The Shadowed Sun (Dreamblood) (5 page)

Her father snorted. “The man is a fool. His predecessor, now—that one got things done, which is probably why the Gatherers killed him. Ah, these days the Hetawa is too eager to appear harmless, too conciliatory to the Kisuati and everyone else…” They reached Tiaanet’s door; he turned to her and cupped her cheek. “Enough politics. Are you tired?”

She made herself smile, wishing that her smiles disturbed him as they did so many others. “Very, Father, after so long an evening.”

“I understand.” He smiled, pulling aside the curtain for her to enter. “We’ll be quick—and quiet, too, so that our guests don’t wake. Yes?”

For a fleeting instant, the urge to scream rose in Tiaanet’s mind. The house was full of guests; one cry would alert them all. Had the Superior stayed the night? If she accused her father of corruption in front of him, in front of the guests, the Hetawa would surely investigate. The Gatherers would come. She could show them poor, damaged little Tantufi as proof; perhaps even Insurret would be lucid enough to confirm her accusations. Perhaps the Gatherers would kill the whole family to rid Gujaareh of such a pestilence. Then Tiaanet and Tantufi could at last be free, one way or another.

But that urge, like a thousand others of its kind, faded as quickly as it had risen. She had not felt true hope in years. Most days—good days—she felt nothing at all.

So Tiaanet went into the room and over to the bed, keeping her eyes on the far wall. Behind her, he closed the curtain and came to join her.

“I love you, Tiaanet,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Father,” she said.

“My good girl,” he replied, and leaned down for a good-night kiss.

Sunandi Jeh Kalawe, Voice of the Kisuati Protectorate and governor of Gujaareh on the Protectors’ behalf, was not a sound sleeper. Any movement woke her during the night. Even a breeze that stirred the bedhangings too often could keep her wide-eyed until dawn. In the years since her marriage she had adapted to this tendency, keeping a pot of watered honey beer on the nightstand, banishing her husband to the sitting room couches whenever he snored, or defecting to those couches herself to avoid disturbing him. She did sleep—just fleetingly, snatching rest in quick, insufficient rations. Sometimes she woke more tired than she had gone to bed.

Invariably there were nights when soothing drinks and counting by fours did no good. At such times she would go to her study to work so that at least the time would not be wasted. Or she went to the balcony of their apartment in Yanya-iyan to gaze up at the Dreaming Moon, drinking in her silvery, multihued light and thinking of nothing.

On this occasion, however, she stopped in shock, finding the balcony already inhabited.

“Don’t scream,” the Gatherer Nijiri said. He sat with one foot on the railing, the other dangling over an eight-story drop, watching her with amused eyes. “Your soldier husband would come charging out here, weapons drawn, and the whole palace’s peace would be disturbed.”

Letting out the breath that she had indeed drawn to scream, Sunandi walked out onto the balcony. “There would be little chance of that if you weren’t perched out here like a skyrer watching for mice.”

“I’m a Gatherer, Jeh Kalawe. Did you think I would come through the front gate with a full escort? Perhaps bringing a chantress to announce me and all my lineage? In any case, you should have been expecting me.”

She rolled her eyes, coming to join him at the railing. “I expected you
at dusk
. I sent my summons right after the damned Banbarra finished terrorizing the city this morning.” Her annoyance vanished as a more personal anxiety eclipsed it. “Have you been here long?” She had made love with Anzi just before midnight.

He smiled, the Moonlight momentarily making him seem younger—more like the boy she’d first met ten years before. He had grown taller in the years since, and his youthful beauty had refined into something elegant and hard-edged, but he was still quite young even by the standards of Kisua, where people did not live as long. It was his profession that made him seem older than his years.

“If I had come earlier,” he said, “you would have had wistful daydreams of coming to this balcony then.”

It took her a moment to understand his meaning, and when she did she wanted to kill him. “
Keb-na!
You know I don’t like you tampering with my dreams.”

He said nothing, only watching her, and after a moment she sighed. Of course he would tamper with her dreams as he saw fit. He was a Gatherer.

“You need to know,” she said, changing the subject, “that these Banbarra raids must stop.”

He continued to watch her in silence, possibly because he knew how much his damned Gujaareen calm irritated her, or because he simply had nothing to say in response. “They threaten the peace,” she said, irrationally compelled to fill the silence. “If our control of Gujaareh slips, all manner of chaos could occur. Riots. Sabotage.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“The Hetawa has the people’s ear. Someone somewhere has to have a Banbarra cousin or aunt. You people breed with anything.”

Nijiri only sighed at the slur; he’d heard worse from her. They tolerated from each other what they would not from anyone else. “The Hetawa supports anyone who can give the city lasting peace. For the time being, that’s Kisua. This has cost us greatly, in the people’s trust.”

“A Gujaareen was killed this time! A city guardsman. Another was badly wounded, though I’m told your healers managed to save him. They’ve killed twenty of my husband’s men. Does that sound like peace to you?”

He frowned. “It sounds remarkable. Eight raids, twenty dead Kisuati, and only one Gujaareen death? What have they taken?”

She ticked off on her fingers. “The contents of three storehouses used by our troops, including one supposedly hidden cache of weapons. Horses. Barley sheaves bundled for shipment to Kisua, which I suppose they’ll use as fodder for the horses; Merik knows what else they could do with it in the desert. Moontear wine. Leather and hekeh-cloth. Lapis and sea salt.”

He said nothing for a moment, contemplating this. “Trade-goods,” he said. “Would you say those are goods especially prized in Kisua?”

Sunandi frowned. “Most of it would fetch high prices in any
Kisuati market, yes. Such trade makes our conquest of Gujaareh less of a financial loss.” She sighed. “Indeed, losing those goods has already done harm; there’s a faction of merchants in Kisua right now calling for harsher measures in our control of the Gujaareen capital—”

“No people taken? They like slaves, those desert barbarians.”

She ignored the jibe. Kisuati kept slaves too. “None. They’ve no qualms about drawing the blood of those who get in their way, but they take no prisoners. Luck, I suppose.”

“I doubt that.”

She frowned. Something in his manner had changed. She hesitated to call it excitement, for there was something wrong with any Gatherer who felt that. Still, there was no mistaking the new tension in his body. “Explain.”

He nodded slowly as he gazed out at the city, his eyes roving back and forth, back and forth, over the rooftops and streets. Fleetingly, Sunandi wondered how well he slept.

“To the desert tribes,” he said, “we city folk—Gujaareen and Kisuati alike—are soft, decadent, cowardly, and unworthy of the wealth we possess. Even the Shadoun, your own allies, treat with you only because they hate Gujaareh more. So for the Banbarra to take no slaves, and avoid killing Gujaareen while slaying fours of Kisuati…”

Sunandi gripped the balcony railing, groaning softly. How foolish of her not to have seen it. “They’re courting Gujaareh as an ally!”

Nijiri did not reply, but there was no need; Sunandi knew at once that she was right. The tribes of the Empty Thousand had been at feud with one another for as long as anyone could remember. The wars between the Banbarra and the Shadoun—the two strongest tribes—were the stuff of legend, but there had been relative peace
in the past few centuries as Gujaareh had grown in power. Neither tribe dared weaken itself fighting old rivals with a new threat lurking so near.

The raids were proof that the long stalemate had broken. The Shadoun were trading partners and sometime allies of Kisua—and now Kisua held Gujaareh. This trapped the Banbarra, whose territory stretched between the southwestern border of Gujaareh and the southern mountain fortresses of the Shadoun, between two allied threats. Small wonder they’d decided to do something about it.

“You believe the Banbarra are targeting trade-goods deliberately,” Sunandi said, frowning as she mulled over Nijiri’s words. “Why? To make our conquest of Gujaareh unprofitable? To trigger some sort of political shift in Kisua?”

“I didn’t say that. But their tactics do show a certain forethought, don’t you think?”

Too much. Sunandi scowled. “Ignorant camel-loving nomads did not think of this.”

A flicker of annoyance crossed his face at last, fleeting and mild. “They aren’t stupid, Jeh Kalawe. It demeans you to say such things.”

“Even your people call them barbarians!”

“But trading with barbarians has made us rich, remember. Unlike Kisua, we have never allowed our prejudices to blind us to the potential
or
the threat of any barbarian race.”

Sunandi waved off the scold, folding her arms across her breasts and beginning to pace. “The Banbarra were too proud to ask for help in their struggle against the Shadoun before; why seek it now? And from Gujaareh, when it’s only a humbled captive of Kisua? The desert folk respect strength; Gujaareh has none.”

“If you believe that,
you’re
the stupid one,” he snapped.

She clenched her fists and whirled on him. “The Gujaareen army—”

“Was only part of Gujaareh’s power even before the Kisuati came. Have you forgotten our ties with the northlands and the east? As you say, half the zhinha are blood relatives to some barbarian king or another. And in this land there is the military caste, most of them
born
warriors, who have sat idle—and angry—since the army was disbanded. It was a mistake for you to do that; you have no idea how hard the Hetawa has worked to keep them quiescent. And the city guard; and the private forces the nobles employ to protect their lands… and the Hetawa itself. Have you any idea what my fellow Servants could do if roused? The Sentinels alone—”

He shook his head, swung both legs to her side of the balcony railing, and leaned forward. Sunandi fought the urge to take a step back from his sudden focus. Gatherers were not supposed to feel strong emotion, but Nijiri had always had a temper. “I know what Kisua thinks of us. You call us sleeping sheep, content to dream away all our troubles. But when Gujaareh’s wrath is awakened it burns as hot as that of any other land—hotter, because we stifle it so often. If it ever bursts free, Kisua
will
lose control.”

She stared back at him and tried to ignore her unease. “You said the Hetawa supported us.”

“The Hetawa supports you
for now
. But if a better option comes along, Jeh Kalawe, if the swiftest and surest path to stability comes through slaughtering every Kisuati within our borders, then be assured the Hetawa will see it done.” Then, to Sunandi’s surprise, the anger in his eyes shifted, becoming something more sorrowful. “All these years and still we’re strangers to you.”

“Not strangers,” she said, feeling oddly stung. “I know how important peace is to you.”

“It’s more than important, Jeh Kalawe. It is our god.” He got to his feet and sighed. “This much I can tell you: your guess was correct. We have been approached by a representative of the Banbarra leader.”

Sunandi caught her breath. “I didn’t know they
had
a leader.”

“The Banbarra are many tribes, true, with many leaders. But in times of war, they become one body with one head. The man we’re dealing with is likely to become that head.”

“When did they approach you?”

“After the first few raids on the city. What you’ve told me only confirms something we’d begun to suspect ourselves. And do not ask me when, or whether, the meeting will take place. Hetawa affairs are none of the Protectors’ business.”

And of course she could not promise to keep it secret, given her role as the Protectors’ Voice, any more than he could promise a lasting cooperation with her. They each had their masters to serve.