The Killing Moon (Dreamblood) Read Online Free

too would be given to the Sharers for the good of all.
    And for those citizens of Gujaareh who were too old, or too sick, or too selfish to bring their offerings to the Hetawa… there were the priests called Gatherers.
    Oh yes, there was magic in Gujaareh. Great, reeking heaps of it.
    “You’re afraid,” observed the Prince.
    Sunandi blinked out of her reverie to find him smiling at her, unapologetic. It was the Gujaareen way to speak of such things—desires that should remain private, concealed anxieties. He knew it was not the Kisuati way.
    “You hide it well,” he continued, “but it shows. Mostly in your silence. You’ve been so forceful up until now that the change is striking. Or is it that you find me a poor conversationalist?”
    If only Kinja had not died, Sunandi thought behind the mask of her answering smile. He had understood the peculiarities and contradictions of Gujaareh better than anyone else in Kisua. In this land flowers bloomed at night and the river created lush farmlands in the heart of a desert. Here politics was half religion and half riddle, for under Hananja’s Law even a hint of corruption was punishable by death. And here Sunandi had discovered that even Kinja could make mistakes, for though he had taught her the language and the magic and the customs, he had not been a woman. He had never been forced to contend with the most elegant, most dangerous charms of Gujaareh’s Sunset Prince.
    “I’m forceful when force is needed,” Sunandi replied. She waved a hand: a touch of unconcern, a hint of coquetry. “Trade discussions with the zhinha most definitely require it. I was under the impression, however, that this meeting between us was…” She pretended to grope for the word in Gujaareen although she suspected that he, unlike most of his countrymen, would not be so easily lulled by her accent and feigned ignorance. “How do you say it? Less official. More… intimate.”
    “Oh, it is.” His gaze followed her every movement; the smile had not left his face.
    She inclined her head. “Then here I may be more myself. If you read fear in my silence, I assure you that it has nothing to do with you.” She smiled to soften the snub. His eyes flared with a mingling of amusement and interest, as they always seemed to do when she parried his verbal feints. Small wonder he found her so alluring; to Sunandi’s mind, Gujaareen women were painfully demure.
    The Prince abruptly rose from his couch and sauntered over to the terrace railing. For a moment Sunandi set aside subtlety to drink her fill of the sight unobserved—though there was hardly any need to conceal her interest. The Prince’s movements were studied, the epitome of grace; he knew full well she was watching. The black ropes of his hair had been threaded with cylinders of gold and strings of minute pearls, and this mane surrounded a face that was fine-planed and flawless, apart from the misfortune of his coloring. Ageless, like his lean warrior’s body. Here in his private quarters he’d shunned the more elaborate collars and adornments of his office for a simple loinskirt and feathered waistcloak. The plumes of the cloak whispered as they swept the floor’s tiles behind him.
    He stopped beside a raised plinth bearing a platter, gazed at it for a moment as if to assure himself of the suitability of its contents, then brought the platter over to her. He knelt with careless ease before the bench she’d chosen and offered the platter to her with his head bowed, humble as any lowcaste servant.
    On the platter lay a profusion of delicacies for the taking: crisp vegetables flecked with hekeh-seed and sea salt, balls of grain held together with honey and aromatic oil, medallions of fresh fish tied into bundles around wine-soaked raisins. And more, each arranged in neat rows of four—forty in all. An auspicious number by Gujaareen reckoning.
    Sunandi smiled at that implicit hopeful message. After a moment’s consideration she