She tried to comfort him. He reassured himself that she had faith in their future, and this was enough. "But then," he said, catching up a thought, "then Intel will not plan to lose you. You might be after all the ablest after her; and if she bequeaths my service to youif you should challenge or return challenge, Melein, I can defend you. I am not unable to defend you: I am skilled in the yin'ein. Nine years they have kept me in training. I must be capable of something."
She was silent a long time. Finally she arose."Come," she said."Let us return to the edun. I am cold."
And she was silent as they climbed down to the trail and walked back; she wept. He saw it in the starlight, and took off his own veil and offered it to her, a gesture of profound tenderness.
"No," she said fiercely. He nodded, and flung the mez over his shoulder, walking beside her."You are right," she said finally."I will not surrender the office and die without challenge if it comes to me. I will kill to hold it."
"It is a great honor for you," he said, because he thought that he should have said something of the kind when she first told him.
She let go her breath, a slow hiss."What honorto go into some strange edun, and into a strange Kel, and kill some woman who never did me hurt? I do not want that honor."
"But Intel will arm you for this," he said."She will make you able. She has surely planned for this for many years."
She looked up at him, her shadowed face set and calm. "I think you are not far wrong," she said, "that she wanted you by her because she knows I could make trouble in the House. She trusts you. She does not trust me."
He shivered, hearing in her voice the bitterness he had always suspected was there, and shadows tore away between himself and the Sen-tower and the she'pan. He remembered Melein preparing the cup each evening, the cup that helped she'pan sleep; and each evening, the she'pan drinking, nothing questioning. He suspected what ungentle things might run in Intel's drug-hazed minda she'pan foreseeing her own death and mistrusting her successor with good reason.
Intel had wanted Melein disarmed: had sent Medai into service, had kept her brother close by. Some kel'en would guard Intel's tomb: normally it would be one of her Husbands, not a son. But there might be one instruction if she passed of age, and another if by Melein's hand.
And Melein would have to challenge against him to challenge Inteclass="underline" he would die before Intel would; but Melein would have to find a kel'en to champion herand there was none who would agree to that.
Intel had done well to banish Medai.
But Melein was not capable of the things of which Intel suspected her; he insisted on believing that she was not. Caste and teaching and the bitterness of her imprisonment could not have changed his truesister to that extent. He would not believe that Intel's fears were justified.
I want her to live, I desperately want her to live, Melein had said.
"How much," he asked finally,"did she bid you tell me?"
"Less," she said,"than I told you."
"Yes," he said,"I had thought so."
They came back to the edun, she drawing ahead of him as they entered. He looked aside at the dus that turned its head from him. When he looked up, she had gone on into the shadows, toward the stairs of her own tower.
She did not look back.
He went toward the she'pan's tower, to take up his duty, where he belonged.
Chapter ELEVEN
THERE WAS quiet over Kesrith. After so many hazards, after two days stalled with the port in chaos from the storm, that last shuttle had lifted with its cargo of refugees, to the station where the freighter Restrivi was forming the last regular civilian list that would leave the world. Hereafter there was time, necessary time, for setting final matters in order. Against the ruddy sun of Kesrith there was only Hazan remaining armed and, when her minor repairs were completed, star-capable; she waited with her crew constantly within her. She carried in her tapes the way to Nurag, to regul homeworld, to safety and civilization for the few hundred left on Kesrith.
A ten of times each passing day bai Hulagh Alagn-ni, working in his heated offices in the Norn complex, looked up at the windows and concerned himself with the condition of Hazan. The dual-capable ship, strong enough behind her screens for combat, was yet a perilously fragile structure when grounded. He had hesitated to take her down in the first place; he had suffered agonies of mind in the hours of the storm's approach, had decided against lofting her to sta-tionside.
And thenthen, to have a witless aircraft pilot attempt to outrun the storm and risk the crosswinds, a known peril at Kesrith's fieldon such an occurrence the whole mission was almost lost. Hulagh cursed each time he thought of it, the youngling pilot and passengers, of course, beyond retribution. He was relieved that, at the least, damage had been confined to the tower and loading facilities, and that to Hazan's structure was minimal. Luck had been with him. Hazan was in his trust over the objections of powerful influences back on homeworld. He had risked everything in securing for himself and his interests this post, replacing old Gruran and Solgan Holn-nian assignment for which his personal age and erudition had qualified him, and thereby won doch Alagn the status it was long overdue.
But as with landing the ship, as in other decisions he had made along the way, it was necessary to risk in order to gain. It was necessary to demonstrate to homeworld his claimed ability and that of doch Alagn in order to obtain the influence permanently.
He could do so by salvaging the most possible benefit of Kesrith, after its loss by Gruran Holn-ni and his get; and Solgah Holn-nihe thought with disgust and contempt of the prolific female who had ruled Holn's establishment of Kesrith, and lorded it so thoroughly over the zone and over the war that was her creationSolgah was on her way to homeworld in utter confusion, stripped of her command, most of her younglings left behind, their ranks decimated by Holagh's own orders, survivors parcelled out to many different colonies, the doch in complete disorganization. She would be lucky if her influences on homeworld enabled her to escape sifting and the execution of her younglings. At the least, Holn was due for some years of obscurity.
The memory still pleased him, how Solgah had received the shock of Hazan's unscheduled and unauthorized landing: how she had fluttered and blustered with prohibitions and objections, until he had made known to her his homeworld-granted authority to assume control.
Now it was his office to complete the evacuation Solgah had begun, to save as much as possible from the concessions her weak kinsman Gruran Holn-ni had granted in negotiations at Elag, trying to save the inner portions of the vast Holn empire. It was his task to prepare Kesrith to receive human occupation, and to remove regul properties as much as could be saved, and regul personnel, as many as could be saved; and to ensure that humans drew the least possible benefit from what they had won in war and in negotiations.
Hulagh had dealt with humans indirectly for three home-world years, and met with a few after replacing Gruran, and knew themincluding the two that had come in on Hazanwith a quiet but mild distaste, less distaste, in fact, than he had ever felt for mri, who served regul. The human war, of course, had been a complete mistake, an error in calculations, and not one attributable to doch Alagn. It had been abundantly clear to wiser regul minds for the better part of five years that the companies of Holn doch had involved themselves in an utter fiasco, from which the mri were unable to rescue them, and that error would have been corrected then, if it had been possible to restrain the obstinacies and military power of such as Holn, whose employ of mercenary kel'ein and whose obvious self-interest in retaining the disputed territories had stalled off any change in policy.