“Am I disturbing you?” she asked.
“Not especially. Is there something you want?”
“I was looking for — well, it doesn’t matter. You look unhappy, Hresh.”
“So do you.”
“It’s this filthy wind. Will it ever stop blowing, do you think?”
He shrugged. “It’ll stop when it stops. There’s rain in the north and this dry air is rushing to meet it.”
“You understand so much, Hresh.”
Looking away, he said, “I understand hardly anything at all.”
“You really are unhappy about something.”
She moved closer to him. He stood with shoulders slumped, saying nothing, idly toying with some intricate silvery device whose function no one had ever been able to determine. How thin he is, she thought. How slight. Suddenly her heart surged with love for him. She saw that he might actually be afraid of her, he whose great wisdom and mysterious skills of the mind had been so frightening to her. She wanted to put her arm around him as Torlyri might do, and comfort him, and draw him into a warm embrace. But he was hidden away behind a curtain of distress.
She said, “Tell me what troubles you.”
“Did I say that anything did?”
“I can see it on your face.”
He shook his head irritably. “Let me be, Taniane. Are you looking for Haniman? I don’t know where he is. Possibly he and Orbin went down to the lakefront to catch some fish, or else—”
“I didn’t come here looking for Haniman,” she said. And then to her own great surprise she heard herself saying, “I came here looking for you, Hresh.”
“Me? What do you want with me?”
Desperately improvising, she said, “Can you teach me some words of the Beng language, do you think? Just a little of it?”
“You too?”
“Has someone else asked you that?”
“Torlyri. That Beng of hers, the one with the scar that she’s always laughing and flirting with — she’s in love with him, do you know that? She came to me a few days ago with a funny look in her eye. Teach me Beng, she said. You have to teach me Beng. Teach me right away. She insisted. Have you ever heard Torlyri insist on anything before?”
“What did you do?”
“I taught her how to speak Beng.”
“You did? I thought you didn’t yet know enough of it yourself to teach anyone anything except a few words.”
“No,” Hresh said in a very small voice. “I was lying. I know Beng like a Beng. I used the Barak Dayir to learn it from the old man of their tribe. I was keeping it all to myself, that was all. But I couldn’t refuse Torlyri when she asked like that. So now she knows Beng too.”
“And I’ll be the next one to learn.”
Hresh looked flustered and immensely ill at ease.
“Taniane — please, Taniane—”
“Please what? It’s your responsibility to teach me, Hresh. To teach us all. Those people are our enemies. We have to be able to understand them if we’re going to cope with them, don’t you see?”
“They aren’t our enemies,” said Hresh.
“So they keep trying to get us to believe. Well, maybe they are and maybe they aren’t, but how are we supposed to know what they are if we can’t figure out what they’re saying? And you are the only one who knows — except Torlyri, now, I guess. What if something happens to you? You can’t withhold it any longer, Hresh. Now that you’ve admitted you can teach it. We all need to know Beng, and not just so we can run off and be with Beng lovers, like Torlyri. Our survival depends on it. Or don’t you agree?”
“Maybe. I suppose.”
“Then teach it to me. I want to start today. If you think I need to get Koshmar’s permission, then let’s go to Koshmar right now. You ought to be teaching Koshmar, too. And then everybody else that matters in this tribe.”
Hresh was silent. He seemed lost in anguish.
“What’s wrong?” Taniane asked. “Is it such a terrible thing that I want to learn Beng?”
In a low dismal voice Hresh said, not looking at her, “The way to learn it is by twining.”
Taniane’s eyes flashed. “So? Where’s the difficulty?”
“I asked you once to twine with me, and you refused.”
So that was it! She felt a moment of embarrassment; and then, seeing that he was even more embarrassed than she, she smiled and said, as gently as she could, “It was because of the way you asked, Hresh. Simply running right up to me the minute Torlyri had taught you how to do it, and saying to me, ‘Let’s go, Taniane, let’s get right to it this minute.’ I was offended by that, didn’t you realize that? We spent thirteen years growing up together, both of us waiting for the day when we’d be old enough to twine, and then you spoiled it, Hresh, you spoiled it with your silly clumsy—”
“I know,” he said dolefully. “You don’t have to tell me all over again.”
She gave him a lively flirtatious glance. “But even though I said no that one time, it didn’t necessarily mean that I’d refuse you the next time you asked.”
Hresh seemed not to have noticed the glance. “That’s what Koshmar said too,” he replied, in the same leaden tone as before.
“You discussed this with Koshmar?” Taniane said, fighting back her laughter.
“She seemed to know all about it. She said I should ask you again.”
“Well, Koshmar was right.”
Hresh stared at her. Coldly he said, “You mean, now that you have something special to gain from twining with me you’re willing to do it, is that it?”
“You’re the most infuriating person I’ve ever known, Hresh!”
“But I’m right.”
“You’re utterly wrong. This has nothing to do with your teaching me Beng. I’ve been waiting ever since that first day for you to show some interest in me again.”
“But Haniman—”
“Dawinno take Haniman! He’s just someone I couple with! You’re the twining-partner I want, Hresh! How can you be so stupid? Why must you make me say all these obvious things?”
“You want me for me ? Not just because I can teach you Beng if we twine?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you say so, Taniane?”
She threw up her hands in despair. “Oh! You!”
He was silent a long while. There seemed to be no expression on his face at all.
At last he said quietly, “I’ve been very stupid, haven’t I?”
“Very stupid indeed.”
“Yes. Yes, so I have.” He looked steadily at her for another long silent moment. Then he said, “Couple with me, Taniane.”
“Couple? Not twine?”
“Couple, first. I’ve never coupled with anyone, do you know that?”
“No. I didn’t know that.”
“Will you, then? Even if I don’t do it very well?”
“Of course I will, Hresh. And you’ll do it just as well as anybody else.”
“And afterward I’d like to twine with you. Yes, Taniane?”
She nodded and smiled. “Yes,” she said.
“Not just to teach you Beng. Just to twine for the sake of twining. And later — the next time — I can teach you Beng then, all right?”
“You promise?”
“Yes. Yes. Yes.”
“Now?” she said.
“Oh, yes. Yes, now.”
In the bright clear morning Salaman went down to his trench to dig. He had long since given up any real hope that the trench was going to yield anything useful, but working in it had the merit of concentrating his thoughts.
He had been digging for no more than five minutes when a long shadow fell across him, and he looked up to see Harruel, hands on hips, peering down at him. The king was wobbling back and forth in a troublesome way, as though about to topple into the open ditch. It seemed very early in the day for Harruel to be this drunk, Salaman thought.