One troubling idea remained. "I have a final question," she said to Perig, as they watched Helwar approach.
"Surely you can stop asking questions now."
"What broke apart your acting company?"
He was silent for a moment. "That's my business."
"It's obvious that you and Cholkwa have a secret," Ahl said. "I think I know what it is."
"Do you?" he asked.
"You have been lovers for a long time; everything about you suggests as much; and he's still young. It would surprise me if he's twenty-five."
"You think I'm a child molester," said Perig.
"Well," said Ahl. "I've met every other kind of criminal on this journey."
"It hasn't been a lucky trip," Perig admitted.
"How old was he when you met?"
Perig turned, leaning his elbows on the rail and looking around to see who might be near. "What are you going to do with this idea!"
"Nothing. You got us out of Sorg and saved us from the pirates. Except for you, they might have killed Leweli and me, or adopted us and taken us home to their miserable island. I will not repay you with harm."
"Hah," said Perig, the long slow exhalation which can mean anything. For a while he was silent. Ahl waited, her eyes on the cloud-capped island.
At last Perig said, "He was fourteen when he left home. His family had been destroyed in the war, and he refused to join the lineage that had killed all his male kin."
"Was that family the Chairing' asked Ahl. "Is he Tesati?"
"Yes. I didn't know his family name at first, nor did he know mine. Actors use their personal names, so as not to embarrass their families. He was a beggar I found on the road, fed and cleaned and found to be lovely.
"I said he could stay with the company if he was old enough, but I wouldn't have an unrelated child traveling with me. Of course he told me he was adult. He wasn't lying by much. He'd been on his own for almost a year by then.
"We were lovers before he reached his fifteenth birthday, and before he learned my family name. When he learned it, he tried to kill me, though it wasn't a serious effort. I took the knife away from him, and he explained."
"You are Chaitin," Ahl said, not certain what she felt. Confusion? Horror! A need to laugh? This is the kind of joke the Goddess loves to play: two-sided like a sword, with sharp edges that can cut to the bone. When the joke is especially fine, when the Great One brings it down like a blade on her victim, piety requires that everyone -- even the victim -- laugh. But Ahl had never been religious.
"Yes," said Perig. "He's angry at me for telling his story to the pirates; but I had to think quickly; and it's always a good idea to stay close to the truth when lying. So I turned one fierce and stubborn boy into a pair of women, and I turned myself into a hero. Art is full of such transformations."
"The cook was right. You are a committer of incest."
"No," he said firmly. "Cholkwa was never adopted by my family. Therefore what we did was not incest. But it would have been, if I'd dragged him home and said, 'Here's a cousin I found at the side of the road.' The actors in my company knew what we'd been doing. The story would have come into daylight; and my hair goes
up when I think of how my mother would have responded.
"In any case, Cholkwa didn't want to join the Chaitin, and I didn't want to give him up."
"He stayed with you, after finding out who you were?"
"I'm Chaitin Perig when I'm at home, which isn't often. The rest of the time I'm Perig the actor. The answer to your question is 'no.' He ran away. I followed and dragged him back, partly because I knew how dangerous the plain was for someone like him -- alone, without a family. But mostly because love had made me
crazy.
"The second time he came back on his own. What else could he do? Starve on the plain? Live among criminals and learn to be like them? I offered him safety and the chance to learn a skill more honest than robbing travel ers."
"And this is what broke apart your company?"
"After so many years," Perig said in admission. "I really thought we could hide the secret forever. But we don't always get along. We had a quarrel which wasoverheard. When Cholkwa has been drinking, he drags the past forward. The actor who overheard us is Chaitin. As far as he was concerned, it was incest. In addition, I had robbed our family of a child who had grown up to a perfectly acceptable young man. Even worse, my cousin had been interested in Cholkwa, though nothing had happened. Imagine how he felt! He had been on the edge of
perversion without knowing it!
"Of course he made a lot of noise, and the other men decided the company was unlucky. That was true enough. I can't blame them for going.
"I don't think my cousin has a future as an actor. He's stiff as a plank and far too moral. It was a mistake to take him into the company. But when a relative asks a favor, it's difficult to refuse."
Ahl looked at her hands, almost seeing the tangle of darkness that filled them.
Perig was wrong about his lover. A man could be kinless. So could a woman, though it wasn't common. But every child must have a family. Cholkwa could not be Tesati, since that lineage was gone; and no other lineage had adopted him.
Therefore he was Chaitin or had been until his fifteenth birthday. When the two of them first had sex, it was incest and the molesting of a child, but only by a few days, twenty or thirty. How could wrong behavior be a matter of timing? She
asked Perig this question.
"Everything is a matter of timing," Perig said. "When the witch came with her offer, I thought, 'What fine timing! What excellent luck!'" He gave Ahl a sideways glance. "If you keep quiet about our story, this may still be true.
Cholkwa and I can still recover."
"I have already promised to cause you no harm," Ahl said. "I want this journey to end. Too many bad things have happened since I left Helwar. I've learned too many things I didn't want to know."
"You would ask questions," Perig said.
"I'll stop. All I want now is Ki and a safe place to stay."
Perig turned, looking at the cloudy island. "You have almost reached safety.
With luck Helwar Ki will be waiting."
As the fishers had promised, they were in harbor by sundown. The two women hurried onshore, Dapple in Leweli's arms. By nightfall they were in a great house, surrounded by matriarchs, telling the story of Sorg's betrayal. Ki was there, leaning over the back of her mother's chair, looking both grim and happy.
Even in the midst of her dark narration, Ahl felt happy as well.
When the story was done, a matriarch spoke. Large and solid, well into middle age, she still had her baby spots. Her son had fathered Dapple, though the women from Sorg didn't know this. "If Sorg wants to escape our alliance so badly, let them go! It's no loss, since they have shown themselves to be cheats of the worst variety. What kind of people enter into a contract, intending to break it?
What kind of people breed children, knowing the children have no future?
"We need to tell everyone in the narrow ocean about this behavior. No one should trust the Sorg, and no one will, once this story has traveled. As for the child, it's my advice that we adopt her and her mother."
Gray eyes met blue-gray eyes. One by one, the women of Helwar tilted their heads. A quick decision, you may say. Remember how angry the Helwar must have been, and remember that every child must have a family.
Leweli was invited to stay in the great house, along with Dapple, but Ahl went back to the Foam Bird with Ki. A fine rain was falling, dimming the lights of Helwar Town. The ships in harbor seemed ghost-like, though the Bird's deck was solid enough, once they set foot on it.