The Killing Moon (Dreamblood #1)(43)

Rabbaneh stopped pacing, his expression strained and grim. “Nor can I.” He turned to Sonta-i. “You understand what this means.”

Sonta-i nodded. “We don’t have enough information to make an assessment yet. Therefore we must acquire more.”

“Perhaps we should take this to the Council of Paths,” Rabbaneh said. “Our judgment may be impaired by our closeness to the situation—”

Sonta-i looked at him; Rabbaneh fell silent. Nijiri frowned at both in confusion.

“No,” Rabbaneh said at last. He turned away, his back stiff, and sighed. “I don’t really believe that.”

Sonta-i regarded Rabbaneh for a moment. Then he turned to Nijiri, his gaze speculative. “How will you find him if you go?”

Only Hananja’s grace prevented Nijiri from gasping aloud. Instead he took a deep breath to calm the sudden racing of his heart. “He’ll be in one of the guard-stations,” he said. “Yanya-iyan has no dungeon and the Sunset Guard does not control the prison.”

“There are eight guard-stations, Apprentice. One for each quadrant of the city, inner and outer.”

“I’ll have to check them all, Sonta-i-brother. But I think he’ll be at one of the inner stations, since they’re closer to Yanya-iyan. I imagine the guards will want to be in range of quick reinforcements, if our brother should somehow break free.”

Sonta-i’s eyes, gray as stone, probed Nijiri’s for several long moments—though what he sought, Nijiri could not fathom. Rabbaneh stared at Sonta-i in disbelief.

“You cannot mean this, Sonta-i.”

“Neither you nor I can go,” Sonta-i said. “The city has only two working Gatherers left; we are needed.”

“So is Nijiri! He must replace Una-une. Bad enough we’ll have one green Gatherer, but if Ehiru is lost, we have to begin training another.”

“If Ehiru is lost when he should not be,” Sonta-i said with the faintest of emphasis, “we will have lost far more than a seasoned Gatherer. We will have lost the autonomy that is absolutely essential for our proper function. We will have allowed a clear injustice to impact our actions. We, who must be purest of all.”

Rabbaneh shook his head. “But Nijiri is only a boy, Sonta-i.”

“He is sixteen, a man by law. In the upriver villages he might be married already, perhaps a father.” Sonta-i focused on Nijiri, though his words were for Rabbaneh. “The pursuit of justice is the duty of every Gatherer, even the least of us. One of our brothers has been wrongfully imprisoned.”

“This is not the way to free him!”

“Indeed. Only the truth can do that. But the truth in this case intersects with the duty of our path.”

“You mean for Ehiru-brother and me to find the Reaper,” Nijiri breathed, understanding at last. His head reeled with wonder. “You mean for us to kill it.”

Sonta-i nodded. “You’ll need proof to clear Ehiru’s name. The Reaper’s body should do.”

“And if you don’t find that proof,” Rabbaneh said in a tight voice, “neither you nor Ehiru will ever be able to return to the Hetawa. You’ll both be declared corrupt and hunted down. We will be sent to hunt you, along with half the Sentinels. Do you understand? While you hunt the Reaper, you walk the Gatherers’ path only in Hananja’s eyes. No one else—not the city guard, not the Sunset Guard, not the Sentinels—will acknowledge it.”

I chose the Gatherers’ path for only one reason anyhow, Nijiri thought, and lifted his chin. “I’ll serve in my heart if serving in public means swallowing injustice.”

To his utter shock, Sonta-i smiled. It was a horrible expression beneath his dead gray eyes, lacking the slightest touch of amusement or pleasure, and the sight of it sent a shiver along Nijiri’s every nerve.

“Rabbaneh and I do not endure injustice either, Apprentice,” Sonta-i said. “We send you to kill it.”





15





Women are goddesses, like unto Hananja Herself. They birth and shape the dreamers of the world. Love and fear them.

(Wisdom)





It was the hottest time of the day. Sunandi had fallen asleep on a couch in the second-floor breezeway when Etissero’s son Saladronim prodded her awake. “Jeh Kalawe. A man.”

She sat up, bleary from sleep and the heat. A dry, dust-laden wind blew into the house and set the curtains a-billowing; she yearned momentarily for the cool moist breezes of Kisua. “Tell him I’m not interested.”

“At the door, Jeh Kalawe. He said he was a merchant but he didn’t look right. He asked after the mistress of the house. I told him we were Bromarte, we leave our women at home like sensible people. He said that was all right because he wanted to see the Kisuati mistress of the house.”

That woke her up. “What did this man look like?”

“Tall. Black as you. Shaven bald but for two long braids at the nape. He didn’t act like a merchant either, Jeh Kalawe. He never smiled.”

“Bi’incha.” She knew who it was. “Did you tell him I was here?”

Saladronim gave her a do-you-think-me-mad? look. “I told him there were no women here at all, but there was a timbalin house down the street if he was desperate. Then I closed the door on him.”