“No. I still intend to submit myself to Her judgment. But I must seek dreamblood now, or become dangerous to our companions.” He sighed. “Once I settle the matter of the Hetawa’s corruption, then I can contemplate my own.”
“Yes, Brother.” Nijiri tried to feel glad for that respite.
“Of course, there is one blessing in this. You’ll finally have the chance to assist in a Gathering.”
Nijiri caught his breath; he had not considered that at all. “Will you speak with her, Brother? Tonight? May I attend?”
Ehiru mustered a rough chuckle, which drove back some of Nijiri’s worry. If Ehiru was still capable of humor, he was not as far gone as Nijiri had feared. “Tonight, yes, I shall assay. You may attend if she wishes it, my greedy apprentice.” Then he sobered. “This serves our purposes, Nijiri, but we must never forget that the tithebearer’s needs come first.”
“Yes, Brother.” They fell silent for the rest of the ride into Tesa.
Palm trees rose out of the sand until they loomed more and more like mountains, the closer they drew. The town beneath was clearly far more prosperous than Ketuyae had been. Narrow fields ran between the houses, taking advantage of an irrigation system that appeared to have been haphazardly rigged throughout the town with fired-clay pipes. Potted plants grew wherever the pipes wouldn’t go, on balconies and rooftops and street corners. The sight of so much green lifted Nijiri’s spirits again. He darted a glance at Ehiru and was pleased to see that his mentor seemed to have regained a measure of alertness as well, sitting straighter on his camel and looking about with interest.
Children came forth at once to surround the caravan, chattering in a syrupy dialect of Gujaareen that Nijiri found barely comprehensible; they offered sweets, flasks of water, flowers and other welcoming trinkets. Adults came out of their houses or looked up from their work, waving. Gehanu, apparently well known to the townsfolk, waved back and called greetings as they rode along. The caravan kept moving forward until the street widened and they faced the oasis itself: a circular pond surrounded on all sides by a low wall, only a few dozen feet across but clearly the heart of the village. All the roads ran to it; irrigation lines radiated from its walls like the spokes of a wheel.
Here the troop stopped and dismounted, tethering the camels near troughs that had been set aside for watering animals. Gehanu walked through the group calling out instructions and the rules of the town: guard the caravan’s goods in shifts, disputes weren’t allowed at the water’s edge, and everyone was required to pay at least one visit to the village baths. “Or none of the maidens or lads here will look twice at you,” she said. A group of passing Tesa-girls giggled to emphasize her point.
Nijiri spent a while unloading and feeding the camels along with all the others. He spied the palanquin on the ground and surreptitiously watched as a young man helped the old woman walk around to ease the stiffness of her legs. She stopped every few steps to let out a series of hollow, wheezing coughs. Each one left her visibly drained, leaning harder on the young man’s arm. She was thin and weak and had probably been ill for months. Nijiri’s heart tightened in sympathy and anger.
“Thinking killing thoughts, boy?”
Nijiri started and turned to see Sunandi nearby, pouring a vase of water into the animals’ trough. She looked every inch the rough caravanner; her full lips were now chapped, her skin was dry, and gone were the brightly colored wraps she’d worn at Etissero’s, along with the earrings and the looping necklaces. Here she wore only shapeless layered robes in earthen tones, same as the rest of them; the only sensible attire for the high desert. The headcloth with which she’d covered her short-shorn hair did accent her angular, large-eyed face nicely—Nijiri reluctantly had to admit that she was quite beautiful—but aside from that, she might as well have been just another juggler or dancer with the caravan troop.
She did not look at him as she worked, and she kept her voice down, but he heard the edge in her tone.
“You believe it better for her to suffer like that?” he asked. “A Sharer could have eased her pain.”
“For a price.”
“A few dreams! From such an old one they would have been rich. All Gujaareh could benefit from the power within her.”
She straightened and mopped her brow with one sleeve, then glared at him. “You sound like a vulture,” she said. “Circling ’round the weak, waiting for your chance to feed. All your kind—pious, well-meaning scavengers.”
Nijiri felt heat, then cold, run through him. He set down the saddlebag he’d been carrying and turned to face her. “You grieve for your northblooded girl,” he said, keeping his voice low. “No one has eased the pain for you, so I’ll forgive that insult. But you, with your life steeped in lies and corruption, can comprehend none of Hananja’s blessings. For that I pity you.”
She stared back at him. Not trusting himself to be civil any longer, Nijiri turned and headed toward the oasis, where Ehiru was helping some of the others distribute water to the animal troughs. Nijiri joined him and wordlessly helped until the task was done. Then Ehiru, who of course had noticed his mood, took his arm and pulled him to a quiet spot beside a feed-seller’s stall. “Tell me,” was all he said, and Nijiri did.
By the time he’d finished telling the tale, his anger had been replaced by shame. Ehiru said nothing for a long while, watching him, and Nijiri finally blurted, “I shouldn’t have gotten angry. She was in pain. I should have comforted her.”
“Yes,” Ehiru said, “but I suspect she wanted no comfort from one she blames for the death of her girl.”
“I didn’t kill her girl! The abomination did that!”
“To her, you and the Reaper—and I—are one and the same.”
Nijiri folded his arms over his chest, shifting from foot to foot. “I’ve never understood why anyone fears Gathering,” he said. “Barbarians know no better. But the Kisuati worship Hananja, if not in the same way as us. They’re civilized.” He glanced at Ehiru and saw a rueful smile on his mentor’s lips.
“Civilization may not be all you think, Nijiri.” Ehiru took Nijiri’s shoulder in a comforting grip for a moment, then pulled Nijiri to walk with him toward the caravan. “But in the future, when a tithebearer attacks with anger and you feel anger in response, think of your mother.”
Nijiri stopped walking, startled. “My mother? But she died in peace. The northblooded girl did not.”
“My mother died in peace too,” Ehiru said. “Not with a Gatherer’s aid, but through her own goddess strength. Yet still I wished for years afterward that she had not died. Even knowing that I would see her again in Ina-Karekh, I thought only of the fact that I could never talk to her, never feel her arms around me, never breathe her scent… not while I yet lived. Sometimes I feel that pain still. Do you?”
And suddenly the old ache was there in Nijiri’s heart, sharper than it had been for years. “Yes.” And as he said it, he understood. If he still felt such pain years later, knowing that his mother had died well, how much worse must the pain be for Sunandi, whose agony was still raw and exacerbated by the horrible circumstances of the child’s death?
“You see,” Ehiru said. He stopped then and they both looked up. The caravan was beginning to settle, pitching tents in a paved square set aside for that purpose by the village folk. On the other side of the square a little girl helped the old woman into a large, ornately decorated round tent.
“Those in pain deserve our compassion,” Nijiri said, his thoughts on that long-ago day in a servants’ hovel. “I won’t forget again, Brother.”
Ehiru nodded, and together they returned to the tents to prepare for the Gathering.
21
A Gatherer shall immediately bring all tithes collected to the Hetawa, to be entrusted to his brethren of the Sharer path. Only the merest portion is to be kept by the Gatherer himself.
(Law)
Ehiru resumed his fallen aristocrat’s guise and found Gehanu in her tent. “Have you any eathir root, mistr
ess? In some lands they call it ghete.”
Gehanu paused in the middle of chewing some sort of spiced meat on a skewer. Village women had come among the minstrel band during the unpacking, selling food and drink. “You planning to put someone to sleep?”
Ehiru smiled and touched his own torso, just below his rib cage. “Ghete can ease spasms here. It sometimes stops a cough.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Ah. For Talithele, che?”
“Is that the name of your elder? Yes, mistress.”
“You don’t look like a healer.”
“There are healers in my family, mistress. Some even serve the Hetawa in Gujaareh. I picked up a few tricks.”
“Mmm. Hold on. Kanek!” Her bellow almost caught Ehiru by surprise, but he had grown used to the woman’s rough mannerisms over the past few days. There was a shuffle outside and then Kanek poked his head into the tent, scowling. “Go find the village headman and ask for ghete root,” Gehanu told him.
“Ghete? Palm wine tastes better, Mother.”
“Just do it, you disrespectful shiffa.” She glared until the boy disappeared. They heard his grumbles as his footsteps faded.
“Thank you, mistress.” Ehiru flattened both his hands and bowed over them.
“Ete sowu-sowu.” Ehiru thought the language might have been Penko, but he could not be certain. Her Gujaareen was fluent, at least, though she tended to speak too fast; it took time for him to sift out the words from her accent. “If you can make Talithele more comfortable, it will be worth getting in debt with the greedy old bastard who runs this town.” She set down the skewer and rummaged among her robes for a moment, finally coming up with a long pipe. She raised her voice again. “And an ember from the fire!” A faint annoyed sound was the only reply.
Ehiru smiled. “It’s good to have dependable sons.”
“Ah-che. Like that boy of yours, hmm? I see him hovering always, making sure no one bothers you much, taking care of problems before you notice.” She did not see Ehiru’s look of surprise as she rummaged again and came up with dried leaves, which she began to pack into the pipe. “If only my sons were as clever and thoughtful. Though of course Niri isn’t your son.” She glanced up at him, her big southerner eyes bright and sharp.
“No, mistress, he is not.”
She grunted and bit another piece of meat off the skewer. “Bed-warmer?”
Ehiru smiled at the notion. “Protégé. I’m teaching him about life.”
Gehanu grunted in amusement. “And he listens? Motro sani’i—a miracle to amaze even the gods.”
“He listens when it suits him.” Ehiru smiled. “Young men.”
“Mmm. Too young for sense, too old to beat. But young women are worse, trust me. Three daughters back home, along with my other three sons. Should probably beat my husband for inflicting all of them on me, but he’s pretty and he doesn’t eat much, so I keep him around.” She cocked her head, examining him. “You’re pretty. You have a wife?”
Ehiru heartily wished that Kanek would hurry back. “No, mistress.”
“You looking?” She grinned, flashing a substantial gap between her front teeth. In the southern lands this marked a woman of great passion, or so Ehiru had heard.
“No, mistress.”
“Why not?”
“I’m a servant, mistress.” He and Nijiri had decided to keep up their guise at all times, though Gehanu had already guessed that they were not what they seemed. She didn’t know the whole truth, and there was no way of knowing who might be listening, through thin tent walls.
“Got to make more servants somehow, che? Nefe is pretty.”
Ehiru forced a laugh. “True. But she is of a different world, mistress.”
“Hn, yes. No time for children anyway, that one. Always busy she is, always worried about something. She needs a nice mellow man like you, but she’ll never slow down enough for that.”
The flap lifted again—much to Ehiru’s relief—and Kanek slipped inside. “Ghete.” He set a small bladder, tied with a leather cord, down on the tent-rug.
“What did the headman want for it?” Gehanu asked.
“Nothing. He was so surprised that we wanted it that he gave it to me without asking anything in trade.”
“Ha! He must be getting senile. Good. I’ll trade more with him tomorrow. Now go bathe; you reek.”
Kanek rolled his eyes behind Gehanu’s back, winked and grinned at Ehiru, and left. Ehiru bowed humbly in thanks and reached for the bladder. Gehanu’s hand fell on his own, forestalling him.
“You understand our ways are different from yours, che?” Her mouth stretched in something that was not quite a smile; her eyes were serious. “I know her time will come soon; I’m not a fool. But remember: she did not ask for you.”
Ehiru froze, realizing all at once what she meant and wondering how she’d figured it out and deciding at last that it made no difference. Such things were Hananja’s will.
“I shall respect her wishes,” he said, discarding the affected manner of speech he’d used before. “Her life does no harm, so her death is her choice.”
Gehanu gave him a long and assessing look, but finally nodded and let his hand go. “I met one of your kind once, long ago,” she said. “Came to take a Gujaareen in our troop whose appendix had burst. He was quiet and strange like you, but there was great kindness in his eyes.”
Ehiru let go of the bladder of eathir, now that they both knew he didn’t need it. If the old woman refused him, Gehanu’s people could give it to her in a tea. “Is that how you knew me?”
“I suspected, but I wasn’t certain. He wasn’t sad like you. I didn’t think your kind got sad, or mad, or anything else.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “And you aren’t supposed to, are you? What’s wrong with you?”
“I am preparing myself to die.”
“What in the gods’ names for?”
He could not bring himself to lie, though he knew the truth would make her uneasy. “I destroyed a man’s soul.”
Gehanu caught her breath and drew back, horror plain on her face. Then it faded, replaced by concern. “Was it an accident?”
So few others had asked that question. It was a relief to not be assumed evil. “Yes.” He gazed down at his hands. “And no. It was incompetence. I forgot my duty and let fear and prejudice dictate my actions. Only for a moment, but that was enough.”
She frowned. “Do you intend to do it again?”
“Of course not. But there are—”
“Then stop your moaning and move on.” She gestured with one hand and abruptly noticed the unlit pipe in it. “Damn forgetful brat.” She set the pipe down. “My grandmother needs you, Gatherer, so wake up and do your job. Go on now.”
He blinked in surprise. “You trust me to complete this task properly?”
“Are you deaf?”
Ehiru opened his mouth, then closed it. She had given him her answer already. For a moment he was overwhelmed, his heart feeling as if it would burst from gratitude—and terror too, for what if he should mishandle this Gathering like the last one?
No. Gehanu was right. Talithele needed the Gatherer Ehiru, not the miserable penitent of the past few days. He took a deep breath and straightened. “I accept your commission. I shall prepare myself and then speak with Talithele-elder, to make an Assay of Truth.”
She inclined her head in approval as he got to his feet and left.
Nijiri was hovering nearby, of course. “A bath first,” Ehiru said, and wordlessly the boy followed him to the village’s bathhouse. Ehiru paid for both of them and a village man led them into the washing chamber, where they undressed and sat while the man scrubbed them both with palm fronds and acrid soap. After the rinse, they were led to the bathing chamber and left there to soak in the warm, oiled, and scented water. Nijiri kept a respectful silence the whole time, allowing Ehiru a precious few moments to pray. When Ehiru had soaked enough, he was surprised to find that his mind was quiescent, his heart at peace. He lifted his head. Nijiri ha
d been watching him; when he saw Ehiru’s eyes he smiled.
“Come,” Ehiru said. They left the pool, dried themselves, dressed in clean clothes, and then headed to Talithele’s tent. “Wait outside,” he told Nijiri, and the boy nodded and slipped into the shadows behind the tent. He would come if and when Ehiru called him, and that would happen only if Talithele wanted him there.
The minstrel encampment had mostly settled for the evening, though some of the younger members had started an impromptu performance, playing lyre and cymbals at the water’s edge. From within the tent Ehiru heard silence; Talithele’s attendant either had gone, or slept along with her. If they had been Gujaareen he would have gone in without asking. Instead he drummed his fingers against the taut hide of the tent wall. “Elder? May we speak?”
There was a stir from within, followed by another of the old woman’s racking coughs. After the cough stopped he heard, “As much as speech is possible, whoever you are. Come.”
Ehiru slipped in through the tent-flap. Within, the tent was spacious and comfortable, lit by a beeswax lantern that hung from the smokehole. The honey scent did not quite disguise the smell of age and sickness, but Ehiru paid that no mind. Thick fur rugs covered the floor and cushioned the hard stone. The inner tent walls had been painted in brightly colored geometric patterns of some southern style he did not recognize. At the center of the chamber lay two pallets, but only one was occupied at the moment. The old woman was there, struggling to sit up and greet her visitor.
Ehiru moved quickly to crouch at her side and prop her against a stack of cushions nearby. “Forgive me, Talithele-elder. I did not mean to interrupt your rest.”
“Couldn’t rest with this damn cough,” she muttered. He heard Gehanu’s choppy accent in her words. She narrowed her eyes at him then, looking him up and down. “Ah-che. The handsome boy who joined us in Gujaareh. They give you ‘take care of the old woman’ duty for the night?”