She straightened and mopped her brow with one sleeve, then glared at him. “You sound like a vulture,” she said. “Circling ’round the weak, waiting for your chance to feed. All your kind—pious, well-meaning scavengers.”
Nijiri felt heat, then cold, run through him. He set down the saddlebag he’d been carrying and turned to face her. “You grieve for your northblooded girl,” he said, keeping his voice low. “No one has eased the pain for you, so I’ll forgive that insult. But you, with your life steeped in lies and corruption, can comprehend none of Hananja’s blessings. For that I pity you.”
She stared back at him. Not trusting himself to be civil any longer, Nijiri turned and headed toward the oasis, where Ehiru was helping some of the others distribute water to the animal troughs. Nijiri joined him and wordlessly helped until the task was done. Then Ehiru, who of course had noticed his mood, took his arm and pulled him to a quiet spot beside a feed-seller’s stall. “Tell me,” was all he said, and Nijiri did.
By the time he’d finished telling the tale, his anger had been replaced by shame. Ehiru said nothing for a long while, watching him, and Nijiri finally blurted, “I shouldn’t have gotten angry. She was in pain. I should have comforted her.”
“Yes,” Ehiru said, “but I suspect she wanted no comfort from one she blames for the death of her girl.”
“I didn’t kill her girl! The abomination did that!”
“To her, you and the Reaper—and I—are one and the same.”
Nijiri folded his arms over his chest, shifting from foot to foot. “I’ve never understood why anyone fears Gathering,” he said. “Barbarians know no better. But the Kisuati worship Hananja, if not in the same way as us. They’re civilized.” He glanced at Ehiru and saw a rueful smile on his mentor’s lips.
“Civilization may not be all you think, Nijiri.” Ehiru took Nijiri’s shoulder in a comforting grip for a moment, then pulled Nijiri to walk with him toward the caravan. “But in the future, when a tithebearer attacks with anger and you feel anger in response, think of your mother.”
Nijiri stopped walking, startled. “My mother? But she died in peace. The northblooded girl did not.”
“My mother died in peace too,” Ehiru said. “Not with a Gatherer’s aid, but through her own goddess strength. Yet still I wished for years afterward that she had not died. Even knowing that I would see her again in Ina-Karekh, I thought only of the fact that I could never talk to her, never feel her arms around me, never breathe her scent… not while I yet lived. Sometimes I feel that pain still. Do you?”
And suddenly the old ache was there in Nijiri’s heart, sharper than it had been for years. “Yes.” And as he said it, he understood. If he still felt such pain years later, knowing that his mother had died well, how much worse must the pain be for Sunandi, whose agony was still raw and exacerbated by the horrible circumstances of the child’s death?
“You see,” Ehiru said. He stopped then and they both looked up. The caravan was beginning to settle, pitching tents in a paved square set aside for that purpose by the village folk. On the other side of the square a little girl helped the old woman into a large, ornately decorated round tent.
“Those in pain deserve our compassion,” Nijiri said, his thoughts on that long-ago day in a servants’ hovel. “I won’t forget again, Brother.”
Ehiru nodded, and together they returned to the tents to prepare for the Gathering.
21
A Gatherer shall immediately bring all tithes collected to the Hetawa, to be entrusted to his brethren of the Sharer path. Only the merest portion is to be kept by the Gatherer himself.
Ehiru resumed his fallen aristocrat’s guise and found Gehanu in her tent. “Have you any eathir root, mistress? In some lands they call it ghete.”
Gehanu paused in the middle of chewing some sort of spiced meat on a skewer. Village women had come among the minstrel band during the unpacking, selling food and drink. “You planning to put someone to sleep?”
Ehiru smiled and touched his own torso, just below his rib cage. “Ghete can ease spasms here. It sometimes stops a cough.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Ah. For Talithele, che?”
“Is that the name of your elder? Yes, mistress.”
“You don’t look like a healer.”
“There are healers in my family, mistress. Some even serve the Hetawa in Gujaareh. I picked up a few tricks.”
“Mmm. Hold on. Kanek!” Her bellow almost caught Ehiru by surprise, but he had grown used to the woman’s rough mannerisms over the past few days. There was a shuffle outside and then Kanek poked his head into the tent, scowling. “Go find the village headman and ask for ghete root,” Gehanu told him.
“Ghete? Palm wine tastes better, Mother.”
“Just do it, you disrespectful shiffa.” She glared until the boy disappeared. They heard his grumbles as his footsteps faded.
“Thank you, mistress.” Ehiru flattened both his hands and bowed over them.
“Ete sowu-sowu.” Ehiru thought the language might have been Penko, but he could not be certain. Her Gujaareen was fluent, at least, though she tended to speak too fast; it took time for him to sift out the words from her accent. “If you can make Talithele more comfortable, it will be worth getting in debt with the greedy old bastard who runs this town.” She set down the skewer and rummaged among her robes for a moment, finally coming up with a long pipe. She raised her voice again. “And an ember from the fire!” A faint annoyed sound was the only reply.
Ehiru smiled. “It’s good to have dependable sons.”
“Ah-che. Like that boy of yours, hmm? I see him hovering always, making sure no one bothers you much, taking care of problems before you notice.” She did not see Ehiru’s look of surprise as she rummaged again and came up with dried leaves, which she began to pack into the pipe. “If only my sons were as clever and thoughtful. Though of course Niri isn’t your son.” She glanced up at him, her big southerner eyes bright and sharp.
“No, mistress, he is not.”
She grunted and bit another piece of meat off the skewer. “Bed-warmer?”
Ehiru smiled at the notion. “Protégé. I’m teaching him about life.”
Gehanu grunted in amusement. “And he listens? Motro sani’i—a miracle to amaze even the gods.”
“He listens when it suits him.” Ehiru smiled. “Young men.”
“Mmm. Too young for sense, too old to beat. But young women are worse, trust me. Three daughters back home, along with my other three sons. Should probably beat my husband for inflicting all of them on me, but he’s pretty and he doesn’t eat much, so I keep him around.” She cocked her head, examining him. “You’re pretty. You have a wife?”
Ehiru heartily wished that Kanek would hurry back. “No, mistress.”
“You looking?” She grinned, flashing a substantial gap between her front teeth. In the southern lands this marked a woman of great passion, or so Ehiru had heard.
“No, mistress.”
“Why not?”
“I’m a servant, mistress.” He and Nijiri had decided to keep up their guise at all times, though Gehanu had already guessed that they were not what they seemed. She didn’t know the whole truth, and there was no way of knowing who might be listening, through thin tent walls.
“Got to make more servants somehow, che? Nefe is pretty.”
Ehiru forced a laugh. “True. But she is of a different world, mistress.”
“Hn, yes. No time for children anyway, that one. Always busy she is, always worried about something. She needs a nice mellow man like you, but she’ll never slow down enough for that.”