The Shadowed Sun (Dreamblood) (26 page)

Tajedd’s eyes widened. The Banbarra tribes kept in contact with one another by messenger and messenger-bird, but the Dzikeh had probably left their tribe’s encampment before word of the alliance could reach them.

Azima seemed less impressed. “A gift. Priests?” He laughed. “Do we need extra prayers to support us in battle, then?”

“Oh, they have many talents,” Wanahomen said. He smiled at Azima, who looked annoyed. He sipped tea and then heard, with
near-perfect timing, the slave return with the female Sharer in tow. The tent-flap opened as the slave led her inside.

Unte frowned at the slave in puzzlement. “What is this?”

The templewoman spoke quickly. Slavery went against Hananja’s Law; no doubt she feared the slave would be punished. “I apologize for interrupting,” she said in her own tongue. “I, I was told someone here had a wound that needed healing.”

Wanahomen could not have planned it better. Both Tajedd and Azima stared at her, astonished by her soft voice and deferential manner. She was dressed properly, for Yanassa had done an astonishing job on her; Wanahomen himself had been impressed. Yet no woman who knew her value to the tribe would stand there stammering like a child.

“Here,” Wanahomen said, curtly beckoning her over. She came at once—another thing a Banbarra woman would not have done, given the rudeness of his gesture—and knelt on a cushion at his side.

“Where is the wound?” she asked. Already she was wholly focused on her duty, oblivious to the stares of the two Dzikeh men. Over her shoulder, Wanahomen could see Unte frowning at him, though the tribe leader had obviously decided to let him play out this game.

Wanahomen lay back on the cushions, getting comfortable, and then lifted his robes to reveal the slash Wutir had made across his belly. This too caught the Dzikeh’s attention, for Banbarra men bared the vulnerable parts of their bodies only to relatives, other men, and women with whom they had been—or intended to be—intimate. “Here,” he said. He pulled off the strip of cloth he had bound over the wound to keep it from bleeding through his robes.

The Hetawa woman leaned forward to examine the wound with her fingers, touching its edges gingerly. “Shallow,” she said briskly, almost spoiling the effect he wanted to create. With a task before her she was confident, cool. He would have to do something about
that. “But because of its location it will reopen again and again. Infection is likely.”

“Yes, that was my thought,” Wanahomen said. Then, making the gesture seem casual, he lifted a hand and brushed the girl’s ornamented hair back over her shoulder. She started just a little, throwing a confused look at him, but, as he’d hoped, she did not protest or pull away. In fact—Ah, she was blushing! Her lowcaste-pale skin warmed like a lantern.

In other circumstances he would have laughed. But it was crucial now that he appear soft-spoken with her, intimate, affectionate. The Dzikeh probably had only the vaguest idea of what they were saying to each other, if they knew any Gujaareen at all, but they would be paying attention to postures and tones of voice. He wanted them to see a lustful man and a reluctant woman—reluctant, yet unable or unwilling to refuse his attentions.

Speaking too quickly she said, “Yes, of course. The healing won’t take long. Do you remember how this is done?”

He had seen one of his brothers healed once, after a boyish adventure in Kite-iyan had gone badly. In answer he leaned his head back, closing his eyes. A moment later, her fingertips landed on his eyelids, light as feathers. Then—

He opened his eyes with a start, the dream fading before he could even recall it. His belly itched; lifting his head he saw that the wound had healed, the already-shed blood beginning to dry. He wiped it away with the cloth that had covered the wound, and only then noticed that the templewoman sat pale and still beside him, something in her expression that might have been fright. But since her back was to the Dzikeh, Wanahomen dismissed it.

He sat up so Tajedd and Azima could see his healed belly. “You see?” Tajedd caught his breath; Azima scowled.

“Magic,” Tajedd said, awed. “I’d heard the priests of Gujaareh had such power.”

“They kill, too,” Azima snapped. “Like demons, creeping in on night-breezes and breathing poison into your sleep.”

“That’s a different kind of priest,” Wanahomen said, in a dismissive tone that said,
and I don’t fear them
. He closed his robes and nodded toward Hanani. “
This
kind can do nothing but heal. They’ll heal our men after battle, leaving us strong and ready to fight while our enemies are still treating their wounded. Now do you see the value of the Hetawa’s friendship?”

Tajedd looked thoughtful. Azima leaned over quickly to whisper in his ear. Unte was no longer frowning; his face had gone as expressionless as a statue’s, though he too was watching the Dzikeh. The Sharer had managed to compose herself, though she still looked troubled about something as she bobbed her head in absent farewell and made as if to rise. He reached over and took her by the chin, startling her into wild-animal stillness.

“Thank you,” he said, and leaned over to kiss her.

If she’d been standing, he thought her knees might’ve buckled. He kept the kiss light, a lover’s tease, even though she didn’t fight him and he could easily have made a show of devouring her in front of all of them. As it was, it took her two tries to get to her feet when he let her go, and even then she was unsteady, visibly shaken. He could not help smiling as she went to the door and nodded farewell again—to the
slave
of all people, dearest gods, even in Gujaareh no one did that—and finally exited.

There was little more than small talk after that. By Banbarra custom, one did not discuss important business immediately after a journey; it was considered unfair to the more tired party. Then too the sun was setting, and already Wanahomen could hear the tribe’s musicians warming up their lutes and hand-drums. The eightday of the solstice always began and ended with a grand party, and with guests to share the revelry, tonight’s was certain to be legendary even by Banbarra standards.

Unte had one of his slaves take Tajedd and Azima to a guest-tent. When they were gone, he let out a long sigh before turning to Wanahomen.

“If you fail to win Gujaareh,” he said, “you must leave this tribe.”

Wanahomen stiffened in shock and unexpected hurt. “Unte?”

“Not because you are incapable, Wana.” There was a softness in Unte’s face that soothed some of Wanahomen’s shock. “In fact, I know that if you were to become leader after me, the tribe would prosper.”

“Then why must I leave?”

“Because I love you as if you were the son of my blood—more—but you frighten me, Wana. I know you’ll use anyone, destroy anything, to assuage the anger that burns like Sun’s fire in your heart. This entire tribe included. You love some of us, but not enough. Not enough to keep us safe if you ever began to hate us.”

“I—” He stared at Unte, unable to think. He groped for some response within himself. Any would do.

“Do you deny it?”

His heart constricting, Wanahomen looked away and said nothing.

Unte nodded as if he’d expected nothing else, and sighed. “Have your slave keep a close eye on the Gujaareen girl from here forth. You planted a dangerous seed today.”

It was a dismissal. Wanahomen got to his feet, as shaky as the templewoman had been, and made for the door. When he touched the door-flap, something shifted in him and he saw—

—His father, extending a dead arm to him, skin mottled with foulness—

—That same taint creeping over his own flesh—

—And then the vision, daydream, or whatever it was, vanished.

“Wana?” Unte’s voice behind him. There was concern in that voice, and sorrow, and love. The love drove the pain of Unte’s words
deeper into his heart, because it meant that Unte truly believed them.

What a lucky man he was to have two fathers, both kings, who cared for him so deeply, and who would never willingly allow him to rule their kingdoms.

“Good night, Unte,” Wanahomen murmured. Pulling up his veil, he returned to his own tent.

Hanani found Mni-inh in his tent, sitting on a stack of new pallets the Banbarra had brought, his eyes closed and head slumped. He might have been truly sleeping, but more likely he was praying. It was a reminder to Hanani that she herself had not prayed for many days. But as she crouched on the rug to gaze into her mentor’s face, she found that she had no desire to try it now. To find peace in Ina-Karekh, it was necessary to have peace within oneself. She could not remember the last time she had been at peace.

Still, it was a comfort to be near Mni-inh’s body, even if his soul was elsewhere. She curled up on the pallets beside him, resting her head on his thigh as she had not done since she was an acolyte. He had begun gently pushing away her hugs and other childish gestures of affection around the time that her fertile cycles had begun. Not because he did not welcome them, he had assured her, but because as the only female past childhood in the Hetawa she needed to keep not only the substance but the appearance of propriety at all times. “You’re a daughter to me,” he had told her, “but in the upriver towns it’s not uncommon for a man my age to take a wife your age. Others will remember that, even if you and I never think it.”

She had never thought of him this way before or since. She had never had such thoughts about any of her Hetawa brethren, not once in all the years she had lived among them.

But now the taste of the Prince was on her lips.

Hanani shuddered, hating the memory of the kiss, yet seeing it in her mind, feeling it, again and again. The Prince was using her. That was obvious even to her untutored eyes. He hated her and everything she valued. And yet she still felt his fingers tucking her hair behind one ear.

She closed her eyes and wished with all her heart that she had said no to Nijiri’s test. She wished that she could go back in her small cell in the Hetawa, where she had been safe from the world’s chaos.

A hand fell on her hair and stroked it lightly, making the gold ornaments clack together. “We’ll be able to go home soon,” Mni-inh said. He had always been good at intuiting her moods. She closed her eyes and fought not to cry, because that was not something Servants of Hananja did.

He sighed, still stroking her hair. “Would it help you to know I have been talking with Nijiri?”

“What?”

“In dreams,” he said. “It’s a simple technique. We agree upon a meeting place in Ina-Karekh—some singularly powerful image, important to both for similar reasons—and then specify a time when we will both travel to it. In this case, the Hall of Blessings. Dreamer-rise, on the eve of a new Waking Moon.”

Hanani frowned. “Gatherer Nijiri told you ahead of time to meet him?”

“Yes.” Mni-inh’s smile turned sour. “He didn’t tell me
why
we needed to arrange a meeting, just that it would be necessary. I gave him a piece of my mind when he got there, that I can tell you.”

Hanani sat up, though not so quickly as to dislodge his hand.
“Why did he do this to us, Mni-inh-brother? These people could kill us. They have no peace in them at all—”

“I know,” he said. “But we’re doing all right thus far, aren’t we? Honestly, from what Nijiri’s told me, we might even be safer here than back in Gujaareh.”

Hanani frowned. “Has the nightmare affected more people?”

“Yes, there are thirty sick with it now, the Hall of Respite is filled with them, but that isn’t what I meant. Yesterday, the Gatherers themselves commissioned, and collected, the tithes of the two Kisuati soldiers who threatened you.”

Hanani caught her breath, her mind filling with images of the Hetawa in flames. “Th-the Kisuati,” she whispered. “They warned in the conquest that any harm to their soldiers would be returned fourfold. If they attack the Hetawa—”

“No, Hanani. They aren’t foolish enough to jeopardize their occupation of Gujaareh over such corrupt men. The soldiers accosted a Sister before the Gatherer judged them: tensions are high in the city as a result. Nijiri thinks the Kisuati will wait until people have calmed a little before they act.” He sighed, rubbing his eyes with one hand. “And when they do act, who can say what might happen? So I hope to the gods our young princely friend is ready to retake the city soon, and that he succeeds when he finally begins.”