The Killing Moon (Dreamblood) (37 page)

But even as he said this, he remembered the Bromarte’s words in the dream:
they’re using you
. And too, he remembered the silhouette that had been watching from a nearby rooftop.

If I had not killed him, the Reaper would have.
He shuddered as understanding came at last, too late and tinged with a bitter irony.

The old woman looked at her fellow Protectors. “The Bromarte clans are reluctant members of the alliance, thanks to their long ties with both Gujaareh and Kisua. They have stayed as neutral as possible, only brokering deals with other clans that are more willing to fight, like the Soreni. But some of them, like Charleron, were willing to warn us of the danger.”

“No troops have left Gujaareh,” another man mused, picking at a spot on the table. “Their armies are at full strength, deployed a bit closer to the border than usual, but they haven’t begun to move. Of that much we can be certain.”

Another man said, “The Feen and the Soreni have ports along the Eastern Ocean, and they have ties to tribes with ports even along the frozen northern seas and the Windswept. Gujaareh has great wealth; they can afford to pay others to fight their wars. So if the Prince’s vessels were empty, so that they
could travel faster, and if they could be filled with northern warriors after making the ocean journey…”

Silence fell in the chamber. In it, Sunandi cleared her throat. “Respectfully, Esteemed… Are our warriors prepared for an attack?”

An old woman at the far end of the table leveled a hard look at Sunandi. “We have been doing nothing else since we first learned of Gujaareh’s warship fleet, Speaker.”

“But even so, the Prince has moved more cleverly than expected,” said the woman at the center. She spoke heavily, oblivious to the quelling looks of her fellow Councillors. After a long moment she lifted her head. “I thank you for your report, Jeh Kalawe, and Gatherers of Gujaareh.”

Sunandi offered her bow again. But as she straightened, she hesitated. “Esteemed and wise. Kisua has not had war for many centuries, and never with her daughter-nation of Gujaareh. Is there no hope remaining for peace?”

“That is up to the Prince,” the central woman said.

“We shall of course attempt to parley with him,” said another of her companions. “Though it seems unlikely he will be interested in peace after investing this much in his attack.”

The central woman sighed, shaking her head. “And what will you do, Gatherer Ehiru?”

“Return to Gujaareh,” Ehiru replied. “There is still the matter of the Reaper, since it seems you have uncovered no information about its connection to all this. But as for the rest… my brothers must know of the Prince’s plans. There are still some in the Hetawa whom I trust, and who will help me try to stop
this—if it can be stopped. War is the greatest possible offense to Hananja.”

The old woman considered this for a moment. “You may have horses and provisions to facilitate your journey home. But take care; by coming here, you may have made yourselves an enemy of your lord.”

He bowed over one hand to her. “We serve Hananja, Elder. Our Prince is merely Her Avatar, and as such he rules only on Her sufferance.”

As he straightened, he remembered Eninket’s face at their last meeting: smiling, reassuring. Lying through his teeth. The rage returned—not the red, brutal rage he’d been fighting since the desert, but something cleaner and more welcome: the cold and righteous anger of a Servant of Hananja.

Perhaps I am not wholly corrupt yet
, he decided.
Perhaps I can remain myself long enough to administer justice one last time. And for you, my birth-brother, that justice is long overdue.

Seeing something of Ehiru’s thoughts in his face, the old woman’s eyes widened. But then her fear faded and she returned a slow, grim nod.

“Then I bid you good luck, Gatherer,” she said, “and for all our sakes… good hunting.”

Nijiri heard the crowd before they walked out of the Meeting House. At first he thought it was the river, though he had already seen as they passed through the city that the river curved away to the west, disappearing into the green, mist-covered mountains in the distance. Then his ears sifted out words and phrases and shouts, and he realized the noise was
voices—
so many of them raised and speaking at once that the result was a monotonous roar. He could not imagine why so many people would assemble in such undisciplined chaos. No public gathering in Gujaareh was ever so loud. Was it perhaps a riot? He had heard of such things in foreign lands. Then he stepped outside, and saw.

People: hundreds of them, possibly thousands, thronging the steps of the Meeting House and the streets and the alleys beyond it, men and women and children and elders, so many
that he could not see the end of them. But when he and Ehiru emerged onto the steps of the House with Sunandi, the gabble softened, then went silent altogether. Sunandi and Ehiru stopped, and Nijiri did as well, all three finding themselves the focus of countless pairs of eyes.

Breaths passed. Nijiri looked into the faces of the nearer crowd members and saw many things, from fear and curiosity to anger and adoration. More than anything else, he saw something that shocked and confused him, for though he had seen it many times in Gujaareh, he’d never expected to see it in a city that named Gatherers anathema.
Hope.
But what they wanted from Ehiru—only Ehiru, no one seemed even to notice Nijiri—he could not guess.

Then Ehiru stepped forward, turning his hands palms open at his sides. Startled, Nijiri hastened to follow, hearing Sunandi mutter something under her breath then follow as well. When he glanced at Ehiru’s face he was stunned again, for the strain and misery of the past month had vanished from his brother’s face. He was smiling, in fact, as he continued forward into the crowd, and his expression was the one Nijiri remembered from their first meeting, years and years ago—tenderness, sternness, warmth, detachment.
Peace
. The crowd, seeing this, murmured and parted for him, whispering to one another.

Then behind them Nijiri heard boots and the jangle of armor, jarring the aura of peace. He glanced around and saw that several Protectorate guardsmen had come out onto the steps, whispering anxiously to one another at the sight of the crowd. Nijiri dismissed them from his attention and focused on Ehiru instead, for he felt certain that what he was witnessing
was no less than an intervention of the Goddess. Kisua had abandoned narcomancy centuries before—but respect for it, and faith in Hananja’s power, clearly still lingered in at least some small part of her ancient soul. As Ehiru’s apprentice, it was his duty to bear witness to such a momentous event.

I do so with a glad heart. Hananja, thank You for making my brother himself again, if only for this moment.

Then someone pushed forward from the crowd, half-dragging another figure. Ehiru stopped. Nijiri tensed, but it was only a man pulling a child along with him—a child, he realized in belated horror, who had been afflicted with some terrible crippling wrong at some point in his short life. The boy’s head lolled back on his shoulders as if he lacked the strength or control to raise it, and though his legs seemed to function, they did so poorly, lurching and wavering to such an unsteady degree that without the man’s aid he might have fallen. Worst of all, Nijiri saw that both his arms had withered, becoming tiny and useless beneath the elbow.

“G-Gatherer, your pardon,” said the man. He wore the garb of a blacksmith and spoke such a thick dialect of Sua that Nijiri barely understood him. “My son, this is my son, will you heal him? Take my life if it will help, Gatherer, I am a loyal follower of Hananja, the healers here can do nothing for him,
please—
”

As if those words had been a signal, other voices suddenly rose around them. “My mother, Gatherer, she’s dying,” called a woman—and another woman’s husband, and a soldier pointed to his missing eye, and a stooped elder begged to be sent to his wife in Ina-Karekh so that he would no longer be alone… so many. All of them, so hungry, pressing forward and extending
hands in supplication. They even began to look at Nijiri: fingers plucked at his shoulders, at his robe. Someone caressed the back of his head and he started away, catching a glimpse of desperate yearning in a woman’s eyes before the crowd surged forward again and she was lost in it.

Abruptly there were
too many
hands, too many pleading voices all around them, wanting, needing, desperate for more than any two Gatherers, any
ten
Gatherers could ever provide. Nijiri gasped as someone yanked at his robe, tearing it; on pure instinct he struck back, knocking the hand away and shifting into a guard-stance. Someone grabbed at Sunandi too, and Nijiri caught a glimpse of Sunandi’s eyes widening in alarm as she pulled away—

“Let me see your son,” Ehiru said to the first man who had spoken.

His voice cut across the rising din, though he had not raised it. The crowd still hushed and drew back. In the new silence, Ehiru stepped forward and took the child’s chin in his fingers, pulling the lolling head upright to examine unfocused eyes.

“He is still himself,” the man said. His voice was thick with unshed tears. “The withering sickness came upon him years ago and destroyed his body, but he still has a mind. He is my only child.”

“I understand,” Ehiru said, and sighed. “He can be healed, but not by me. Such a healing would require dreamseed to regenerate the muscles and nerves, and dreambile to stop any growth that has gone wrong. Surgery could be used to remove the parts of his body damaged beyond reclaim, and that would require dreamblood to banish his pain and dreamichor to
replenish his strength. It would take many eightdays and there is a possibility it would not succeed completely. I have not the skill to do any of it.”

“But you’re a Gatherer—”

Ehiru looked up and the man’s protests died on his lips. “A Gatherer, not a Sharer. I can help him in only one way.” In the silence the words carried.

The man caught his breath—but instead of drawing back as Nijiri expected, he reached out and caught Ehiru’s arm in a hard grip. “Then help him that way,” the man said. “My son weeps every night knowing that he can never inherit our smithy, he can never marry or care for us, his parents; he will be like this the rest of his life. He reaches the age of manhood in two years but his mother still diapers him like a babe! He feels pain with every movement! He has begged me to kill him many times, but I, I could never… the courage…” He shuddered, bowing his head and shaking it fiercely. “But if he cannot be healed—”

Ehiru watched him for a moment, then looked at the boy. A horrible palsied movement passed through the child’s flesh, tears welling in his eyes and spilling down the sides of his face, his mouth gaping open and closed and open again. It took long painful breaths for Nijiri to realize that the twitching, frenzied movement was the child’s effort to nod agreement.

Oh Goddess, how could You allow such suffering to continue? How could anyone?

But though he had expected no answer to that prayer, he got one anyhow as Sunandi stepped forward and put a hand on Ehiru’s other wrist. “I cannot permit this,” she said. She spoke softly, her face subdued, but she did not take her hand away.

Ehiru merely looked at her. Nijiri heard gasps from the crowd, however, and when he turned to see what had startled them he saw two of the guards coming down the steps, spears at the ready.

“Do it, and they will kill both you and the boy’s father, Gatherer,” she said, raising her voice loud enough for the crowd to hear. Then she looked at the man, sighing. “I understand that your son suffers, but what you ask goes against every law we honor.”

The man stared—then lunged at her, dragging the afflicted child, trying to hit her with his free hand, his face contorted with rage. The crowd cried out in collective alarm. Ehiru caught the man immediately and pulled him and the child back; Nijiri stepped in front of Sunandi to protect her. “Honor?” the man cried. “What should I honor?
Do you see my son?
What does the law do for him, highcaste bitch?”

Ehiru laid a hand on the man’s chest and pushed him firmly back. “Peace,” he said—and even if Nijiri had not sensed the quicksilver flow of dreamblood between them, he would have known it by what happened next. The man caught his breath and stumbled backward, clutching his son to himself in reflex. He blinked at them with no hint of his former rage, focusing on Ehiru in stunned wonder.