“Try closing your bedroom to Shan t’Tefur,” he said, “for a start. Your credibility among the Families is in rags as long as you’re Shan t’Tefur’s mistress.”
It hurt her. He had thought it could not, and suddenly he perceived she was less armored than he had believed.
“You’ve given your advice,” she said. “Go back to Elas.”
“Djan—”
“Out.”
“Djan, you talk about the sanctity of local culture, the balance of powers, but you seem to think you can pick and choose the rules you like. In some measure I don’t blame Shan t’Tefur. You’ll be the death of him before you’re done, playing on his ambitions and his pride and then refusing to abide by the customs he knows. You know what you’re doing to him? You know what it is to a man of the nemet that you take for a lover and then play politics with him?”
“I told him fairly that he had no claim on me. He chose.”
“Do you think a nemet is really capable of believing that? And do you think that he believes now he had no just claim on the Methi’s loyalty, whatever he does in your name? He’ll push you someday to the point where you have to choose. He’s not going to let you have your own way with him forever.”
“He knows how things are.”
“Then ask yourself why he comes running when you call him to your bed, and if you discover it’s not your considerable personal attractions, don’t say I didn’t warn you. A nemet doesn’t take that kind of treatment, not without some compelling reason. If this is your method of controlling the Sufaki, you’ve picked the wrong man.”
“Nevertheless”—her voice acquired a tremor that she tried to suppress—“my mistakes are my choice.”
“Will that undo someone’s dying?”
“My choice,” she insisted, with such intensity that it gave him pause.
“You’re not in love with him?” It was question, and plea at once. “You’re too sensible for that, Djan. You said yourself this world doesn’t give you that choice. You’d kill him or he’d be the death of you sooner or later.”
She shrugged, and the old cynical bitterness that he trusted was back. “I was conceived to serve the state. Doing so is an unbreakable habit. Other people—like you, my friend,—normal people—serve themselves. Relationships like serving self, serving—others—are outside my experience. I thought I was selfish, but I begin to see there are other dimensions to that word. I find personal relations tedious, these games of me and thee. I enjoy companionship. I—love you. I love Shan. That is not the same as: I love Nephane. This city is mine; it is
mine.
Spare me your appeals to personal affection. I would destroy either of you if I were clearly convinced it was necessary to the survival of this city. Remember that.”
“I am sorry for you,” he said.
“Get out.”
Tears gathered to her eyes, belying everything she had said. She struggled for dignity, lost; the tears spilled free, her lips trembling into sobs. She clenched her jaw, turned her face and gestured for him to go.
“I am sorry,” he said, this time with compassion, at which she shook her head and kept her back to him until the spasm had passed.
He took her arms, trying to comfort her, and felt guilty because of Mim; but he felt guilty because of Djan too, and feared that she would not forgive him for witnessing this. She had been here longer, a good deal longer than he. He well knew the nightmare, waking in the night, finding that reality had turned to dreams and the dream itself was as real as the stranger beside him, looking into a face that was not human, perceiving ugliness where a moment before had been beauty.
“I am tired,” she said, leaning against him. Her hair smelled of these exotic on this world, lab-born, like Djan—perfumes like home, from a thousand star-scattered worlds the nemet had never dreamed of. “Kurt, I work, I study, I try. I am tired to death.”
“I would help you,” he said, “if you would let me.”
“You have loyalties elsewhere,” she said finally. “I wish I’d never sent you to Elas, to learn to be nemet, to belong to them. You want things for your cause, he wants things for his. I know all that, and occasionally I want to forget it. It’s a human weakness. Am I not allowed just one? You came here asking favors. I knew you would, sooner or later.”
“I would never ask you deceitfully, to do you harm. I owe you, as I owe Elas.”
She pushed back from him. “And I hate you most when you do that. Your concern is touching, but I don’t trust it.”
“Nephane is killing you.”
“I can manage.”
“Probably you can,” he said. “But I would help you.”
“Ah, as Shan helps me. But you don’t like it when it’s the opposition, do you? Blast you, I gave you leave to marry and you’ve done it, you’ve made your choice, however tempting it was to—”
She did not finish. He suddenly found reason for uneasiness in that omission. Djan was not one to let words fly carelessly.
“When I came here,” he said, “whenever I come, I try to leave my relations with Elas at the door. You’ve never tried to make me go against them; and I do not use you, Djan.”
“Your little Mim,” said Djan. “What is she like? Typical nemet?”
“Not typical.”
“Elas is using you,” she said. “Whether you know it or not, that is so. I could still stop that. I could simply have you given quarters here in the Afen. No arrest decree has Upei review.
That
power of a Methi is absolute.”
She actually considered it. He went cold inside, realizing that she could and would do it, and knew suddenly that she meant this for petty revenge, taking his peace of mind in retaliation for her humiliation of a moment ago. Pride was important to her.
“Do you want me to ask you not to do that?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “If I decide to do that, I will do it, and if I do not, I will not. What you ask has nothing to do with it. But I would advise you and Elas to remain quiet.”
12
The fog did not go out. It held the city the next morning, the faint sound of warning bells drifting up from the harbor. Kurt opened his eyes on the grayness outside the window, then looked toward the foot of the bed where Mim sat combing her long hair, black and silken and falling to her waist when unbound. She looked back at him and smiled, her alien and wonderfully lovely eyes soft with warmth.
“Good morning, my lord.”
“Good morning,” he murmured.
“The mist is still with us,” she said. “Hear the harbor bells?”
“How long can this last?”
“Sometimes many days when the seasons are turning,—especially in the spring.” She flicked several strands of hair apart and began with quick fingers to plait them into a thin braid. Then she would sweep most of her hair up to the crown of her head, fasten it with pins and combs, an intricate and fascinating ritual daily performed and nightly undone. He liked watching her. In a matter of moments she began the next braid.
“We say,” Mim commented, “that the mist is a cloak of the
imiine,
the sky-sprite Nue, when she comes to visit earth and walk among men. She searches for her beloved, that she lost long ago in the days when godkings ruled. He was a mortal man who offended one of the godkings, a son of Yr whose name was Knyha;—and, poor man, he was slain by Knyha, and his body scattered over all the shore of Nephane so that Nue would not know what had become of him. She still searches and walks the land and the sea and haunts the rivers, especially in the springtime.”
“Do you truly think that?” Kurt asked, not sarcastically: one could not be that with Mim. He was prepared to mark it down to be remembered with all his heart if she wished him to.
Mim smiled. “I do not, not truly. But it is a beautiful story, is it not, my lord? There are truths and there are truths, my lord Kta would say, and there is Truth itself, the
yhia,
—and since mortals cannot always reason all the way to Truth, we find little truths that are right enough on our own level. But you are very wise about things. I think you really might know what makes the mist come. Is it a cloud that sits down upon the sea, or is it born in some other way?”
“I think,” said Kurt, “that I like Nue best. It sounds better than water vapor.”
“You think I am silly and you cannot make me understand.”
“Would it make you wiser if you knew where fog comes from?”
“I wish that I could talk to you about all the things that matter to you.”
He frowned, realizing that she was in earnest. “You matter. This place, this world matters to me, Mim.”
“I know so very little.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
“Well, you owe me breakfast first.”
Mim flashed a smile, put in the last combs and finished her hair with a pat. She slipped on the
chatem,
the overdress with the four-paneled split skirt which fitted over the gossamer drapery of the
pelan,
the underdress. The
chatem,
high-collared and long-sleeved, tight and restraining in the bodice,—rose and beige brocade, over a rose
pelan.
There were many buttons up either wrist and up the bodice to the collar. She patiently began the series of buttons.
“I will have tea ready by the time you can be downstairs,” she said. “I think Aimu will have been—”
There was a deep hollow boom over the city, and Kurt glanced toward the window with an involuntary oath. It was the sighing note of a distant gong.
“
Ai,
” said Mim. “
Intaem-Inta.
That is the great temple. It is the beginning of Cadmisan.”
The gong moaned forth again through the fog-stilled air, measured, four times more. Then it was still, the last echoes dying.
“It is the fourth of Nermotai,” said Mim, “the first of the Sufak holy days. The temple will sound the
Inta
every morning and every evening for the next seven days, and the Sufaki will make prayers and invoke the
Intain,
the spirits of their gods.”
“What is done there?” Kurt asked.
“It is the old religion which was here before the Families. I am not really sure what is done, and I do not care to know. I have heard that they even invoke the names of godkings in Phan’s own temple; but we do not go there, ever. There were old gods in Chteftikan, old and evil gods from the First Days, and once a year the Sufaki call their names and pay them honor, to appease their anger at losing this land to Phan. These are beings we Indras do not name.”
“Bel said,” Kurt recalled, “that there could be trouble during the holy days.”
Mim frowned. “Kurt, I would that you take special care for your safety, and do not come and go at night during this time.”
It hit hard. Mim surely spoke without reference to the Methi, at least without bitterness: if Mim accused, he knew well that Mim would say so plainly. “I do not plan to come and go at night,” he said. “Last night—”
“It is always dangerous,” she said with perfect dignity, before he would finish, “to walk abroad at night during Cadmisan. The Sufak gods are earth-spirits, Yr-bred and monstrous. There is wild behavior and much drunkenness.”
“I will take your advice,” he said.
She came and touched her fingers to his lips and to his brow, but she took her hand from him when he reached for it, smiling. It was a game they played.
“I must be downstairs attending my duties,” she said. “Dear my husband, you will make me a reputation for a licentious woman in the household if you keep making us late for breakfast.—No!—dear my lord, I shall see you downstairs at morning tea.”
“Where do you think you are going?”
Mim paused in the dimly lit entry hall, her hands for a moment suspending the veil over her head as she turned. Then she settled it carefully over her hair and tossed the end over her shoulder.
“To market, my husband.”
“Alone?”
She smiled and shrugged. “Unless you wish to fast this evening. I am buying a few things for dinner. Look you, the fog has cleared, the sun is bright, and those men who were hanging about across the street have been gone since yesterday.”
“You are not going alone.”
“Kurt, Kurt, for Bel’s doom-saying? Dear light of heaven, there are children playing outside, do you not hear? And should I fear to walk my own street in bright afternoon? After dark is one thing, but I think you take our warnings much too seriously.”
“I have my reasons, Mim.”
She looked up at him in most labored patience. “And shall we starve? Or will you and my lord Kta march me to market with drawn weapons?”
“No, but I will walk you there and back again.” He opened the door for her, and Mim went out and waited for him, her basket on her arm, most obviously embarrassed.
Kurt nervously scanned the street, the recesses where of nights t’Tefur’s men were wont to linger. They were indeed gone. Indras children played at tag. There was no threat—no presence of the Methi’s guards either, but Djan never did move obviously: he had no difficulty returning to Elas late, probably, he thought with relief, she had taken measures.
“Are you sure,” he asked Mim, “that the market will be open on a holiday?”
She looked up at him curiously as they started off together. “Of course, and busy. I put off going, you see, these several days with the fog and the trouble on the streets, and I am sorry to cause you this trouble, Kurt, but we really are running out of things and there could be the fog again tomorrow, so it is really better to go today. I have some sense, after all.”
“You know I could quite easily walk down there and buy what you need for supper, and you would not need to go at all.”
“
Ai,
but Cadmisan is such a grand time in the market, with all the country people coming in, and the artists, and the musicians—besides,” she added, when his face remained unhappy, “dear husband, you would not know what you were buying or what to pay. I do not think you have ever handled our coin. And the other women would laugh at me and wonder what kind of wife I am to make my husband do my work, or else they would think I am such a loose woman that my husband would not trust me out of his sight.”