”

Yanassa shook her head, not in response to Hanani’s question, but out of some great inner turmoil. “The last woman survived, if you can call it that. The Shadoun sent her back to us. Broken, gibbering—” She clenched her fists. “We actually took her to your people for help, though it near choked us to do so. And they tried, out of simple kindness. But she was damaged beyond the ability of magic to repair… They could heal her body, but not her mind. So they killed her for us, as a mercy. And we were glad for it.” Yanassa’s eyes welled with tears; sorrow and hatred competed in her face with an ugly mixed result. “That was twenty years ago, my great-aunt. I remember the look in her eyes, little mouse, and if you had seen her too—” She drew in a deep breath. “So no, it’s not right. But
I do not care
.”

Hanani shivered, though the tent was not cool inside. She had seen people so wounded by tragedy or other misfortune, a handful of times in her Hetawa life. When madness was not inborn or the result of some humoric imbalance, when the problem was memories and not the flesh that housed them—No, even magic could only do so much. That was why Gatherers existed.

Yet, as she looked at Yanassa’s trembling lips, her clenched jaw, it occurred to Hanani that sometimes the real damage was not to the souls released, but the ones left to mourn. Corruption was the most virulent of diseases, after all, and it needed only the smallest wound in which to fester.

“So stay in here,” Yanassa said. Her face had softened a little. “Unte and Tajedd plan to question the woman first. They may yet
kill her outright—if only because anything worse would taint the solstice celebrations.”

She exited the tent, and Hanani stared at the swinging tent flaps for a long moment after she’d gone.

Then she pushed through them herself, and headed straight for Unte’s tent.

The messenger-bird had come and gone, a harbinger of change. Now that change was at the palace gates, and Sunandi Jeh Kalawe was afraid.

Anzi put a hand on her shoulder as they stood waiting in the courtyard. The courtyard was still, though on their way through the palace Sunandi and Anzi had seen courtiers and guards hurrying about the marble halls to prepare for their unexpected guests. Only the servants—most of them Gujaareen and unimpressed by the arrival of yet more Kisuati—had been calm as they went about their duties. A few of the Kisuati had paused to bow to Sunandi and Anzi in passing, but most had paid the couple no attention. No doubt they considered Sunandi useless to whatever political ambitions they held, now that a quartet of Protectors was arriving to take control of Gujaareh.