“Why would the Prince allow a Reaper to roam the city?” he asked again, his voice flat.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Centuries ago, when your Inunru founded the Hananjan faith in Kisua, there were none of the rules and rituals you use now to control the magic. No one knew what a rogue Gatherer could do until the first Gatherers did it—and the horrors they inflicted on Kisua are the reason narcomancy was outlawed there. They say a Reaper can breathe death through the very air. They say they devour souls rather than sending them elsewhere. There are stories of them draining the life from dozens, even hundreds at a time without sating themselves…”
He was shaking his head even before she finished. “Impossible. I can carry the dreamblood of two, perhaps three souls within me. It’s taken me twenty years to build up to that.”
“I only repeat the stories, priest. In the early days, the Hananjans in Kisua recorded many examples of what Reapers could do, and the ‘uses’ of their terrible magic. Those records were outlawed along with the rest of dream magic, but the stories are told to this day. We use them to frighten children—but what if someone heard those tales and believed? What if someone with power, who wanted more of it, decided to see for himself whether the tales of Reapers’ magic were true?”
The Gatherer said nothing to this. Sunandi saw that his posture had become even more rigid, his brow furrowed in clear disquiet. Abruptly he stood, startling her, and began pacing back and forth in the narrow breezeway. “That would be insanity. The creature is a walking pestilence, hunger without a soul. No one could control it.” He almost spat the words, speaking so harshly and quickly that the words almost tumbled over each other. “There was no one around to direct its attack. It acted on its own madness.”
It took her a moment to understand what he meant, and then Sunandi caught her breath. “You’ve seen it!”
The Gatherer nodded absently, still pacing. She noticed, with some concern, that his hands shook like those of a sick elder when he wasn’t clenching them in agitation.
“Last night,” he said. “It attacked us in an alleyway after we left Yanya-iyan—” He stopped pacing and looked at her in sudden horror, as if he’d only just remembered something. “Indethe etun’n ut Hananja,” he whispered. Sua, though with an archaic flavor Sunandi had seen only in the oldest poems and tales. May the gaze of Hananja turn outward upon thee. Their version of a blessing, though Sunandi preferred Hananja keep Her gaze to Herself.
But it was the pity in the Gatherer’s eyes that troubled her most. “What is it?”
“The Reaper,” the Gatherer said. He spoke as softly as he had the night before, compassionate even with death in his eyes. “When we encountered it, it had already killed. Your northblooded child—”
Sunandi’s heart shattered.
Through a dim roaring in her ears she heard the rest of his words. “The alley was dark, but I did see the body clearly. Please forgive me. I would have given her peace, seen her safely to Ina-Karekh, if…”
If there had been anything left to Gather.
Sunandi was not aware of screaming at first. It was only when hands caught her wrists that she realized she had lifted them to claw at her scalp. And it was only when something scraped in her throat that she noticed the strangled, anguished cries echoing from Etissero’s walls. Through a haze she saw Etissero at the top of the stairs with a knife in his hand, staring uncertainly at the scene before him. Then the Gatherer’s arms folded about her and she crumpled into them, too lost in anguish to care that she wept on her sworn killer’s shoulder.
“I would ease this for you if I could,” the Gatherer whispered to her through the roaring, “but I have no peace left to share. I still have love, though. Take it, daughter of Kalawe. As much as you need.”
There will never be enough, she thought bitterly, and let the grief close about her like a fist.
16
Four are the tributaries of the great river. Four are the harvests from floodseason to dust. Four are the great treasures: timbalin, myrrh, lapis, and jungissa. Four bands of color mark the face of the Dreaming Moon.
Red for blood.
White for seed.
Yellow for ichor.
Black for bile.
Nijiri had seen six floods by the time of his adoption into the House of Children. Long before that, however, he’d begun learning the ways of the servant caste into which he’d been born. He still remembered his mother’s first lessons in the proper way to walk: back bent, strides short but brisk to convey humility and purpose. Never look a higher-caste in the eyes. When waiting, keep eyes forward but see nothing, show nothing—neither impatience nor weariness—no matter how long one has been standing. “They will see you, but not see you,” she had told him. “When they need you, you will have already come. What they need, you will have already done. If they no longer need you, you will not exist. Do these things, and you may have what freedom our caste allows.”
Those lessons had served him well in his quest to become a Gatherer. Servants were servants, after all. And today he’d had no trouble getting into the first guard-station by pretending to be a wine-seller’s boy. So convincingly did he stammer and stoop that the guardsmen did not question his shorn hair or the pouch on his hipstrap, and not once did they look into his face as he spun his tale. His master had too much left of sweetwine chilled with fruit juices; would they not buy it to give to their prisoners? He would discount the price if so. The guards had been too interested in cheap wine to watch their tongues, laughingly telling him that they had no prisoners but would buy his wine for themselves. Nijiri left promising to bring it and never returned.
The ruse had worked on the second guard-station as well, though they’d actually had a prisoner. After noting the number of guards and the location of the exits, it had been a simple enough matter for Nijiri to pass through the alley beside the building, where he stood on a storage urn to peer through the slotted window. The man within had the filthy, half-starved look of an unclaimed or mistreated servant who had probably turned thief to survive; he was not Ehiru.
But this discovery troubled Nijiri deeply, for it meant that his first two guesses as to Ehiru’s location had been wrong. Neither of the stations’ men had been of the Sunset Guard, either. If Ehiru had been in either place, he was now gone.
What if I’ve lost him? What if they have taken him to the prison—or had him killed?
No. He could not allow himself to think such things.
The worst of the afternoon heat had faded by the time Nijiri stopped at a public cistern to drink. So dispirited was he that he did not, at first, sense the pressure of a gaze against his back. A handful of people loitered in the cistern-square, drinking from the provided cups or watering horses at the animal trough. It was only when the soldier touched his shoulder that Nijiri became aware of the man’s proximity. He jumped and whirled, spilling his cup and exerting every ounce of will not to drive his fist through the man’s throat in reflex.
“Jumpy,” the man said with a chuckle. He was tall, handsome, tawny-skinned, with neatly woven braids—probably from a well-to-do family of the military caste. And he wore the rust and gold of the Sunset Guard.
Nijiri’s heart sped up.
Then he remembered to be a servant. He dropped the cup and bowed deeply. “Please forgive me, lord. Did I wet you? Forgive me.”