The Killing Moon (Dreamblood #1)(51)
“You’re coming with us, then?” she asked the boy.
“Yes,” he answered.
“Fine,” she said, and turned to Etissero. “Do you think Gehanu’s band can accommodate three instead of one?”
Etissero looked ready to protest, but he settled instead for folding his arms and throwing a resentful glare at the Gatherers. “Yes, yes, the number doesn’t matter. But look matters, and neither of these two will be able to pass as anything other than the murderers they are.”
“We do not—” the apprentice began, but the Gatherer put a hand on his shoulder and he subsided immediately.
“With the right clothing, we can blend in well enough,” Ehiru said. “Under what guise will we travel?”
“Part of a minstrel caravan.” Etissero smiled, daring them to look horrified.
Ehiru smiled as well. “Such caravans have many members. Guardians, those who perform, workers who care for the group’s animals and properties. Nijiri and I shall be the lattermost. I shall be Kisuati, he Gujaareen.”
“Kisuati speak Sua!”
“As do I, sir, ceremonially and the common speech,” Ehiru replied in that tongue. He spoke with no trace of a Gujaareen accent, Sunandi noted, though there was a touch of highcaste in his inflections.
“You’re a Kisuati who was once wealthy and respectable,” she said, and he nodded understanding. She turned to Etissero and switched back to Gujaareen so he could understand.
“Will you gift us with suitable clothes and traveling supplies? I won’t offend you by offering reimbursement, especially when you shall be family in my own house whenever you next visit Kisua.” And, of course, she would also steer as much lucrative sonha business his way as she could.
The gesture seemed to mollify Etissero. “Of course. I’ll have Saladronim find clothes for the boy; they’re almost of a size.”
He moved to pass her on the stair, but paused and touched her arm. “Are you certain of this, ’Nandi?” He glanced back at the Gatherers, not bothering to hide his dislike or lower his voice. “If that black one harms you, I’ll kill him.”
“You will do nothing of the sort,” she snapped, darting a glance at Ehiru. The older Gatherer turned away and went to the breezeway curtain, affording them what privacy he could. The apprentice, however, eyed them coldly for a moment before turning to follow his master.
“Guest-custom—”
“Does not apply once I leave your house, Etissero. And much as you love me, you told me yourself: I’m all but dead already. Unless I can convince these two that my apparent corruption is the scheme of even more corrupt people, with more corrupt purposes.” She smiled in resignation. “And even then they may kill me. They might even be right to do so.”
He stared at her for a moment. “You didn’t kill the scamp, Sunandi.”
“I sent Lin forth. I knew our enemies would stop at nothing to keep the secrets she carried. An army captain who did the same in wartime would accept responsibility for a subordinate’s death, would he not?”
“You’re no army captain and the girl wasn’t a soldier, and we’re not at war.”
“But we are, Etissero—or we may be, as soon as I tell the Protectors what’s going on in this city. Lin wasn’t even the first victim of that war.” She closed her eyes and touched her breast. If a Reaper had not been involved, she could have at least hoped that Lin would find Kinja, somewhere in the vastness of Ina-Karekh. Then they could have been father and daughter in death as they had not been able, in life. But Reapers left nothing in either world when they were done with a victim: no waking life, no soul to dream. She had not even hope for comfort.
Etissero took her hand. “If not for these”—he jerked his head at the Gatherers—“I would order you to stay here until your grief is spent, ’Nandi. You should be among friends at this time, not enemies.”
“The enemies are better. They’ll help me to remember why Lin died.” She smiled a smile she did not feel and gently disengaged her hand from his. “And I have endangered your family enough by remaining here.”
His face fell but he said nothing, for he knew she spoke the truth. She smiled, leaned close, and kissed him on the cheek. “Now hurry,” she said. “The caravan will surely leave before the afternoon rest hour.”
*
The market square of the Unbelievers’ District was crowded when they arrived, the air thick with dust and the smells of fried food and animal dung. Shoppers and traders hawking their wares mingled in a cheerfully chaotic mass that made the more orderly markets of Gujaareh seem funereal by comparison. Then too Sunandi saw less pleasant reminders that they were no longer in Hananja’s City: pickpockets roamed the crowd, a shopkeeper shouted insults at a recalcitrant customer, and dealers in shadier wares did brisk business on the fringes. Surreptitiously she tucked her wrist purse into her travel-robes.
She worried at first that the two Gujaareen, unused to the rough ways beyond their city’s walls, might not be so careful. Yet Ehiru had already tucked his purse out of sight, and as usual the boy had taken cues from his master. To a point: Ehiru moved through the crowd with such calm and ease that no one could mistake him for the pious monster he truly was, but Nijiri gaped openmouthed at everything around him. He looked exactly like a runaway servant-caste boy getting his first glimpse of life beyond Gujaareh’s walls, but she didn’t think it was an act.