How Long 'Til Black Future Month?

by N. K. Jemisin

  “I remember the time before I took my oath.”

  “Not the same.”

  Cet shrugged, gazing at the mourning family. “I have the peace and order of Temple life to comfort me now. It is enough.”

  The Superior looked at him oddly for a moment, then sighed. “Well, I’m afraid I must ask you to leave that comfort for a time, Cet. Will you come with me to my office? I have a matter that requires the attention of a Gatherer—one with your unique skill at bestowing peace.”

  And thus did Cet’s second hardship fall upon him.

  The quartet that stood in the Superior’s office were upriver folk. Cet could see that in their dingy clothing and utter lack of makeup or jewelry; not even the poorest city dweller kept themselves so plain. And no city dweller went unsandaled on the brick-paved streets, which grew painfully hot at midday. Yet the woman who stood at the group’s head had the proud carriage of one used to the respect and obedience of others, finery or no finery. The three men all but cowered behind her as the Superior and Cet entered the room.

  “Cet, this is Mehepi,” said the Superior, gesturing to the woman. “She and her companions are from a mining village some ways to the south, in the foothills that border the Empty Thousand. Mehepi, I bring you Cet, one of the Temple’s Gatherers.”

  Mehepi’s eyes widened in a way that would have amused Cet, had he been capable of amusement. Clearly she had expected something more of Gujaareh’s famed Gatherers; someone taller, perhaps. But she recovered quickly and gave him a respectful bow. “I greet you in peace, Gatherer,” she said, “though I bring unpeaceful tidings.”

  Cet inclined his head. “Tidings of …” But he trailed off, surprised, as his eyes caught a slight movement in the afternoon shadows of the room. Some ways apart from Mehepi and the others, a younger woman knelt on a cushion. She was so still—it was her breathing Cet had noticed—that Cet made no wonder he had overlooked her, though now it seemed absurd that he had. Wealthy men had commissioned sculptures with lips less lush, bones less graceful; sugared currants were not as temptingly black as her skin. Though the other upriver folk were staring at Cet, her eyes remained downcast, her body unmoving beneath the faded indigo drape of her gown. Indigo: the mourning color. Mehepi wore it, too.

  “What is this?” Cet asked, nodding toward the younger woman.

  Was there unease in Mehepi’s eyes? Defensiveness, certainly. “We were told the Temple offers its aid only to those who follow the ways of the Dream Goddess,” she said. “We have no money to tithe, Gatherer, and none of us has offered dreams or goods in the past year …”

  All at once Cet understood. “You brought her as payment.”

  “No, not payment—” But even without the hint of a stammer in Mehepi’s voice, the lie was plain in her manner.

  “Explain, then.” Cet spoke more sharply than was, perhaps, strictly peaceful. “Why does she sit apart from the rest of you?”

  The villagers looked at one another. But before any of them could speak, the young woman said, “Because I am cursed, Gatherer.”

  The Temple Superior frowned. “Cursed? Is that some upriver superstition?”

  Cet had thought the younger woman broken in spirit, to judge by her motionlessness and fixed gaze at the floor. But now she lifted her eyes, and Cet realized that whatever was wrong with her, she was not broken. There was despair in her, strong enough to taste, but something more as well.

  “I was a lapis merchant’s wife,” she said. “When he died, I was taken by the village headman as a secondwife. Now the headman is dead, and they blame me.”

  “She is barren!” said one of the male villagers. “Two husbands and no children yet? And Mehepi here, she is the firstwife—”

  “All of my children had been stillborn,” said Mehepi, touching her belly as if remembering the feel of them inside her. That much was truth, as was her pain; some of Cet’s irritation with her eased. “That was why my husband took another wife. Then my last child was born alive. The whole village rejoiced! But the next morning, the child stopped breathing. A few days later the brigands came.” Her face tightened in anger. “They killed my husband while she slept beside him. And they had their way with her, but even despite that there is no child.” Mehepi shook her head. “For so much death to follow one woman, and life itself to shun her? How can it be anything but a curse? That is why …” She darted a look at Cet, then drew herself up. “That is why we thought you might find value in her, Gatherer. Death is your business.”

  “Death is not a Gatherer’s business,” Cet said. Did the woman realize how greatly she had insulted him and all his brethren? For the first time in a very long while, he felt anger stir in his heart. “Peace is our business. Sharers do that by healing the flesh. Gatherers deal with the soul, judging those which are too corrupt or damaged to be salvaged and granting them the Goddess’s blessing—”

  “If you had learned your catechisms better, you would understand that,” the Superior interjected smoothly. He threw Cet a mild look, doubtless to remind Cet that they could not expect better of ignorant country folk. “And you would have known there was no need for payment. In a situation like this, when the peace of many is under threat, it is the Temple’s duty to offer aid.”

  The men looked abashed; Mehepi’s jaw tightened at the scolding. With a sigh, the Superior glanced down at some notes he’d taken on a reedleaf sheet. “So, Cet; these brigands she mentioned are the problem. For the past three turns of the greater moon, their village and others along the Empty Thousand have suffered a curious series of attacks. Everyone in the village falls asleep—even the men on guard duty. When they wake, their valuables are gone. Food stores, livestock, the few stones of worth they gather from their mine; their children have been taken, too, no doubt sold to those desert tribes who traffic in slaves. Some of the women and youths have been abused, as you heard. And a few, such as the village headman and the guards, were slain outright, perhaps to soften the village’s defenses for later. No one wakes during these assaults.”

  Cet inhaled, all his anger forgotten. “A sleep spell? But only the Temple uses narcomancy.”

  “Impossible to say,” the Superior said. “But given the nature of these attacks, it seems clear we must help. Magic is fought best with magic.” He looked at Cet as he spoke.

  Cet nodded, suppressing the urge to sigh. It would have been within his rights to suggest that one of his other Gatherer-brethren—perhaps Liyou, the youngest—handle the matter instead. But after all his talk of peace and righteous duty, that would have been hypocritical. And … in spite of himself, his gaze drifted back to the younger woman. She had lowered her eyes once more, her hands folded in her lap. There was nothing peaceful in her stillness.

  “We will need a soul-healer,” Cet said softly. “There is more to this than abuse of magic.”

  The Superior sighed. “A Sister, then. I’ll write the summons to their Matriarch.” The Sisters were an offshoot branch of the faith, coexisting with the Servants of Hananja in an uneasy parallel. Cet knew the Superior had never liked them.

  Cet gave him a rueful smile. “Everything for Her peace.” He had never liked them either.

  They set out that afternoon: the five villagers, two of the Temple’s warrior Sentinels, Cet, and a Sister of the Goddess. The Sister, who arrived unescorted at the river docks just as they were ready to push off, was worse than even Cet had expected—tall and commanding, clad in the pale gold robes and veils that signified high rank in their order. That meant this Sister had mastered the most difficult techniques of erotic dreaming, with its attendant power to affect the spirit and the subtler processes of flesh. A formidable creature. But the greatest problem in Cet’s eyes was that the Sister was male.

  “Did the messenger not explain the situation?” Cet asked the Sister at the first opportunity. He kept his tone light. They rode in a canopied barge more than large enough to hold their entire party and the pole crew besides. It was not large enough to accommodate ill feelings b
etween himself and the Sister.

  The Sister, who had given his name as Ginnem, stretched out along the bench he had claimed for himself. “Gatherers; so tactful.”

  Cet resisted the urge to grind his teeth. “You cannot deny that a different Sister—a female Sister—would have been better suited to deal with this matter.”

  “Perhaps,” Ginnem replied, with a smile that said he thought no one better suited than himself. “But look.” He glanced across the aisle at the villagers, who had occupied a different corner of the barge. The three men sat together on a bench across from the firstwife. Three benches back, the young woman sat alone.

  “That one has suffered at the hands of both men and women,” Ginnem said. “Do you think my sex makes any difference to her?”

  “She was raped by men,” Cet said.

  “And she is being destroyed by a woman. That firstwife wants her dead, can you not see?” Ginnem shook his head, jingling tiny bells woven into each of his braids. “If not for the need to involve the Temple in the brigand matter, no doubt the firstwife would’ve found some quiet way to do her in already. And why do you imagine only a woman could know of rape?”

  Cet started. “Forgive me. I did not realize—”

  “It was long ago.” Ginnem shrugged his broad shoulders. “When I was a soldier; another life.”

  Cet’s surprise must have shown on his face, for a moment later Ginnem laughed. “Yes, I was born military caste,” he said. “I earned high rank before I felt the calling to the Sisterhood. And I still keep up some of my old habits.” He lifted one flowing sleeve to reveal a knife sheath strapped around his forearm, then flicked it back so quickly that no one but Cet noticed. “So you see, there is more than one reason the Sisterhood sent me.”

  Cet nodded slowly, still trying and failing to form a clear opinion of Ginnem. Male Sisters were rare; he wondered if all of them were this strange. “Then we are four fighters and not three. Good.”

  “Oh, don’t count me,” Ginnem said. “My soldier days are over; I fight only when necessary now. And I expect I’ll have my hands full with other duties.” He glanced at the young woman again, sobering. “Someone should talk to her.”

  And he turned his kohl-lined eyes to Cet.

  Night had fallen, humid and thick, by the time Cet went to the woman. Her companions were already abed, motionless on pallets the crew had laid on deck. One of the Sentinels was asleep; the other stood at the prow with the ship’s watchman.

  The woman still sat on her bench. Cet watched her for a time, wondering if the lapping water and steadily passing palm trees had lulled her to sleep, but then she lifted a hand to brush away a persistent moth. Throwing a glance at Ginnem—who was snoring faintly on his bench—Cet rose and went to sit across from the woman. Her eyes were lost in some waking dream until he sat down, but they sharpened very quickly.

  “What is your name?” he asked.

  “Namsut.” Her voice was low and warm, touched with some southlands accent.

  “I am Cet,” he replied.

  “Gatherer Cet.”

  “Does my title trouble you?”

  She shook her head. “You bring comfort to those who suffer. That takes a kind heart.”

  Surprised, Cet smiled. “Few even among the Goddess’s most devout followers see anything other than the death I bring. Fewer still have ever called me kind for it. Thank you.”

  She shook her head, looking into the passing water. “No one who has known suffering would think ill of you, Gatherer.”

  Widowed twice, raped, shunned … He tried to imagine her pain and could not. That inability troubled him all of a sudden.

  “I will find the brigands who hurt you,” he said, to cover his discomfort. “I will see that their corruption is excised from the world.”

  To his surprise, her eyes went hard as iron though she kept her voice soft. “They did nothing to me that two husbands had not already done,” she said. “And wife-brokers before that, and my father’s creditors before that. Will you hunt down all of them?” She shook her head. “Kill the brigands, but not for me.”

  This was not at all the response that Cet had expected. So confused was he that he blurted the first question that came to his mind. “What shall I do for you, then?”

  Namsut’s smile threw him even further. It was not bitter, that smile, but neither was it gentle. It was a smile of anger, he realized at last. Pure, politely restrained, tooth-grinding rage.

  “Give me a child,” she said.

  In the morning, Cet spoke of the woman’s request to Ginnem.

  “In the upriver towns, the headman’s wife rules if the headman dies,” Cet explained as they broke their fast. “That is tradition, according to Namsut. But a village head must prove him or herself favored by the gods, to rule. Namsut says fertility is one method of proof.”

  Ginnem frowned, chewing thoughtfully on a date. A group of women on the passing shore were doing laundry at the riverside, singing a rhythmic song while they worked. “That explains a great deal,” he said at last. “Mehepi has proven herself at least able to conceive, but after so many dead children, the village must be wondering if she, too, is cursed. And since having a priest for a lover might also connote the gods’ favor, I know now why Mehepi has been eyeing me with such speculation.”

  Cet started, feeling his cheeks heat. “You think she wants—” He took a date to cover his discomfort. “From you?”

  Ginnem grinned. “And why not? Am I not fine?” He made a show of tossing his hair, setting all the tiny bells a-tinkle.

  “You know full well what I mean,” Cet said, glancing about in embarassment. Some of the other passengers looked their way at the sound of Ginnem’s hair bells, but no one was close enough to overhear.

  “Yes, and it saddens me to see how much it troubles you,” Ginnem said, abruptly serious. “Sex, Gatherer Cet. That is the word you cannot bring yourself to say, isn’t it?” When Cet said nothing, Ginnem made an annoyed sound. “Well, I will not let you avoid it, however much you and your stiff-necked Servant brethren disapprove. I am a Sister of the Goddess. I use narcomancy—and yes, my body when necessary—to heal those wounded spirits that can be healed. It is no less holy a task than what you do for those who cannot be healed, Gatherer, save that my petitioners do not die when I’m done!”

  He was right. Cet bent at the waist, his eyes downcast, to signal his contrition. The gesture seemed to mollify Ginnem, who sighed.

  “And no, Mehepi has not approached me,” Ginnem said, “though she’s hardly had time, with three such devoted attendants …” Abruptly he caught his breath. “Ahh—yes, now I understand. I first thought this was a simple matter of a powerful senior wife plotting against a weaker secondwife. But more than that—this is a race. Whichever woman produces a healthy child first will rule the village.”

  Cet frowned, glancing over at the young woman again. She had finally allowed herself to sleep, leaning against one of the canopy pillars and drawing her feet up onto the bench. Only in sleep was her face peaceful, Cet noticed. It made her even more beautiful, though he’d hardly imagined that possible.

  “The contest is uneven,” he said. He glanced over at the headwoman Mehepi—acting headwoman, he realized now, by virtue solely of her seniority. She was still asleep on one of the pallets, comfortable between two of her men. “Three lovers to none.”

  “Yes.” Ginnem’s lip curled. “That curse business was a handy bit of cleverness on Mehepi’s part. No man will touch the secondwife for fear of sharing the curse.”

  “It seems wrong,” Cet said softly, gazing at Namsut. “That she should have to endure yet another man’s lust to survive.”

  “You grew up in the city, didn’t you?” When Cet nodded, Ginnem said, “Yes, I thought so. My birth village was closer to the city, and surely more fortunate than these people’s, but some customs are the same in every backwater. Children are wealth out here, you see—another miner, another strong back on the farm, another eye to watc
h for enemies. A woman is honored for the children she produces, and so she should be. But make no mistake, Gatherer: This contest is for power. The secondwife could leave that village. She could have asked asylum of your Temple Superior. She returns to the village by choice.”

  Cet frowned, mulling over that interpretation for a moment. It did not feel right.

  “My father was a horse trader,” he said. Ginnem raised an eyebrow at the apparent non sequitur; Cet gave him a faint shrug of apology. “Not a very good one. He took poor care of his animals, trying to squeeze every drop of profit from their hides.”

  Even after so many years, it shamed Cet to speak of his father, for anyone who listened could guess what his childhood had been like. A man so neglectful of his livelihood was unlikely to be particularly careful of his heirs. He saw this realization dawn on Ginnem’s face, but to Cet’s relief, Ginnem merely nodded for Cet to continue.

  “Once, my father sold a horse—a sickly, half-starved creature—to a man so known for his cruelty that no other trader in the city would serve him. But before the man could saddle the horse, it gave a great neigh and leapt into the river. It could have swum back to shore, but that would have meant recapture. So it swam in the opposite direction, deeper into the river, where finally the current carried it away.”

  Ginnem gave Cet a skeptical look. “You think the secondwife wants the village to kill her?”

  Cet shook his head. “The horse was not dead. When last I saw it, it was swimming with the current, its head above the water, facing whatever fate awaited it downriver. Most likely it drowned or was eaten by predators. But what if it survived the journey, and even now runs free over some faraway pasture? Would that not be a reward worth so much risk?”

  “Ah. All or nothing; win a better life or die trying.” Ginnem’s eyes narrowed as he gazed contemplatively at Cet. “You understand the secondwife well, I see.”