The Shadowed Sun (Dreamblood) by N. K. Jemisin Read Free Book Online

above, he levered his body upward in a single smooth motion. Then he was gone.
    It was not until Sunandi returned to her bed that she understood what he had done. More precisely, she understood it in the morning, when she woke up wrapped in Anzi’s arms, comfortable and more rested than she’d felt in years. Anzi had pulled her close during the night, surely jostling her in the process. Yet she had not woken up once.

The Tithebearer
     
    “No,” Mni-inh said.
    Hanani kept her head bowed, arms folded before her with hands palm-down. Mni-inh, who sat on a cushioned bench massaging one knee, scowled when it became clear she had no intention of moving.
    “I said no, Hanani.” He straightened, flicking his red loindrapes back into place. “The Hetawa has already made its apology to the family of the tithebearer. He’s to receive a full formal burial in the Hetawa’s own crypt, an honor usually given only to Servants of Hananja. Let that suffice.”
    “The tithebearer’s death was not
the Hetawa’s
fault,” Hanani replied, keeping her eyes on his chest. In the low morning light, the ruby collar of his office looked like droplets of blood scattered over his pale skin.
    Mni-inh flinched and sat up. But the Sharers’ Hall was mostly empty between dawn and the noon hour, as those who worked the night hours slept and the rest were kept busy with a Sharer’s usual daytime duties in the Hall of Blessings or the herbs-and-simples chamber. Those few who lounged about the hall’s benches and nooks were deep in study or conversation with others. No onelooked at Hanani and Mni-inh, though Mni-inh darted his eyes about to make sure, and leaned close before he spoke again. “It isn’t
your
fault either, little fool! Don’t do Yehamwy’s work for him, Hanani. How can you expect the Council to believe you’re competent if you don’t believe it yourself?”
    She lifted her head and watched him draw back in surprise. “I don’t believe I’m incompetent, Mni-inh-brother. How could I, after your training?”
    “Then why visit the tithebearer’s family?”
    It was a question that Hanani had asked herself all night, during the hours that she’d spent weeping and praying and finally rocking herself to sleep. She had not dreamed; there had been no answer to her prayers for peace or understanding. And so she had awakened that morning with her thoughts full of a single impulse: to find out
why
Dayu had died.
    “Because my heart is empty of peace right now,” she said. Mni-inh drew back at this, frowning. “Doubt has come to fill the void instead. Did I truly press Dayu too far, too fast? Did that tithebearer die because I expected a child to do an adult’s work? You know what doubt can do in narcomancy, Brother. Even if the councilor had not pronounced interdiction on me, I would refuse to perform healings now.”
    Mni-inh sighed, a tone of frustration. “That I understand. But how will apologizing to a grieving widow—who may blame you for her husband’s death whether it’s your fault or not—ease your doubts?” He sobered abruptly. “Wait. I know what this is about. This is the first time you’ve dealt with death.”
    “That isn’t it,” she said, though she had to look away from the compassion in his eyes. In the early months of her path training, Hanani had actually suspected Mni-inh of harboring a secret sadism in his soul, somehow concealing it from the Gatherers but gleefully inflicting it on his unwilling apprentice under the guise of mentorship. He had been twice as hard on her as the other Sharers with their—male—apprentices, noting when she complained that she would have to be twice as good to overcome petitioners’ fears of her sex. And
his
hatred for same, she had been certain.
    Yet as the months became years, and as Hanani matured, she had understood at last that Mni-inh’s harshness was an act. Underneath it, his true personality was far softer.
Too
soft, Hanani now believed, sorely lacking the