The Faded Sun Trilogy (97 page)

Now two more lostlings were sent among them. Melek chewed at the concentrates, its trembling somewhat abated; its comrade Pegagh sat munching on soi nuts, the while the newcomers settled in among them. Magd and Hab their names were, Alagn like Pegagh. Melek, of Geleg doch, regarded them all with suspicion, its double hearts laboring in the dull dread that they were to be held here too long, that the calculations it had made were inaccurate, and it was not valued and honored for being of another doch than Alagn . . . quite the contrary. Melek did not speak such things, certainly not to them; and made no complaints, as Pegagh did not: one never knew in what eat such complaints would be dropped should they survive. There was a swelling in Melek’s throat that made swallowing difficult in such contemplations. They flew their missions precisely as told; they beamed Eldest’s tape over the wide flat nothingness.

They hoped, forlornly, to be taken home and fed and comforted.

Now they were four.

There were ten shuttles in all; and four of them sat here. Two more coming down could not carry supplies sufficient to make the trip worthwhile: they would then be six marooned down here . . . a matter of diminishing returns. There would be no more supplies. Melek made the calculations with interior panic.

Perform.

Obey orders precisely.

Hope for favor and life.

It was all they had.

Duncan looked a sorry sight under any circumstances. Stripped naked and in daylight he was sadder still, scrubbing away at himself with handfuls of sand to take the blood and grime away. Niun worked at his own person, the two of them alone on the edge of camp where the slight rolling of the land gave them a measure of privacy and the wind blew clear. He rubbed dust into his mane and shook it until the dust was gone, scrubbed his skin until it stung and then quickly sought the warmth of clean robes, shivering in the wind.

Duncan managed the same for himself, although his hair coated skin would not shed the sand so easily and the hair of his head was prone to retain the dust. Still he labored fastidiously at it, sitting somewhat sheltered from the wind, and his stress thinned limbs shivered so that Niun took concern for him and held his robes between him and the treacheries of the breeze.

“Come, you are clean enough. Will you not make haste about it? My arms tire.”

Duncan stood and shrugged into the robes, shivered convulsively, and fastened the inner robe with its cloth belts, the while Niun sat down again on the side of the slope to work his boots on.

Duncan coughed a little, smothered it. Niun looked up anxiously. Duncan ignored the matter and sat down again, began with a little oil and the blade of one
as-en,
to scrape away at the hair on his face. Niun regarded the process with furtive glances. It was a matter of meticulous care with Duncan, and a difference between them which Duncan sought assiduously to hide, which humans in general did, for Niun supposed that all had this tendency and that all cared for it as Duncan did, not the hair of the body but that of the face: a tsi’mri observance he continued as compatible with mri, perhaps, or simply that the veil was the one portion of clothing a kel’en could not maintain in the camp.

And Niun deliberately sought privacy for Duncan to attend to his person, so that the newcomers should not see the differences of his body. He was vaguely ashamed at this deception, although Duncan freely consented in it. He remained uncertain whether Duncan did so out of shame of his own structure, or out of some consideration for him, not to embarrass him. Niun greatly suspected the latter . . . but asking Duncan why—that required delving into tsi’mri thoughts. It had been more comfortable to ignore the matter, and to provide Duncan that measure of privacy, the two of them.

Duncan lived, and that was enough at the moment. He was wan and thin and slow in his movements as an old man, but alive, and without the bleeding this bright morning. It was a good thing in a man, that he wake with a sudden concern for his appearance and his cleanliness, and an evidence of impatience with his own condition: It was a good thing.

This morning there seemed much of good in the world.

The dusei were out and away, lost somewhere in the haze of the amber morning . . . presumably hunting as they should be, and not out troubling the camps which lay over the horizons on all sides of them. The stranger-kel’en had settled into camp, in a makeshift patchwork of three shades of canvas on ropes between sen-tent and Kel. There was a quiet there, sensible mri folk who were not going to provoke quarrels in stupidity, as sensibly silent and observing as folk were who knew they might be set to kill, and who could profit from understanding as much as possible and seeing clearly and without passion. Their own she’panei directed them to take orders within the camp; they did so, adapting to strangeness with the confidence that came of knowing their own tribes relied on them for eyes and ears . . . the Face-Turned-Outward of their she’panei. Even the ja’anom were unwontedly reasonable, for all Duncan’s presence among them. It would not last; but it was, for the moment, good.

In the camp, children of the Kath played, laughing aloud and having the energy at last to skip and run. They had caught a snake this dawn, unfortunate creature which had strayed in seeking the camp’s moisture. Nothing ventured into camp wily enough to escape the sharp-eyed children, who added it triumphantly to the common pot. They teased and played at pranks, amusing even the sober strangers.

And that laughter, reaching them, was a comfort to the heart more than all others.

“Why the face?” Niun asked in sudden recklessness.

Duncan looked up, wet a finger in his mouth, touched a bleeding spot his chin. He seemed perplexed by the question, but quite unoffended.

“Why the face and not—” Niun made a gesture vaguely including his own body.

Duncan grinned, a shocking expression in his gaunt, half-tanned face, which was brown about the eyes and not elsewhere. More, he laughed silently. “It would take a long time. Should I?”

That was not the sober reaction Niun had expected. He found himself embarrassed, frowned and touched his brow. “Here is mri, sov-kela. The outside is a veil, like the other veil. You and I are alike enough.”

Duncan went sober indeed, and seemed to understand him.

“My brother,” Niun said, “pleases
himself
by this. For them—” He gestured widely toward the mingled and all the camps about.

Duncan shrugged, “
Should
I remove it all?”

“Gods,” Niun muttered, “no.”

And Duncan confounded him by an inward smite, a nod. “I hear you.”

“My brother is perverse as a dus.”

“And similarly coated.”

Niun hissed, high exasperation, and found himself compelled to laugh because Duncan could so deftly lead him.

Human laughter; it was at times irreverent of most serious things; but that Duncan retained his sense of balance, that was a knowledge cleansing as a draft of wind.

“Gods, gods, I have missed you.”

And that for some reason brought a touch of pain to Duncan’s face, a shadow of a sorrow.

That question too he would have liked to ask, and for his peace and Duncan’s . . . declined.

Duncan sat down and pulled on his boots, gave a deep breath when he had done and rose shakily, belted on his
weapons and his Honors. Niun stood and resumed the visored headcloth and Duncan did likewise, until there was only the difference of the face and Duncan’s lesser stature between them.

“You think—” Duncan said then, as if it were something which had been biding speaking a long time. “You think these stranger kel’ein would go back with us to the ship?”

“That is not for Kel to say.”

“The she’pan said that she would consider. What is she considering?”

“The Sen deliberates.” Niun felt exposed in the hedging, ashamed; there were times that Duncan could meet a stare with the look of a kath’en and the steadiness of a kel-Master. “Did I not teach you patience, without questions?”

“They have been deliberating the second day now.”

“Sov-kela.”

“Aye,” Duncan answered him, glancing away. Niun made a bundle of the clothing they had shed, knotted it and rose again; he set his other hand on Duncan’s shoulder, turning him back toward the main aisle of the camp, and Duncan for all his disquiet reached and took the cord of the bundle, carrying the burden with a courtesy automatic as one born to it. Niun regarded that, and felt the more uncomfortable himself.

“Do you doubt the she’pan?” Niun asked. “Do you think she would not do the best thing?”

“There are thoughts I cannot say in the hal’ari, that I am not good enough to say.” They walked slowly, boots crunching on the wind-scoured sand beside their outward footprints, already wind-dimmed. “If you would hear—if you would remember human language for a small moment, and let me say in human terms—”

“Veil” Niun cut him off. “Do not breathe the wind. Manners do not apply to the sick.”

Duncan did so, and was silent.

“You had years on the ship to talk to us,” Niun said, “
You
are the speech you would make, and it is already well-made.” He took a pass of the veil across his own mouth, for courtesy between them, not to make Duncan conspicuous, and mindfully shortened his long strides. “It is all said, Duncan.”

The morning haze fell kindly about the tents, touching them all with the tranquility of the hour. Even the
black fabric of kel-tent and the patchwork tent adjoining had a little of gold on their coarse surface; and gold stained the paler hue of that of the she’pan and of the Others. The trampled center of the camp was alive with blue robes, goings and comings of the children, women working by Kath in the morning light, cookfires burning. But of gold there was none; and of black-robed figures but one, and that one vanished into the main kel-tent as they approached; others came out then, jamming the doorway, and sudden apprehension gathered at Niun’s belly, the morning dimmed . . . he opened his mouth to warn Duncan and did not. Duncan was wise on his own, and some things were too evil to suspect aloud.

They walked as close to the doorway as they might with the Kel blocking their way. Hlil was there in the center of matters, unveiled; some were and others were not.

“The she’pan has called half-council,” Hlil said. “Ours and theirs together.”

It had come, then. Niun dismissed his worse suspicions with a profound shame. “Aye,” he told Hlil and started away with him at once. But a few steps away he delayed, still with that vile feeling crawling at his belly. He looked back and caught Duncan’s eye, who stared after him.

“The dusei,” he said to Duncan. “It concerns me . . . where they are. You might call them.”

If you need them,
he meant. He thought that Duncan took his meaning; that sort of glance went between them, and there was a touch of apprehension in Duncan’s eyes, but no panic.

He turned then and went with Hlil.

*   *   *

Kel’ein settled about the doorway, showing no disposition to enter the tent . . . ja’anom, but not all ja’anom: kel’ein of the other Kels hovered about the edges, and more and more arrived, strolling up casually. The door was blocked, inconvenient to reach, and it was dark inside, lacking witnesses. Duncan settled on the sand in their midst, his back to the tent, the black bulk of which served to shelter him and them from the slight wind. He kept his head bowed, doing as Niun had suggested, thinking on the dusei, but when time passed in the quiet and extraneous conversation of those near him, he dismissed his more vivid fears and glanced furtively at the ja’anom, wondering
if he understood anything at all of what game they were playing. One was old Peras, a quiet one and civil to him; he could not think evil of him. There was Taz . . . . Taz’s unwontedly expressionless face gave him no comfort; he had never seen the boy but that he was alive and alight to every need about him, and he was withdrawn now, watching. And Ras . . . Ras and Niun did not agree: he had sensed this thoroughly, even without the dusei. She came now and settled slightly behind him, so that she could see him and not otherwise.

Silence fell in the group. Most withdrew inside, strangers as well as ja’anom, not into their proper tent; and that was unwonted. Others stayed sitting. Duncan glanced down rather than appear to question this movement, reckoning silence the best course. Niun needed no trouble of his making; trouble there was already, and he reckoned that a portion of it had maneuvered to take him in. He knew names more than Peras and Taz and Ras, but few more; there were ja’anom whose names and reasons he ought to know, and did not, so short a time he had been among them before. If they had helped him live now, it was out of some sense of honor, or something that Niun had the power to make them do; hot for love: he had no illusions of that.

The kel’en on his right touched his sleeve.

“Tsi’mri,” that one said, but as if it were fact, not a calculated insult, “you say nothing.”

He looked up perforce, met the unveiled face of that man and of others, young and old, male and female. None of them showed expression. All those left had the kel-scars, the
seta’al,
time-faded on the faces of some, new and bright on others. “Perhaps there are some who do not wish me well. What do you wish, kel’ein?”

Silent glances went from one to the other, and Duncan followed these exchanges with anxiety he did not allow to his face.

“You are wise,” said a kel’e’en, “always to keep to someone’s shadow.”

Duncan felt the wind, felt his back naked without Niun, and bowed his head to them, which was all his recourse.

“We see what is toward,” another said. “Best you sit here.”

He cast a look toward the aisle, toward the she’pan’s tent, into which Niun had vanished, and all that he could see was a wall of stranger-kel’ein, listening silently on the fringes. Almost he rose to walk away from them all, to
go settle at the she’pan’s door in safety, but a grip on his sleeve advised him otherwise before he could make the move. He looked back at them. An old kel’e’en touched the scars on her face, mark of a skill he lacked. “You are
tsi’seta.
Who would challenge
you
but another unscarred? And there are none such here.”