The Shadowed Sun

by N. K. Jemisin

  His skin was soft as chamois leather around the scars. Such fragile stuff to have withstood so much violence. She traced along his collarbone to his shoulder, then drew her fingers down one arm, over the rise and fall of the muscles there. She had studied the bodies of the Gathered as part of her training, knew the names of every tendon and bone, had searched within parts that had no name to find the soul’s ever-moving seat—but that was a different matter, somehow, from contemplating the warm, breathing whole of a living being. It took so little to reduce all this solid aliveness into ash. Someday Wanahomen would be like Mni-inh, a little jar of nothing. All that mattered of him would have gone on to Ina-Karekh.

  So important to treasure life, protect it, understand it in fullness, while it yet lived.

  “Prince,” she said. His eyes were still on her, faintly puzzled now. It was the Banbarra way to touch casually; it was not the Gujaareen way. She had confused him with her explorations. “Are you Gujaareen?”

  He stiffened, angry all of a sudden. “You know damn well that I am—”

  “You act more Banbarra than you realize, I think,” she said, still studying his body, tracking his breathing. “I understand why—out here, it’s safer to be Banbarra than Gujaareen. Safer to be anything than Gujaareen.” She stopped then, her hand on his belly. Beneath her fingers, his abdominal muscles were more tense than they should have been. “But is it an act? Something you’ve pulled over your true self like a cloak? Or have you become the cloak? I ask because you have been kind to me, and you have also been cruel, and I don’t know which is the real you.”

  His belly rose slightly with his inhalation, though he was silent for a moment. “Both, I suppose,” he said at last. “It isn’t a thing I think about. I’ve lived among the Banbarra for nearly half my life; when I’m with them I think as they do. I even think in Chakti. But when I’m around you, and your mentor—” He sighed. “I suppose I must become a bit more Gujaareen. A strange feeling, being two men.” He hesitated a moment more, then reached down and caught her hand. She felt him searching her face. “But the cruelty is not a Banbarra thing, Hanani, if that’s what you want to know. That part of me is all Gujaareen, and it comes from my father. You’ve helped me understand that, these past few days.”

  She nodded. “Does it please you? To be as cruel as your father?”

  He did not answer for several breaths; when he spoke, the word was very soft, and tinged with shame. “No. I need that cruelty. I would not have survived this long without it. But I do not like it.”

  Hanani nodded. She got to her feet, then, and stepped out of her shoes, beginning the laborious process of removing all the dangling bangles and tinkling jewels Yanassa had made her wear. She dropped them into the decorative bag they were meant to be stored in. “Then you aren’t corrupt.”

  Wanahomen sat up on one elbow, frowning at her. “Good to know. But what are you doing?”

  “Undressing.” She was surprised at her own calm.

  There was sudden, startled stillness behind her. She tugged off her overshirt and hung it from a tent-peg; when she turned back to him, he was staring at her. “That isn’t a good idea, Hanani.”

  She was heartily sick of people speaking to her as though she could not understand the implications of her own actions.

  “I do not demand. I ask.” She stepped out of her skirts; his eyes followed them down her legs, as if he could not quite believe what he was seeing. “I ask your Banbarra self, or your kinder self, however you prefer to think of it. I would like sex. Will you do this with me?”

  When she turned back from hanging the skirts, Wanahomen’s expression showed something close to fright. He had grabbed his own shirt, clutching it in his hands as if he meant to ward her off with it. “Have you gone mad again?”

  “I was never mad.” He had helped her back from that edge, and she was glad for it. It was unfair of her to ask him for more, perhaps, but there was no one else who would understand. She had to hope that the part of him that was a Gatherer, however unrefined it might be, would want to help again.

  “You’re serious. This is—” He froze as she untied her loincloth and dropped it in a basket. “You really mean it.”

  Hanani tugged off the shift that had been beneath her shirt. She wore only her breast-wrappings beneath, and when she finished laying the shift aside, she was amused to see that his eyes had gone straight to this part of her, as though he had never seen her in Sharers’ garb. Perhaps her breasts had been unattractive to him then, framed by men’s clothing? She began the laborious process of unwinding the wrappings as he gazed at her like a thirsty man in the desert. “Obviously I do, Prince.”

  He dragged his eyes upward, and there was a clear wariness in his expression. “You don’t love me.”

  At this she paused, surprised. “No, I don’t. Must I?”

  A half-smile, half-grimace rippled across his face. “I suppose not. No one can fault you for honesty, templewoman, I’ll give you that.” He got to his feet and turned to face her at last, still holding his shirt, though he made no move to put it on. “But you must trust me for this, at least, and—” He looked away. “And as you said: I have been cruel to you.”

  Hanani sighed and began to wonder whether she’d made a mistake. He felt so deeply, so quickly, this man. She had hoped he would simply act on his desire, not talk things to death. Yet she should have expected this too: a man so ruled by his emotions must of course serve them before making any decision. Mni-inh had taught her that long ago, when she’d asked him why he’d volunteered to serve as her mentor. It wasn’t something I thought about, he’d told her. I just saw you needing a mentor, and the other Sharers balking as though your femaleness were a plague that would taint them. That sort of foolishness—I suppose it made me angry. I acted because of that.

  The thought that Wanahomen had something of Mni-inh in him, however unwelcome he would find the comparison, made Hanani feel better about her decision.

  “I’ve let you into my dreams,” she said. “I have seen the secrets of your soul, and shown you a few of my own. The body—” She shrugged. “It can be healed, changed, ended. It’s an easy thing to manipulate. But the soul has meaning and permanence …” His frown deepened, and she faltered silent. It was too hard to explain. She was no Teacher.

  “This is nothing to you, then.” He sounded bitter, and she didn’t know why. She stepped closer, touching his arm to try and understand, but he would not meet her eyes. Was he offended that she wanted to use him in this way? Perhaps. But perhaps she could still persuade him with the truth.

  “No, Prince.” Up close, he smelled of sweat and sand—but also herbs, like those used by most Gujaareen for bathing and medicine. Anise and calendula, which she had seen growing around the canyon, and something finer that he must have bought in Gujaareh: aged ambergris. It was a scent that reminded her of the Hetawa, where it was burned as incense. Another luxury she’d failed to question, like her red Sharer-drapes; she’d seen ambergris in the market, and it was fantastically expensive. But it did not surprise her at all that Wanahomen, despite his exile and spare barbaric existence, would still find some small way to treat himself like a prince.

  She smiled and touched the scar beneath his collarbone again. He straightened, perhaps in surprise. Barbarian skin, Gujaareen blood and bone. He thought of himself as two men, but she saw only one.

  “This is life to me.” She met his eyes, trying to speak to the wariness there. “This is flesh. It is … pain and weakness and things that frighten me. But flesh is something I can control, Prince. I can make it stronger. I can heal it when it goes wrong. I need that, that certainty, right now. Does that make sense to you?”

  His face twitched through several expressions, all too quick and complex for her to interpret. “I … Yes. Strange as it sounds, it does. But what of your Servant’s Oath, Sharer-Apprentice? I’ve taken so much from you already. I would not add more to the pile.”

  “The oath is mine to discard, not y
ours to take.” Hanani set her jaw. “Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll be able to give all of myself to Hananja again without qualm. Tonight—” She sighed, feeling both ancient and young, and incomparably lonely. “Hananja has also taken enough from me, Prince.”

  More than She has had any right to take. But Hanani did not say this aloud, because he was just Gujaareen enough that it would disturb him.

  Wanahomen looked at her hand on his arm, then at her face, searching. Hanani had no idea what he sought, but after a moment he sighed. Very deliberately, he let his shirt drop back to the floor.

  “Flesh is not just pain,” he said softly. “You shouldn’t think of it that way.”

  She shrugged and resumed unwinding her breast-wrappings. “It’s all I know.”

  “I can show you more.” He looked almost shy as he said it.

  In spite of herself, she smiled. “I would be grateful.”

  When she let the last of her breast-wrappings fall to the floor, he looked at her for a long while, studying her with his eyes as she had done him with her hands. When he stepped out of his pants, very ready for her, she turned back to the cushions to lie down. He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, then—to her great surprise—knelt at her feet. His breath had gone harder, but there was reverence as well as need in his gaze.

  “Women are goddesses,” he said. “Pleasure is your due tithe. That is the Gujaareen way, after all—I remember that much. And it is my duty as Prince to see the tithe delivered properly.” He said this with no hint of irony or mockery; Hanani stared at him in wonder. And when he spread his arms, lifting his chin and making an offering of himself, something within her that had been held tight, despite her words, relaxed.

  She stepped closer, and his arms folded around her in the most careful of embraces.

  This, then, was the manifestation of peace: silence. They were Gujaareen. They had no need of shouts, moans, names gasped as declarations of pride or devotion. He pressed nothing she did not want, held back nothing she desired. While he moved against her, she studied the steady flex of his muscles, the pace and pitch of his breath, the way her every sigh and touch redirected the humors within the miracle of his flesh. This was real magic, not dreamstuff, written in solid, aware blood and bile and ichor and seed. At the height of the matter Hanani channeled this new magic into a prayer for Mni-inh, so that the Goddess might bring his soul back home. And in that held breath, as Hanani hovered almost outside herself, the Avatar of Hananja gripped her tight and shuddered within her and breathed hot into her ear: “Yes.”

  She closed her eyes, grateful, and at peace.

  36

  Legacy

  It had not been difficult for Sunandi to arrange certain matters within Yanya-iyan once the Gatherers and Superior were interned. The Protectors had not cared where the prisoners were kept so long as they were secure, and so Sunandi installed them in a set of guestrooms that had apparently been made to fit northerner tastes: with sturdy lockable doors, and only the narrowest of windows. The rooms would have been unpleasantly hot during the growing-season months—there was a reason Gujaareen left doors off rooms—but in these not-quite-floodseason days they were comfortable enough. In addition, she had selected rooms that were spaced widely, and posted a guard outside each door, so that no one would think her lax. However, she had asked Anzi’s aid in selecting guards with certain useful characteristics. One, whom she placed in charge of the Superior, was the secret-son of a Teacher from the Hananjan temple in Kisua. Two more were Hananjans themselves; perhaps a fifth of all Kisuati had devoted themselves to the faith. The fourth was a Gujaareen man, one of the few military-castes who’d managed to find employment with the Kisuati army. He was a lowly foot soldier now; in Gujaareh’s army he had been an officer.

  Such guards, she would tell the Protectors if they asked—she doubted they would ask, but it was always wise to have explanations ready—would ensure that the Gatherers and Superior were not mistreated during their confinement. Already there had been incidents in the two days since the Gatherers had been taken into custody: a spate of arrests as artisans refused to hand over work commissioned by Kisuati citizens, and merchants turned away Kisuati buyers or stopped accepting Kisuati coins. After several pairs of soldiers were attacked and beaten by gangs of angry Gujaareen, Anzi had ordered that soldiers patrol only in troops of sixteen, and he had stationed a troop in every neighborhood of the city. Despite this, a curfew and ban on assemblages had not prevented a riot—the first that had occurred in centuries—in the Unbelievers’ District. Only later had they learned that an armory was looted during the chaos. The district was being searched, but none of the weapons had yet been found. Sunandi suspected they had already made their way through the wall into the rest of the city.

  The only thing that surprised her was that the violence had not yet become widespread. It felt to her as if the city was holding its breath, waiting, though for what she could not say.

  The corridor where the priests were being kept was quiet when Sunandi arrived—a far cry from the busy, hectic upper floors where the Protectors had been living and working since their arrival. Indeed, the silence reminded Sunandi of the Stone Garden, a prayer space within the Gatherers’ Hall at the Hetawa: the corridor had that same pervasive calm. Three of the guards nodded solemnly to her as she approached; she returned their nods. The fourth guard, the one who should have been at Nijiri’s door, was missing.

  Sunandi paused and glanced at the other guards. They had not yet raised the alarm, nor did they even look concerned.

  A moment later, the door of the room opened and the guard—the Gujaareen military-caste—stepped out. Spotting Sunandi, he inclined his head to her respectfully. “Dinner, Speaker,” he said in accented Sua.

  “Ah.” She gazed at him for a moment longer, until he began to look uncomfortable. It was after midnight—late for dinner, even for a nocturnal Gatherer. But finally she came forward, and he opened the door to let her inside.

  Within, the room was quiet, lit only by a single lamp and the Dreamer’s light coming in through the window. She saw a meal laid out on the table: so the guard had at least had the wit to be truthful about that. Nijiri sat on the bed nearby, his back propped against the wall, watching her with as much of a look of innocence as he could muster. That, for him, wasn’t much.

  She folded her arms. “Good evening, little killer. Or should it be little schemer instead?”

  He smiled, almost to himself. “I asked the guard to help me send a message to a friend, nothing more,” he said. Then he sobered. “But the friend was … not there.”

  She frowned in confusion. “The guard already delivered it for you?”

  “Through his dreams, yes. It’s something skilled narcomancers can do.” He folded his hands, his eyes lighting on the trio of scrolls she carried under one arm. “Have you brought me a gift, Jeh Kalawe?”

  She ignored his question. “How long before you run out of dreamblood?”

  He didn’t bat an eyelash, long used to her rudeness. “Three or four eightdays, for all of us. We had time to prepare, remember.”

  That was a relief. “And when does the storm you summoned strike?”

  He raised his eyebrows, innocence again. “Storm?”

  “I know the nobles are up to something. And it’s becoming more and more obvious by the day that this city is gathering itself for a fight. Are you influencing them all in their dreams?”

  That elicited a genuine smile. “No Gatherer has that much power, Jeh Kalawe.”

  “Ehiru did.”

  A pause. “Ehiru was not a Gatherer at that time.” His voice had gone cold, his smile vanishing. Instantly Sunandi regretted her words, but there was no way to rectify her error. He was Gujaareen, anyway; he would let it pass for the sake of peace between them. Forgiveness would take longer, but so be it.

  She let out a sigh and forged on. “Earlier you implied that one of Eninket’s sons was still alive, and with the Banbarra. My sources say there are rumo
rs of this floating about the city as well—that a new Prince is coming who will free Gujaareh. Is this true?”

  He lowered his eyes. “I told you I would forgive you, Jeh Kalawe. That promise stands even if I don’t answer your questions and you have me punished for my silence.”

  “I’m not going to have you punished, you fool! I’m trying to help us both!” She stepped closer, lowering her voice. “The Protectors brought a thousand additional troops with them, Nijiri. They’re being deployed in the city now, to help keep the peace, and they’ve been given orders to respond to any problems very harshly—death to anyone who resists. And something else is being planned, in case there’s some sort of attack or citywide revolt. Something meant to break the people’s spirit.” She set her jaw. “I don’t know what. I’m not in favor right now; nor is Anzi.”

  Nijiri got up and went over to the window, glancing up as if to check the Dreamer’s position. It was the closest she had ever seen a Gatherer come to restlessness. “You won’t regain favor by helping us, Jeh Kalawe. So why are you?”

  Sunandi rolled her eyes. “I’m helping Kisua. This land has become too dangerous for us to hold. A few of the greedier members of our populace—some of whom are here now, in charge—will become wealthy as tensions grow, but the rest of Kisua is who will suffer as Gujaareh devours our resources and soldiers and gives back nothing but headaches. And I’m terrified of this nightmare plague getting into our populace. You know we have no defense against magic.”

  “We would help you, if that happened, once we learn how to fight it ourselves. Though it may require your people to attempt magic again.”

  “It won’t require magic. Just a miracle.”

  He turned to her slowly, studying her face, and then his eyes flicked to the scrolls under her arm. “You found something.”