The Killing Moon (Dreamblood #1)(23)

“No, of course not. In peace, then, Gatherer.”

Instead, Ehiru left in silence.





7





In the dark of dreams, the soul cries for help. It summons friends, loved ones, even enemies in the hope of relief from its torment. But it is still in darkness. These seeming allies will do no good.

(Wisdom)





In the dark of waking, the Reaper’s soul no longer cries. It has no further need to summon others; others always come eventually, or it can fetch them if it so desires. It does not remember the word friend.

*

Kite-iyan—Sun Above the Waters—was the Prince’s springtime palace. Yanya-iyan—Sun Upon the Earth—was not floodproof, and during the rainy season most of the palace’s denizens suffered with the rest of the city. The Prince himself did not. He retreated to Kite-iyan, where his four-of-four wives lived year-round. There he spent the season of fertility in appropriately symbolic labor, conceiving the children who would continue his dynasty.

“I don’t visit often during the dry months,” the Prince said to Niyes as they rode amid the caravan. “I find my wives are happier when I keep things orderly, and sudden unannounced visits create chaos. They scramble to adorn the palace for my arrival, make the children presentable, and so forth. The ones hoping for my favor rush to pretty themselves, while the ones who wish to punish me make themselves scarce. It’s terribly detrimental to peace.”

Niyes, keeping an eye on the soldiers around them, chuckled. “You sound as if you enjoy making unannounced visits a great deal, my Prince.”

“Does it seem that way? How crude of me. Must be all this sun addling my brain.”

The day was certainly hot enough for it. The Prince’s caravan rode along the elevated roadway called the Moonpath, which led from the city right to Kite-iyan’s front gates. Irrigation ditches feeding nearby farms flanked the path; there were no trees to provide shade. Niyes politely refrained from pointing out that the center of their caravan, where the Prince rode, was cooler than it could have been thanks to the canopy that four servants held above him.

“But yes, I do rather enjoy surprising them,” the Prince continued. “I remember what it was like, growing up in Kite-iyan. My mother would alternately fuss over me and shoo me away, and the other mothers would be just as frantic, whenever the Prince visited. The guards and eunuchs, the tutors and chefs, my siblings—everyone was on edge. But at the same time we were all so excited. The Sun of our own little earthly kingdom was coming to shine on us. We were a family, after all, in spite of our numbers.” The Prince’s expression hardened. “My father—may he dwell in Her peace forever—forgot that sometimes. I do not.”

Kite-iyan had been built on one of the broad, squat hills that bordered the Goddess’s Blood river valley. From there the palace stood sentinel over neatly sectioned tracts of farmland and orchards, and the maze of roads that connected each part of Gujaareh with every other. In the springtime, when the Prince usually made the journey, most of the farms were under floodwaters; now in high summer they were lush and green. As the party continued along the Moonpath, Niyes caught glimpses of workers in the fields below stopping to watch as the caravan rode by. Some knelt and manuflected; the rest shaded their eyes as if it were indeed the Sun himself who passed so near.

The gates of Kite-iyan opened as the palace came into view. When the troop drew to a halt, a dozen children poured out of the palace’s entrance, the smallest of them running to meet the party. The Prince laughed and spurred his horse forward, waving the soldiers aside. He dismounted and then was mobbed by the youngsters, who showed no shyness in tugging on the Prince’s shirt or skirt or even his braids to gain his attention. And he lavished it on them, Niyes saw, ruffling hair here or bestowing a rough hug there, picking up the youngest to carry on his hip, chatting with the rest as he walked.

Niyes signaled the soldiers to dismount and quietly flank the Moonpath and palace entrance. He expected little trouble; the Prince’s decision to visit Kite-iyan had been spur-of-the-moment, and Gujaareh had no enemies—overtly—who could arrange unpleasantness on such short notice. It still never hurt to be certain.

Beyond the knot around the Prince, a handful of adults and older children waited more calmly near the gate. Among them Niyes spotted the Prince’s firstwife Hendet, their son Wanahomen, and Charris, captain of the guard at Kite-iyan. The Prince patted several of the children to send them inside, handed the youngest off to an older sibling, and then paused to exchange affections with his wife and favorite son, kissing the former and playfully gripping the arm of the latter in a mock-combative gesture.

It would not be long before Wanahomen’s combativeness became something more than playful, Niyes gauged, gazing at the young man’s arms; they rippled with muscle beneath the finely tailored linen of his shirt. The Prince still outstripped his son in height and build… but it was cunning, and not physical prowess, that usually decided the contest for the Aureole. Wanahomen was more than old enough for that. Yet there was no cunning in Wanahomen’s eyes, Niyes saw—nothing but adoration as he embraced his father.

“Did you really bring a full forty of men?” drawled a familiar voice.

Distracted, Niyes blinked away from the Prince to see that Charris had drawn near. The guard-captain was smiling, although his green eyes showed more than a little contempt. “Did you expect trouble, Niyes, or are you just becoming paranoid in your old age?”