No. Not silent. A few blocks away, echoing up from the street, Nijiri heard the slap of sandals on stone. Running.
“Light,” Ehiru whispered. “A woman, perhaps. Or a child.”
Nijiri swung about to orient on those running feet as well, tensing as a thousand possibilities—most of them dire—ran through his mind. “A messenger. A servant on an errand.” A rapist. A murderer.
They fell silent again, listening. The rhythm of the runner changed, skidding now and again, faltering and then resuming. Nijiri frowned, for there was something indisputably urgent about the sound of those running feet. Something frantic.
Ehiru lifted a hand in a quick signal: follow in silence. Nijiri obeyed at once as Ehiru abruptly set off, leaping from the roof on which they stood to the next, and then running along another. Their course, Nijiri realized as he ran behind his mentor, would intersect that of the runner in a half-block or so.
Ehiru stopped at the edge of a squat storage house’s roof, peering over its wall into the street below. No one was in sight. The patter of feet had stopped.
From an alley on the other side of the building—the direction in which they’d last heard the runner—they both heard a sharp, frightened cry.
Ehiru was moving before the cry’s echo faded, running with no further attempt at stealth. Nijiri scrambled to keep up. Even after ten years of acrobatics training, it still shocked him when Ehiru reached the roof-edge and slowed not one whit before leaping off. He flipped in the air, his hands reaching back to catch the wall as he fell; his feet braced against the stone to cushion the impact. An instant later he let go, dropping another man-length to land on fingers and toes, his eyes fixed on the dark beyond the alley’s entrance.
From that darkness came a soft hiss.
Nijiri skidded to a halt on the rooftop, his heart pounding. There was no easier way down. Swallowing, he took a deep breath to focus as the Sentinels had taught him, and concentrated on the opposite wall of the alley as he repeated Ehiru’s flipping trick. He fouled the final leap, however, landing without injury but stumbling.
Before Nijiri could regain his balance, something flew out of the dark and struck Ehiru. It looked like a badly packed sack of clothes; it had yellow hair. The Kisuati woman’s girl.
Hananja have mercy!
Ehiru grunted as he was borne down by the dead weight of the corpse. As he struggled to extricate himself from flopping limbs and a lolling head and horrible, horrible sightless eyes, Nijiri moved to help—and gasped as something else came out of the dark and struck him so hard that his vision went white. He hit the cobblestones with painful force, too stunned to do more than flail weakly at the thing that had struck him. But this thing was no corpse.
“Pretty child,” whispered a voice in Nijiri’s ear. Fear froze him; the voice seemed barely human, low and rough. “I will enjoy your taste.”
Hands as strong as iron caught Nijiri’s arms. One of them pinned his wrists above his head. The other, smelling of dirt and bile and a four of other foul things, fumbled over his face. Nijiri shut his eyes in reflex as fingertips pressed against his eyelids. Wait, this is— But just as he understood—
—He woke screaming, somehow freed. Terror pounded through his blood so powerfully that he rolled to his side and vomited a thin sour trickle, then could not find the wit to move away from the mess. Instinctively he curled himself into a ball, praying for the fear to pass and for the sick throb of his head to either go away or kill him and be done with it.
Dimly he heard the sounds of flesh striking flesh, the scuffle of sandals on stone. A feral snarl, like that of a jackal.
“Abomination!” Ehiru’s shout came to Nijiri through his misery and some of the fear faded. Ehiru would keep him safe. “You shall not have him!”
A rough laugh was the creature’s reply, and Nijiri whimpered, for somehow he had heard that laugh in his nightmares—but he could not remember the nightmares.
The cobblestones vibrated as feet pounded over them, out of the alleyway, running away. Then hands lifted Nijiri, cradling him against warmth and muscle and a hard-beating heart. “Nijiri? Open your eyes.”
It had not occurred to Nijiri that his eyes were closed.
Then fingers touched Nijiri’s eyelids. He thrashed and opened his mouth to scream, terrified. But something sweet and warm and exquisite brushed against his mind, soft as flower petals, soothing away the terror.
When Nijiri opened his eyes, Ehiru’s worried expression brought reality back to him, though in fragments.
“Thank the Dreamer. I thought your soul had come completely untethered.” The world shifted dizzyingly as Ehiru lifted Nijiri in his arms. “The Sharers will be able to heal you fully.”
Then the world began to bob and wheel in a mad dance as Ehiru ran with him. Nijiri’s last sight before unconsciousness was the gem-layered glow of dawn.
11
It happened so rarely that Ehiru was summoned to perform his duty. Oh, the commissions were summonings in their way—submitted through intercessors, assessed by committee, and sanctified with prayer before a Gatherer ever saw them. So distant, that way. A direct summons was better. Then the Gathering could be performed by daylight, treasured, celebrated. The tithebearer could pass into eternal joy with family and friends near to witness the wonder, and bid farewell.
But so few truly believed in Hananja’s blessing or welcomed it as they should. All the procedure, all the stealth had been designed for them—those of weak faith, or none at all. Even now Ehiru noted the ones who drew away as he walked through the streets in his formal Gatherer’s robe, face hooded, the black oasis rose visible on his shoulder. It saddened Ehiru that so many of Hananja’s citizens feared Her greatest gift… but perhaps that too was Her will. The greatest mysteries of life—or death—were always frightening, but no less marvelous for that.
In the merchant quarter: lovely, sprawling houses surrounded him. He reached the one he sought and found its inhabitants waiting, formally dressed and solemn, flanking the open door in twin rows to signal that the way was clear. A tall, pale-skinned elder was the master of the house. He bowed deeply as Ehiru passed, but not before Ehiru caught his eyes and read the faith there. Here was one at least who did not begrudge the Goddess Her due.
But for now his duty was to another. Ehiru said nothing as he passed the old man and entered the dwelling. She would be in the servant quarters. He stepped through a hanging and discovered a vast courtyard where a lesser house’s atrium would be. Several tiny cottages clustered here. Some showed personal touches—a flower garden in front of this one, inexpert glyphs decorating the walls of that. He examined each house in turn, contemplating what he’d fathomed of the tithebearer from her note. It had been brief, using the blocky pictorals of a semiliterate rather than the more elegant hieratics taught to higher castes. Simple language, a simple request, written inexpertly but with care… His eyes settled on the nearest of the cottages. Conservatively decorated, comfortable in appearance, linked to the house by a neat path of river stones. Yes, this would be the one.
As Ehiru pushed open the front hanging, the smell hit him: old blood, feces, infection. Neither the herbalist’s incense nor the sachets of dried flowers hanging from the ceiling could mask the stench. There were few diseases that magic could not heal, but those were always the worst. The cottage was little more than a single large room. A tiny altar stood in one corner; a firepit took up another. The far end of the room was dominated by a small pallet, on which lay a silent, shuddering form: the tithebearer.
But she was not alone. A boy-child who could have seen no more than six floods, seven at the most, knelt beside the pallet. Beside him were bowls, wadded cloths, a plate that held some sort of herbal paste, and the incense-brazier. A child so young, nursing his mother as she lay dying?
Then the child turned and gazed at him with eyes like desert jasper gone dull with age, and Ehiru experienced a sudden flutter of intuition. The shaky, crude pictorals of the note. Not an adul
t’s hand at all.
“Are you the Gatherer?” the boy asked. His voice was very soft.
“Yes.”
The child nodded. “She stopped talking this morning.” He turned back to the woman and laid his small hand on her trembling one. “She’s been waiting for you.”
After a moment’s contemplation Ehiru stepped forward and knelt beside the boy. The woman was awake—but so far gone with pain that Ehiru marveled at her silence. The disease was a cruel one that he had seen before, infecting the bowels so that the victim’s own body poisoned itself trying to fight the invader. Too late by the time the first symptoms appeared. She would have been passing blood for days, unable to draw nourishment from food, burning with fever even as she took chill from shock. Ehiru had heard the pain described as if some animal nested within the victim’s gut and sought to chew its way out.
Her eyes were fixed on the ceiling. Ehiru passed a hand before her face but they flickered only a little. He sighed and reached up to lower his hood—then paused as he considered the boy’s presence. The child had sent for him, but probably on his mother’s request. Could a child so young comprehend the blessing that a Gatherer brought?
Yet as he looked again into the child’s ancient, soul-weary eyes, he knew this one could.
So he lowered his hood and put a hand on the child’s shoulder, squeezing gently for a moment before returning his attention to the woman. “I am Ehiru, named Nsha in dreams. I come as summoned to deliver you from the pains of waking into the peace of dream. Will you accept Hananja’s blessing?”
No response—save a faint racking shudder—from the woman. “She accepts,” the boy whispered. After a moment, Ehiru nodded.
So he stroked her eyelids shut and sent her to sleep, and crafted a dream that brought her pleasure in place of torment. When he opened his eyes to observe her last breath, her cheeks glistened with tears and her face was rapt with joy. He lifted the sheet to arrange her and to set his mark on her breast. It was beautiful against her unblemished red-brown skin. He so rarely Gathered women, and this was a young one at that.
“Thank you,” the boy whispered.
Ehiru focused on him, contemplating. “Where is your father?”
The boy only shook his head. He was servant-caste; any man who’d felt a passing fancy for his mother could’ve sired him. No relatives would be willing or able to support him. The master of the house might keep him, or release him to find a new master if he could. Then his life would continue in years of endless, mindless toil.
He held out a hand to the child. “Does it pain you?”
The boy’s eyes lifted slowly. “Hn?”
“Your heart.”
“Oh. Yes, Gatherer.”
Ehiru nodded. “I’m no Sharer, but I have your mother’s peace within me. If anyone has the right to it, you do. Give me your hand.”
The child took his hand—with no hesitation or fear, Ehiru noted, pleased. So he pulled the boy into his arms and held him and shared with him an instant of the bliss that his mother would now know for eternity. A bit of cautery; no more than that. Dreamblood might soothe wounds of the heart, but it was never right to take the pain away completely.
The child went limp in his arms and began to weep, and Ehiru smiled.
A step behind him. He rose and turned with the child in his arms and saw the master standing at the threshold of the cottage. The rest of the family and servants hovered behind him, peering in. “Gatherer?”
“If you have no objection, Sijankes-elder, I’ll take this child back to the Hetawa with me.”
The elder’s eyebrows rose. “I have no objection, Gatherer, but… are you certain? He’s only a child, too young yet to be much use as a servant.”
Only a child, and only a servant, but able to accept death and understand its blessing. Ehiru shifted the child to lean him against one shoulder and smiled as thin arms encircled his neck. As a Gatherer, he had never expected, nor wanted, sons. In spite of this, he stroked the boy’s back, and for just a moment wondered if this was how it felt to have one.
“He will serve the Goddess now,” he said.
And then he left with the boy safe in his arms, a mother’s dreamblood warm inside him, and tears of love drying against his skin.
* * *
Ehiru watched as Sharer Mni-inh, fingers on Nijiri’s closed lids, sighed and opened his eyes.
“You were right to share peace with him immediately. His umblikeh was a hair from snapping.” The Sharer took his hands from the boy. “He’ll recover with no permanent harm—physically, at least.”
Ehiru sent a prayer of thanks to the Goddess. “The creature was on him for only a breath. Gatherings are never so quick.”
“You can’t call this a Gathering.” Mni-inh scowled so fiercely that his thin, fine brows almost met in the middle of his forehead. “It’s too obscene for that. The humor was stripped with such speed and force that it left great rents in his mind. I’ve healed them, but there will be scars.”
Ehiru ached in silent misery, lowering his eyes to the alcove floor. “My fault.”
“Don’t you dare blame yourself. Though if I hadn’t seen the evidence with my own eyes, I would never have believed it. Gods; a Reaper.” He shook his head as he got to his feet to stretch, eyeing Ehiru sidelong. “I would’ve said the madness had taken you.”
“I would’ve said the same before tonight,” Ehiru replied. He lifted a hand to one temple to massage the dull ache there. “But visions don’t leave bruises, or bodies.”
Mni-inh frowned, stepping closer and pushing Ehiru’s hand away. Ehiru felt the Sharer’s cooler fingers press against his temple, followed by the more subtle touch of another soul against his own. “You spent your last reserve giving peace to the boy. And took no tithe tonight?”
“No.”
The Sharer’s lips twitched, probably in disapproval. “You need an infusion, then. I’ll wake Inesst. He has enough left to share with you, and it’s almost time for his duty-shift anyhow.”
Ehiru hesitated. “I think… I would prefer to face the pranje. Now, rather than at my usual time.”
Mni-inh scowled. “You’ve been foolish about this long enough, Ehiru. You’ve served more than enough penance—”
“That is for Hananja to say, not you.” Ehiru folded his arms and fixed his gaze on Nijiri, feeling more certain of his decision as he did so. “I tried to Gather last night, and circumstances demanded an abeyance. Then I tried to prevent a murder and failed. A child is dead, her soul banished to torment. Her body lies in an alley like trash, and now my apprentice has been harmed as well. Does that sound as though Hananja still wants me to work, Mni-inh?”
“It sounds like you’re seeing omens around every corner!”
Ehiru pointed a finger at Nijiri’s prone form. The boy still slept, but was beginning to breathe faster as he recovered. “There lies an omen. What do you think it means?” Mni-inh flinched at his sharpness, and with an effort Ehiru restrained his anger before it could alarm the Sharer further. More calmly he said, “Do you believe it was all a vision?”
Mni-inh rolled his eyes. “No, obviously something happened to Nijiri. But your reserves are low enough to be problematic, Ehiru, you cannot deny—”
“I don’t want to deny it. I welcome it. I’ll go into seclusion now if you think I should, but I won’t ignore this coincidence, if that it is. I think She calls me to commune with Her, Mni-inh. I am Her Servant; I must obey.”
“And your apprentice?” Mni-inh gestured toward Nijiri, his own anger bordering on the unpeaceful. “If you undergo the pranje now and She tells you to offer the Final Tithe, he’ll be left alone.”
“Sonta-i can—”
“Sonta-i has trouble mustering enough simple human compassion to comfort his tithebearers, much less anyone else!”
“Rabbaneh, then.”
Mni-inh scowled in exasperation and poked Ehiru in the chest with a finger. “You, stubborn fool. You’re the one the boy is in love w
ith.” Ehiru flinched at Mni-inh’s bluntness—but then Mni-inh had always been too blunt, willing to say things no Gatherer would put to words. Most Sharers wouldn’t have, either; that was just Mni-inh’s way. “It’s a good thing; only love can heal scars like his. And yours, if you ever decide to do more than just let them fester.”
Ehiru took an involuntary step back, unbalanced by more than the jab. “I…”
Nijiri chose that moment, conveniently, to stir. Throwing a last glare at Ehiru, Mni-inh went to the boy’s pallet and knelt, lifting one of his eyelids to peer within. Pursing his lips as he gauged something only a Sharer could fathom, Mni-inh then leaned down and whispered in the boy’s ear.
Nijiri’s eyelids flicked open, blank and disoriented—and then he bucked, throwing Mni-inh off and rolling away. He backed himself against the alcove wall in a crouch, eyes wild, before the Sharer could do more than gasp out a swift oath and reach after him.
Ehiru quickly caught Mni-inh’s hand. Sentinel training functioned in concert with instinct; in this state, the boy might break the Sharer’s arm. Pushing Mni-inh back, he crouched low so as to seem less threatening. “Peace, Nijiri. The danger has passed.”
It took several breaths for sense to flow back into the boy’s eyes. When it did he shut them again and sagged against the wall. “Brother.”
Ehiru crept closer. “Here. The demon’s gone. We’ve come home to the Hetawa, and you’re safe in Hananja’s own Hall. See?”
He got close enough to reach out and touch Nijiri’s cheek with his fingertips. The boy’s eyes opened and for a moment Ehiru was thrown ten years back in time. Desert jasper. Then the vision passed.
“Yes,” Nijiri whispered. “I see you, Brother.”