The Shadowed Sun

by N. K. Jemisin

  Behind her she heard Orenajah’s faint sniff of disapproval at this, but the old woman said nothing more.

  “Mama,” whispered Tantufi. Tiaanet looked down at her; the huge, bloodshot eyes were on her face, lucid for the moment. “The people.”

  The sleepers. “Shh,” Tiaanet said. “Are you hungry?”

  Tantufi shook her head fiercely. “No no no.” She turned, looking over Tiaanet’s shoulder at the pallets; her face tightened in palpable distress. “So many, Mama.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Tiaanet said again. “Nothing matters for you but me, and for me but you. Hasn’t it always been thus? Be still now.”

  Tantufi fell silent at last, resuming her manic movements, but her eyes lingered on the sleepers, and now and again she made a low, fluting sound of despair. Across the aisle, Insurret uttered a faint contemptuous snort, but otherwise kept her silence, and so Tiaanet ignored her.

  A relative silence fell in the Hall as they waited—for what, Tiaanet did not know. Another acolyte passed, this one carrying slabs of flat bread; apparently Bibiki was allowing some templefolk to visit their storerooms under guard. Tiaanet took a piece of bread, more to keep herself awake than out of any real hunger, and pressed Tantufi to eat for the same reason. The girl had begun to grow still for brief periods of time, another warning of impending sleep.

  But before Tiaanet could get Tantufi to eat, she jumped as one of the soldiers near the Hetawa’s main doors called sharply, “Captain!”

  Bibiki, conferring in a corner with some of his soldiers, immediately went to the doors to see what was the matter. There was nothing else for a long while; Tiaanet ate and fed Tantufi, chewing some of the bread for her, as the child’s teeth were loose. But eventually it became clear that something was happening outside. The soldiers had become more alert, clustering at the front door and windows with weapons held ready. Their tension jarred the Hall’s air of peace.

  Abruptly Tiaanet heard Bibiki murmur, “I do not believe this,” and laugh. “Well, well. Perhaps this mess will end sooner than I first thought. Let us see if we can take him alive.”

  The men shuffled themselves quickly, though Tiaanet could not see what they were doing or why. Then she heard the deep bronze groan of the Hetawa’s doors being opened.

  The Servants, all around the Hall, tensed at once. “They are drawing weapons,” said one Sharer in an audible, incensed whisper. He clenched his fists. “Weapons!”

  “Peace,” said the Teacher near him, but he looked no happier about it.

  Then Bibiki’s voice called, “Now!” and Tiaanet heard the twang-hiss of arrows. A great roar echoed into the Hall, a thousand angry men’s voices, and the voices of women and elders and children as well. Over this she heard Bibiki shout, “Fire into the front line! Drive them back! You four, go and fetch him. Hurry. The rest of you, cover them!”

  There was a great flurry of activity at the Hetawa entrance before a moment later the doors groaned shut. And then a cluster of Bibiki’s men came running into the center of the hall, one of them pulling along a woman in barbarian garb who struggled wildly in his hands. One Kisuati soldier dragged another Banbarra, but even from her vantage Tiaanet could see that this man was dead; a single arrow had stuck through his throat. Blood began to pool around him as soon as they dropped him to the floor.

  The third figure that they dragged with them bled as well, but cursed and struggled as they dropped him to the floor. Wanahomen.

  “Mind your snakeling, daughter.” Insurret’s voice pulled Tiaanet back to her own concerns. Insurret was smiling; she nodded toward Tiaanet’s arms. With a sharp stab of alarm Tiaanet realized that Tantufi’s body had gone slack, her eyes shut and mouth hanging open.

  “No—” Immediately Tiaanet shook her, as hard as she dared short of injury. Tantufi’s eyes, glazed and unseeing, opened a crack but drifted shut again almost at once. “’Tufi, wake. You must not sleep, not now.”

  Not in a room full of sleepers, their souls already weakened by long captivity. Not in the heart of the Hetawa, surrounded by narcomancers who would know Tantufi at once for what she was.

  But it was too late. Tiaanet shook her again, slapped her, even lifted one limp hand and clamped her own teeth over one of the recent scars there, but Tantufi did not stir. It was always so whenever she finally fell asleep; if not woken at once, her body demanded recompense for the days of abuse. Nothing short of a beating would wake her at that point.

  Leaving Tiaanet helpless and terrified as her daughter sighed, snuggled closer to her breast, and quietly began to dream.

  43

  The Battle of Flesh

  Wanahomen would not stop struggling beneath Hanani’s hands. “Shadow-spawned belly-crawling shit-eating sons of jackals!” He pushed her hands away when she tried to examine the arrow in his chest, glaring fury at the Kisuati soldiers clustered around them and trying to sit up. “Have you no honor at all? For defiling the Hetawa you should suffer the wrath of every god—”

  The cluster parted and a Kisuati man, wearing a black leopard-skin mantle and an air of command, came to peer down at them. “Very likely we shall, Prince,” he said in heavily accented Gujaareen. “But as I suffer, I shall content myself with the fact that for a time, at least, I was accorded a hero by my people for capturing you. You,” and he looked sharply at Hanani. “Are you some sort of healer, or just his woman?”

  The wound in Wanahomen’s thigh was bleeding too much. The arrow in his chest might have gone deep enough to pierce his lung, but the thigh was more dangerous in the short term. “I’m a Sharer-Apprentice of this Hetawa,” she said to the Kisuati, getting a good grip on Wanahomen’s robes and tearing them open so she could see the wound. “Loaned to the Prince in token of our alliance.”

  She heard rather than saw the Kisuati commander’s surprise. “I see. Well, then—since that is your purpose, please keep him alive. I’ll send someone out to let his troops know he’ll die if they try to batter down the door.”

  “Keep me alive so you can execute me.” Wanahomen laughed bitterly, then winced as this pained his chest.

  “Yes, yes, as you like,” Hanani snapped, impatient with both men. Unnecessary threats and pointless resistance; she had no time for their barbaric posturing. Beyond the soldiers, she could see some of the templefolk gathering, and among them a familiar face. “Nhen-ne-verra-brother!”

  Nhen-ne-verra started, then came forward. “Yes …?” His eyes widened in belated recognition. “Hanani?”

  “I think this arrow has nicked the great artery of his leg,” she said. She sat up and unbuckled one of the girdles Yanassa had given her—the one meant to carry the affection-tokens of her lovers. She pulled it off and looped it around Wanahomen’s thigh above the arrow. “I can work the healing, but I dare not pull the arrow yet. That may be the only thing stopping the flood …”

  She trailed off as one of the soldiers moved aside and she saw Charris, still carrying her saddlebags, facedown in a pool of blood. Someone had pulled the arrow from him, but he did not stir.

  “Charris!” Wanahomen tried to get up; one of the soldiers pointed a sword at his throat and he swore a string of Banbarra invective. “Hanani—” He turned to her, his eyes wide with fear. “Help him. Please.”

  There was too much blood around Charris’s body. Hanani concentrated on tightening the tourniquet around Wanahomen’s thigh to delay telling him the truth a moment longer. But Nhen-ne-verra crouched beside her. “One of our acolytes is seeing to him, Prince.”

  A boy nearly old enough for apprenticeship had knelt beside Charris. His examination took only a moment; the look on his face was confirmation enough. “No,” Wanahomen whispered, and then made a sound that was half moan and half sob. “Gods, no.”

  Hanani forced herself to concentrate on the wound. There would be time to comfort him later. “I think we have a piece of luck,” she said to Nhen-ne-verra. “The arrow in the chest may not have pierced the lung. I can’t hear air, and his breathing do
esn’t seem impaired.”

  Nhen-ne-verra moved to rip the clothing around the chest-arrow for a closer look. “Ah, yes—it lodged between the ribs, just a flesh wound. One moment.” He yanked the arrow out of Wanahomen’s chest. Wanahomen screamed, then glared at Nhen-ne-verra in pure affront. Hanani almost smiled; if anger and pride alone could sustain a man, Wanahomen would be recovered within a day.

  “If you tend the leg, Brother, and pull the arrow when the time seems appropriate—” She reached for Wanahomen’s eyes. But Nhen-ne-verra caught her wrist sharply.

  “You can’t heal him,” he said. “Not with magic, not here.” He gestured around the Hall, where Hanani at last noticed the rows of sleeping figures.

  “And more than this dead,” Nhen-ne-verra said, when she caught her breath in horror. “Every few days, something sweeps through them like a flood. These are just the new ones brought since the last culling. We can do nothing to save them—or to save anyone else, since healing sleep is enough like true sleep that—Well.” He lowered his eyes.

  Completely thrown by this turn of events, Hanani looked at Wanahomen, who had faded somewhat; he lay panting in the aftermath of the arrow’s withdrawal. The beads of sweat on his brow pulled her out of her daze. “In my saddlebags, the ones that man was carrying,” she said to the acolyte who had seen to Charris, and who now hovered nearby. “My ornaments are there. Please make preparations for a surgery ritual.” The youth looked startled for a breath, but then he immediately went to Charris’s body to rummage for her tools.

  “Hanani—” Nhen-ne-verra shook his head. “Do you have dreamblood to ease his pain? With the Gatherers imprisoned, we have almost none left, among us. If he passes out, the nightmares will take him.”

  “If I do nothing, he’ll bleed to death,” she said, struggling to remain respectful. Of course she understood the danger. Did he think she was a fool? But he did, she now realized—and so did many of the full Sharers, who had often spoken to her as if she were still an acolyte, or especially stupid, long after she’d proven herself the equal of the other apprentices. She’d thought she had grown used to their casual disregard. What had changed so in the past month that she no longer had the patience for it?

  “And you can’t use magic to cleanse his body,” Nhen-ne-verra continued. Lecturing. “When the wound takes poison—”

  “I would welcome any alternate suggestions, Brother.” She looked him in the eye, knowing he had none. Finally Nhen-ne-verra looked away and shook his head.

  Hanani looked at Wanahomen’s face. He had subsided after the arrow, and now watched her. She was reminded suddenly of the night he had held her while she mourned Mni-inh, and a fierce, painful fear took hold of her. She was tired of losing people. It was one thing to lose Wanahomen to his throne, and her duty; another altogether to lose him to death.

  “You’re strong, Prince,” she said, reaching up to touch his lips. Some of his blood was on her fingers. It left a smear like Banbarra lip paint. “You’ve survived too much to falter here, now.”

  Wanahomen lifted his eyebrows in surprise at her gesture. Belatedly it occurred to her that she had never done anything affectionate toward him before. Perhaps it pleased him. “Of course I won’t die,” he said, and she was heartened by the scorn in his tone. “Hurry up and make me well.”

  Hanani nodded, then got to her feet.

  Her Banbarra robes—loose, filthy with travel dust and horse sweat—were completely unsuitable for surgery. She removed her outer tunic and tossed that aside, then the loose shift underneath. She had stopped wearing breast-wrappings since Wanahomen’s first visit, because they were an annoyance when she wanted sex. The Banbarra leather breast-bands chafed her, however, and having found no suitable substitute, she had finally opted to wear nothing underneath her shift. Nhen-ne-verra turned bright red in the way of pale men, but after a single shocked glance at her breasts he looked away and said nothing, knowing as she did that now was not the time to quibble about propriety.

  The acolyte returned, carrying Hanani’s ornaments and a water jar, followed closely by another youth who carried the wide basin of heated red wax kept in one of the prayer chambers for the surgery ritual. If either of the boys was thrown by Hanani’s breasts, neither was foolish enough to show it. “May we assist, Sharer-Apprentice?” asked the first boy.

  Hanani blinked in surprise. She had never expected another acolyte to serve her after Dayu, much less two. Ah, but of course: surgeries were rare, and they might never have another chance to witness one. “You may assist,” she said. “Hold the bowl.” Bracing herself, for the wax was still hot enough to sting, she thrust her hands into the bowl. The wax was beeswax—said, like honey, to prevent festering—mixed with hekeh fiber and herbs known to aid healing. She dipped her hands four times, whispering an invocation to the Goddess after each, and after the fourth dip lifted her hands; the wax coated them to the mid-forearm in thin, flexible gloves.

  While Nhen-ne-verra came over to dip his hands, the other acolyte held forward her ornaments on a leather pad, and she saw that he had polished them with stinging-acacia ointment and laid them out in the proper order. When Hanani nodded approval, the boy’s delighted smile reminded her, for a jarring instant, of Dayuhotem. But she pushed that memory aside, picked up the long, wafer-thin white-opal knife, and crouched beside Wanahomen. “Do you want something to bite down on, Prince?”

  He was gazing at the ceiling, taking deep breaths. “What good will that do? Just get on with it.”

  Hanani nodded, then bent forward and made a quick, bone-deep slice with the opal knife on either side of the arrow. The knife’s thinness made it pass through skin and muscle as easily as butter. Unfortunately butter felt no pain, while Wanahomen caught his breath and went rigid in pure agony. He managed not to make a sound as Hanani put the opal back on the pad and prized the wound open with her fingers, though his breath came very hard and his hands tightened into trembling fists.

  It was difficult to see around the seeping blood, but the damage to the great artery was plain enough; the arrow crushed and cut into its outer side. That too was luck, for the arrowhead blocked most of the hole it had created. Otherwise he would have bled out already.

  “Jade,” she said, and the acolyte quickly offered her a thin, curved needle, already threaded with fibers of dried horse sinew. “Nhen-ne-verra-brother.” Nhen-ne-verra took hold of the arrow. When Hanani nodded, he pulled it free. Blood gushed at once, a small fountain that would have been far worse if not for the tourniquet. As quickly as she could Hanani slid the needle through the artery several times and pulled the sinew tight. That stopped the flood, though not the smaller leaks—

  “Hanani.” The urgency in Nhen-ne-verra’s tone warned her. She looked up to see Wanahomen’s eyelids fluttering, his eyes rolling back.

  “Prince,” she said, making her voice sharp. “Wanahomen.” He blinked several times, finally managing to focus on her, though it clearly took an effort. “Do you want to know what Yanassa told me about you?”

  That woke him, though he groaned softly. “Sh-she told you …?”

  Switching to the tiny nightstone needle, Hanani worked quickly to seal the leaks, nodding for one of the acolytes to dribble salted water into the wound so she could see. Wanahomen uttered a strangled scream at that, stiffening again and panting through his teeth. “Oh, many secrets,” she said, to distract him. “She said you called for your mother, once, at the height, and your mother yelled back through the tent-wall for you to cry some other name and not embarrass her.”

  Nhen-ne-verra was waiting, his hand on the tourniquet. As soon as she pulled the last suture tight, Hanani nodded. Nhen-ne-verra loosened the belt. The wound welled with blood almost immediately—but most of it was from the wound-widening Hanani had done, not from the great vein. Hopefully that meant he would take no gangrene in the limb. Hanani exhaled in relief; Nhen-ne-verra nodded approval. Taking up the jade again, Hanani quickly began to sew the muscle back together.

&
nbsp; “Sh-she … told you … nothing of the sort,” Wanahomen gritted through his teeth. One of his hands opened and closed convulsively with each dip of the needle. “You are—ah, gods, gods!—the most incompetent liar I have ever seen.”

  The skin was the easiest to stitch, and the worst for pain. Hanani worked as quickly as she could, but Wanahomen shuddered with every dip of the needle, tossing his head from side to side and panting like a bellows. By the time she was finally done, his body ran with sweat and the pool of blood under his leg had soaked Hanani’s skirts from knees to ankles.

  “It needs wrapping,” Hanani said at last, sitting back with a sigh, “but it’s done.” Nhen-ne-verra looked relieved as well, and belatedly Hanani realized he had been nearly as tense as Wanahomen. It was a Sharer’s instinct to attack pain, not inflict it.

  Wanahomen made no sound, though, and Hanani looked at him quickly, fearing that he had fainted. He was awake, though staring off through the pillars at something else, a frown of confusion on his face. Hanani followed his gaze to see a young woman, tall and slim in the way of a shunha or Kisuati, sitting against the far wall with a spindly-limbed child in her arms. She was shaking the child, murmuring endearments to wake her, but the child flopped about bonelessly.

  “Fetch bandages,” Hanani said absently, and one of the acolytes immediately ran off to obey, going to the compartments between the alcoves where healing supplies were kept. “Nhen-ne-verra-brother, that woman …”

  Nhen-ne-verra looked. “Yes, I saw them as they came in. The child has some sort of wasting sickness. I offered to examine her, but the woman—Well, they’re shunha.”

  “Tiaanet?” Wanahomen said suddenly. His speech was slurred; whatever strength had sustained him through the surgery was fading. “T-Tiaanet?”

  Beyond the pillars, the woman looked up. Hanani saw that she was incredibly beautiful, though there was a deep anxiety marring her features now. She gazed at Wanahomen for a moment, but then looked away, and resumed shaking the child in her arms.