The Killing Moon (Dreamblood #1)(32)

(Wisdom)





The Reaper knows that it is an abomination. If it had a soul left, it could mourn this.

*

Leaving Yanya-iyan had gone smoothly. The palace guards generally concerned themselves far more with unwanted intruders than with departing guests—even those leaving in the small hours of the night. Ehiru summoned another servant-drawn carriage, ordering a drop-off along the quiet streets of the riverfront. Now Nijiri sat with his mentor on a rooftop near the river, gazing out at the Goddess’s Blood as it flowed in the near distance. Dreaming Moon had not quite completed her slow, graceful journey across the sky, but already the horizon was growing pale with the coming dawn. Nights were always short for a time after the solstice.

Corruption and madness and war…

Hamyan, and Nijiri’s conversation with Sister Meliatua, had been only the night before.

At Nijiri’s side Ehiru sat quietly, his eyes fixed on the river but seeing, Nijiri suspected, into some other plane. Though an hour had passed since the conversation with the Kisuati woman, Ehiru showed no inclination to return to the Hetawa. Nor was there any further sign of the temper that had seized him in the woman’s bedchamber—though Nijiri knew the calm was only temporary. If Ehiru’s control had slipped once, it would slip again. That was the way of the test.

He raised his hand, palm up. “Ehiru-brother?” Touch helped a Gatherer focus on reality when his other senses began to betray him; it was a trick taught to all who served as pranje attendants.

Ehiru’s eyes flickered back from that other place, shifting to first Nijiri’s face and then the proffered hand. Sorrow furrowed his brow, but he sighed and reluctantly took the hand. “Have I frightened you so much, my apprentice?”

“You have never frightened me, Ehiru-brother.”

But Ehiru only looked down at their joined hands and sighed again. “She wasn’t lying. In dreams I could be surer, but even in waking, there’s a sense to such things.”

Nijiri used his free hand to begin stroking the back of Ehiru’s. This, too, was permitted in the pranje, but Nijiri suspected he was not supposed to pay such attention to the smoothness of Ehiru’s skin, or the scents of incense and sweat that formed Ehiru’s distinctive musk… With an effort, he made himself lean back. “It’s possible to lie without lying, Brother. She herself admitted that she didn’t know the whole truth.”

“She knows enough to be of concern.” Ehiru gazed down at their hands. “But too much of what she said is… inconceivable. Unacceptable.”

“This business of a Reaper?” Nijiri shook his head. “She must have been mistaken. She was, at first.”

“No.” Ehiru’s expression grew solemn. “That mistake was mine. I assumed she spoke of… of my own error.” He hesitated for a long moment. “The Superior told you?”

Nijiri looked out at the water. “Of course. I made the choice to have you as my mentor in full knowledge.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That you failed to fulfill a commission, doing harm to the soul and perhaps even destroying it.” Ehiru frowned as he spoke, however, and Nijiri stopped speaking, concerned. Was there more to the matter, then?

Ehiru took a deep breath, seeming to ready himself. “The tithe was to be taken from a foreigner—a man of the Bromarte. I found him already in Ina-Karekh and followed him in.” Ehiru abruptly went silent; his fingers twitched a little against Nijiri’s.

“Brother?”

“There was corruption in his soul.” Ehiru still gazed out at the river, but Nijiri suspected he did not see the palm trees on the far shore, the reeds waving in the wind, or the flatboats bobbing gently at their moorings. His hand, in Nijiri’s, felt cold. “Not enough to make him criminal, but enough to taint his dreamscape with ugliness and violence. I tried to take him to a more pleasant place, but then he had a true-seeing.”

Nijiri frowned. “Foreigners don’t see truly in their dreams, brother. They wander helpless in Ina-Karekh every night. A fourflood child has more control.”

“Foreigners have the same innate abilities as we of Gujaareh, Nijiri. Anything a skilled narcomancer can do, they can—though only by accident.”

Nijiri held back a snort; the notion of a barbarian managing the same feat as the most highly trained Sisters, Sharers, and Gatherers seemed ludicrous. Did children write treatises?

“In this Bromarte’s case…” Ehiru sighed. “Up to that point he had been no different from any other stubborn, frightened dreamer. But then he said to me, ‘They’re using you.’ ”

Nijiri frowned. “What did that mean?”

“I don’t know. But I felt the truth of his words. And tonight, when the Kisuati woman said the same thing…”

“So that was it.” Nijiri squeezed his hand. “She is corrupt, Brother. A professional liar by her own admission.”

“Then you dismiss her tales of dead prisoners, and a conspiracy to begin a war?”

“Dead prisoners would hardly begin a war. And anyhow, every account that I have read of war speaks of its terrible destruction and suffering. No one would start such a thing deliberately.”

Ehiru glanced at him, and Nijiri was startled to see a smile on his mentor’s face. “Ehiru-brother?”