“The people’s hearts are fickle,” he replied, nodding thanks to Tiaanet as she refilled his cup with sweetwine. “They’ll hate the Hetawa again the moment the Kisuati start killing them in retaliation for the soldiers’ deaths.”
“You can’t guarantee that,” said another of Sanfi’s guests. This one was Deti-arah of the shunha and military castes, once poised to become Gujaareh’s next general. The fact that he had not already achieved the rank was the only thing that had saved him from a Kisuati execution after the conquest. “Neither that the Kisuati will retaliate, nor that the people will turn against the Hetawa. I’ve met Sunandi Jeh Kalawe and her husband Anzi Seh Ainunu. Anzi is a soldier, granted; he may want blood for the deaths of his men. But Sunandi will understand the danger in doing so. Those soldiers robbed, beat, and raped Gujaareen citizens. To retaliate against the Hetawa for killing such filth would infuriate the whole city.”
“Anzi controls the city’s military power,” Sanfi said, taking a sip of wine. “How likely is a man to listen to his wife, no matter how sensible her advice might be, when he’s angry and has the power to act on his rage?”
“Sunandi speaks for the Protectorate,” said Ghefir, another shunha who owed Sanfi for a substantial business loan. He picked at his lower lip as he spoke, his brow furrowed with unease, not looking up at Tiaanet even when she poured him more wine. “They put her in place precisely to prevent him from making such mistakes. If he ignores her and things go wrong, he must later answer to the Protectors.”
“But the damage would be done,” said Sanfi.
“That is beside the point,” snapped Iezanem in an unpeaceful tone that made Tiaanet wince. “We’re moving too slowly. Our troops have gathered at the edge of the desert; why are we waiting to attack? The longer we delay, the more power the Hetawa gains. At this rate, even if we win, the people will cheer us as their liberators, then still turn to the priests for guidance.”
“Or to whomever the Hetawa endorses,” said Deti-arah. He sighed and steepled his fingers. “Word is spreading in the city that the Banbarra are on our side now, and they’re led by a man of the Sunset Lineage. Is that your doing, Sanfi?”
Tiaanet went to a serving table at the edge of the room to refill her flask. In the long silence before Sanfi’s answer, the sound of the pouring wine seemed very loud.
“No,” Sanfi said at last, and there was thunder in his voice now, dark and gathering. “That was information we had agreed to withhold until the time of the final assault. Someone among us has been talking.”
Deti-arah was shaking his head when Tiaanet turned back to face the room. “I heard this from the Hetawa,” he said. “I went with my son to tithe some dreams two days ago. The priest who took my donation told me that the Goddess would soon answer my prayers for peace, because Her Avatar would be returning to restore the city’s freedom. The fellow seemed almost gleeful about it; most unlike a templeman.”
Silence fell. Tiaanet saw Sanfi’s hand tighten on his cup.
“But … they would only know that, and be happy about it, if the Prince’s return served their purposes,” said Ghefir, picking even harder at his lip now. “Wouldn’t they?”
“Yes,” Sanfi said quietly. “It would seem the Hetawa and the Prince have forged an alliance of their own. That is … unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate?” Iezanem stood; she was shaking with rage. “That’s what you call it? Who in the city will want a Gujaareen Protectorate now, when the Hetawa is making Wanahomen’s return sound like some sort of much-heralded prophecy? This is what comes of your delays, Sanfi. We have no choice but to act—”
“No.” Sanfi glared at her, no longer bothering to be polite. “The Kisuati in the city are on alert, fearful of an uprising at any moment. We must wait until they’re off guard.”
“That could take months!”
“It will not. It will take only days.”
Ghefir rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Sanfi, old friend, what are you talking about?”
Deti-arah was more direct as he leaned forward. “What are you hiding?”
Sanfi sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers as if weary. Tiaanet knew better. He was furious, but he needed to sound calm, look confident.
“A four of Protectors is coming to Gujaareh,” he said at last. The others in the room reacted with murmured alarm; he waited until they subsided. “One of my merchant contacts there sent word, though they travel in secrecy for the sake of security; he handles barge traffic on that part of the river, and was contracted to bring them here. They should be here by the end of the solstice eightday. And they are coming, at the very least, to evaluate Sunandi Jeh Kalawe and determine whether she should remain in control of the city. Their arrival can work to our advantage. Any transition of power is a time of confusion.
“And there is a plague loose in the city.” He paused and inclined his head gravely to Iezanem, who tightened her jaw. She did not wear mourning colors because zhinha did not bother with tradition, but her grief was still plain. “Again a contact of mine has told me a secret: the Hetawa has some two or three dozen layfolk sequestered in the inner Hetawa, sleeping their lives away. The priests say they’re studying the sickness, seeking some cure for it. But what if there is no cure?”
Iezanem went very still. Deti-arah frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“A Gatherer died several days ago. Sonta-i.”
“Yes,” said Deti-arah with an air of impatience. “What do you imply? Sonta-i was old as Gatherers go. There’s nothing untoward about his giving the Final Tithe now.”
“What if he didn’t give the Final Tithe?” asked Sanfi. “What if he too died of this sickness? What if word spread that the Hetawa, with all its magic, can neither control nor stop the spread of this sickness? What would happen then?”
Deti-arah’s eyes widened. Iezanem shook her head in confusion, setting her dangling lapis-and-gold earrings a-rattle. “The city would be rife with fear and unrest,” she said, “and the Protectors would likely turn on the Hetawa once they can no longer perform their basic function of keeping the city healthy and content. But none of those things has happened, Sanfi.”
Sanfi shrugged, though Tiaanet could see the tension in his shoulders. “What if they could?”
“You,” Deti-arah said, his voice shaking and horrified. “You have caused this sickness?”
Iezanem whirled on Sanfi, her body going rigid.
“No,” Sanfi said firmly, looking at Iezanem as he spoke. “The sickness is magic. Who controls magic in Gujaareh? The Hetawa. Perhaps they even caused the sickness themselves, somehow. I merely suggest that we find some way to remind the people, and the Protectors, of this.”
Iezanem caught her breath; beneath her scowl, her eyes were bright with unshed tears. Ghefir stopped picking at his lip. Only Deti-arah continued to gaze at Sanfi with something close to suspicion, but he did not voice his concerns aloud, whatever they were.
There was little more to be said after that. Iezanem and Ghefir agreed to spread the rumor via their connections. Sanfi, as one of the most prominent nobles in the city, offered to arrange a meeting with the visiting Protectors, once they arrived, in order to express his concerns regarding the Hetawa. Then Tiaanet offered their guests a tray of small edibles to refresh them, and they made their farewells for the evening, leaving Tiaanet alone with her father.
Sanfi remained in the greeting-room where he’d sat throughout the meeting, gazing at his folded hands while Tiaanet cleaned up. He was silent for so long that it startled her when he said, “Has Tantufi been settled?”
Tiaanet had almost knocked over a vase at his sudden words. She righted it quickly, concentrating on it so that she would not frown. He was too used to seeing empty serenity on her face; the change would’ve been too noticeable. “Yes, Father. I have her in the storage cellar.”
“Take me to her.” His voice was very soft.
Tiaanet turned to face him with the vase in her hands, ten
se. He glanced at her; a muscle in his jaw tightened.
“Don’t defy me, Tiaanet,” he said. “Not tonight.”
Setting the vase down, Tiaanet stayed where she was a moment longer to fuss with the arrangement of flowers in it. All the while her mind was racing, trying to find some way to appease the wrath that she could feel radiating from him like a fire’s warmth. But the longer she delayed, the hotter that wrath would grow. Finally she turned to him, bowed, and walked toward the cellar room.
She could hear him walking behind her, his pace as measured and sedate as her own, though his breathing was uneven and harsh. The corridor leading to the cellar was dim; the short stairwell leading under the house was even dimmer. In the dark he could not see her hands shake, but she knew he would sense her fear nevertheless. This was the one thing that could still make her afraid, and they both knew it.
Inside the small cellar, a single lantern burned steadily on a shelf stacked with sealed jars. The lantern’s oil was scented of hyssop, but this was not quite enough to mask the scent of mildew wafting from the earthen floor and walls. The cellar never quite dried out from floodseason to floodseason; they used the space only to store those items that were proof against the smell. And those items that were otherwise deemed unimportant, like the little girl chained against the far wall.
Sanfi came into the cellar behind Tiaanet and stopped, his eyes narrowing. The girl leaned against the wall, her head lolling, but in the silence her soft mutters were audible, as was the sound of her ankle-chain, rattling as she methodically rubbed her leg against the stone wall.
“Why isn’t she asleep?” he asked.
Tiaanet swallowed. But before she could formulate an answer, Tantufi’s head lifted. She focused on their voices with an effort, blinking huge rheumy eyes.
“No sleep,” the girl muttered. “No sleep sleep sleep so many nearby, so many.”
Sanfi set his jaw, his fists clenching. He stepped toward the girl, his whole posture warning of his intent. Tiaanet quickly stepped in front of him.
“It’s habit, Father,” she said. “She’s just used to being kept awake by the guards. She doesn’t understand that you want her to sleep now.”
“Get out of my way,” he said.
“She won’t be able to help it, Father, she’ll have to sleep eventually—”
He reached up to caress Tiaanet’s cheek, and she fell silent, frozen.
“I want her asleep now,” he said softly. “Her magic works just as well if she’s unconscious.”
No. Tiaanet closed her eyes, hearing her heart pound in her ears. So few things could hurt her now, but this she had no defense against. Goddess, please, no. I can’t stand to watch again while he beats her, she almost died the last time, no. Hananja, please help me.
Then, as if in answer to her prayer, the solution came to her.
“You promised, Father,” she said. In the closed stillness of the cellar, her voice sounded unnaturally loud, dangerously harsh—much like that of the zhinha Iezanem. She saw him frown in response to it, saw his anger begin to focus on a new target.
Yes. Me, not her.
“You promised that you wouldn’t hurt her again, after the last time.” She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. She was taller than him by a fingerwidth or so, and normally kept her head tilted down so as to avoid looking down on him. Now she did it deliberately, belligerently. “And did I not please you that night, Father? Did I not buy her safety well enough for you?”
His eyes widened, his whole body going taut with fury. “How dare you,” he whispered.
“If you want her to sleep, I can give her an herb-draft,” she said. Deliberately Tiaanet stepped closer to him, crowding him, glaring into his eyes. “Then you can have your plague. But you don’t want her asleep, do you? You want her dead. You’re too angry to think right now, Father, because Wanahomen stole the march on you, but why does that anger you so? He’ll be a good son-in-law. He uses others and lies as you do. As you will, if you hurt Tantufi when you promised not to, or do none of your promises in bed have any value? That wouldn’t surprise me, nothing else you do in bed has any—”
It was almost a relief when the storm broke. She’d been running out of ways to taunt him. He roared in fury and backhanded her so hard that she spun around and fell among several piled sacks of decorative white sand, meant to be used in the atrium garden. The sacks were soft enough that she broke nothing falling on them, but the breath was knocked from her lungs, and between that and his blow her vision went gray for a time.
Through the gray Tiaanet heard Sanfi shouting, something about how she was just as much a poison as her mother, a curse on his lineage, a curse he didn’t deserve. He took hold of her hips and she waited for him to drag her off the sacks, onto the floor where he could finish venting his rage. But he left her where she was. Instead she felt the back of her dress torn open, her legs shoved apart. There was more fumbling and cloth ripping and then a stunning new pain came into her, four times worse than the blow he’d struck her, forty times worse than the first night he’d ever come into her room, so many years ago that she barely remembered any of it but the shame that she had once felt. There was the potential for shame here too, and perhaps a bit of disgust as he snarled and grunted and ground himself against her backside, but she felt none in spite of the pain. The time when she had been ashamed of him, and of herself for being his daughter, had passed years ago. Now all that mattered was that it was she who bore the pain, and not Tantufi. Not Tantufi.
Thankfully, he was too angry to try to please her, as he so often did to assuage his guilt. That made it go quickly.
When it was done, she waited, listening to him gulp air and compose himself, knowing that the apologies would not come now. For a time he would still blame her for provoking him. For making him hurt her. At most he might worry that she would leave him, and then she would have to endure being shadowed by his guards everywhere she went. He had warned her since childhood that he would have her hunted down by assassins if she ever tried to flee. They would not use weapons, though; he would authorize their slowest and most brutal methods as a parting gift for his only beloved child.
(She did not fear this for herself. What was more pain? But he would do it to Tantufi too, and that she could not endure.)
Only later would guilt replace her father’s anger, and then he would offer apologies that meant nothing, and gifts she did not want, and yet more promises never to be kept.
After a while he got up and left the cellar. Tiaanet lay where she was, feeling moisture cooling on her body, waiting for the last of the ache to fade from her head and ribs and elsewhere. For a time she drifted, thinking that she imagined the touch of gentle fingers along her lips, and the soft patter of tears on her cheek. But they could not have been her own tears, since she no longer cried.
“Sleep,” whispered a voice in her ear. “Sleep now, sleep. I will stay awake for you. Safe safe safe. Sleep.”
Tiaanet slept.
26
Teacher
“I am wondering,” said Mni-inh, speaking slowly so as to make his anger very clear, “whether you have lost your mind.”
Hanani, sitting beside the bathing pool with her hands folded in her lap, sighed. A day had passed since their last argument; it seemed the time had done little to smooth the ground between them. “This is the only way, Brother.”
Mni-inh sat on a rock opposite her, where he had been braiding his hair until Hanani told him of her plan. Now he sat half naked, hair a mess, glaring at her in his fury. “That, my apprentice, is not true at all. You don’t have to help the Prince in any way, much less follow through on this ridiculous plan to teach him narcomancy.”
“He could go mad—”
“Let him.”
Hanani stared at Mni-inh, shocked. After a moment Mni-inh sighed, rubbed his face, and stood to begin pacing.
“Hanani—” He shook his head in frustration. “You say anger gives you no comfort; fine. You’re
a better Servant of Hananja than I, because I want him to hurt as deeply as he hurt you.”
Hanani frowned. “The desire for vengeance is natural, Brother, but there’s no peace in it.”
“I know that! But I cannot bear what that arrogant jackal’s machinations have done to you. You never smile anymore. You won’t even speak to me of—of what happened. There’s a space between us now where once we were closer than blood.”
Hanani sighed and closed her eyes, reaching for calm. She didn’t want to talk about Azima; didn’t even want to think about him. Yet Mni-inh kept bringing the subject up, over and over, worrying at it like a child with a half-healed scab. Never mind that she had borne the wound.
“All of that is irrelevant, Brother,” she said, when she felt herself able to speak in a neutral tone. “Whatever the Prince has become, the Hetawa had a hand in creating—”
Mni-inh made a sound of annoyance. “Wanahomen is irrelevant, Hanani. Nijiri is mad to rely on him, and I couldn’t care less what happens to him!”
The anger was returning. Hanani clenched her fists on her thighs and prayed for the Goddess to make her strong against it. “He is why we’re here, Brother. Or would you rather all of this be for nothing? The pain I suffered—” Now the anger was eclipsed by revulsion and the ugly memory of Azima’s hands, and the uglier memory of her own hands shredding his soul. She focused on her words. Words could not hurt her. “The life I took. Anger doesn’t comfort me, Brother. But knowing that what I endure, what I do, may help Gujaareh—that comforts me, yes. Helping the Prince helps Gujaareh.”
Mni-inh had stopped pacing to stare at her, and as she watched, his face flickered through sorrow to anger to comprehension, then back to sorrow.
“I should have protected you,” he said softly.
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