As they drew nearer the city, the river traffic grew thicker yet, forcing them to slow and even stop on occasion as boats gathered into knots and lines leading up to the looming arch of the Blood Gate. The crew murmured in annoyance. Pulling himself out of sorrow enough to pay attention, Nijiri watched as the captain called out to another boat nearby to ask why the traffic was so much worse than usual.
“Heard they’re searching boats,” the man replied with a shrug. “For contraband, maybe, or smuggled goods. Who knows?”
“Mnedza’s Tongue,” said one of the crewmen, frowning. “Why in the shadowlands would they tie up half the river with boat searches? Are they mad? It’ll be Moonset before they go home tonight.”
The captain glanced back at Ehiru and Nijiri, though he spoke aloud to the whole crew. “We’ve nothing to worry about,” he said. “Our cargo is strictly legal—this time.” This provoked uneasy laughter that Nijiri could not bring himself to share.
Their boat inched closer to the network of piers and bridges that made up the Gate. Soldiers wearing the gray loinskirts of the City Guard swarmed along the piers like ants, on both sides of the river. Nijiri’s dread grew as he glimpsed a fisherman standing rigid with fury, watching a soldier poke a spear butt through his day’s catch. As they finally reached a pier, a man wearing the indigo-trimmed headcloth of a tax assessor approached the boat, flanked by two soldiers. “Tie your boat for boarding,” he said brusquely, and the barge’s crew moved to comply. On the captain’s orders, Nijiri and Ehiru pushed the barge’s anchor stone over the side and then stood among the rest of the crew, watching.
The tax assessor stepped into the boat with the ease of long practice and began rummaging through the stacks of baskets and chests. The soldiers boarded less skillfully, but they moved with purpose as they came to where the crew stood. “State your name and business,” said one. While the other soldier took notes on a wide scroll, the crew members began to speak in turn. When Ehiru’s turn came he used the false name he’d given to Gehanu before the desert journey. Nijiri did the same.
“You don’t look Kisuati, boy,” the soldier said, narrowing his eyes.
“He was born in Gujaareh,” the captain interjected smoothly. “My sister slept with a northerner and moved here when the family put her out. I’ve hired him on for the time being, since he isn’t as lazy and shiftless as his father.”
The soldier snorted at this and moved on down the line. Nijiri exhaled in private relief; the captain winked at him.
Finally the soldiers finished interviewing the crew. “All right, then,” said the one taking notes. “Turn and raise your arms, and then we’ll be done.”
The captain started. “What is this? I have been riding the river between Kisua and Gujaareh for ten years and never—”
“New orders from Yanya-iyan,” the other soldier said. He spoke wearily, clearly having said the words many times before. “There have been problems lately with spies and smugglers. You could have contraband hidden on you.”
The captain’s eyes widened in genuine affront. “Are you mad? I—”
The soldier drew his sword and put it at the captain’s throat in a blur of motion; the captain fell silent immediately. “Orders from Yanya-iyan,” the soldier said again, speaking slowly and coldly now. “The Prince’s city obeys the Prince’s law.”
From the corner of his eye Nijiri saw Ehiru bristle at this perversion of Hetawa doctrine, but of course they could not take the man to task for it. The crew members tensed as well, angry on behalf of their captain, but there was little they could do without jeopardizing his life.
“This can be quick and simple,” said the soldier with the sword, with a hint of exasperation this time. “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear.”
One by one, the crew members obeyed. Nijiri did the same, sighing at the indignity, but Ehiru turned only slowly. His eyes met Nijiri’s as they turned, and Nijiri was startled to see that his mentor’s jaw was tight with tension.
But why is he afraid? We have no contraband and barely enough money to be worth stealing. Only—
And then he remembered. Their black loindrapes, hidden under their Kisuati clothing. Their Gatherer ornaments.
His heart began to pound as the soldiers moved down the line, patting each crew member and pulling out weapons, money-pouches, and the like. They were moving quickly, he noticed with the one part of his mind that could still function through rising fear. His ornaments were in a pouch tucked into the band of his Kisuati loinskirt. Let them miss it in their haste, he prayed silently. Perhaps they would feel them and dismiss them as dice or tehtet pieces or just a boy’s rock collection—
The soldier’s hands slapped roughly over his torso, and paused when they found the pouch. Through rising panic Nijiri felt the soldier tug the pouch out of his skirt; he heard the clatter of stones as the pouch was opened. When he heard the soldier’s murmured oath, he knew they were lost.
He glanced at Ehiru; there was only one chance. He mouthed the word fight?
Ehiru’s expression startled him, for the tension had been replaced by introspection. He shook his head minutely, then turned to face the soldiers. Swallowing, Nijiri turned as well, unsurprised to see a sword leveled at his own throat.
“Gatherer Ehiru,” said the soldier; his voice shook. “Gatherer-Apprentice Nijiri. We were told to watch for you, but that you’d probably left the city.”
“Obviously we have returned,” Ehiru said.
“You will come with us now!” said the other soldier, nearly trembling in his excitement.
“Obviously we shall,” replied Ehiru. He lowered his arms and gazed down at the sword pointed at him, unafraid. “To Yanya-iyan, I presume?”
That was when Nijiri understood. They had found a way into Yanya-iyan after all.
34
A Gatherer may serve for as long as he passes Her test. At the end of his service, he must offer up his soul’s blood for Her use. A Gatherer belongs wholly to Hananja, in life and in death.
(Law)
Deep beneath Yanya-iyan lay Yanyi-ija-inank, the Earthly Thrones of the Immortal Kings. Row upon row of shelves lined the silent, winding corridors, each shelf housing the funeral urns of Gujaareh’s past Princes. Interspersed among the shelves were murals in embossed lacquer depicting each ruler’s time upon the Throne of Dreams, accompanied by formal pictorals delineating his or her name and accomplishments in Hona-Karekh. In testament to the ambition of Gujaareh’s founders, fewer than half of the shelves and walls had been filled in the thousand years of the city’s existence—this even though many shelves bore the urns of favored spouses, acclaimed soldiers, and other noteworthy folk granted the honor of resting alongside their rulers. It would take thousands more years for the catacombs to fill completely.
But a temporary use for the empty space had been found, Ehiru saw. Three small, hastily constructed cages stood against one of the blank walls, marring the catacombs’ graceful architecture with ugly iron latticework. The sight filled Ehiru with affront even as the soldiers pushed him into one of the cages and locked the door.
Nijiri yelped as a soldier prodded him ungently into the cage after Ehiru. Their hands had not been bound, but the soldiers seemed well aware of the dangers of physical contact with a Gatherer, using the butts of their spears to goad them along. Nijiri glared back at them and rubbed a fresh bruise on the back of one thigh as he crouched beside Ehiru. “What now, Brother?” He sounded tense but calm, and Ehiru suspected that his tension was as much eagerness as fear.
“Now we wait,” Ehiru replied, examining their surroundings while the guards took up duty outside the cage. The cages were nothing more than flat grids of forged iron bars, tied with oiled lengths of twine to form a cube; the door was just a rough sheet of bronze, laid over an opening between the bars. The soldiers had to roll a carved wheel-stone in front of the thing to seal the door. The whole structure had been tied to iron rings set into a nearby wall of the catacombs, be
cause clearly it would list wildly and perhaps fall apart otherwise. Flimsy in appearance, but nevertheless difficult to escape.
The cage nearest theirs was empty, but the furthest cage held one occupant. In the dim torchlight Ehiru could make out no details of the huddled form, which might have been only a pile of rags for all that it moved.
“Just wait?” Nijiri glanced toward the guards outside the cage, raising his eyebrows. They could not speak freely, but there was nothing to be said that their enemies did not already know.
“The Prince will be along soon enough,” Ehiru said.
It did not take long for him to be proven right. After an hour’s passing or so, the soldiers snapped to attention as the halls echoed suddenly with the rumble of chains and massive metal hinges. This was the mechanism which opened the heavy stone doors that sealed the catacombs during floodseason. A gust of fresh air and the jingle of sandals heralded the Prince’s arrival, along with four of the Sunset Guard and the child who bore the Aureole. Two other child-servants trailed behind the guards, each carrying an armload of heavy iron chains.
The Prince, resplendent in armor of bronze scales and a blood-red linen skirt, drew to a halt before the cage.
“Ehiru,” he said, smiling warmly. “I’m pleased to see you again.”
“I am not pleased to see you, Eninket,” Ehiru said. Eninket raised his eyebrows, smile fading.
“I see the Kisuati have filled your head with lies before sending you back to us.” He sighed. “If only you had killed the woman. I could have spared you so much suffering.”
“No more lies, Eninket,” Ehiru snapped. “You have planned war, unprovoked and to suit your own greed, in violation of our every law. I name you corrupt—”
“You name me nothing.” As quickly as the smile had vanished from Eninket’s face, now a glare replaced it. “I should never have left you with the Hetawa, once I learned they had you. Better you had died with all the rest of our siblings than grow up to become another of their puppets.” He stepped closer to the cage, though still not within arm’s reach; Ehiru forced his tense muscles to relax. “Do you know what they did to our father, Ehiru? I saw him grovel once, abject as the most humble servant-caste, at the feet of a Hetawa priest. He begged, he wept, he promised to do whatever they asked, if only they would give him dreamblood. And they gave it to him, laughing at his humiliation.”
Beside Ehiru, Nijiri made a strangled noise. Ehiru frowned, startled out of anger, disbelieving. “No,” he said. “Dreamblood is used for healing.”
Eninket threw back his head and laughed bitterly, the sound echoing throughout the tombs. “Healing?” He spun away, beginning to pace in his anger, fists tight at his sides. “Dreamblood is the greatest secret of power in this land, Ehiru! You and your pathbrothers collect hundreds of tithes every year; do you honestly believe all of them are used just to comfort grieving widows and ease injured farmers’ surgeries?”
Ehiru stared back at him, aware in that instant of a terrible, instinctive dread building in the back of his mind. This was not at all what he had expected. I do not want to know this, he thought.
But Hananja’s will could never be denied.
“Dreamblood is sweeter than any wine or aphrodisiac, more powerful than the purest timbalin,” Eninket said. He had stopped pacing. His voice was edged as a sword—but soft, too. Like a Gatherer’s. “A single draught can heighten the mind, soothe the heart, and make the body impervious to pain, weariness, even age, at least for a short time. But too much too often and even the strongest man begins to crave it. To need it. He will do anything to get more. You know this better than anyone.”
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.
“Come, Brother,” Eninket said to the creature. Fixing the stone to his breastplate, he held out his hands in a posture that was sickeningly familiar. Like the Hetawa’s statue of the Goddess, Ehiru realized with sinking horror—or a Sharer awaiting the transfer of a Gatherer’s collected tithes. After a moment, the Reaper shuffled to Eninket’s feet and knelt, taking his hands.
“No,” Ehiru whispered. But there was no mistaking the Reaper’s posture, a palsied mockery of the tithing ceremony. Nor could Ehiru deny the way Eninket suddenly caught his breath and stiffened, his face alighting in all-too-familiar ecstasy.
And even as Ehiru wept, a surge of pure, envious lust shot through him.