“You have created a Shan Tefur,” said Bel, “and he finds many others like him. Now we who have been friends of the Indras do not know what to do.” Bel was trembling. He clasped his hands, elbows on his knees. “There is no more peace, Kta. But let no Indras answer violence with violence, or there will be blood flowing in the streets come the month of Nermotai and the holy days.—Your pardon, my friends.” He rose, shaking out his robes. “I know the way out of Elas. You do not have to lead me. Do what you will with what I have told you.”
“Bel,” said Aimu, “Elas will not put you off for the sake of Shan t’Tefur’s threats.”
“But Osanef has to fear those threats. Do not expect me to be seen here again in the near future. I do not cease to regard you as my friends. I have faith in your honor and your good judgment, Kta. Do not fail my hopes.”
“Let me go with him to the door,” said Aimu, though what she asked violated all custom and modesty, “Kta, please.”
“Go with him,” said Kta. “Bel, my brother, we will do what we can. Be careful for yourself.”
11
Nephane was well named the city of mists. They rolled in and lasted for days as the weather grew warmer, making the cobbled streets slick with moisture. Ships crept carefully into harbor, the lonely sound of their bells occasionally drifting up the height of Nephane through the still air. Voices distantly called out in the streets, muted.
Kurt looked back, anxious, wondering if the sudden hush of footsteps that had been with him ever since the door of Elas meant an end of pursuit.
A shadow appeared near him. He stumbled off the edge of the unseen curb and caught his balance, fronted by several others who appeared, cloaked and anonymous, out of the grayness. He backed up and halted, warned by a scrape of leather on stone: others were behind him. His belly tightened, muscles braced.
One moved closer. The whole circle narrowed. He ducked, darted between two of them and ran. Soft laughter pursued him, nothing more. He did not stop running.
The Afen gate materialized out of the fog. He pushed the heavy gate inward. He had composed himself by the time he reached the main door. The guards stayed inside on this inclement day, and only looked up from their game, letting him pass,—alert enough, but, Sufaki-wise, careless of formalities. He shrugged the ctanback to its conventional position under his right arm and mounted the stairs. Here the guards came smartly to attention: Djan’s alien sense of discipline: and they for once made to protest his entry.
He pushed past and opened the door, and one of them then hurried into the room and back into the private section of the apartments, presumably to announce his presence.
He had time enough to pace the floor, returning several times to the great window in the neighboring room. Fog-bound as the city was, he could scarcely make out anything but Haichema-tleke, Maiden Rock, the crag that rose over the harbor, against whose shoulder the Afen and the Great Families’ houses were built. Gray and ghostly in a world of pallid white, it seemed the cloud-city’s anchor to solid earth.
A door hissed upon the other room and he walked back. Djan was with him. She wore a silver-green suit, thin, body-clinging stuff. Her coppery hair was loose, silken and full of static. She had a morning look about her, satiated and full of sleep.
“It’s near noon,” he said.
“Ah,” she murmured, and looked beyond him to the window. “So we’re bound in again. Cursed fog. I hate it.—Like some breakfast?”
“No.”
Djan shrugged and from utensils in the carved wood cabinet prepared tea, instantly heated. She offered him a cup: he accepted, nemet-schooled. It gave one something to do with the hands.
“I suppose,” she said when they were seated, “that you didn’t come here in this weather and wake me out of a sound sleep to wish me good morning.”
“I almost didn’t make it here; which is the situation I came to talk to you about. The neighborhood of Elas isn’t safe even by day. There are Sufaki hanging about, who have no business there.”
“The quarantine ordinances were repealed, you know. I can’t forbid their being there.”
“Are they your men? I’d be relieved if I thought they were. That is,—if yours and Shan t’Tefur’s aren’t one and the same, and I trust that isn’t the case. For a long time it’s been at night; since the first of Nermotai, it’s been even by day.”
“Have they hurt anyone?”
“Not yet. People in the neighborhood stay off the streets. Children don’t go out. It’s an ugly atmosphere, I don’t know whether it’s aimed at me in particular or Elas in general, but it’s a matter of time before something happens.”
“You haven’t done anything to provoke this?”
“No. I assure you I haven’t. But this is the third day of it. I finally decided to chance it. Are you going to do anything?”
“I’Il have my people check it out, and if there’s cause I’ll have the people removed.”
“Well, don’t send Shan t’Tefur on the job.”
“I said I would see to it. Don’t ask favors and then turn sharp with me.”
“I beg your pardon. But that’s exactly what I’m afraid you’ll do,—trust things to him.”
“I am not blind, my friend. But you’re not the only one with complaints. Shan’s life has been threatened. I hear it from both sides.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t choose to give my sources. But you know the Indras houses and you know the hard-line conservatives. Make your own guess.”
“The Indras are not a violent people. If they said it, it was more in the sense of a sober promise than a threat, and that in consideration of the actions he’s been urging. You’ll have riots in the streets if Shan t’Tefur has his way.”
“I doubt it. See, I’m being perfectly honest with you: a bit of trust. Shan uses that apparent recklessness as a tactic; but he is an intelligent man, and his enemies would do well to reckon with that.”
“And is he responsible for the late hours you’ve been keeping?”
Her eyes flashed suddenly, amused. “This morning, you mean?”
“Either you’re naive or think he is. That is a dangerous man, Djan.”
The humor died out of her eyes. “Well, you’re one to talk about the dangers of involvement with the nemet.”
“You’re facing the danger of a foreign war and you need the goodwill of the Indras Families; but you keep company with a man who talks of killing Indras and burning the fleet.”
“Words. If the Indras are concerned, good. I didn’t create this situation: I walked into it as it is. I’m trying to hold this city together. There will be no war if it stays together. And it will stay together if the Indras come to their senses and give the Sufaki justice.”
“They might, if Shan t’Tefur were out of it. Send him on a long voyage somewhere. If he stays in Nephane and kills someone, which is likely, sooner or later, then you’re going to have to apply the law to him without mercy. And that will put you in a difficult position, won’t it?”
“Kurt.” She put down the cup. “Do you want fighting in this city? Then let’s just start dealing like that with both sides, one ultimatum to Shan to get out, one to Nym, to be fair—and there won’t be a stone standing in Nephane when the smoke clears.”
“Try closing your bedroom to Shan t’Tefur,” he said, “for a start. Your credibility among the Families is in rags as long as you’re Shan t’Tefur’s mistress.”
It hurt her. He had thought it could not, and suddenly he perceived she was less armored than he had believed.
“You’ve given your advice,” she said. “Go back to Elas.”
“Djan—”
“Out.”
“Djan, you talk about the sanctity of local culture, the balance of powers, but you seem to think you can pick and choose the rules you like. In some measure I don’t blame Shan t’Tefur. You’ll be the death of him before you’re done, playing on his ambitions and his pride and then refusing to abide by the customs he knows. You know what you’re doing to him? You know what it is to a man of the nemet that you take for a lover and then play politics with him?”
“I told him fairly that he had no claim on me. He chose.”