“Those are our orders,” said the captain of the detachment, “since the Methi is there and the fleet is sailing. Move on, t’E-las, or will you be taken through the streets in chains?”
Kta’s head came up. For the least moment the look of Nym t’Elas flared in his dark eyes. “What is your name?”
The guard looked suddenly regretful of his words. “Speak me no curse, t’Elas. I repeated the Methi’s words. She did not think chains necessary.”
“No,” said Kta, “they are not necessary.”
He bowed his head again and matched pace with the guards, Kurt beside him. The nemet was a pitiable figure in the hard, uncompromising light of day, his clothing filthy, his face unshaved—which in the nemet needed a long time to show.
Through the streets, with people stopping to stare at them, Kta looked neither to right nor to left. Knowing his pride, Kurt sensed the misery he felt, his shame in the eyes of these people; and he could not but think that Kta t’Elas would have attracted less comment in his misfortune had he not been laden with the added disgrace of a human companion. Some of the murmured comments came to Kurt’s ears, and he was almost becoming inured to them: how ugly, how covered with hair, how almost-nemet, and caught with an Indras-descended, more the wonder —pity the house of Elas-in-Indresul to see one of its foreign sons in such a state and in such company!
The gangplank of the first trireme at the dock was run out, rowers and crew scurrying around making checks of equipment. Spread near its stern was a blue canopy upheld with gold-tipped poles, beneath which sat Ylith, working over some charts with Lhe t’Nethim and paying no attention to their approach.
When at last she did see fit to notice them kneeling before her, she dismissed Lhe back a pace with a gesture and turned herself to face them. Still she wore the crown of her office, and she was modestly attired in chatemand pelanof pale green silk, slim and delicate in this place of war. Her eyes rested on Kta without emotion, and Kta bowed down to his face at her feet, Kurt unwillingly imitating his action.
Ylith snapped her fingers. “It is permitted you both to sit,” she said, and they straightened together. Ylith looked at them thoughtfully, most particularly at Kta.
“ Ei,t’Elas,” she said softly, “have you made your decision? Do you come to ask for clemency?”
“Methi,” said Kta, “no.”
“Kta,” Kurt exclaimed, for he had hoped. “Don’t—”
“If,” said Ylith, “you seek in your barbaric tongue to advise the son of Elas against this choice, he would do well to listen to you.”
“Methi,” said Kta, “I have considered, and I cannot agree to what you ask.”
Ylith looked down at him with anger gathering in her eyes. “Do you hope to make a gesture, and then I shall relent afterward and pardon you? Or do they teach such lack of religion across the Dividing Sea that the consequence is of little weight with you? Have you so far inclined toward the Sufak heresies that you are more at home with those dark spirits we do not name?”
“No, Methi,” said Kta, his voice trembling. “Yet we of Elas were a reverent house, and we do not receive justice from you.”
“You say then that I am in error, t’Elas?”
Kta bowed his head, caught hopelessly between yea and nay, between committing blasphemy and admitting to it.
“T’Elas,” said Ylith, “is it so overwhelmingly difficult to accept our wishes?”
“I have given the Methi my answer.”
“And choose to die accursed.” The Methi turned her face toward the open sea, opened her long-fingered hand in that direction. “A cold resting place at best, t’Elas, and cold the arms of Kalyt’s daughters. A felon’s grave, the sea,—a grave for those no house will claim, for those who have lived their lives so shamefully that there remains no one, not even their own house, to mourn them, to give them rest. Such a fate is for those so impious that they would defy a father or the Upei or dishonor their own kinswomen. But I, t’Elas, I am more than the Upei. If I curse,—I curse your soul not from hearth or from city only, but from all mankind, from among all who are born of this latter race of men. The lower halls of death will have you: Yeknis, those dark places where the shadows live, those unnameable firstborn of Chaos. Do they still teach such things in Nephane, t’Elas?”
“Yes, Methi.”
“Chaos is the just fate of a man who will not bow to the will of heaven. Do you say I am not just?”
“Methi,” said Kta, “I believe that you are the Chosen of Heaven, and I reverence you and the home of my Ancestors-in-Indresul. Perhaps you are appointed by heaven for the destruction of my people, but if heaven will destroy my soul for refusing to help you, then heaven’s decrees are unbelievably harsh. I honor you, Methi. I believe that you, like Fate itself, must somehow be just. So I will do as I think right, and I will not aid you.”
Ylith regarded him furiously, then with a snap of her fingers and a gesture brought the guards to take them.
“Unfortunate man,” she said. “Blind to necessity and gifted with the stubborn pride of Elas. I have been well-served by that quality in Elas until now, and it goes hard to find fault with that which I have best loved in your house. I truly pity you, Kta t’E-las. Go and consider again whether you have well chosen. There is a moment the gods lend us, to yield before going under. I still offer you life. Thatis heaven’s justice.—Tryn, secure them both belowdecks. The son of Elas and his human friend are sailing with us, against Nephane.”
The hatch banged open against the deck above and someone in silhouette came down the creaking steps into the hold.
“T’Elas. T’Morgan.” It was Lhe t’Nethim, and in a moment the Indras officer had come near enough to them that his features were faintly discernible. “Have you all that you need?” he asked, and sank down on his heels a little beyond the reach of their chains.
Kta turned his face aside. Kurt, feeling somewhat a debt to this man’s restraint, made a grudging bow of his head. “We are well enough,” Kurt said, which they were, considering.
Lhe pressed his lips together. “I did not come to enjoy this sight. For that both of you—have done kindness to my house, I would give you what I can.”
“You have generally done me kindness,” said Kurt, yet careful of Kta’s sensibilities. “That is enough.”
“Elas and Nethim are enemies; that does not change. But human though you are—if Mim could choose you, of her own will—you are an exceptional human. And t’Elas,” he said in a hard voice, “because you sheltered her, I thank you. We know the tale of her slavery among Tamurlin,—this through Elas-in-Indresul, through the Nethim. It is a bitter tale.”
“She was dear to us,” said Kta, looking toward him.
Lhe’s face was grim. “Did you have her?”
“I did not,” said Kta. “She was adopted of the chanof Elas. No man of my people treated her as other than an honorable woman, and I gave her at her own will to my friend, who tried with all his heart to treat her well. For Mim’s sake, Elas is dead in Nephane. To this extent we defended her. We did not know that she was of Nethim. Because she was Mim, and of our hearth, Elas would have defended her even had she told us.”
“She was loved,” said Kurt, because he saw the pain in Lhe’s eyes, “and had no enemies in Nephane. It was mine who killed her.”
“Tell me the manner of it,” said Lhe.
Kurt glanced down, unwilling: but Lhe was nemet—some things would not make sense to him without all the truth. “Enemies of mine stole her,” he said, “and they took her; the Methi of Nephane humiliated her. She died at her own hand, Lhe t’Nethim. I blame myself also. If I had been nemet enough to know what she was likely to do,—I would not have let her be alone then.”
Lhe’s face was like graven stone. “No,” he said. “Mim chose well. If you were nemet you would know it. You would have been wrong to stop her. Name the men who did this.”
“I cannot,” he said. “Mim did not know their names.”
“Were they Indras?”
“Sufaki,” Kurt admitted. “Men of Shan t’Tefur u Tlekef.”