And she was smiling, even as she was dragged along by two warriors of Wanahomen’s hunt.
But that was not half so troubling as the grim anticipation in Yanassa’s manner. “Tell me what you plan to do with her!” Hanani demanded.
Yanassa scowled and finally stepped into the tent, pulling the flap closed behind her. “It isn’t up to me—or at least, not me alone. The hunt will give her to Unte. Unte will probably give her to the tribe. Specifically, the tribe’s women. It is for us to decide another woman’s fate.” She folded her arms. “Some of us are angry enough to tear her apart ourselves, or throw her from the cliffs, but most likely, we’ll make a gift of her to the tribe’s men. They’ll see that she suffers long enough to satisfy all.”
Hanani stared at her, too revolted for words.
Yanassa sighed and looked away for a moment, a whiff of shame in her eyes—but she was angry too, and it was the anger that made her turn back to glare defiantly at Hanani. “It’s what they do to our women, when they can!”
“And that makes it right?”
Yanassa shook her head, not in response to Hanani’s question, but out of some great inner turmoil. “The last woman survived, if you can call it that. The Shadoun sent her back to us. Broken, gibbering—” She clenched her fists. “We actually took her to your people for help, though it near choked us to do so. And they tried, out of simple kindness. But she was damaged beyond the ability of magic to repair … They could heal her body, but not her mind. So they killed her for us, as a mercy. And we were glad for it.” Yanassa’s eyes welled with tears; sorrow and hatred competed in her face with an ugly mixed result. “That was twenty years ago, my great-aunt. I remember the look in her eyes, little mouse, and if you had seen her too—” She drew in a deep breath. “So no, it’s not right. But I do not care.”
Hanani shivered, though the tent was not cool inside. She had seen people so wounded by tragedy or other misfortune, a handful of times in her Hetawa life. When madness was not inborn or the result of some humoric imbalance, when the problem was memories and not the flesh that housed them—No, even magic could only do so much. That was why Gatherers existed.
Yet, as she looked at Yanassa’s trembling lips, her clenched jaw, it occurred to Hanani that sometimes the real damage was not to the souls released, but the ones left to mourn. Corruption was the most virulent of diseases, after all, and it needed only the smallest wound in which to fester.
“So stay in here,” Yanassa said. Her face had softened a little. “Unte and Tajedd plan to question the woman first. They may yet kill her outright—if only because anything worse would taint the solstice celebrations.”
She exited the tent, and Hanani stared at the swinging tent flaps for a long moment after she’d gone.
Then she pushed through them herself, and headed straight for Unte’s tent.
29
The Protectors
The messenger-bird had come and gone, a harbinger of change. Now that change was at the palace gates, and Sunandi Jeh Kalawe was afraid.
Anzi put a hand on her shoulder as they stood waiting in the courtyard. The courtyard was still, though on their way through the palace Sunandi and Anzi had seen courtiers and guards hurrying about the marble halls to prepare for their unexpected guests. Only the servants—most of them Gujaareen and unimpressed by the arrival of yet more Kisuati—had been calm as they went about their duties. A few of the Kisuati had paused to bow to Sunandi and Anzi in passing, but most had paid the couple no attention. No doubt they considered Sunandi useless to whatever political ambitions they held, now that a quartet of Protectors was arriving to take control of Gujaareh.
“You don’t know what they’ll do,” Anzi murmured. She looked up at him, more grateful than words that they had settled their differences in the wake of the incident six days before. The two Gathered soldiers had been his men. But he had listened when she’d cautioned him against going at once to arrest the Gatherer involved. Instead he’d waited, calming himself and his restive officers, and waiting too while the tensions in the city eased somewhat. And when the message had come from Kisua that Sunandi should prepare for the four members of the Protectorate who were already on their way downriver to Gujaareh, he had returned the favor by calming her, and reminding her that she had done a good job of governing the kingdom given limited resources and difficult orders from the homeland. Whatever shift the political winds had undergone in Kisua, no one could deny that.
But Sunandi, who knew exactly how fickle those winds could be, was not so certain.
She had chosen to meet the Protectors in the great courtyard of Yanya-iyan, before the glass-topped pavilion that had once served as the outdoor throne dais of Gujaareh’s Prince. Now the dais was merely a natural focal point for attention as visitors entered through the palace’s gates and crossed the swept sand. Soldiers came first, fanning out to flank the courtyard’s walls. Then came household retainers and baggage carriers, and lastly four fours of strong young men, each quartet carrying the poles of a mid-sized palanquin on its shoulders. The palanquins were green-draped, bedecked with tassels and polished shells; she could see only faint figures within. The groups stopped and set the palanquins down before the throne dais, and Sunandi and Anzi knelt to show their respect as the Protectors emerged.
And the moment she looked up to greet their visitors, Sunandi knew the winds in Kisua must be ill indeed.
Two of the Protectors Sunandi knew personally: Sasannante, a great scholar and poet whom Sunandi had studied in her apprenticeship; and Yao, called Mama Yao because she’d had thirteen children and used them to become matriarch of one of Kisua’s most powerful shipping families. The other two she knew only by face and reputation. One was Moib, a former general who had lost an eye against Gujaareh-backed troops at the Battle of Soijaro ten years before. The other—a man so tall that he had probably been miserable the whole way in that palanquin—had to be Aksata, another merchant, whose family had made its fortune selling swords and armor to Kisua’s standing army. Moib the Warmonger, he was called, and Aksata the Profiteer.
So things have gotten that bad. Lovely. There can be only one reason the Protectors sent these two here.
As if hearing her thought, Aksata smiled, inclining his head to Sunandi and Anzi.
“Greetings, Speaker Jeh Kalawe, General Seh Ainunu. The Council sends its regards.”
Sunandi got to her feet, though she kept her gaze respectfully lowered. Beside her, Anzi did the same. “And greetings to you, Esteemed and Wise of Kisua. I bid you welcome to Gujaareh. Was your journey difficult? May I offer you refreshment or rest?”
“Yes, shortly,” Aksata said. He glanced around at his fellow Protectors. Mama Yao, who was in perhaps her seventh decade, leaned heavily on one of the palanquin-servants but nodded in weary agreement with Aksata. Sasannante stood straight and inscrutable as the elaborately carved cane in his hands, while Moib was carefully performing some soldier’s stretch to work out the stiffness of travel. Aksata himself seemed hale, but then he was only in his late fifties by Sunandi’s guess. In Gujaareh, where magic lengthened citizens’ lives, he would have been too young to qualify for eldership.
While Mama Yao is so old that the journey alone might have killed her. She has no love of Gujaareh, but neither is she unreasonable … So do the other Protectors hope for her to die before she can do much?
It was, sadly, quite possible.
“The journey has indeed been difficult,” Aksata said, “in no small part because we hurried to get here. We received word along the way of further trouble beyond the plague of desert bandits you’ve suffered. Something to do with the Hetawa?”
“Yes,” Sunandi replied, keeping her tone carefully neutral. Messenger-birds again, or perhaps a message-rider, traveling upriver to meet the Protectors along the way. Either way, she had no idea how much truth—or falsehood—the Protectors had been given by the spies among Sunandi’s staff.
“At the start of the solstice,” she began, �
��a pair of our soldiers were Gathered. Apparently they had been molesting women in the city.”
“I was told they were whores,” Moib said. His voice was rough as road-gravel; there was another puckered scar, long healed, across his throat.
“Gujaareh has few whores as we call them,” Sunandi said. “Servants and timbalin-house women, if they choose”—and even those were never to be assaulted under Gujaareh’s Law, but this was not the time to explain that to the Protectors—“but the women assaulted by the soldiers were of another caliber. A kind of priestess.”
Mama Yao curled her lip. “Holy whores, then. And no doubt easily mistaken for any other kind. So the Gujaareen slaughtered your men over a misunderstanding?” She looked at Anzi.
Anzi set his jaw for a moment, and Sunandi prayed her husband’s temper would hold. “They do not consider it a misunderstanding, Esteemed.”
“Of course not,” said Aksata. He sighed. “Well, we expected something like this would happen eventually. You’ve executed the Gatherer who did the deed?”
Sunandi frowned. “No, Esteemed.”
“No?” Something in Aksata’s manner—poor acting, perhaps—told her at once that he was nowhere near as surprised as he seemed. “Arrested him, then? A trial seems overly formal, but …”
So that was it. Sunandi almost smiled. Somewhere in the afterlife of dreams, her old mentor Kinja was laughing. But she knew now the role they meant her to play.
“Tensions in the city have been high,” she said. She looked past Aksata at the other Protectors. Aksata was irrelevant; he had come with his own agenda. Moib too, most likely. It was possible that all of them had come for the same purpose, but she had to try. She focused on Mama Yao and Sasannante, hoping that they had not yet prejudged the situation so much as to ignore reason. “There has been unrest lately with the Banbarra raids, and there are rumors of some sort of sickness loose within the city. I also suspect some of the nobles of—”
“That is enough, Speaker,” said Mama Yao. She straightened and fixed a stern look on Sunandi. “We did not come for excuses.”
Sunandi closed her mouth for a moment. Then she said, “I would welcome any solution that you suggest, Esteemed.”
Sasannante glanced at the other Protectors and smiled. “I told you Kinja’s protégé would not be foolish.”
“Too conciliatory, perhaps,” said Mama Yao. She looked annoyed, as though she had expected a better fight from Sunandi.
“Perhaps.” Sasannante looked at Sunandi, thoughtful. “This will be a difficult time for you, Speaker. It’s not easy to give up the sort of control you’ve had up to now. But if you would weather this time successfully, remember that you serve the people of Kisua, not those of Gujaareh.”
All of them, then. Sunandi lowered her eyes, inwardly quivering with anger that she would never show. Damn them! Ten years of sleepless nights and careful diplomacy, and now they were about to undo it all.
But Sasannante was right; she served Kisua above all. Gujaareh had its own protectors, more dangerous than the council back home realized. And if by bowing and smiling at these fools, Sunandi could find some way to shield her homeland from the worst of Gujaareh’s brewing wrath? Then so be it.
So she inclined her head to Sasannante, spreading her hands to the sides in a graceful extra measure of submission, and said, “I have never forgotten that I serve Kisua, Esteemed—and its Protectors, of course.”
Moib let out a rough chuckle; Aksata shook his head and smiled. “I fear for the day you become an elder, Jeh Kalawe,” he said. “I wonder if we dare let you on the council when that happens!”
Sunandi kept her contempt hidden behind the pleasant mask of her face. Let me on and the first thing I will do is make sure self-serving, shortsighted fools like you are assassinated in your sleep.
“So.” Aksata stretched, joints popping loudly as he did so; he grimaced. “Redeem yourselves today, Speaker and General. Go to the Hetawa and fetch the man who dared to take a Kisuati life. Bring him here for us to make an example of him.”
And Anzi, sweet Anzi, who had spent the past few days learning from Sunandi why that was precisely the wrong thing to do, frowned and stepped forward. “Esteemed, if you would but listen to my wife’s advice—”
Sunandi put a hand on his shoulder, and he turned to stare at her. She shook her head minutely. They had been together for nearly ten years; he had come to know her better than anyone save Kinja and a certain Gujaareen priest—both of whom were long dead. She still marveled that at times like this he could look at her and decide, based purely on love, to trust her without question. She could not remember what in her life she had done to deserve such devotion. But he showed it now, and stepped back.
“It shall be done at once, Esteemed,” she said, and bowed. Anzi bowed as well, though his bow was less graceful; he was not as good at pretending as she.
Aksata nodded. “Well, then. If you please, we will happily accept that offer of rest and refreshment, and await your return.”
Now they stood on the steps of the Hetawa, Sunandi and the sixteen soldiers of Anzi’s best troop, waiting while a Sentinel went to announce their arrival. Sunandi had requested that the soldiers be unarmed, but she doubted that distinction would matter much to the crowd of Gujaareen that was already gathering in the square, come to see what Kisuati soldiers wanted of Hananja’s Servants. She could make out murmurs among the crowd, feel the undercurrent of anger that lurked just below the surface, but she was not afraid. Not yet, anyhow. No Gujaareen would do violence on the Hetawa’s doorstep.
The great bronze doors clacked and then groaned open. Belatedly it occurred to Sunandi to wonder why the doors had been closed—and latched, if she had not mistaken the sound—in the first place. It was mid-afternoon; the Hetawa usually stayed open during the daylight hours.
Then the Superior emerged, looking tired but not at all surprised to see them, and Sunandi quickly focused on the here and now.
“Welcome, Voice of the Protectors,” the Superior said, inclining his head to her. He glanced at the soldiers and raised one curling white eyebrow. “Welcome, soldiers of the Protectors as well. I’m surprised to see you without weapons.”
Dirakha, the troop’s captain, offered the Superior a careful bow, then glanced wordlessly at Sunandi. The Superior gave them a faint smile. “I see,” he said. “Thank you, Speaker. We appreciate the respect.”
Sunandi inclined her head in return, though only just enough to acknowledge an equal. Among Gujaareen, for whom the Superior officially ranked second only to the Prince in power, this held the risk of insult, but the Superior must have known why they had come. He only sighed a little, his smile fading.
“The Gatherers bid you enter, Sunandi Jeh Kalawe,” he said. “And since these men are unarmed, they may enter as well. There’s something within the Hall of Blessings that you should see.”
This Sunandi had not expected. However, she concealed her surprise and nodded, mounting the steps to follow the Superior inside. Behind her she heard Dirakha hesitate for a moment, perhaps waiting for some signal from Sunandi, but she did not look at him. The choice to enter the Hetawa would have to be his. She knew his decision when she heard a muttered Sua curse and the sudden tromp of sixteen pairs of sandals at her heels.
She passed through the doorway into the cooler, dimmer confines of the Hetawa, blinking as her eyes adjusted. Then, when they did, she stopped in shock.
In twin rows along the central aisle lay pallets. There must have been forty or more, spaced neatly apart and lined up halfway to the bronze doors. On each pallet lay a sleeping person.
Sunandi frowned, moving down the aisle as she tried to comprehend what she was seeing. Was this some new ritual? But some of the pallet-bound folk seemed to be sleeping fitfully, groaning and shifting in their sleep as if unable to wake from a nightmare.
Peering into the face of one of the sleepers, Sunandi stiffened as she recognized the man. This was one of the Sharers, whom she’d
met ages ago at some state function or other. She looked around at the other sleepers, and shivered as a chill passed through her. Nearly all of them wore Hetawa garb.
“Mostly Sharers, but Teachers and Sentinels as well,” the Superior said, watching her. She turned to him; he offered her another thin, pained smile. “No Gatherers or children, thank the Goddess. A small blessing.”
“What is this?” Sunandi asked.
“Your spies must have told you of the plague.” He moved past her, stopping to gaze down at another of his comrades. “We’ve been fighting it for a month now. I will admit we’ve kept the news relatively quiet, in the earnest hope that we would soon find some cure.” He sighed. “Now we have no choice. Rumors are rampant in the city that we are the source of this horror. We must reveal everything so that people may find peace in the truth.”
Dirakha took Sunandi’s arm suddenly. “Speaker, if there is a plague—”
“The plague is passed from dream to dream,” said a familiar voice, and Sunandi turned from the captain to see a figure clad in pale robes moving toward them. He stopped and bowed over his hands in the Gujaareen fashion; his topknot of red-brown ringlets swung forward as he did so. The Gatherer Rabbaneh. As he straightened, Sunandi realized that he was not smiling for perhaps the first time in all the years she’d known him.
“There’s no danger of contagion,” he said. He looked at Dirakha, who abruptly looked embarrassed and released Sunandi. “Not now. But if you were to lie down now and sleep among these people, you would never wake.”
The Shadowed Sun: Dreamblood: Book 2 Page 26