in the kitchen, have Hanni and Desis arrive precisely as I manage to wake the fire? And then hurry me off to the dormitories, because Hayras’ daughter has woken with a fever that Caitha thinks could be strangle-cough. In which case we may be confronting a plague.
Which with no qherrique to consult means quarantine, fret and sweat it out, unholy reshufflings of half the House into new quarters. So when I did get home, Alkhes had gone.
While Sarth, looking wan and transparent as any mother after a hard birthing, would say only, “He wanted to think. No, he ate. He drank. He put warm clothes on. He’s all right.”
So the furor re-closed round me, with no chance to cry, Is he going, is he staying? What did you say, what did he say? Think about what?
Where he went, I found all too soon. Up to the outcrop above the quarry, the area’s lookout post.
For a soldier, natural enough. The place is a magnet for anyone wanting perspective and privacy. Right atop the crest, a bastion of creamy gray rock, a cluster of low-growing, pure white snow-helliens behind its parapet. You can sit in natural hollows or on backside-polished boulders, and gaze through the silver-green hellien foliage across the width of the River-world, sunk in fathoms of empty air, while you let a morning, a day, a sun-cycle roll away.
Where Iskarda’s women have gone from time immemorial, for ceremonies, or meditation, or mere solitude in the Dark. Where my husband, Mother help me, homed in his own necessity. Straight into Darthis.
“Tel, I didn’t see her. I swear, I didn’t know she was there!”
“Caissyl, of course not.” I put my arms around him and got him to sit at last, on the stool beside the hearth. Iatha, Caitha, Zuri, Quetho, Hanni made a silent chorus of catastrophe behind me. And at my shoulder, Sarth.
“You couldn’t have known, nobody could.” Somebody took the filthy, chilly cloak away. Somebody else began, very quietly, to build up the fire. “As the Mother sees me, nobody blames you. Can you just tell me what she said?”
He drew a great breath and straightened, scrubbing at his eyes like a wept-out child. Then he dropped the hand, and there was no child in that stare.
“She wouldn’t let me go.”
My back went stiff as Zuri’s. If she thinks she can take the old ways so far as man-theft, I wanted to squawk, she can think again!
“I knew it was a special place the minute I—she had her back to me. On a rock. I thought she was a rock. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Started to apologize. She said, ‘Stay’. ”
Like, his eyes told me, a Head to an underling. Or a dog.
“She asked where I came from. What I . . . was. How I . . . married you.”
He stuck. An arm came over my shoulder, holding a hot mug of tea. He nursed it, but his eyes never left me. Even when the blood rose in his face.
“She asked—what I was doing out of a tower.”
And, I thought resignedly, you told her to go to—
“I said, ‘Telluir’s Head told you. She has pulled them down’. ”
Mercifully, Iatha kept quiet.
“She said, ‘Why?’ ”
Seeking truth from the mouths of babes. Mother blast her, I thought.
“What did you say?”
He scowled into the cup. The wing of dark hair, drying now, frayed into his eyes. “I—uh—” He set the cup down. That look signaled urgently: Not here. Not now.
“This is a House matter, Alkhes.”
I could not make it clearer without gross insult. The others were also on trial. I had no right to shut them out.
He twisted where he sat. Then he gritted his teeth, and looked past me. With more than apology. With dread.
“I tried to explain. That it was unjust. Cruel. Unnatural.” He braced himself. “And . . . I told her about your sons.”
I swiveled. All the women’s eyes followed mine. Sarth had backed a step across the fireplace, but he was not looking at us.
“I meant it for an example. A defense.” He had not moved, but the tone was urgent as a leap. “I never meant—!”
I got up and took two strides away. Put my hand on Sarth, as if to run off the lightning bolt. He was rigid. Locked in tower discipline, face a mask only lightning would break.
“What did she say?”
Tel, his eyes begged. But it was too late for mercy now.
“She . . . said: Of course, they lifted the curse.”
If Sarth did not know the backwoods, he knew what sort of thing I expected. But I was the one who flinched.
“I didn’t know what she was talking about!” Alkhes came off the stool, half across the fireplace. “I didn’t—”
The feel of Sarth’s side told me why he stopped.
I could have halted it there; could have saved Sarth the worst. I knew there was to be a worst. But to shield him was also to degrade him, to count his courage, his endurance less than a woman’s. Again, to shut him out.
I said, “Go on.”
For an instant that black stare cried, Betrayer! Then he drew himself up.
“I said, ‘What ?’ I didn’t understand. And she . . . said, Three times a misbegetting. A curse. It endangers the House. You must wipe out the—sire.”
His voice wobbled, all the women winced. Only Sarth did not move, and looking up at him I could have cried. Because he had gone away as he had the day Alkhes came, into some fastness, invulnerable, impenetrable, that left us a block of breathing wood.
“Tel, she didn’t mean it, did she? She couldn’t—gods!”
“This is the backwoods, Alkhes.” I shoved a hand under Sarth’s jacket as if I could physically detain him, grasp his flesh, the being’s shell. “You have to expect that sort of—!”
“You think I didn’t? They expose hare-lipped babies in Verrain. But this!”
“What did you say to her?” Warm muscle under my hand, solid, familiar bone. But not Sarth. I had to talk or else break down. “Did you argue? You didn’t try to—”
“I was knocked silly, I just wanted to get away. But, Tel,” he reached out, pure panic. “She said when I was going, I have a duty to the House-head too.”
“Sweet Work-mother!” Iatha’s consternation answered mine. A man disintegrating in front of us, a sick child across hill, a possible plague ahead, and now, the worst of all pending confrontations. Not merely revolution, but blasphemy. Could it have found a better time?
* * *
But it was a House crisis, waking reflexes from other days. I shot Zuri off to arrange lookouts, Quetho to warn Hayras, Iatha to muzzle everyone else. Hanni was already spilling slates across the only writing surface, the kitchen table’s wide scrubbed planks. The others would return to make my court. Shia would manage the hearth—
Shia had taken the day off too, with a niece who wanted to walk the hills.
I turned on Sarth and gave him a quick shove; as if protocol was the only trouble, and nothing—nothing!—else was wrong.
“Put the kettle back on. Get that peppermint tea. See if there’s wine left. The good cups . . .”
It was like pushing a cliff. I snapped, “Sarth?”
“You heard.” The voice came out of that fastness. Remote, alien. “I am more than a provocation. I’m a curse. I’ll contaminate the House.”
My splendid, beloved man, regained,