would reveal only to their closest relatives or friends, in loud voices in public.
"Was the Taig youth right to die?" she asked. "Is that what a man of ordinary honor would do?"
Perig glanced at her sideways. "One who isn't an actor? I think not, though it isn't my business to judge any of the Taig. He should have waited and spoken with his relatives. It's not a good idea to kill yourself without permission.
Now his mother has lost a son and the men on this ship have lost a cousin. Did he have the right to deprive them of so much, because the world is not as safe and pleasant as he imagined?"
A troubling conversation. Ahl was no longer sure she could disentangle right from wrong. The threads seemed knotted together. When she pulled on a bright one, she found something dark, while the dark threads often led to something as bright as gold or silver.
AHL PONDERED morality while the ship continued south. Looking around, she began to see evidence that land was near. Clouds like towers stood at the horizon; and there was an increase in the number of birds. Next came an island: a bald rockthat rose straight out of the ocean, useless to anyone except the birds. Another island followed, equally bare and sheer. Finally they passed a fishing boat,wallowing home with as many fish as it could carry. The Taig sailors shouted and waved message banners. The fishers replied with their own shouts and flags.
"We'll be in harbor before dark," the Taig captain said.
Soon after that Helwar came into view. Its forested peaks rose into a wreath of clouds; and mist lay in the upland valleys like handfuls of unspun wool. Off the north coast rain fell like a curtain made of gauze. Ahl's mind filled with happiness.
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