But it was three days until Jindigar was strong enough to sit in a chair for more than an hour, and two more before he was walking. Darllanyu kept Krinata informed, often by sending Cyrus with a daily bulletin. She hardly needed the news, though. There was an awareness in the back of her mind, a growing strength that kept a smile on her face. She accepted the residual link, far short of a duad, and never thought she was responding to it when it suddenly occurred to her that Jindigar would love to see Imp.
She had been lying on her back in bed, drowsily realizing it was getting light, when Imp leapt in through an open window and deposited a still flopping fish on her chest. Stifling an outcry, she dried the piol off and took him and his fish to the Dushau* compound, trying to convince him to gift Jindigar with the fish. The Dushau who met her looked dubious, but Imp took his fish and scampered past the gate as if homing on a scent. Much later Krinata learned that Imp had found Jindigar's bed and had deposited the cold, wet fish under his nose, making him laugh for the first time.
Later she sent Jindigar word of how their Cassrian orphans had been adopted by a childless Cassrian couple who were giving them the kind of love they needed, while Terab and Irnils were accepted by the Holot community.
She hardly saw any of the other refugees. After being cooped up with each other for nearly a year, it wasn't surprising that they didn't seek each other's company.
Nevertheless, she was enjoying an upwelling sense of health and vitality. The nightmares had stopped. All pangs of guilt and shame over Prey's death were gone, and she no longer wondered which passing Dushau avoided her eyes because she was a zunre-killer. She went about her duties in the fields, filling in for people sent to dig defense trenches, bunkers, traps, and deadfalls with more cheer than their situation warranted.
The settlement's scouts had observed the hives on the plain above the cliff becoming ever more touchy, and a skywatcher had reported three orbiters passing overhead the previous night. Artisans redoubled their pace, fashioning crude weapons from native material; labor was pulled off the job for target practice with stunners and bush-whips.
Irnils turned out to be the champion shot with a stunner, with Terab a close second, because the Outriders disqualified themselves. The Holot community was inordinately proud, their rousing nightly celebrations entertaining the whole camp.
Cyrus took Krinata to the dancing on the fifth night, after her hands had healed. They had to wait for the six-legged Holot to finish before two-legged rhythms were played, the dancing becoming a competition among species, in strength and endurance as much as grace and warrior spirit. But it also seemed to bind the community, for every night a few Dushau joined in as musicians and dancers.
Studying the indigo figures, almost invisible in the dark firelight, Krinata noticed how they eluded all direct confrontation, not flaunting their strength as the Holot did, nor displaying their grace and speed, as the Lehiroh did. Dance was not to them, as to the humans and others, the quasi-sexual ritual of female preening to waken male prowess and lead to sensuous intimacy.
No, there was another energy the Dushau were raising, another way of living symbolized by their dance. They moved among the aggressive shouting and stomping dancers like wraiths, near but not touching, apparently in danger of collision but escaping unhurriedly. They understood the pattern of the dance and wove themselves through it without disturbing it—without leaving a trace. And when they left, the dance was over.
Krinata dreamed of that dance, and what it might become when danced during Renewal, and woke chasing the memory with a tantalizing sense of near understanding. Later that morning, the seventh since they'd arrived, Darllanyu sought her out where she was helping weed a field.
By this time Krinata didn't even notice the curious stares that followed the Dushau visits. Those who accepted her odd connection to the Dushau had asked their embarrassing questions and become friends. Those who couldn't encompass it just left her alone.
"You look as if you've already done a day's work," said Darllanyu as Krinata leaned on her hoe, stripping off gloves.
It was only mid-morning, but Krinata had been out since before dawn. "It's almost quitting time. Too hot for humans to work. The Lehiroh crew will be out in a bit." She was supposed to go with Cyrus later, to gather medicinal herbs for the field hospital, in case they survived the battle.
"The roof on the temple is finished, and it's cool inside," offered Darllanyu. Krinata raised her eyebrows, and Darllanyu interpreted that correctly. "Jindigar is going to try the constitution now, and he says with the duad link, it's distracting if you're focusing on this ecology while he's trying to pull an Oliat out of thin air."
She was speaking colloquial Dushauni, and though Krinata didn't follow it all, she asked, "What duad link?"
"The one you're holding with Jindigar."
"Oh," said Krinata, some things coming clear. "Duad."
"Will you come?"
All morning she'd been suppressing an urge to go to the Dushau compound to see Jindigar—knowing she'd be brusquely turned away at the gate. "Duad," she repeated, hacking her hoe into the ground to mark her place. "Can I shower first?"
"Don't take long," Darllanyu admonished, and started back along the furrow. "I'll send Zannesu for you."
The Aliom temple was indeed cool inside, and they even had a fire going. They had plugged all the windows with some fine, dry moss and trickled water into it from a cistern on the roof. The air that came through the windows was several degrees cooler than that outside.
A new ceiling was in place, forming an insulating attic space above rough hewn roof beams, and the giant Oliat symbol had been finished, an X supported at its crux by an arrow point. It stood away from the back wall, taller than a man and twice as broad. Piles of debris still littered the floor, and heaps of lumber for furniture were stacked near the walls. The astringent smell of sawdust from Phanphihy's woods filled the air.
As she came in with Zannesu, people stood talking in small groups. She saw Jindigar sitting on a pile of boards close to Darllanyu, and there was something different about him—a vibrant sensuousness that echoed through the duad link—as if a totally different personality with different values and goals was straggling to emerge. He brushed his fingers across Darllanyu's cheek in a clearly intimate gesture, whispering to her. Her hands drifted to his neck, but he caught them and returned them to her lap, a firm negative.
Then he saw Krinata and rose to come toward her. He moved like an old man, carefully on top of his feet. She was shocked at how he seemed to have aged. His nap even seemed darker. "I'm glad you decided to come," he said. "I should have come out to see you—"
"No," she denied. "It's all right. If I can help—"
"Well, I don't know. But let's get started and see what happens." He turned to look around the room and gathered attention by calling out the first line of a chant, which everyone answered. The groups coalesced into one, a form that changed constantly, Dushau dance without the structure of the aggressive species, yet bursting with triumph, vigor, and the joy of celebration. Her feet wanted to move in the patterns, but she held back, for they were doing more than dancing. They were presenting themselves to Jindigar for his judgment, displaying skills, announcing talents. Eventually they ended in a single movement, all facing the Oliat symbol.
At the base of the huge symbol was a larger-than-life wood carving of a Dushau hand, the end of each of the seven fingers tapering into a stylized flame while the palm, cupped upward, became a bowl filled with water in which a tiny fish swam. The carved hand was set on a stone tray filled with dirt, and planted as a miniature garden. On another tray hewn from a gorgeous pink stone from a local quarry was an array of local fruits. She'd heard mat the Dushau eventually planned to use that stone for permanent buildings. They were uncomfortable with wooden structures, which wouldn't last long enough to raise a child.