The Killing Moon (Dreamblood #1)(104)

“I can taste them.” The wind shifted again, carrying with it the muddy richness of the irrigation canals. Ehiru inhaled deeply as if savoring the scent.

Nijiri got to his feet, dusting himself off. The wind rippled the cloth of the filthy Kisuati shirt he’d worn since the catacombs. He pulled it off and tossed it away, reveling in the feel of light and air on his skin again.

“I suppose that’s Hananja’s will too,” he said, and Ehiru nodded.

They remained that way for some while, watching the day brighten over the greenlands. Somewhere below, farmers tilled their fields and fishermen checked their nets and mothers kissed their children awake. War had come to Gujaareh and it did not matter, for whoever ruled in the palaces and fortresses would always need grain and fish and subjects to rule. For that, there would have to be peace. Hananja’s will always won out in the end.

Nijiri turned to Ehiru and said: “Lie down, Nsha.”

Ehiru glanced up at him and smiled. He lay back, his arms at his sides, and waited.

Nijiri knelt and cupped Ehiru’s face between his hands, wiping away sweat and grime and flecks of the Prince’s blood. When that was done he simply caressed Ehiru’s face, memorizing its lines as if he hadn’t done so a hundred times already. “I am Zhehur, in dreams,” he whispered.

Ehiru nodded. “We’ll meet again, Zhehur.” He took a deep breath and let it out in a long, weary sigh.

The ritual words were in Nijiri’s mind, but he did not say them. There was no need, and in any case no words were adequate. He drew his fingers over Ehiru’s eyes to close them and then settled his hand in place. He had no jungissa—the Prince’s defiled stone had probably fallen over the balcony railing—but it was an easy matter to push Ehiru into sleep. Even easier to pass through the thin layers that separated the realms, for Ehiru’s soul was halfway to dreaming already.

The images that passed between them in the moments that followed were simple. Ehiru was more than skilled enough to construct his own paradise. Nijiri lingered only to make certain the proper connections were in place—Ehiru’s mother and Kite-iyan, his hundred siblings, Una-une. He added small but unnecessary touches, like making certain the scent of the river hung in the air, and clearing the sky so that the Dreamer’s light shone with that special strangeness he knew Ehiru loved. When the world was finished, he lingered more, reluctant to sever the final connection, but at last Ehiru gently pushed him out. Ina-Karekh was not a place for the living, except in short safe doses of dream.

So at last Nijiri withdrew from the dream and took hold of Ehiru’s frail, fraying tether. He severed it neatly, collecting the tithe and setting the soul loose in its new home. Only when the last vestiges of Ehiru’s umblikeh had faded to nothingness did he follow his own tether home, settling back into his flesh with a sigh.

“Farewell, Brother,” said Gatherer Nijiri. “We shall indeed meet again.” He kissed the smile on Ehiru’s lips, then bent to lay another kiss on his breast. Those would do in place of his lotus signature.

Though no one would know they were there but him.





Epilogue





Hananja’s city burned beneath the Dreaming Moon.

Flanked by eight Kisuati soldiers, Sunandi walked through the debris-strewn streets with her face a mask and her heart full of grief. Here was the crafters’ market, several stalls already destroyed by the fires that had flared in the city over the past several days. There was the hall where the famous chantress Ky-yefter performed, its facade destroyed by a stray catapult stone. Although the Unbelievers’ District and parts of the southernmost wall now lay in smoldering ruins, the majority of the city remained relatively unscathed. The Gujaareen army had not fought hard before surrendering, for their Prince was dead. Since then, the Protectors had been adamant that there be no looting or rapine, and General Anzi had been ruthless in enforcing those instructions among the Kisuati troops who’d come north to see to the occupation. They would have a difficult enough time controlling Gujaareh as it was.

Yet it was clear that even with the Protectors’ caution, something vital had been damaged in the city. Sunandi glimpsed some of the citizens forming water-brigades to combat the fires, but far more simply milled about in aimless confusion, their faces haunted and lost. Along the main avenues some of the citizens loitered with their fellows while watching the Kisuati soldiers move through their streets, but most sat or stood or rocked alone. In the pleasure quarter the Kisuati had found several raucous parties under way, with music and dancing in the streets. Gaudily painted timbalin-house women and youths beckoned to the soldiers, some lifting loindrapes to show nothing underneath and some wearing nothing to begin with, all of them smiling and friendly. But Sunandi had seen the haze of drugs or dreamseed in their eyes; she had heard the edge of fear in their sweet invitations. And among the whores she spied the yellow-clad figures of Hananja’s Sisters, standing silent watch amid the revelry. Then she understood: Gujaareh’s pleasure-givers offered themselves to the conquerors so that Gujaareh’s weaker citizens might remain unmolested.

“They’ll strike at any Kisuati-looking face,” Anzi had warned Sunandi, when he heard of her plan to tour the city. “All our people will be targets for their vengeance—a pretty woman like you even more so.” Clever of him to slip in that flattery, she reflected. Transparent, but clever. Well, he was handsome enough. Perhaps when the dust had settled and Gujaareh was firmly in hand… But not yet.