Late the next day a courier from the Embassy came to him bearing the address of the place where Thalarne was living.
It was, Nortekku learned, halfway across the city from his own place. Which meant a considerable distance, for Bornigrayal had turned out to be a diffuse, far-flung city, endlessly proliferating itself over a succession of islands linked by bridges as it sloped down toward the ocean. Because of the cold, he had not cared to explore the city at all thus far—indeed he failed to understand why anyone had been mad enough to found a city in such a chilly site—but he saw now, as a hired carriage took him on what proved to be an hour-long journey to Thalarne’s lodgings, that considerable ingenuity and skill had been expended on the layout and construction of this place, and in fact it was a city of some grandeur, in every way the equal of grand Dawinno itself. One might regard all those tall flat-topped white buildings as stark and monotonous; but, just as readily, one might find great power in them, much rugged strength.
According to the message from Samnibolon, Thalarne had found rooms for herself in the faculty lodge of Bornigrayal University. Nortekku, apprehensive over the meeting, had not sent word ahead to Thalarne that he was coming to see her. He realized that he half-hoped she would be somewhere else when he arrived.
The University was dramatically situated on a high craggy outcropping rising above the city’s central island. His driver dropped him off in the wrong place, and Nortekku needed to do much dreary trudging about from building to building before he located the right one.
That same apprehension, that same uneasiness about coming face to face with her, still gripped him as he knocked at her door. How would she react to his showing up like this on her doorstep? With amazement, no doubt, that he had followed her all the way across the continent. But then what? Displeasure, resentment, irritation, anger?
He heard footsteps. The door opened. For a moment, standing there facing her, Nortekku had to fight back the temptation to turn and flee. But then he saw that she was smiling. Her eyes were warm and bright with surprise and pleasure.
“So you got here at last!” she cried. “Oh, Nortekku, what could have taken you so long?”
And drew him quickly across the threshold, and enfolded him in her arms, and touched her sensing-organ to his in a greeting of unqualified delight.
He was too befuddled to be able to speak at all. Fearing the worst, he had never dared to expect anything like this. For a long while they embraced in silence; then, as she released him, he stepped back and looked at her in wonder, and said, finally, “What—took—me—so—long? Thalarne, what can you possibly mean? I had to find out where you had gone, first. And then make arrangements to get here. And then—you know how long the trip takes—then I had to track you down.—You aren’t upset that I came, then?”
“Upset?” She sounded mystified. “I’ve been waiting for you all week. If you hadn’t turned up in another couple of days, I would have had to continue on without you. The ship is due to sail at the end of the week, and—”
“The ship?” he said. “What ship?” There was a lot to sort out here. “Wait a minute, Thalarne. This isn’t making sense. Can we back things up a little? Hamiruld came to me and told me that you had left town without saying a word to him about where you were going, and that he was instructed to simply inform me that our expedition was off.”
“No. That isn’t true, Nortekku.”
“What isn’t true? That he told me—”
“No. That I left any such message for you.” Something close to panic flared in her eyes. “Oh, Nortekku, Nortekku, this is all so badly garbled! What I asked him to let you know was that there’s been a new discovery, something that has a much higher priority than anything you and I could have done at the cocoon site, and that I was leaving straightaway for Bornigrayal. You were supposed to take the next flight out.”
He felt numb. “He said nothing whatever like that. Only that you had gone off somewhere, and the expedition was cancelled. And I thought—that perhaps, because of that imbecilic quarrel I had with you—”
“The quarrel was over and done with.”
“I thought so too.”
“Hamiruld lied to you,” Thalarne said. She seemed to be trembling. “Deliberately and cold-bloodedly lied to you. I can hardly believe it.”
By second sight Nortekku felt waves of sincerity radiating from her. To use second sight on another person without permission was improper in Dawinno, always had been, but the Yissouans had no such prohibition, and he and Thalarne had allowed themselves that communion almost from the beginning. He felt it now. There could be no doubt.
He said, “I thought he had no feelings of jealousy about us. But that isn’t so, is it? I wanted to think so, but obviously that isn’t true. He deliberately withheld the key part of your message and distorted the rest of it, hoping to cause trouble between us. I see now that I’ve never really understood your relationship with Hamiruld.”
She was silent a moment, frowning a little, as though debating how much she wanted to tell him. Then she said, “Hamiruld has no physical interest in women, Nortekku. He never has. I don’t know why: that’s just how he is. But he claims to love me, and I think he does. I’m a kind of trophy for him, perhaps: something to be proud of, a woman whom every man in Yissou seems to desire for one reason or another, most, I guess, for my looks, maybe some for my mind. Or both. And so he’s been willing to countenance my—affairs, provided I’ll go on living with him.”
My affairs. Well, he thought, of course he hadn’t been the first. Of course not.
“And you?” he said. “You’re perfectly willing to have that kind of marriage? Do you love him, Thalarne?”
Something close to evasiveness crossed her features. “Love? How can I say? It was never an issue, before you came along. We were, well, happy. We got on well together. We enjoyed each other’s company. We went to the year’s social events as a couple. To the parties at court. To the opera—you saw what a problem it created when you wanted to take me. He didn’t get in the way of my research. If I felt like amusing myself with another man, he didn’t interfere.”
“Up to a point, it would seem.”
“Up to a point, yes. But clearly he was unhappy about the proposed cocoon expedition, or at least with your being a part of it, and even unhappier when I announced I was going to come out here. And so he suppressed my message to you, which I find tremendously distressing. He’s never done anything like that before. It’s a complete violation of the rules of our marriage.”
Nortekku glanced away from her. All of this, this series of unwanted glimpses into the intimacies of their life together, was beginning to make him exceedingly uncomfortable.
The less he knew of the rules of their marriage, the less he knew about their marriage at all, the better, he thought. He had taken care never to question her about any aspect of it. It had seemed unlikely to him that they coupled—indeed Hamiruld didn’t appear to be the sort of man who cared much about bodily passion—but Nortekku had not presumed to pry. Did they twine? He certainly had not wanted to know that. And now—having heard everything that had just poured out of her—