by Sean Wallace
With Shuai in custody and the boy safe under the soldiers’ protection, Gongsun demanded answers. “Start from the beginning.”
“I’ll gladly answer all your questions, Magistrate, but only in confidence.”
“Agreed.”
Lun helped me to the tower on Gongsun’s instructions. “Thank you, Tangren Ao,” he whispered in my ear.
“No need, Lun. She likes you. All you needed was a little push.” I was glad the candy-rabbit brought them together, even though things had turned out much differently than I expected.
“I meant the water dragon.”
I pretended not to know what he was talking about. “You have a vivid imagination, lad.”
Lun left with a crooked smile.
I couldn’t lie to Magistrate Gongsun. I couldn’t prove the scholar’s guilt unless he understood how Shuai’s magic and mine worked. I sat on the steps of the pagoda and recounted the night’s events, and for the first time, spoke frankly about my power. As I revealed my secret, the burden of years fell away. Despite myself, my eyes brimmed with unshed tears.
At the end of it, Gongsun stroked his beard. “I believe you, though few others will.”
“No one else must know.”
“I agree. However, I still intend to bring Shuai up on charges of sorcery and arson. The boy’s testimony will seal his fate, and I will crush him with the full force of the law.”
Not what I wanted to hear, being a sorcerer myself, but nonetheless I bowed. “I, your insignificant servant, thank you.”
“You have a strange and useful talent that ought not go to waste, Tangren Ao,” Gongsun said. “Will you work for me? I will pay you well for it.”
“And give up this sweet calling? The life of a Tangren is all I know.”
“I am not asking you to abandon your trade. Stay in Chengdu. Learn the city. Help us rebuild. I only ask that, when I have need of you, you answer my summons. What say you?”
He surely knew how my magic could advance his career. For good or for ill, my fate was now entwined with his, so long as he demanded it. But what choice did I have? You should never anger a man who could sentence you to death. I felt as helpless as a rat caught in the coils of a—
“Your animal sign wouldn’t happen to be Snake, would it?” I asked.
“Indeed,” Gongsun replied. “How did you know?”
THE NARCOMANCER
N. K. Jemisin
In the land of Gujaareh it was said that trouble came by twos. Four bands of color marked the face of the Dreaming Moon; the great river split into four tributaries; there were four harvests in a year; four humors coursed the inner rivers of living flesh. By contrast, two of anything in nature meant inevitable conflict: stallions in a herd, lions in a pride. Siblings. The sexes.
Gatherer Cet’s twin troubles came in the form of two women. The first was a farmcaste woman who had been injured by an angry bull-ox; half her brains had been dashed out beneath its hooves. The Sharers, who could work miracles with the Goddess’s healing magic, had given up on her. “We can grow her a new head,” said one of the Sharer-elders to Cet, “but we cannot put the memories of her lifetime back in it. Best to claim her dreamblood for others, and send her soul where her mind has already gone.”
But when Cet arrived in the Hall of Blessings to see to the woman, he confronted a scene of utter chaos. Three squalling children struggled in the arms of a Sentinel, hampering him as he tried to assist his brethren. Nearer by, a young man fought to get past two of the Sharers, trying to reach a third Templeman – whom, clearly, he blamed for the woman’s condition. “You didn’t even try!” he shouted, the words barely intelligible through his sobs. “How can my wife live if you won’t even try?”
He elbowed one of the Sharers in the chest and nearly got free, but the other flung himself on the distraught husband’s back then, half dragging him to the floor. Still the man fought with manic fury, murder in his eyes. None of them noticed Cet until Cet stepped in front of the young man and raised his jungissa stone.
Startled, the young man stopped struggling, his attention caught by the stone. It had been carved into the likeness of a dragonfly; its gleaming black wings blurred as Cet tapped the stone hard with his thumbnail. The resulting sharp whine cut across the cacophony filling the Hall until even the children stopped weeping to look for the source of the noise. As peace returned, Cet willed the stone’s vibration to soften to a low, gentle hum. The man sagged as tension drained out of his body, until he hung limp in the two Sharers’ arms.
“You know she is already dead,” Cet said to the young man. “You know this must be done.”
The young man’s face tightened in anguish. “No. She breathes. Her heart beats.” He slurred the words as if drunk. “No.”
“Denying it makes no difference. The pattern of her soul has been lost. If she were healed, you would have to raise her all over again, like one of your children. To make her your wife then would be an abomination.”
The man began to weep again, quietly this time. But he no longer fought, and when Cet moved around him to approach his wife, he uttered a little moan and looked away.
Cet knelt beside the cot where the woman lay, and put his fore- and middle fingers on her closed eyelids. She was already adrift in the realms between waking and dream; there was no need to use his jungissa to put her to sleep. He followed her into the silent dark and examined her soul, searching for any signs of hope. But the woman’s soul was indeed like that of an infant, soft and devoid of all but the most simplistic desires and emotions. The merest press of Cet’s will was enough to send her toward the land of dreams, where she would doubtless dissolve into the substance of that realm – or perhaps she would eventually be reborn, to walk the realm of waking anew and regain the experiences she had lost.
Either way, her fate was not for Cet to decide. Having delivered her soul safely, he severed the tether that had bound her to the waking realm, and collected the delicate dreamblood that spilled forth.
The weeping that greeted Cet upon his return to waking was of a different order from before. Turning, Cet saw with satisfaction that the farmcaste man stood with his children now, holding them as they watched the woman’s flesh breathe its last. They were still distraught, but the violent madness was gone; in its place was the sort of grief that expressed itself through love and would, eventually, bring healing.
“That was nicely done,” said a low voice beside him, and Cet looked up to see the Temple Superior. Belatedly he realized the Superior had been the target of the distraught husband’s wrath. Cet had been so focused on the family that he had not noticed.
“You gave them peace without dreamblood,” the Superior continued. “Truly, Gatherer Cet, our Goddess favors you.”
Cet got to his feet, sighing as the languor of the Gathering faded slowly within him. “The Hall has still been profaned,” he said. He looked up at the great shining statue of the Goddess of Dreams, who towered over them with hands outstretched in welcome and eyes shut in the Eternal Dream. “Voices have been raised and violence done, right here at Her feet.”
“S-Superior?” A boy appeared at the Superior’s shoulder, too young to be an acolyte. One of the Temple’s adoptees from the House of Children, probably working a duty-shift as an errand runner. “Are you hurt at all? I saw that man . . .”
The Superior smiled down at him. “No, child; I’m fine, thank you. Go back to the House before your Teacher misses you.”
Looking relieved, the boy departed. The Superior sighed, watching him leave. “Some chaos is to be expected at times like this. The heart is rarely peaceful.” He gave Cet a faint smile. “Though, of course, you would not know that, Gatherer.”
“I remember the time before I took my oath.”
“Not the same.”
Cet shrugged, gazing at the mourning family. “I have the peace and order of Temple life to comfort me now. It is enough.”
The Superior looked at him oddly for a moment, then sighed. “
Well, I’m afraid I must ask you to leave that comfort for a time, Cet. Will you come with me to my office? I have a matter that requires the attention of a Gatherer – one with your unique skill at bestowing peace.”
And thus did Cet’s second hardship fall upon him.
The quartet that stood in the Superior’s office were upriver folk. Cet could see that in their dingy clothing and utter lack of makeup or jewelry; not even the poorest city dweller kept themselves so plain. And no city dweller went unsandaled on the brick-paved streets, which grew painfully hot at midday. Yet the woman who stood at the group’s head had the proud carriage of one used to the respect and obedience of others, finery or no finery. The three men all but cowered behind her as the Superior and Cet entered the room.
“Cet, this is Mehepi,” said the Superior, gesturing to the woman. “She and her companions are from a mining village some ways to the south, in the foothills that border the Empty Thousand. Mehepi, I bring you Cet, one of the Temple’s Gatherers.”
Mehepi’s eyes widened in a way that would have amused Cet, had he been capable of amusement. Clearly she had expected something more of Gujaareh’s famed Gatherers; someone taller, perhaps. But she recovered quickly and gave him a respectful bow. “I greet you in peace, Gatherer,” she said, “though I bring unpeaceful tidings.”
Cet inclined his head. “Tidings of . . .” But he trailed off, surprised, as his eyes caught a slight movement in the afternoon shadows of the room. Some ways apart from Mehepi and the others, a younger woman knelt on a cushion. She was so still – it was her breathing Cet had noticed – that Cet made no wonder he had overlooked her, though now it seemed absurd that he had. Wealthy men had commissioned sculptures with lips less lush, bones less graceful; sugared currants were not as temptingly black as her skin. Though the other upriver folk were staring at Cet, her eyes remained downcast, her body unmoving beneath the faded-indigo drape of her gown. Indigo: the mourning color. Mehepi wore it too.
“What is this?” Cet asked, nodding toward the younger woman.
Was there unease in Mehepi’s eyes? Defensiveness, certainly. “We were told the Temple offers its aid only to those who follow the ways of the Dream Goddess,” she said. “We have no money to tithe, Gatherer, and none of us has offered dreams or goods in the past year . . .”
All at once Cet understood. “You brought her as payment.”
“No, not payment . . .” But even without the hint of a stammer in Mehepi’s voice, the lie was plain in her manner.
“Explain, then.” Cet spoke more sharply than was, perhaps, strictly peaceful. “Why does she sit apart from the rest of you?”
The villagers looked at one another. But before any of them could speak, the young woman said, “Because I am cursed, Gatherer.”
The Temple Superior frowned. “Cursed? Is that some upriver superstition?”
Cet had thought the younger woman broken in spirit, to judge by her motionlessness and fixed gaze at the floor. But now she lifted her eyes, and Cet realized that, whatever was wrong with her, she was not broken. There was despair in her, strong enough to taste, but something more as well.
“I was a lapis merchant’s wife,” she said. “When he died, I was taken by the village headman as a secondwife. Now the headman is dead, and they blame me.”
“She is barren!” said one of the male villagers. “Two husbands and no children yet? And Mehepi here, she is the firstwife—”
“All of my children had been stillborn,” said Mehepi, touching her belly as if remembering the feel of them inside her. That much was truth, as was her pain; some of Cet’s irritation with her eased. “That was why my husband took another wife. Then my last child was born alive. The whole village rejoiced! But the next morning, the child stopped breathing. A few days later the brigands came.” Her face tightened in anger. “They killed my husband while she slept beside him. And they had their way with her, but even despite that there is no child.” Mehepi shook her head. “For so much death to follow one woman, and life itself to shun her? How can it be anything but a curse? That is why . . .” She darted a look at Cet, then drew herself up. “That is why we thought you might find value in her, Gatherer. Death is your business.”
“Death is not a Gatherer’s business,” Cet said. Did the woman realize how greatly she had insulted him and all his brethren? For the first time in a very long while, he felt anger stir in his heart. “Peace is our business. Sharers do that by healing the flesh. Gatherers deal with the soul, judging those which are too corrupt or damaged to be salvaged and granting them the Goddess’s blessing—”
“If you had learned your catechisms better you would understand that,” the Superior interjected smoothly. He threw Cet a mild look, doubtless to remind Cet that they could not expect better of ignorant country folk. “And you would have known there was no need for payment. In a situation like this, when the peace of many is under threat, it is the Temple’s duty to offer aid.”
The men looked abashed; Mehepi’s jaw tightened at the scolding. With a sigh, the Superior glanced down at some notes he’d taken on a reedleaf sheet. “So, Cet, these brigands she mentioned are the problem. For the past three turns of the greater Moon, their village and others along the Empty Thousand have suffered a curious series of attacks. Everyone in the village falls asleep – even the men on guard duty. When they wake, their valuables are gone. Food stores, livestock, the few stones of worth they gather from their mine; their children have been taken too, no doubt sold to those desert tribes who traffic in slaves. Some of the women and youths have been abused, as you heard. And a few, such as the village headman and the guards, were slain outright, perhaps to soften the village’s defenses for later. No one wakes during these assaults.”
Cet inhaled, all his anger forgotten. “A sleep spell? But only the Temple uses narcomancy.”
“Impossible to say,” the Superior said. “But given the nature of these attacks, it seems clear we must help. Magic is fought best with magic.” He looked at Cet as he spoke.
Cet nodded, suppressing the urge to sigh. It would have been within his rights to suggest that one of his other Gatherer-brethren – perhaps Liyou, the youngest – handle the matter instead. But after all his talk of peace and righteous duty, that would have been hypocritical. And . . . in spite of himself, his gaze drifted back to the younger woman. She had lowered her eyes once more, her hands folded in her lap. There was nothing peaceful in her stillness.
“We will need a soul-healer,” Cet said softly. “There is more to this than abuse of magic.”
The Superior sighed. “A Sister, then. I’ll write the summons to their Matriarch.” The Sisters were an offshoot branch of the faith, coexisting with the Servants of Hananja in an uneasy parallel. Cet knew the Superior had never liked them.
Cet gave him a rueful smile. “Everything for Her peace.” He had never liked them either.
They set out that afternoon: the five villagers, two of the Temple’s warrior Sentinels, Cet, and a Sister of the Goddess. The Sister, who arrived unescorted at the river docks just as they were ready to push off, was worse than even Cet had expected – tall and commanding, clad in the pale-gold robes and veils that signified high rank in their order. That meant this Sister had mastered the most difficult techniques of erotic dreaming, with its attendant power to affect the spirit and the subtler processes of flesh. A formidable creature. But the greatest problem in Cet’s eyes was that the Sister was male.
“Did the messenger not explain the situation?” Cet asked the Sister at the first opportunity. He kept his tone light. They rode in a canopied barge more than large enough to hold their entire party and the pole-crew besides. It was not large enough to accommodate ill feelings between himself and the Sister.
The Sister, who had given his name as Ginnem, stretched out along the bench he had claimed for himself. “Gatherers; so tactful.”
Cet resisted the urge to grind his teeth. “You cannot deny that a different Sister – a female Sister – w
ould have been better suited to deal with this matter.”
“Perhaps,” Ginnem replied, with a smile that said he thought no one better suited than himself. “But look.” He glanced across the aisle at the villagers, who had occupied a different corner of the barge. The three men sat together on a bench across from the firstwife. Three benches back, the young woman sat alone. “That one has suffered at the hands of both men and women,” Ginnem said. “Do you think my sex makes any difference to her?”
“She was raped by men,” Cet said.
“And she is being destroyed by a woman. That firstwife wants her dead, can you not see?” Ginnem shook his head, jingling tiny bells woven into each of his braids. “If not for the need to involve the Temple in the brigand matter, no doubt the firstwife would’ve found some quiet way to do her in already. And why do you imagine only a woman could know of rape?”
Cet started. “Forgive me. I did not realize . . .”
“It was long ago.” Ginnem shrugged his broad shoulders. “When I was a soldier; another life.”
Cet’s surprise must have shown on his face, for a moment later Ginnem laughed. “Yes, I was born military caste,” he said. “I earned high rank before I felt the calling to the Sisterhood. And I still keep up some of my old habits.” He lifted one flowing sleeve to reveal a knife-sheath strapped around his forearm, then flicked it back so quickly that no one but Cet noticed. “So you see, there is more than one reason the Sisterhood sent me.”
Cet nodded slowly, still trying and failing to form a clear opinion of Ginnem. Male Sisters were rare; he wondered if all of them were this strange. “Then we are four fighters and not three. Good.”
“Oh, don’t count me,” Ginnem said. “My soldier days are over; I fight only when necessary now. And I expect I’ll have my hands full with other duties.” He glanced at the young woman again, sobering. “Someone should talk to her.”