“I will have tea ready by the time you can be downstairs,” she said. “I think Aimu will have been—”
There was a deep hollow boom over the city, and Kurt glanced toward the window with an involuntary oath. It was the sighing note of a distant gong.
“ Ai,” said Mim. “ Intaem-Inta.That is the great temple. It is the beginning of Cadmisan.”
The gong moaned forth again through the fog-stilled air, measured, four times more. Then it was still, the last echoes dying.
“It is the fourth of Nermotai,” said Mim, “the first of the Sufak holy days. The temple will sound the Intaevery morning and every evening for the next seven days, and the Sufaki will make prayers and invoke the Intain,the spirits of their gods.”
“What is done there?” Kurt asked.
“It is the old religion which was here before the Families. I am not really sure what is done, and I do not care to know. I have heard that they even invoke the names of godkings in Phan’s own temple; but we do not go there, ever. There were old gods in Chteftikan, old and evil gods from the First Days, and once a year the Sufaki call their names and pay them honor, to appease their anger at losing this land to Phan. These are beings we Indras do not name.”
“Bel said,” Kurt recalled, “that there could be trouble during the holy days.”
Mim frowned. “Kurt, I would that you take special care for your safety, and do not come and go at night during this time.”
It hit hard. Mim surely spoke without reference to the Methi, at least without bitterness: if Mim accused, he knew well that Mim would say so plainly. “I do not plan to come and go at night,” he said. “Last night—”
“It is always dangerous,” she said with perfect dignity, before he would finish, “to walk abroad at night during Cadmisan. The Sufak gods are earth-spirits, Yr-bred and monstrous. There is wild behavior and much drunkenness.”
“I will take your advice,” he said.
She came and touched her fingers to his lips and to his brow, but she took her hand from him when he reached for it, smiling. It was a game they played.
“I must be downstairs attending my duties,” she said. “Dear my husband, you will make me a reputation for a licentious woman in the household if you keep making us late for breakfast.—No!—dear my lord, I shall see you downstairs at morning tea.”
“Where do you think you are going?”
Mim paused in the dimly lit entry hall, her hands for a moment suspending the veil over her head as she turned. Then she settled it carefully over her hair and tossed the end over her shoulder.
“To market, my husband.”
“Alone?”
She smiled and shrugged. “Unless you wish to fast this evening. I am buying a few things for dinner. Look you, the fog has cleared, the sun is bright, and those men who were hanging about across the street have been gone since yesterday.”
“You are not going alone.”
“Kurt, Kurt, for Bel’s doom-saying? Dear light of heaven, there are children playing outside, do you not hear? And should I fear to walk my own street in bright afternoon? After dark is one thing, but I think you take our warnings much too seriously.”
“I have my reasons, Mim.”
She looked up at him in most labored patience. “And shall we starve? Or will you and my lord Kta march me to market with drawn weapons?”
“No, but I will walk you there and back again.” He opened the door for her, and Mim went out and waited for him, her basket on her arm, most obviously embarrassed.
Kurt nervously scanned the street, the recesses where of nights t’Tefur’s men were wont to linger. They were indeed gone. Indras children played at tag. There was no threat—no presence of the Methi’s guards either, but Djan never did move obviously: he had no difficulty returning to Elas late, probably, he thought with relief, she had taken measures.
“Are you sure,” he asked Mim, “that the market will be open on a holiday?”
She looked up at him curiously as they started off together. “Of course, and busy. I put off going, you see, these several days with the fog and the trouble on the streets, and I am sorry to cause you this trouble, Kurt, but we really are running out of things and there could be the fog again tomorrow, so it is really better to go today. I have some sense, after all.”
“You know I could quite easily walk down there and buy what you need for supper, and you would not need to go at all.”
“ Ai,but Cadmisan is such a grand time in the market, with all the country people coming in, and the artists, and the musicians—besides,” she added, when his face remained unhappy, “dear husband, you would not know what you were buying or what to pay. I do not think you have ever handled our coin. And the other women would laugh at me and wonder what kind of wife I am to make my husband do my work, or else they would think I am such a loose woman that my husband would not trust me out of his sight.”
“They can mind their own business,” he said, disregarding her attempt at levity; and her small face took on a determined look.
“If you go alone,” she said, “the fact is that folk will guess Elas is afraid, and this will lend courage to the enemies of Elas.”
He understood her reasoning, though it comforted him not at all. He watched carefully as their downhill walk began to take them out of the small section of aristocratic houses surrounding the Afen and the temple complex. But here in the Sufaki section of town, people were going about business as usual. There were some men in the Robes of Color, but they walked together in casual fashion and gave them not a passing glance.
“You see,” said Mim, “I would have been quite safe.”
“I wish I was that confident.”
“Look you, Kurt, I know these people. There is lady Yafes, and that little boy is Edu t’Rachik u Gyon—the Rachik house is very large. They have so many children it is a joke in Nephane. The old man on the curb is t’Pamchen. He fancies himself a scholar. He says he is reviving the old Sufak writing and that he can read the ancient stones. His brother is a priest, but he does not approve of the old man. There is no harm in these people. They are my neighbors. You let t’Tefur’s little band of pirates trouble you too much. T’Tefur would be delighted to know he upset you. That is the only victory he dares to seek as long as you give him no opportunity to challenge you.”
“I suppose,” Kurt said, unconvinced.
The street approached the lower town by a series of low steps down a winding course to the defense wall and the gate. Thereafter the road went among the poorer houses, the markets, the harborside. Several ships were in port, two broad-beamed merchant vessels and three sleek galleys, warships with oars run in or stripped from their locks, yards without sails, the sounds of carpentry coming loudly from their decks, one showing bright new wood on her hull.
Ships were being prepared against the eventuality of war. Tavi,Kta’s ship, had been there; she had had her refitting and had been withdrawn to the outer harbor, a little bay on the other side of Haichema-tleke. That reminder of international unease, the steady hammering and sawing, underlay all the gaiety of the crowds that thronged the market.
“That is a ship of Ilev, is it not?” Kurt asked, pointing to the merchantman nearest, for he saw what appeared to be the white bird that was emblematic of that house as the figurehead.
“Yes,” said Mim. “But the one beside it I do not recognize. Some houses exist only in the Isles. Lord Kta knows them all, even the houses of Indresul’s many colonies. A captain must know these things. But of course they do not come to Nephane. This one must be a trader that rarely comes, perhaps from the north, near the Yvorst Ome, where the seas are ice.”
The crowd was elbow-to-elbow among the booths. They lost sight of the harbor, and nearly of each other. Kurt seized Mim’s arm, which she protested with a shocked look: even husband and wife did not touch publicly.