The Killing Moon (Dreamblood #1)(92)
He jerked his chin at Ehiru, and Ehiru flinched despite himself. Eninket smiled.
“Did you honestly believe the Hetawa would not take advantage of that, Ehiru? Where do you think they get the resources to run the House of Children, to build statues out of rare nightstone, to buy your food and clothing? The elite of the city pay half their fortunes every year for the Hetawa’s favor—and for dreamblood.” His lip curled. “A tithe for a tithe.”
“You lie!” Ehiru sprang to his feet and ran to the cage’s bars, his whole body trembling. If he had been free in that moment he would have killed Eninket with his bare hands, just to stop the terrible words. But Eninket only sighed at the sight of Ehiru’s rage, his eyes filling with bleak pity. That, more than anything else, broke the back of Ehiru’s anger. It meant that Eninket was telling the truth.
No. It isn’t true. No.
“The forty and four years of our father’s rule were a sham, my brother,” Eninket said. He spoke heavily now, his anger gone; Ehiru’s was too, numbed to nothingness. “He never made a decision without the Hetawa’s approval, for fear they would cut him off and leave him to die in madness. The Princes are figureheads; Gujaareh is truly ruled by the Hetawa. When I learned this—and saw what it did to our father—I swore I would break the cycle. I accepted their poisoned honey when I took up the Aureole. It was either that or wake to find a Gatherer in my bedchamber some night. I lived as their slave for years. But in secret, I searched for the means to free myself.”
He gestured at the two chain-carrying servants. They bowed acquiescence and then went past him to the third cage, which the guards unlocked for them. Ehiru heard whispers and the clack of metal, and a moment later they emerged, leading along the cage’s occupant: a man who would have been twice their height if not for his hunched posture. He shuffled along between them, manacled at wrists and ankles. An open, hooded cloak had been draped over his head and torso, though he wore only a stained loincloth underneath. Once the man must have been hale, but some illness or famine had sapped the vitality from his flesh and left him emaciated, the skin of his legs ashen and mottled with sores.
Nijiri sucked in a breath and stumbled back, his eyes widening, terrified. Ehiru stared at the boy, then narrowed his eyes at the hunched figure as his mind filled with an ugly suspicion.
“You hate me now,” Eninket said to Ehiru. His face was solemn. With one hand he plucked something from the waistband of his leather skirt. “I see that in your eyes even though they are the ones you should hate. But I’ve never hated you, Ehiru, no matter what you might think. I mean to use you, for they’ve made you into a weapon and dropped you at my feet. But know that I do it out of necessity, not malice.”
He gestured again. One of the children reached up to remove the manacled man’s ragged robe. And then it was Ehiru’s turn to stagger away, so overcome with shock and revulsion that had there been anything in his stomach he would have vomited it up in helpless reaction.
“Una-une,” he whispered.
Una-une did not respond. Once he had been Ehiru’s mentor, oldest and wisest of the Gatherers who had served Gujaareh for the past decade. Now he was a slack-jawed apparition who gazed unfocused into what was surely the most twisted of the nightmarelands. There was nothing of the Una-une Ehiru had known in the creature’s eyes. There was nothing of humanity in those eyes—not any longer.
“He isn’t at his best right now,” Eninket said, still in that Gatherer-gentle voice. “His mind, what remains of it, comes and goes. I thought at first to use a Sharer; easier to control, and the deterioration wouldn’t have been as severe. But the scrolls warned that only a Gatherer would have the power I needed. So I bribed a Sentinel to steal Una-une away as he meditated on the night before his Final Tithe.”
Through shadows Ehiru heard Nijiri’s voice. “The Superior said Una-une gave his tithe directly to the Sharers.” The boy sounded more shaken than Ehiru had ever heard him, his voice quavering like an old man’s. The Reaper’s attack had left its mark on him. “I stood attendance on his funeral pyre with the other acolytes. I watched him burn!”
“You watched a body burn,” Eninket snapped. “Some pauper buried by the Hetawa; I don’t know. The Superior helped me hide the kidnapping when I threatened to tell the Gatherers about his corrupt use of dreamblood. Perhaps he thought to cut me off in retaliation, or perhaps it simply never occurred to him to wonder why I wanted a broken Gatherer; who knows? In any case, by the time he discovered my intent, it was too late. Una-une was mine.”
Ehiru wept. He could not help it, witnessing the ruin of a man he had loved more than his father, more than all his brothers and sisters, more than even Hanaja Herself. He pressed himself against the hard, cold wall at the back of the cage, because that was the only way he could keep his feet. My pathbrother, my mentor, I have failed you, we have all failed you, so badly—
“Why?” It was a hoarse whisper, all he could manage. Beyond the cage Una-une twitched, reacting either to Ehiru’s voice or to some conjuration of his broken mind.
“Una-une has no limit now,” Eninket replied. “He takes and takes, far more than he ever could as a Gatherer. Much of the magic is consumed by his hunger, but more than enough remains for my needs.” He turned to Una-une and lifted his hand, rapping the object in it with his fingernail; Ehiru jerked in reflexive response when he heard the faint whine of a jungissa stone. Una-une lifted his—no. The Reaper lifted its head slowly, blinking at Eninket as if trying to see him from a great distance.