Talithele caught her breath in fright, which turned into a racking cough. Sunandi helped her hold a cloth to her mouth, wrapping an arm around her for comfort and willing the pounding of her own heart to slow. But the sounds from without were too terrible to assuage her fears. Finally—for not knowing made the waiting worse—she pulled aside one of the palanquin’s drapes to expose a sliver of outside, and peeked through.
Guidance of the Protectors!
Only a few moments could have passed since the beginning of the attack, but already the air was thick with dust and the stench of blood and worse. Just beyond the tent lay the body of one of the men who’d helped them into the palanquin. Beyond that she saw another minstrel fall from his camel, screaming; an instant later she gasped in horror as a soldier ran him down. Gehanu ran past, screaming like a madwoman and brandishing a short sword with both hands. Then Sunandi’s heart leaped into her throat as a soldier swung his horse about and narrowed his eyes at the palanquin, spotting her as she peered through the curtain.
“We must go!” Hooking an arm around Talithele, she put her shoulder under the old woman’s arm—she was light as a child—and hauled her out of the palanquin’s other side, struggling to climb over the saddlebags. Behind them she could hear the beat of hooves, all but sense the soldier’s malice directed at her back as he drew closer, closer yet, close enough to run her through—
There was a horse’s sharp squeal of protest from behind her. She put her hand on the ground to brace herself and haul Talithele over a sack of fruit; the earth gave a hard shudder against her palm as something heavy landed nearby. She struggled to her feet and saw:
The soldier’s horse was dead. So was the soldier, lying sprawled across the now-smashed palanquin, his neck broken. Above the soldier, his fists still clenched, Nijiri stared down at the body with something like shock on his face.
Sunandi helped Talithele upright and tried to catch her breath. “Little killer,” she said between pants. “How fortunate for me that you are.”
He flinched and glared up at her, anger displacing the shock in his diluted brown eyes. Then his face hardened, turning as cold as his mentor’s. “Stay with me,” he told her. “Carry the elder and I’ll protect you both.”
She wanted to refuse him, but pragmatism—and the scream of another horse as it went down nearby—outweighed pettiness. Nodding, she lifted Talithele in her arms and moved behind him, trying not to crowd against him in her terror. He stayed where he was, keeping the palanquin debris and piled baggage at their backs, crouching in some sort of defensive stance. But when Sunandi looked around, she was relieved to see there would be little need of the boy’s skills. Although the caravan clearly had been on the losing side of the battle, their attackers were beginning to withdraw, calling alarms to one another and looking southward in visible agitation. Sunandi followed their sight and spied another party of riders drawing near, trailing a dust-plume in their wake and bracing the green-and-gold wooden shields of the Protectorate to the fore. Relief nearly brought tears to her eyes.
Abruptly Nijiri stiffened and whirled, looking not toward the Kisuati riders but off in a completely different direction. “Stay here,” he told her, and before she could protest he went running off. She saw him halt beside Ehiru, who sat slumped on his knees beside the sprawled body of another soldier. But she had no more time to puzzle this out as the rescue party arrived.
The Kisuati riders split, the bulk of the troop continuing on in pursuit of the Gujaareen while a four veered off and slowed to ride among the minstrels. Sunandi glanced down at Talithele, torn.
“Put me down,” the old woman whispered. Her voice had gone hoarse. “I will be fine.”
After another moment’s hesitation, Sunandi crouched and helped Talithele to lie down amid some sacks of northern herbs, whose savory fragrance did little to cover the smell of death around them. They had left all their lean-tos behind when they broke camp, so she pulled some of the mangled palanquin debris over the pile and jammed one broken pole into the ground, hooking a cloth over its end to give the old woman some shade. Then she turned and raised her fists. One of the Kisuati riders, a lean, large-eyed man with a slashing scar across his face, spurred his horse over to her.
“I am Sunandi Jeh Kalawe, First Voice of the Protectors assigned to Gujaareh,” she called as he drew to a halt. She lifted the sleeve of her robe to reveal the gold band around her bicep, detaching the polished half-orb of agate set into it as a decoration. Its flat side was inscribed with a formal pictoral of a stylized double moon above four trees: the mark of passage granted to all Kisuati high officials.
He raised his eyebrows and said, “You’re a long way from your assignment, Speaker. What happened here? These aren’t the usual bandit scum.”
“Gujaareen soldiers.”
“Gujaareen! But how…?”
“I believe there may be a garrison hidden somewhere in the desert.” She stepped closer, reaching up to put a hand on his saddle. “They attacked to stop me from bringing that secret back to the Protectors, but I have more secrets to deliver, all equally important.”
His eyes widened, then hardened. “You shall deliver them, Speaker. When my captain returns I’ll tell him, and we will escort you to make certain of it.”
“These people need help first. They—” Grief and guilt struck then and she bowed her head. “They have suffered much because of me.”
The lieutenant nodded and signaled his three riders to begin aiding the wounded. Sunandi assisted as much as she could, moving among the minstrels to perform the unpleasant task of sorting the all-but-dead from those who could still be saved.
“You’re not to blame, Nefe.” Gehanu’s voice drew Sunandi out of the numbness. Kanek lay dead across Gehanu’s knees, his chest a mass of red. Tear-tracks had dried on Gehanu’s cheeks. “The people behind this don’t care what they unleash to get what they want. We were just in their way.”
Sunandi sighed and turned away.
Barely two fours of their party survived—a third of the number that had started out from Gujaareh. Like a pittance from the gods in compensation for their earlier cruelty, many of the wounded would survive thanks to the Gujaareen in their party. Nijiri revealed to the others that he was a Servant of Hananja and asked for tithes of humors to help heal the wounded. He could perform only simple healing—closing wounds, easing shock—but even that much helped greatly. The three Gujaareen minstrels who’d survived immediately let him put them to sleep and siphon whatever he needed from their dreams. He did not tell them what sort of Servant he was, Sunandi noted, and they did not ask. Nor did they censure him for lying to them, for Servants of Hananja often went in disguise for various reasons. The power of faith, even in Gujaareh’s expatriate children, was strong.
The Kisuati troop returned to report that the Gujaareen soldiers, after a pitched battle, began to turn their swords on themselves when it became clear they would lose. Those who hesitated were cut down or shot by their captain, who managed to mortally wound himself before they disarmed him. He’d died as they tried to question him.
“Those two will be accompanying me as well,” Sunandi said, nodding toward Ehiru and Nijiri. Ehiru sat on some baggage nearby, slumped in apparent exhaustion; Nijiri crouched near him, offering him water. The boy glanced around as they spoke, listening.
The captain assessed them in a glance and narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “Gujaareen?”