Esdan was light-headed with hunger and sleeplessness. He stood still—he had not been invited to sit down—and looked down at the floor, his hand at his sides. He murmured barely audibly, "Yes, master."
Banarkamye's head snapped up, his eyes flashed. "What did you say?"
"Enna."
"Who do you think you are?"
"A prisoner of war."
"You can go."
Esdan left. Tema followed him but did not stop or direct him. He made his way straight to the kitchen, where he heard the rattle of pans, and said, "Choyo, please, give me something to eat!" The old man, cowed and shaky, mumbled and apologised and fretted, but produced some fruit and stale bread. Esdan sat at the worktable and devoured it. He offered some to Tema, who refused stiffly. Esdan ate it all. When he was done he limped on out through the kitchen exitways to a side door leading to the great terrace. He hoped to see Kamsa there, but none of the house people were out. He sat on a bench in the balustrade that looked down on the long reflecting pool. Tema stood nearby, on duty.
"You said the bondspeople on a place like this, if they didn't join the Uprising, were collaborators," Esdan said.
Tema was motionless, but listening.
"You don't think any of them might just not have understood what was going on? And still don't understand? This is a benighted place, zadyo. Hard to even imagine freedom, here."
The young man resisted answering for a while, but Esdan talked on, trying to make some contact with him, get through to him. Suddenly something he said popped the lid.
"Usewomen," Tema said. "Get fucked by blacks, every night. All they are, fucks. Jits' whores. Bearing their black brats, yesmaster yesmaster. You said it, they don't know what freedom is. Never will. Can't liberate anybody lets a black fuck 'em. They're foul. Dirty, can't get clean. They got black jizz through and through 'em. Jit-jizz!" He spat on the terrace and wiped his mouth.
Esdan sat still, looking down over the still water of the pool to the lower terraces, the big tree, the misty river, the far green shore. May he be well and work well, have patience, compassion, peace. What use was I, ever? All I did. It never was any use. Patience, compassion, peace. They are your own people… He looked down at the thick blob of spittle on the yellow sandstone of the terrace. Fool, to leave his own people a lifetime behind him and come to meddle with another world. Fool, to think you could give anybody freedom. That was what death was for. To get us out of the crouchcage.
He got up and limped towards the house in silence. The young man followed him.
The lights came back on just as it was getting dark. They must have let old Saka go back to his tinkering. Preferring twilight, Esdan turned the room light off. He was lying on his bed when Kamsa knocked and came in, carrying a tray. "Kamsa!" he said, struggling up, and would have hugged her, but the tray prevented him. "Rekam is—?"
"With my mother," she murmured.
"He's all right?"
The backward nod. She set the tray down on the bed, as there was no table.
"You're all right? Be careful, Kamsa. I wish I— They're leaving tomorrow, they say. Stay out of their way if you can."
"I do. Do you be safe, sir," she said in her soft voice. He did not know if it was a question or a wish. He made a little rueful gesture, smiling. She turned to leave.
"Kamsa, is Heo—?"
"She was with that one. In his bed."
After a pause he said, "Is there anywhere you can hide out?" He was afraid that Banarkamye's men might execute these people when they left, as "collaborators" or to hide their own tracks.
"We got a hole to go to, like you said," she said.
"Good. Go there, if you can. Vanish! Stay out of sight."
She said, "I will hold fast, sir."
She was closing the door behind her when the sound of a flyer approaching buzzed the windows. They both stood still, she in the doorway, he near the window. Shouts downstairs, outside, men running. There was more than one flyer, approaching from the southeast. "Kill the lights!" somebody shouted. Men were running out to the flyers parked on the lawn and terrace. The window flared up with light, the air with a shattering explosion.
"Come with me," Kamsa said, and took his hand and pulled him after her, out the door, down the hall and through a service door he had never even seen. He hobbled with her as fast as he could down ladderlike stone stairs, through a back passage, out into the stable warren. They came outdoors just as a series of explosions rocked everything around them. They hurried across the courtyard through overwhelming noise and the leap of fire, Kamsa still pulling him along with complete sureness of where she was going, and ducked into one of the storerooms at the end of the stables. Gana was there and one of the old bondsmen, opening up a trapdoor in the floor. They went down, Kamsa with a leap, the others slow and awkward on the wooden ladder. Esdan most awkward, landing badly on his broken foot. The old man came last and pulled the trap shut over them. Gana had a battery lamp, but kept it on only briefly, showing a big, low, dirt-floored cellar, shelves, an archway to another room, a heap of wooden crates, five faces: the baby awake, gazing silent as ever from its sling on Gana's shoulder. Then darkness. And for some time silence.
They groped at the crates, set them down for seats at random in the darkness.
A new series of explosions, seeming far away, but the ground and the darkness shivered. They shivered in it. "0 Kamye," one of them whispered.
Esdan sat on the shaky crate and let the jab and stab of pain in his foot sink into a burning throb.
Explosions: three, four.
Darkness was a substance, like thick water.
"Kamsa," he murmured.
She made some sound that located her near him.
"Thank you."
"You said hide, then we did talk of this place," she whispered.
The old man breathed wheezily and cleared his throat often. The baby's breathing was also audible, a small uneven sound, almost panting.
"Give me him." That was Gana. She must have transferred the baby to his mother.
Kamsa whispered, "Not now."
The old man spoke suddenly and loudly, startling them alclass="underline" "No water in this!"
Kamsa shushed him and Gana hissed, "Don't shout, fool man!"
"Deaf," Kamsa murmured to Esdan, with a hint of laughter.
If they had no water, their hiding time was limited; the night, the next day; even that might be too long for a woman nursing a baby. Kamsa's mind was running on the same track as Esdan's. She said, "How do we know, should we come out?"
"Chance it, when we have to."
There was a long silence. It was hard to accept that one's eyes did not adjust to the darkness, that however long one waited one would see nothing. It was cave-cool. Esdan wished his shirt were warmer.
"You keep him warm," Gana said.
"I do," Kamsa murmured.
"Those men, they were bondsfolk?" That was Kamsa whispering to him. She was quite near him, to his left.
"Yes. Freed bondsfolk. From the north."
She said, "Lotsalot different men come here, since the old Owner did die. Army soldiers, some. But no bondsfolk before. They shot Heo. They shot Vey and old Seneo. He didn't die, but he's shot."
"Somebody from the field compound must have led them, showed them where the guards were posted. But they couldn't tell the bondsfolk from the soldiers. Where were you when they came?"
"Sleeping, back of the kitchen. All us housefolk. Six. That man did stand there like a risen dead. He said, 'Lie down there! Don't stir a hair!' So we did that. Heard them shooting and shouting all over the house. Oh, mighty Lord! I did fear! Then no more shooting, and that man did come back to us and hold his gun at us and take us out to the old house-compound. They did get that old gate shut on us. Like old days."
"For what did they do that if they are bondsfolk?" Gana's voice said from the darkness.