The Shadowed Sun (Dreamblood) (44 page)

He thought he understood, because his father was dead. But his father had been a monster, while Mni-inh had been good and wise and kind. She looked away from Wanahomen lest she hate him too, and made her voice very cold. “I’ll be fine, Prince.”

“No, you won’t be,” he said, sounding annoyed. “But you’re as stubborn and arrogant as any other woman—Gods. I shouldn’t have even tried. Do as you please, then.” He left, flicking the flap closed as he did so.

She retied the flaps behind him and then sat still in the darkness and silence of her tent, wishing that she could feel something of Mni-inh in the ashes he had left behind.

*  *  *

By nightfall, Hanani knew she was going to break.

Wanahomen had been right about the silence. She had sat in her tent for another hour, staring at the saddlebag and fighting the urge to fetch the urn, unwrap it, curl herself ’round it and open it to see whether it smelled like her mentor, knowing full well that to do so would leave her gibbering. Finally she had no choice; she might hate the Banbarra for rejoicing when Mni-inh was dead, but hating
them was better than missing him. So finally she emerged from the tent and looked around.

All was as it had been on the first night of the eight-day solstice celebration: both ledges of the Banbarra camp—and several other nearby ledges within Merik-ren-aferu, made habitable just for their guests—were teeming with people. The walkways between tents were brighter than usual thanks to dozens of lanterns hanging from rope-lines; the whole canyon was louder than usual, the air filled with voices and music and clapping and laughter. She could even see the slaves celebrating, at a bonfire down on the ground level. High above, the Dreaming Moon was not as fat as usual, its four-banded face truncated on the right side by encroaching shadows said to herald the time of sharpest cold in northern lands. For the first time in several months the bright, winking star called
Myani
in Old Sua, or Beautiful Boy, had become visible just beneath the Moon’s darkened curve. A new year had begun.

Wandering through the camp was like wandering through a dream. No one seemed to notice Hanani—not the knots of men and women, not the children who ran past her in their play. She was a river stone, unmoving while the life of the camp coursed around her. She stood among a thousand other souls and felt utterly alone.

“Hanani!” A familiar voice. She turned and saw Yanassa, sitting with Hendet and several other women near one of the fires. Yanassa rose and came over to her, smiling and taking her hands. “You came out—good! I didn’t put all that work into your hair for you to hide it indoors. Come, come.”

It was easier to give in than to resist, and so she went with Yanassa to sit by the fire.

“Here,” said one of the women, thrusting something at her in a hollowed gourd. She took it and drank without looking, and only realized what it was when her throat seemed to catch fire. Choking and coughing, she nearly dropped the gourd, but someone took it
from her. Good-natured laughter surrounded her; someone rubbed her back to help her recover. “Sipri,” said the same woman who had given her the drink. “From the tea, yes?”

“Wh-what?” Hanani was still trying to breathe.

“It’s made from the same plant as the cold tea you like so much,” said Yanassa. She was the one rubbing Hanani’s back. “You want more?”

Liquor of some sort. Sharers were never supposed to drink, since narcomancy required an unimpaired will. She took the gourd back and drank another few swallows, grimacing while it burned its way down.

Hendet, who had been watching Hanani from across the fire with narrowed eyes, said, “You aren’t well, Sharer-Apprentice.”

Hanani looked up at her. Yanassa leaned forward to search Hanani’s face as well, her own mirth fading.

“No,” Hanani said to Gujaareh’s queen. “I’m not.”

Yanassa gave Hanani a pained smile, and deftly took the gourd of sipri from her hands. “You will be. We’ll care for you. Don’t worry.”

Hanani was not worried. She simply did not care.

“Well, well,” said one of the other women. They followed her gaze. Over at another fire, a young woman of perhaps sixteen or seventeen floods sauntered toward one of the Issayir warriors who sat amid a knot of men. His gaze sharpened with interest; he continued his conversation with the other men, but it was obvious as daylight that he was paying no real attention to them. The girl had a bit of jewelry in one hand; it was difficult for Hanani to see exactly what it was. But as the girl passed the warrior, she looked him in the eye and dropped the item as if by accident. With an innocent look that fooled no one, she moved on toward another of the women’s fires.

The warrior grinned and snatched up the item. The men around him elbowed and jostled him good-naturedly, trying to make him drop the thing, but he held on tight.

“So Teniant has made her choice at last!” Yanassa sounded pleased. “That one is the Issayir’s hunt leader. A good choice.”

“I disagree,” said another woman, scowling. “A man readying himself for war may be too rough for such a young girl.”

“I’m sure he can quiet his warrior nature for a single night,” Yanassa said dismissively. “I can’t see a man becoming hunt leader under Unte’s brother if he has a taste for brutalizing decent women. The Issayir are not the Dzikeh.”

Another woman quickly shushed Yanassa, darting a glance about to see whether there were any Dzikeh nearby, but Hanani ignored them, staring at the Issayir warrior. An urge developed in her heart, neither fully formed nor logical. She would have called it instinct if she had bothered to think about it at all. But she had no desire to think.

And so while Yanassa and the other woman continued to bicker, Hanani rose. Yanassa had given her a beautiful, elaborate earring that clipped around the edge of one ear in three places. She reached up to remove it.

“Sharer-Apprentice?” Hendet’s voice, full of surprise and a hint of suspicion. Ignoring her, Hanani walked away from the fire.

She found who she wanted at a fire near the edge of camp, talking quietly with some of his men. Charris stood against the rocky wall nearby, subtly at guard. He saw Hanani coming before anyone else, and frowned in puzzlement as she approached. Then someone nudged Wanahomen, who turned to look at her, curious.

The earring felt cold in Hanani’s hand. She clutched it so tightly that its sharper parts threatened to draw blood. But she came forward anyhow, meeting Wanahomen’s gaze as steadily as she could, and dropped the earring at his feet.

The men fell silent. She did not look at them; she did not want them. Wanahomen stared down at the earring, his eyes widening. He looked up at her in wordless disbelief.

Silent, empty, Hanani went back to her tent to wait.

The easternese told tales of souls that could not make the journey to Ina-Karekh for whatever reason, and were doomed to walk the waking realm forever as mist and sorrow. The templewoman had looked like one of these.

Wanahomen stared after her as she drifted away, and then looked down at the earring at his feet. “She can’t have intended this,” he murmured. He picked it up; it was so plainly meant for him that none of the other men were even pretending to claim it. “She can’t know what it means.”

“Looked to me she knew exactly what it meant,” said Ezack. Even he sounded uneasy, despite his smile.

“Stubborn, arrogant woman,” he said, closing his hand around the earring. It was cold, though it had just been clutched in her hand; one of the pendants had broken loose when she dropped it. Cold and broken, just like her. “Thoughtless,
stupid
woman—”

He stood and stormed after her, not allowing himself to question his own fury. Reaching her tent, he went inside, yanked away his face-veil, and threw the earring back at her feet. “You are out of your mind,” he snarled.

The tent was lit by a single lantern hanging from the central tentpole. Hanani stood away from it, half in shadow with her back to him. Abruptly Wanahomen’s anger chilled as he realized she was staring at the saddlebag he’d put Sharer Mni-inh’s ashes into.

“I do not dispute that,” she said in a near-whisper. Then she uttered a weak, unsteady laugh that unnerved him even further.

He sighed, pulling off his headcloth and rubbing a hand over his braids, out of habit. “This isn’t what you need, Hanani. You need—Gods, I don’t know what you need. But not this.”

“That’s for me to decide, isn’t it?”

He stared at her, incredulous. “When it involves
my body
?”

Her unadorned ear tilted toward him. “You wanted me yesterday.”

“That doesn’t mean I want you now!”

To his alarm, she began to tremble all over, so violently that her hair ornaments jingled. The contrast between this and her too-calm, too-flat voice was truly astonishing. “I see. Forgive me, then; I misunderstood. I’ll choose someone else.”

“You’ll
what
?” He went to her and took hold of her shoulders, turning her around to face him. It was like grabbing a wild animal; she went taut, her eyes wide and mindless with panic. She did not scream, but he suspected that was a near thing.

“Hanani—” He shook his head, though he loosened his grip at once. “Dearest Goddess,
look
at you. You don’t want a man. Why are you doing this?”

Some of the panic faded from her eyes, replaced by a misery so deep that all of his remaining anger vanished. She looked away from him and made a halfhearted effort to twist out of his grasp. “It doesn’t matter. I know what I want.”

“No, you—”

“
I know what I want!
” She screamed the words, her fists clenching, her face so distorted by rage that for a moment he didn’t recognize
her. Then she lunged at him, hands turning to claws, and suddenly he had to keep hold of her to prevent her from tearing his throat out. Or using her magic on him—but he could not let himself fear her, not now. “Get out! You’re no use to me, I can’t trust you anyway,
you can’t help me
!”

He fought her for a moment, then realized he would have to change tactics. Instead of trying to keep her hands away, he pulled them to his chest. “Here,” he snapped, flattening her palms over his heart. “You want me gone? You know the way. Do to me what you did to Azima.”

She froze, eyes suddenly wide with fear. “No. I won’t kill again.”

“You don’t have to. Your mentor gave me pain once. Drove me to my knees with a touch. Do that now, and I’ll know you truly want me to leave so some other fool can come in here and be ‘useful’ to you. I’ll know you can at least protect yourself.” He braced himself in case he’d guessed wrong about her, but he did not think he was wrong. And indeed, instead of hurting him, she tried to escape again.

“Let go!”

“You say you know what you want! Who would you rather have besides me? Shall I send Charris in to you? Unte perhaps—he’s old, but he fathered another child just last year. Or will you have the first man who comes at you with lust instead of wits? You should have let Azima rape you, in that case!”

She flinched, but then shook her head. “What does it matter, Prince? You hate me anyhow. Just let me go.”

He took a deep breath. “I don’t hate you. I did once, but that was wrong. In fact—” He almost laughed; this was the last conversation he’d ever expected to have with a Hetawa priest. “You’re fine enough, and admirable enough, that I’m actually tempted. But
this is wrong too
, can’t you see that? There’s something wrong with you, and
this will not fix it
.”

She lifted her head slowly; he could have pitied her for the confu
sion in her expression alone. While she seemed to grope for words, he squeezed her hands and said, “You said I couldn’t help you. Help you how, Hanani? What is it you need?”

She said nothing, but she looked at the saddlebag again. Wanahomen found himself heartily wishing he hadn’t given her the damned urn until it was time to return to Gujaareh.

“Your mentor is gone.” He said it as gently as he could, and yet she still flinched as if he’d lifted a hand to her. An idea came to him. “Tell me what Mni-inh would do, Hanani, if he were here. Tell me how he would help you.”

It was completely irrational. If Mni-inh had still been alive, she would have been fine. But those who dealt in dreams learned to think in dream-logic, so it did not surprise him at all that she frowned and blinked and seemed to focus on him, as though the words made perfect sense. “H-he would hold me.” She lowered her eyes. “No. He didn’t do that often, not anymore. But I, I wanted him to. I always wanted him to.”