The Shadowed Sun (Dreamblood) (6 page)

So she kept her next question open-ended, to allow him room to maneuver between her loyalties and his own. “Is there anything you
can
tell me?”

He nodded with the faintest air of approval. “The Banbarra head’s spokesman, when they came to us, was a Gujaareen military-casteman. High-ranking; he claimed to have been a general in the days before the conquest. Zhinha by birth.” He watched her as he said it.

“Goddess protect us,” Sunandi whispered, her skin goosebumping with more than the night air’s chill. Shunha and zhinha, the two noble castes of Gujaareh, did not often join the military, being too proud to take orders from anyone of lesser birth than themselves. They would tolerate serving their peers, just. But there was one lineage that a zhinha-born general would serve gladly, even into exile.

Nijiri said nothing at her blasphemy—perhaps because he sensed, for the moment at least, that she was utterly sincere.

“Make of that what you will,” he said. “Now go back to your husband before he misses you.” He stood to leave, flicking one of his twin nape-braids back over his shoulder as he did so. The gesture,
and the hairstyle, were so familiar that a soft pang stirred in Sunandi’s heart.

“How are you, Nijiri?” she asked, placing the lightest of emphases on
you
.

He paused, but did not turn to face her. “I’m well, Jeh Kalawe.”

“I…” She hesitated, then finally blurted, “I actually
miss
him. Can you believe that? We weren’t friends. And yet…”

Nijiri took hold of the railing. “We will both meet him again someday. You may even find him before I do; you’re a woman, you have more power than I to find your way within Ina-Karekh. And you can still dream.”

She had forgotten that. He was a true Gatherer now, paying a Gatherer’s price for power.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She could not tell whether the note in his voice was sorrow or simply resignation; either way there was pain underneath it. Hesitantly she reached for his shoulder, for whatever good that would do. Her fingers barely brushed his skin before he turned and took hold of her hand.

“Don’t be sorry,” he said. He lifted the back of her hand to his cheek and leaned against it for a moment, closing his eyes and perhaps imagining someone else’s hand in its place. It occurred to her in that moment just how lonely he must be, for no one touched Gatherers, not intentionally. They gave comfort to others, but bore their own pain alone.

But to Sunandi’s surprise, Nijiri opened his eyes and frowned. “You’ll never meet him at this rate. Why didn’t you come to me? You know I would’ve helped you.”

And before she could ask what he was talking about, he reached toward her face. She blinked in instinctive reaction and felt his fingertips brush her eyelids for an instant, and then he let her go. When she opened her eyes, he had vaulted up to crouch on the railing, nimble as a bird.

“Don’t summon me again,” he said over his shoulder. “Things are changing too quickly. I misspoke, Jeh Kalawe, when I said that you didn’t understand us. As much as any foreigner can, and better than any other Kisuati, you do. That’s why I’ll forgive you, no matter what the Protectors make you do.”

While Sunandi stared back at him, trying to puzzle this out, he stood up on the railing, balancing easily, heedless of the height. Taking hold of a ledge above, he levered his body upward in a single smooth motion. Then he was gone.

It was not until Sunandi returned to her bed that she understood what he had done. More precisely, she understood it in the morning, when she woke up wrapped in Anzi’s arms, comfortable and more rested than she’d felt in years. Anzi had pulled her close during the night, surely jostling her in the process. Yet she had not woken up once.

“No,” Mni-inh said.

Hanani kept her head bowed, arms folded before her with hands palm-down. Mni-inh, who sat on a cushioned bench massaging one knee, scowled when it became clear she had no intention of moving.

“I said no, Hanani.” He straightened, flicking his red loindrapes back into place. “The Hetawa has already made its apology to the family of the tithebearer. He’s to receive a full formal burial in the Hetawa’s own crypt, an honor usually given only to Servants of Hananja. Let that suffice.”

“The tithebearer’s death was not
the Hetawa’s
fault,” Hanani replied, keeping her eyes on his chest. In the low morning light, the ruby collar of his office looked like droplets of blood scattered over his pale skin.

Mni-inh flinched and sat up. But the Sharers’ Hall was mostly empty between dawn and the noon hour, as those who worked the night hours slept and the rest were kept busy with a Sharer’s usual daytime duties in the Hall of Blessings or the herbs-and-simples chamber. Those few who lounged about the hall’s benches and nooks were deep in study or conversation with others. No one
looked at Hanani and Mni-inh, though Mni-inh darted his eyes about to make sure, and leaned close before he spoke again. “It isn’t
your
fault either, little fool! Don’t do Yehamwy’s work for him, Hanani. How can you expect the Council to believe you’re competent if you don’t believe it yourself?”

She lifted her head and watched him draw back in surprise. “I don’t believe I’m incompetent, Mni-inh-brother. How could I, after your training?”

“Then why visit the tithebearer’s family?”

It was a question that Hanani had asked herself all night, during the hours that she’d spent weeping and praying and finally rocking herself to sleep. She had not dreamed; there had been no answer to her prayers for peace or understanding. And so she had awakened that morning with her thoughts full of a single impulse: to find out
why
Dayu had died.

“Because my heart is empty of peace right now,” she said. Mni-inh drew back at this, frowning. “Doubt has come to fill the void instead. Did I truly press Dayu too far, too fast? Did that tithebearer die because I expected a child to do an adult’s work? You know what doubt can do in narcomancy, Brother. Even if the councilor had not pronounced interdiction on me, I would refuse to perform healings now.”

Mni-inh sighed, a tone of frustration. “That I understand. But how will apologizing to a grieving widow—who may blame you for her husband’s death whether it’s your fault or not—ease your doubts?” He sobered abruptly. “Wait. I know what this is about. This is the first time you’ve dealt with death.”

“That isn’t it,” she said, though she had to look away from the compassion in his eyes. In the early months of her path training, Hanani had actually suspected Mni-inh of harboring a secret sadism in his soul, somehow concealing it from the Gatherers but gleefully inflicting it on his unwilling apprentice under the guise of mentor
ship. He had been twice as hard on her as the other Sharers with their—male—apprentices, noting when she complained that she would have to be twice as good to overcome petitioners’ fears of her sex. And
his
hatred for same, she had been certain.

Yet as the months became years, and as Hanani matured, she had understood at last that Mni-inh’s harshness was an act. Underneath it, his true personality was far softer.
Too
soft, Hanani now believed, sorely lacking the calm and stoicism that the faithful expected of Hananja’s Servants. He took slights to her as a personal insult; he chafed constantly at the Hetawa’s slow pace of change; he forgot tact and said things that damaged his standing among their pathbrothers. It was true that his unorthodoxy had probably made him the best teacher for her, but there were times when Hanani would have found the taskmaster of her youth easier to deal with than the brash and overprotective elder brother he had become since.

“Meeting her will make me feel better,” she said finally, firmly. “And I just need to know more, Mni-inh-brother. I need to know the man who died with Dayu. I need to understand what happened, or at least begin to try. There can be no peace for me without that.”

Mni-inh stared at her. Finally he sighed again, running a hand over his peculiar, wavy, oily-looking hair. “Fine. Go.”

She sprang to her feet and had taken three steps before he spluttered, “You’re going
now
? Oh, never mind, you probably should or I might change my mind. Just be careful.”

“Thank you, Mni-inh-brother!”

He muttered something under his breath that she suspected was not a prayer.

So Hanani left the Sharer’s Hall, crossing the enormous open courtyard of the inner Hetawa on her way to the Hall of Blessings. A pair of Teacher-Apprentices, their arms weighed down with scrolls, glanced at her as they crossed her path; they fell to whispering almost
as soon as she was out of earshot. An elderly Sentinel sitting on a stoop watched her, eyes narrowed, as if taking her measure. She nodded to him; he gave her a nod in return.

It was not hard for Hanani to guess what underlay so many of the looks that had been thrown her way throughout the morning. She had joined a group prayer dance that dawn, and felt many eyes on her back. In the baths, some of the other apprentices had been more pointed than usual in averting their eyes from her nudity. Not all of her fellow Servants thought her responsible for the two deaths, she knew. But it was clear from the looks and whispers that many did.

If she had not already felt so low, the looks would have taken their toll. As it was, nothing could hurt worse than Dayu’s loss.

The Hall of Blessings provided some relief, for the Sharers on duty were too busy to even glance in her direction. The line of petitioners was longer than usual, half again the length of the tithebearers’ line. Nearly everyone in the petitioner line showed some visible injury—a slung arm, a bandaged foot or head. More injuries from the Banbarra raid, she realized, along with the usual accidents of harvest season and daily life in the city. The most injured, like the soldier Hanani had healed the day before, had been treated first. Now there was time and magic enough for the rest.

It would go faster if I were there
, she thought as she passed the dais. But there was no peace or point in such thoughts, so she moved on.

The great bronze double doors stood open for public hours, and as she passed from the cool dim Hall to the noise and brilliance of outside, she paused on the steps to let her eyes adjust. The heat was so fierce that her skin tingled with it—pleasantly in this first instant, though soon she would begin to sweat. She put a hand up to shadow her eyes and gazed over the busy, crowded expanse of Hetawa Square. Nearby she saw a handful of devotees sitting on the steps to pray, and beyond them merchants moved about, selling water and cut fruit to passersby. Along the main thoroughfare at the other end of the
square, dozens of folk milled and moved on their way to the market or the riverfront or dreams-knew-where else. Too many people, too much chaos, and too many who would stare at her flattened, wrapped breasts, or the red man’s loindrapes strapped around a woman’s broad hips. She had never liked venturing into the city. And yet—

Not one of those busy, brisk-moving people so much as glanced at her, as she gazed down at them from the Hetawa’s steps. Even the ones who would stare, once she joined their bustling flow, wondered only that she was a woman in man’s dress. They did not know what she had done, and moreover they did not care. It was strange, and somehow a relief, to contemplate this.

“You should have an escort, Sharer-Apprentice.”

Hanani glanced up at the small balconies that overlooked the Hetawa steps. The two men who crouched there were each clad in black loindrapes and onyx collars and quiet, deadly stillness. Hanani recognized the one who had spoken to her as Anarim, a senior of the Sentinel path. The other was a Sentinel she did not know; while Anarim focused his attention on her, that one kept his gaze on the steps and streets beyond, alert for any threats to the Goddess’s temple or worshippers.

She bowed to both of them regardless. “I’ve gone into the city to serve petitioners many times, Sentinel. I can find my way.”

“Of that I have no doubt, Apprentice. But that was not why I suggested an escort.” Anarim, like most of his path, was whipcord-lean; it was some effect of the training they did. He had taken this further by being a tall, narrow sort of man, with long fingers and an angular face, and lips as thin as a northerner’s. Those thin lips twitched now in faint disapproval, though he kept his expression blank otherwise. She knew at once the disapproval was not for her. “The Kisuati seem unable to prevent raids and other disruptions within the city’s walls these days. Things aren’t as peaceful as they should be. I, or another of my path, can accompany you.”