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' 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 between 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 occuped 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.