Jindigar rose, pleased they'd revived enough to share the water. As he passed Krinata, heading for where Frey had the cargo exposed, he scolded, "You shouldn't have refrained. You could go down with heatstroke."
He's changed so since our escape! But she was too tired to be charitable. She followed him, complaining, "Why are you always thinking of the things that could happen to me? Haven't you learned I'm not so frail—"
He turned, desert cloak flying, indigo face unreadable. "I've worked on many worlds with human Outriders who competed with other species until they collapsed, endangering everyone. Experience is a harsh teacher. If I've wronged you—"
Abruptly it seemed to Krinata that he was using the group's welfare to rationalize his behavior, so he wouldn't have to admit how much he really cared for these ephemerals. It was unlike him. He'd defended his friendships with ephemerals before other Dushau. But after what he'd endured lately she couldn't blame him. "Forget it. I'll be more careful."
She bent to untangle the lashing cords, and Jindigar went to where the Cassrian family sat, cleaning sand out of the joints of their exoskeletons. He played with the piols, fed the smallest child, and cheered them by twittering in their own language. The father, Trassle, had once pulled Jindigar out of a fire, saving his life. Now he seemed to be concealing weakness and pain from his family—but not from Jindigar. He respects Trassle.
Later, she was leaning against the sled's cargo and drinking greedily when Jindigar paused to apologize. "I've been treating you as a patient because I perceive you as gravely injured. / failed to keep Desdinda out of our triad, so your injury is my responsibility. From your point of view, you took a risk to save us all—and succeeded, which is worth taking pride in. I suppose we're both right."
She stood up straight. "Does that mean you're going to give me another chance in the triad?"
"Krinata, that's impossible. For all the reasons—"
"Humans heal certain things more quickly than Dushau."
"Perhaps, but—" Storm called to Jindigar, and he shouted back, "Coming!" He left, muttering, "We'll talk!"
She slumped down to the sand, propping her back against the sled, hips and thighs aching. Jindigar had taken an awful risk letting the first human into a triad, an Oliat subform used to train Oliat officers. And in the end she had done what no Dushau could ever do: she'd deliberately killed another Dushau who was linked to them all, having invaded their triad and made it a tetrad—a different Oliat subform. Did Jindigar feel he'd created a monster? How could she prove to him that he hadn't?
Her eye drifted to the shaded side of the dune where Frey was sitting munching rations, staring into space. On impulse—the kind of instant action Jindigar had praised in her, calling it a trait cultivated by those who studied Aliom, the philosophy behind the Oliat practices—she grabbed another ration bar and went to join Frey.
He glanced up in welcome and made a place for her beside him. "I wanted to talk to you," he said. Silence stretched until she asked what about, and he offered hesitantly, "We're zunre, you know."
"I've wanted to think of the three of us that way." Zunre, those bound to the same Oliat, were considered closer than blood relatives. "Only Jindigar doesn't accept me."
"But he does, and that's the problem. Krinata, do you understand why he mustn't?—It isn't my place to say it, but I see you gravitating to Jindigar's company, and I see him fighting to protect himself and the Archive he carries, and—it's hard to watch your zunre hurting each other."
He's thinking of Desdinda too. She was zunre to us, if only for a moment. "I've never meant to hurt Jindigar—or any Dushau."
<'You were there when Grisnilter promised Jindigar he could take the Archive from him and still work Oliat without the Archive interfering. Jindigar didn't believe it—Grisnilter knew nothing of Oliat dangers—but he took the Archive, anyway."
Krinata remembered the windowless bus in which they'd been prisoners. Grisnilter, the oldest Dushau she'd ever seen and a famous Historian, lay across the backseat of the bus, dying. Grisnilter was custodian of a historical record, the Archive, a living memory impressed into his mind, and it would perish with his death if he couldn't impress it on another Dushau with the talent to become Historian.
"It hasn't given Jindigar any trouble," offered Krinata.
"Not until Desdinda's death," answered Frey. "He tries, but he can't hide it from me. He's erratically accessing the Archive, and he's frightened. It's a... a sacred trust. He mustn't mar that record, he mustn't become lost in it, he mustn't lose it behind grieving scars, and he mustn't die before he can pass it on to a Historian. Do you understand?"
"Dushau memory works differently from human." Krinata nodded. "You re-experience emotional pain every time you access a memory of something that happened before it."
"Yes, and Jindigar was always very good at farfetching, despite his many scars and lack of Historian's training."
Farfetching was the eidetic recall of memories thousands of years past. The danger was to go episodic, to become lost in memory, a fatal form of insanity for a Dushau. Grisnilter had thought Jindigar immune to that—but he wasn't.
"Now he's afraid that his lack of training," continued Frey, "may cause him to betray a trust. Everything seems to evoke the Archive for him—even just talking to you."
"So that's why he won't attempt the triad again—"
Frey shook his head. "Jindigar's been qualified to Center an Oliat longer than I've lived. I couldn't guess at all the factors he's considering when he says no. I'd never dare go against his judgment."
"Even when it may be impaired by his personal problems? Even when the survival of the whole group may
depend on it? Frey, you're surely old enough to think for
yourself!" She couldn't believe she'd just said that. "I didn't
mean"
Frey laughed. "And you, zunre, are likewise old enough to think for yourself." He sobered. "Krinata, we may be zunre, but I don't wish to acquire ephemeral friends. I don't know on what grounds to appeal to you—professional, personal, or ethical. I can only beg—stay away from him."
"The group is too small to promise that, but I'll try not to hurt him." He should have told me. If Frey was right, that explained why none of her arguments affected Jindigar's decision. He didn't fear her infirmity, but his own, and his own was not aggravated by the Cassrians.
As the young Dushau gathered his canteen to rise, Jindigar mounted the dune to join them. "Storm's right," he called as he drew close, "there's no way to fix the brake on the water sled without tearing it apart. And there's no time for that." He surveyed the western horizon where the dirty pall was creeping higher into the magenta sky. "Frey?"
The youth's eyes flicked to Krinata, then fixed on the ground as he replied, "Yes, I've been studying the storm.
We're not going to make it at this rate. But now that we're this far, there's nothing to do but try."
He said we could make it. Is Jindigar's judgment slipping?
"With the sun down we'll be able to pick up the pace," argued Jindigar.
"Jindigar," Krinata said, "a triad could read the situation better. Perhaps if we change course, the storm would only graze us? Or maybe we can find a closer shelter?"
Below them the line of march was forming up under the Lehiroh's guidance. Frey offered, "It's your decision, of course, but if you judge the danger to the Archive from the storm greater than the danger from the triad, I'd be willing to attempt the triad with Krinata again. I think I might be able to hold it this time, and it would increase our range."