“To keep Nae’s children from doing wrong, Phan gave Qavur the yhia to take to men. All law comes from it. From it we know our place in the universe. Anything higher is gods’ law, but that is beyond the words of the song. The song is the Ind. It is sacred to us. My father taught it to me, and the seven verses of it that are only for Elas. So it has come to us in each generation.”
“You said once,” said Kurt, “that you didn’t know whether I was man or not. Have you decided yet?”
Kta thoughtfully laid aside the aos, stilled its strings. “Perhaps, said Kta, “some of the children of Nem escaped, the plague; but you are not nemet. Perhaps instead you are descended of Yr, and you were set out among the stars on some world of Thael’s kindred. From what I have heard among humans, the earth seems to have had many brothers. But I don’t think you think so.”
“I said nothing.”
“Your look did not agree.”
“I wouldn’t distress you,” said Kurt, “by saying I consider you human.”
The nemet’s lips opened instantly, his eyes mirroring shock. Then he looked as if he suspected Kurt of some levity, and again, as if he feared he was serious. Slowly his expression took on a certain thoughtfulness, and he made a gesture of rejection.
“Please,” said Kta, “don’t say that freely.”
Kurt bowed his head then in respect to Kta, for the nemet truly looked frightened.
“I have spoken to the Guardians of Elas for you,” said Kta. “You are a disturbance here, but I do not feel that you are unwelcome with our Ancestors.”
Kurt dressed carefully on the last morning. He would have worn the clothes in which he had come, but Mim had taken those away, unworthy, she had said, of the guest of Elas. Instead he had an array of fine clothing he thought must be Kta’s, and on this morning he chose the warmest and most durable, for he did not know” what the day might bring him, and the night winds were chill. It was also cold in the rooms of the Afen, and he feared he would not leave it once he entered.
Elas again began to seem distant to him, and the sterile modernity of the center of the Afen increasingly crowded in on his thoughts, the remembrance that, whatever had happened in Elas, his business was with Djan and not with the nemet.
He had chosen his option at the beginning of the two weeks, in the form of a small dragon-hilted blade from among Kta’s papers, where it had been gathering dust and would not be missed.
He drew it now from its hiding place and considered it, apt either for Djan or for himself.
And fatally traceable to the house of Elas.
It did not go within his clothing, as he had always meant to carry it. Instead he laid it aside on the dressing table. It would go back to Kta. The nemet would be angry at the theft, but it would make amends, all the same.
Kurt finished dressing, fastening the ctan, the outer cloak, on his shoulder, and chose a bronze pin with which to do it, for his debts to Elas were enough; he would not use the ones of silver and gold with which he had been provided.
A light tapping came at the door, Mim’s knock.
“Come in,” he bade her, and she quietly did so. Linens were changed daily throughout the house. She carried fresh ones, for bed and for bath, and she bowed to him before she set them down to begin her work. Of late there was no longer hate in Mim’s look. He understood that she had had cause, having been prisoner of the Tamurlin; but she had ceased her war with him of her own accord, and in consideration of that he always tried especially to please Mim.
“At least,” he observed, “you will have less washing in the house hereafter.”
She did not appreciate the poor humor. She looked at him, then lowered her eyes and turned around to tend her business.
And froze, with her back to him, facing the dresser. Hesitantly she reached for the knife, snatched at it and faced about again as if uncertain that he would not pounce on her. Her dark eyes were large with terror; her attitude was that of one determined to resist if he attempted to take it from her.
“Lord Kta did not give you this,” she said.
“No,” he said, “but you may give it back to him.”
She clasped it in both hands and continued to stare at him. “If you bring a weapon into the Afen you kill us, Kurt-ifhan. All Elas would die.”
“I have given it back,” he said. “I am not armed, Mim. That is the truth.”
She slipped it into the belt beneath her overskirt, ‘through one of the four slits that exposed the filmy pelan from waist to toe, patted it flat. She was so small a woman; she had a tiny waist, a slender neck accentuated by the way she wore her hair in many tiny braids coiled and clustered above the ears. So little a creature, so soft-spoken, and yet he was continually in awe of Mim, feeling her disapproval of him in every line of her stiff little back.
For once, as in the rhmei that night, there was something like distress, even tenderness in the way she looked at him.
“Kta wishes you come back to Elas,” she said.
“I doubt I will be allowed to,” he said.
“Then why would the Methi send you here?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps to satisfy Kta for a time. Perhaps so I’ll find the Afen the worse by comparison.”
“Kta will not let harm come to you.”
“Kta had better stay out of it. Tell him so, Mim. He could make the Methi his enemy that way. He had better forget it.”
He was afraid. He had lived with that nagging fear from the beginning, and now that Mim touched nerves, he found it difficult to speak with the calm that the nemet called dignity. The unsteadiness of his voice made him greatly ashamed.
And Mim’s eyes inexplicably filled with tears-fierce little Mim, unhuman Mim, who would have been interestingly female to Kurt but for her alien face. He did not know if any other being would ever care enough to cry over him, and suddenly leaving Elas was unbearable.
He took her slim golden hands in his, knew at once he should not have, for she was nemet and she shivered at the very touch of him. But she looked up at him and did not show offense. Her hands pressed his very gently in return.
“Kurt-ifhan,” she said, “I will tell lord Kta what you say, because it is good advice. But I don’t think he will listen to me. Elas will speak for you. I am sure of it. The Methi has listened before to Elas. She knows that we speak with the power of the Families. Please go to breakfast. I have made you late. I am sorry.”
He nodded and started to the door, looked back again. “Mim,” he said, because he wanted her to look up. He wanted her face to think of, as he wanted everything in Elas fixed in his mind. But then he was embarrassed, for he could think of nothing to say.
“Thank you,” he murmured, and quickly left.
IV
All the way to the Afen, Kurt had balanced his chances of rounding on his three nemet guards and making good his escape. The streets of Nephane were twisting and torturous, and if he could remain free until dark, he thought, he might possibly find a way out into the fields and forests.
But Nym himself had given him into the hands of the guards and evidently charged them to treat him well, for they showed him the greatest courtesy. Elas continued to support him, and for the sake of Elas, he dared not do what his own instincts screamed to do: to run, to kill if need be.
They passed into the cold halls of the Afen itself and it was too late. The stairs led them up to the third level, that of the Methi.
Djan waited for him alone in the modern hall, wearing the modest chatem and pelan of a nemet lady, her auburn hair braided at the crown of her head, laced with gold.