She decided to banter. “And you understand outland women?”
“I have two hundred and fifty-six wives,” he replied, his voice rippling with amusement. “I can understand any woman.”
She laughed again, and after a moment’s further consideration stepped closer. His hands tightened immediately, pulling her nearer still until her breasts brushed against his chest through the folds of her gown. He leaned close, putting his face beside hers, cheek against cheek. He smelled of sandalwood and moontear blossoms.
“You find me amusing, Sunandi Jeh Kalawe?” His voice held only the barest hint of roughness; the lust was in him, but firmly controlled.
“I am a woman, my lord,” she replied, in the same tone he’d used a moment before. “I find any man amusing.”
He chuckled, breath warm against her ear, and began pulling her toward the couch, his grip coaxing her to stay close. “You’ll find I’m unlike any man you know, Sunandi.”
“Because of your great experience?” She posed the question carefully, knowing he would sense her true meaning but leaving him a safe outlet. He had two hundred and fifty-six wives, and was duty-bound to please them all. He was also far older than he looked. No one knew his age for certain, but he had ruled Gujaareh for more than thirty floods, and he didn’t look a day over that much. His lineage was famous for its longevity, said to be the gift of the Sun’s scions.
But the Prince only sat down as they reached the couch, pulling her to sit beside him. Not until she was seated did he release her hands, shifting his grip to her hips instead.
“Because I am the Avatar of Hananja,” he said, his golden eyes hungry as a lion’s, “and I will give you beautiful dreams.”
* * *
Once their business was concluded and the Prince slept, Sunandi rose from the couch to attend herself in the wash-chamber. She took care to confine her exploration of the Prince’s apartments only to what was in sight, for there was no telling when he might wake and come looking for her, and he would already be suspicious of her motives. Though she had expected to find nothing of note, her attention was caught in his study, where an iron case bristling with four elaborate eastern locks sat bolted to the desk.
There, she realized with a chill. The secret she had come to Gujaareh to find: it was there.
But she did not approach the case, not yet. Most likely it held dangerous traps; Gujaareen were fond of those. Instead she returned to the terrace, where with some unease she found the Prince awake, as alert as if he had never slept, and waiting for her.
“Find anything interesting?” His smile was a sphinx’s.
She returned it. “Only you,” she said, and lay down beside him again.
* * *
She returned to her suite late that night, just as the Dreamer passed zenith. The Prince had not made good on his boast of a full day and night of pleasure, but he’d given a respectable accounting of himself nevertheless. The pleasurable aches she felt in the aftermath told her that it was probably just as well. She’d gotten out of practice; by morning she would doubtless be sore.
More important matters claimed her attention as soon as she crossed the threshold of her suite, however, where Lin waited for her.
Few of the Gujaareen had paid any heed to the skinny, wheat-haired child among the other pages in Sunandi’s entourage. Northblooded youngsters were common in Gujaareh, and in any case it was the fashion for nobles of both lands to keep a few curiosities on hand as entertainers. It pleased her to let them think this was her only purpose.
“A long appointment, mistress,” the girl said, speaking in Sua since they were alone. She lounged across a chair in the corner, her impish face not quite daring a smile.
“The Prince was kind enough to teach me a few Gujaareen customs that Master Kinja neglected.”
“Ah, a valuable lesson, then. Did you learn much?”
Sunandi sighed, flopping onto a suede-covered bench that reminded her obliquely of the Prince’s couch. Not as comfortable, sadly; her aches twinged. “Not as much as I’d hoped. Still, further tutorings might prove useful.”
“That knowledgeable, is he? A hint, mistress: question him before the lesson begins.”
She leveled a look at Lin. “Disrespectful infant. You must have found something if you’re so insufferably smug.”
In answer, Lin held up a hand. In it lay a tiny scroll barely as long as her forefinger. When Sunandi sat up in interest, she crossed the room to offer it to Sunandi—keeping to the shadows, Sunandi noted, and away from the open window. She filed this oddity away to ponder another time, however, snatching the scroll from Lin’s hand. “You found it!”
“Yes, ’Nandi. It’s in Master Kinja’s hand, I’d swear, and…” She hesitated, glancing toward the window again. “It speaks of things no Gujaareen would commit to print.”
Sunandi threw her a sharp glance. Her expression was unusually grim.
“If it’s that serious, I’ll send the scroll back to Kisua. But I’m not yet certain how far some of Kinja’s old contacts can be trusted… especially the Gujaareen ones.” She sighed in annoyance. “You might have to go, Lin.”
Lin shrugged. “I was getting tired of this place anyway. It’s too dry here, and the sun makes me red; I itch constantly.”
“You complain like a highcaste matron,” Sunandi replied. She opened the scroll and scanned the first scrawled numeratics, translating the code in her mind. “Next I’ll find you demanding servants to oil your spoiled backside—groveling Sun!”
Lin jumped. “Keep your voice down! Have you forgotten there are no doors?”
“Where did you find this?”
“General Niyes’s office, here in the palace.—Yes, I know. But I think it’s all right. The general claimed some of Master Kinja’s things because they’d been friends. One of the decorative masks. I don’t think Niyes noticed the false backing.”
Sunandi’s hands shook as she read further. The scroll was not long; Kinja had been spare but eloquent in the limited space. When she reached the end she sat back against the wall, her mind churning and her heart tightening with belated grief.
Kinja had been murdered. She had suspected, but the confirmation was a bitter tea. The Gujaareen had called it a heart-seizure, something too swift and severe for even their magic to cure. But Sunandi knew there were also poisons that could trigger heart-seizures, and other techniques to make death look natural. Here in Gujaareh, where only custom and curtains kept a bedroom secure, it would have been easy. And why not, given what Kinja had discovered? Monsters in the shadows. Magic so foul that even their murderous priests would cry abomination—if they ever learned of it. Clearly, someone meant to make certain they did not.
But now Sunandi knew those secrets. Not all of them by far, but enough to put her in danger of Kinja’s fate.
Lin edged close, concern plain on her face. Sunandi smiled sadly at her, reaching up to smooth a hand over her thin, flat hair. Her sister of the heart, if not the lineage. Kinja had not adopted Lin outright as he had Sunandi—foreigners had no legal standing in Kisua—but Lin had proven her worth time and again over the years. Now it seemed Sunandi would have to force her to prove it once more. She was barely thirteen…
And she was the only one out of their whole delegation who could escape the palace and city without alerting the Gujaareen. It was why Sunandi had brought the girl, knowing they would never expect a Kisuati to entrust vital secrets to a northerner. And Lin was no untried innocent; she had survived alone on the streets of Kisua’s capital for years. With aid from their contacts, she could handle the journey.
Unless Sunandi’s enemies knew she had been sent to look for this. Unless the scroll had been left in place as a trap. Unless they knew of Kinja’s penchant for finding and training talented youngsters.
Unless they sent their Reaper.
She shivered. Lin read her face and nodded to herself. She took the scroll from Sunandi’s limp fingers, rerolled it, and tucked it out of sight in her
linen skirt.
“Shall I go tonight, or wait until after the Hamyan celebration?” she asked. “It means two days’ delay, but it should be easier to slip out of the city then.”
Sunandi could have wept. Instead she pulled Lin close and held her tightly, and shaped her thoughts into a fervent prayer that she hoped the mad bitch Hananja could not hear.
3
A child of a woman may have a four of siblings, or an eight. A child of the Hetawa has a thousand.
(Wisdom)
There were many things that one could feel when surrounded by a four of the Hetawa’s finest guardians, Nijiri considered. Fear, first and foremost—and oh, he felt that in plenty, souring his mouth and slicking his palms. But along with the fear, and dread for the beating these men would almost certainly administer to him before they were done, he felt something new, and surprising: anticipation.
Lack of emotion is not the ideal. Nijiri licked his lips, practically hearing Gatherer Ehiru’s night-soft voice in his mind. Ehiru always knew just the right thing to say when Nijiri came to him with a boy’s frets. Control of emotion is. Even we Gatherers feel—and we savor those feelings, when they come, as the rare blessings they are.
Could the urge to grind his opponents’ faces into the sand truly be a blessing? Nijiri grinned. He would meditate upon it later.
Sentinel Mekhi glanced at Sentinel Andat, his kohled eyes narrowing in amusement. “I think perhaps Acolyte Nijiri wants peace, pathbrother.”
“Hmm,” said Andat. He was grinning as well, turning his fighting stick in the fingers of one hand with careless expertise. “I think perhaps Acolyte Nijiri wants pain. I suppose there’s a kind of peace in that.”
“Share it with me, Brothers,” Nijiri breathed, crouching low and ready. With that, they came at him.
He did not wait for their sticks. No one could deflect, or endure, blows from four armed Sentinels. Instead he dropped low, presenting a smaller target and slipping beneath the zone of their fastest response. They were fast enough with their feet, though, and he only just dodged Sentinel Harakha’s sweeping kick by rolling over it. This, thankfully, put him outside the Sentinels’ circle and forced them to turn. That gave him a precious half-breath in which to formulate a strategy.
Harakha. As the youngest of the four, he had yet to develop a Sentinel’s proper serenity. He was dangerous; any Sentinel who survived his apprenticeship was dangerous. But Nijiri had observed Harakha in sparring matches several times, and noted that whenever his blows were deflected, he tended to flail for an instant before recovering, as if shocked by his failure.
So Nijiri swept at Harakha’s ankles with first one leg and then the other, rolling on his forearms to execute the sweeps again and again, forcing Harakha to dance back. The other Sentinels quickly altered their formation to avoid Nijiri’s whirling legs and to keep from tripping over each other—just as Nijiri had hoped. Then, when Harakha grew justifiably annoyed and angled a stabbing strike at Nijiri’s head, Nijiri closed his legs and rolled—toward Harakha. This brought him under Harakha’s stick; the tip struck the ground beyond Nijiri and lodged, just for an instant, in the sand. At this Nijiri kicked up, aiming for Harakha’s hand. He did not score, for Harakha realized what he was doing at the last instant and jerked back, retaliating with a furious kick that Nijiri bore with a grunt as he rolled away. A small pain-price to pay, for he had achieved his goal: Harakha stumbled back a step more, overcompensating in typical fashion for the fact that he’d almost lost his weapon. This forced the other three Sentinels to move more, gracelessly, to avoid their clumsy younger brother.
Distraction was a Gatherer’s beloved friend. Rolling to his hands and toes, Nijiri darted forward and slapped his hand against Mekhi’s calf. It was hard to find the soul from a limb, and harder for Nijiri to cool his thoughts enough for narcomancy, but perhaps—
Mekhi stumbled and fell to the ground, groaning. He was only groggy, but from an awake, aware man whose blood was fired for battle, Nijiri could expect nothing better. When Mekhi went down, however, Harakha hissed and nearly tripped over Mekhi’s stick. Nijiri rose behind him like a shadow, and too late Harakha realized the danger. By that point Nijiri had touched two fingers to the nape of his neck, sending dreambile coursing along his spine like cold water to numb everything it touched. Harakha was unconscious even as his body whipped around. He kept spinning until he hit the ground, hard enough that he would no doubt curse Nijiri for his bruises when he woke.
Delighted, Nijiri rounded on Mekhi, who was trying to stumble away until his sleep-mazed mind could clear. Forking his fingers and humming the song of his jungissa, Nijiri lunged after him—
—Only to halt, statue-still, as the tip of a stick came to hover before his face. Another stick, light as the touch of a lover, came to rest on the small of his back.
It was only a sparring match, he reminded himself in an effort to summon calm. (It did not come.) Only a test… but he had seen Sentinels impale men using sheer strength and angles to make their blunt sticks sharp as glass-tipped spears. And Andat liked to leave flesh wounds whenever he felt Nijiri had not fought to his fullest effort, as an encouragement to greater diligence.
“Good,” said Andat, who held the stick to his face. That meant the one behind him was Sentinel Inefer. He had bested two, but been caught by the two most experienced. Had that been enough to pass the test? I should have left Mekhi; he was no threat. Should have gotten one of the others first, should have—
“Very good,” Andat amended, and with relief Nijiri realized the man was truly pleased. “Two of us, with you unarmed and all of us ready? I would have been satisfied if you’d gotten one.”
“It would’ve been Harakha, regardless,” said Inefer behind Nijiri, sounding disgusted. “Blundering, peaceless fool.”
“We’ll drill him until he learns better,” Andat said easily, and in spite of himself Nijiri grimaced in sympathy.
Nijiri felt Inefer’s stick leave his back. “Other matters take precedence for now,” Andat said, looking up at the balcony that overhung the sparring circle. Nijiri followed Andat’s gaze and tensed in fresh dread, for there, gazing down at them with a wry expression, stood the Superior of the Hetawa. Beside the Superior stood two men in sleeveless, hooded robes of loose off-white linen. He could see nothing of their faces, and the angle was wrong to glimpse their shoulder tattoos, but he knew their builds well enough to guess which was which—and which, since a third man should have been among them, was missing.
Suppressing a frown, Nijiri got to his feet so that he could raise his hands in proper salute toward his brethren.
“That should do, I think,” said the Superior. “Sentinel Andat, are you satisfied?”
“I am,” said Andat, “and I speak for my pathbrethren in this. Anyone who can beat two Sentinels out of four has more than sufficient skill to carry out the Goddess’s will beyond the Hetawa’s walls.” He glanced at Nijiri and smiled. “Even if he chooses to follow the wrong path in the process. Alas.”
“I see. Thank you, Andat.” The Superior’s dark eyes settled on Nijiri then, and privately Nijiri fought the urge to cover himself or apologize for his unpeaceful appearance. He was still out of breath, drenched in sweat and dressed only in a loincloth, and it felt as though his heart had made a dancing-drum of his sternum. But he had done well; he had no reason for shame.
“Come then, Acolyte Nijiri,” the Superior said—and paused, amusement narrowing his dark eyes. “Acolyte for now, at least.”
Nijiri tried not to grin, and failed utterly.
“Go and wash,” the Superior continued, emphasizing the latter word enough that some of Nijiri’s joy turned to embarrassment. “At the sunset hour, come to the Hall of Blessings.” To take your Gatherers’ Oath, he did not say, but Nijiri heard it anyhow, and rejoiced anew. Then the Superior turned away, heading through the balcony hanging into his offices. Silently, the two hooded men flanking him followed.
“That was quick,” muttered Mekhi,
who grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck as he joined them. He still moved stiffly, shaking his free arm as if the hand had gone to sleep. Nijiri lifted his hand, flat with palm down, and bowed over it in contrition; Mekhi waved this off.
“A love match on both sides, I think,” said Andat, though he also made an apologetic gesture when his brothers looked at him, so no one would think him resentful. “Go on, then, boy. Congratulations.”
The word made it real. With a delighted grin, Nijiri bobbed a barely courteous nod to all three men, then turned and walked—with a speed just shy of running—into the Hetawa’s dim silence.
* * *
The bath restored his spirits, and the cool water was a balm after the sparring match in sweltering afternoon heat. No one else was in the bathing chamber when Nijiri used it, though once he returned to the small cell that he shared with three other acolytes he found that word had somehow spread: a four of pathing gifts had been left on his pallet. The first was a small, prettily enameled mirror, which had probably come from his roommates—yes, that was Talipa’s work on the flowers, he would recognize it anywhere. Talipa had been claimed from a potter family. The second gift was a small set of finger-cuffs, engraved with formal prayer pictorals. Beautiful work, and probably that of Moramal, the acolyte-master. Nijiri set this aside. As a Gatherer he would need some jewelry, for a Gatherer went disguised among the faithful—but it was still not a gift that would see much use. Alas.
The third was a small jar of scented oil, which he sniffed and nearly dropped in amazement. Myrrh; could it be? But there was no mistaking the fragrance. Such an expensive gift could only have come from his soon-to-be pathbrothers. And that, no doubt, had been how the other acolytes guessed the news; one of them would’ve been dispatched to bring the gift to Nijiri’s cell, and that one had apparently gossiped the whole way. Nijiri grinned to himself.