The Killing Moon (Dreamblood) Read Online Free PDF

their Reaper.
    She shivered. Lin read her face and nodded to herself. She took the scroll from Sunandi’s limp fingers, rerolled it, and tucked it out of sight in her linen skirt.
    “Shall I go tonight, or wait until after the Hamyan celebration?” she asked. “It means two days’ delay, but it should be easier to slip out of the city then.”
    Sunandi could have wept. Instead she pulled Lin close and held her tightly, and shaped her thoughts into a fervent prayer that she hoped the mad bitch Hananja could not hear.

3

    A child of a woman may have a four of siblings, or an eight. A child of the Hetawa has a thousand.
    (Wisdom)
    There were many things that one could feel when surrounded by a four of the Hetawa’s finest guardians, Nijiri considered. Fear, first and foremost—and oh, he felt that in plenty, souring his mouth and slicking his palms. But along with the fear, and dread for the beating these men would almost certainly administer to him before they were done, he felt something new, and surprising: anticipation.
    Lack of emotion is not the ideal.
Nijiri licked his lips, practically hearing Gatherer Ehiru’s night-soft voice in his mind. Ehiru always knew just the right thing to say when Nijiri came to him with a boy’s frets. Control
of emotion is
.
Even we Gatherers feel—and we savor those feelings, when they come, as the rare blessings they are.
    Could the urge to grind his opponents’ faces into the sand truly be a blessing? Nijiri grinned. He would meditate upon it later.
    Sentinel Mekhi glanced at Sentinel Andat, his kohled eyes narrowing in amusement. “I think perhaps Acolyte Nijiri wants peace, pathbrother.”
    “Hmm,” said Andat. He was grinning as well, turning his fighting stick in the fingers of one hand with careless expertise. “I think perhaps Acolyte Nijiri wants
pain
. I suppose there’s a kind of peace in that.”
    “Share it with me, Brothers,” Nijiri breathed, crouching low and ready. With that, they came at him.
    He did not wait for their sticks. No one could deflect, or endure, blows from four armed Sentinels. Instead he dropped low, presenting a smaller target and slipping beneath the zone of their fastest response. They were fast enough with their feet, though, and he only just dodged Sentinel Harakha’s sweeping kick by rolling over it. This, thankfully, put him outside the Sentinels’ circle and forced them to turn. That gave him a precious half-breath in which to formulate a strategy.
    Harakha. As the youngest of the four, he had yet to develop a Sentinel’s proper serenity. He was dangerous; any Sentinel who survived his apprenticeship was dangerous. But Nijiri had observed Harakha in sparring matches several times, and noted that whenever his blows were deflected, he tended to flail for an instant before recovering, as if shocked by his failure.
    So Nijiri swept at Harakha’s ankles with first one leg and then the other, rolling on his forearms to execute the sweeps again and again, forcing Harakha to dance back. The other Sentinels quickly altered their formation to avoid Nijiri’s whirling legs and to keep from tripping over each other—just as Nijiri had hoped. Then, when Harakha grew justifiably annoyedand angled a stabbing strike at Nijiri’s head, Nijiri closed his legs and rolled—
toward
Harakha. This brought him under Harakha’s stick; the tip struck the ground beyond Nijiri and lodged, just for an instant, in the sand. At this Nijiri kicked up, aiming for Harakha’s hand. He did not score, for Harakha realized what he was doing at the last instant and jerked back, retaliating with a furious kick that Nijiri bore with a grunt as he rolled away. A small pain-price to pay, for he had achieved his goal: Harakha stumbled back a step more, overcompensating in typical fashion for the fact that he’d almost lost his weapon. This forced the other three Sentinels to move
more
, gracelessly, to avoid their clumsy younger brother.
    Distraction was a