Brothers of Earth

XI

Nephane was well named the city of mists. They rolled in and lasted for days as the weather grew warmer, making the cobbled streets slick with moisture. Ships crept carefully into harbor, the lonely sound of their bells occasionally drifting up the height of Nephane through the still air. Voices distantly called out in the streets, muted.

Kurt looked back, anxious, wondering if the sudden hush of footsteps that had been with him ever since the door of Elas meant an end of pursuit.

A shadow appeared near him. He stumbled off the edge of the unseen curb and caught his balance, fronted by several others who appeared, cloaked and anonymous, out of the grayness. He backed up and halted, warned by a scrape of leather on stone: others were behind him. His belly tightened, muscles braced.

One moved closer. The whole circle narrowed. He ducked, darted between two of them and ran. Soft laughter pursued him, nothing more. He did not stop running.

The Afen gate materialized out of the fog. He pushed the heavy gate inward. He had composed himself by the time he reached the main door. The guards stayed inside on this inclement day, and only looked up from their game, letting him pass; they were alert enough, but, Sufaki-wise, careless of formalities. He shrugged the ctan back to its conventional position under his right arm and mounted the stairs. Here the guards came smartly to attention-Djan’s alien sense of discipline-and they for once made to protest his entry.

He pushed past and opened the door, and one of them then hurried into the room and back into the private section of the apartments, presumably to announce his presence.

He had time enough to pace the floor, returning several times to the great window in the neighboring room. Fogbound as the city was, he could scarcely make out anything but Haichema-tleke, Maiden Rock, the crag that rose over the harbor, against whose shoulder the Afen and the Great Families’ houses were built. Gray and ghostly hi a world of pallid white, it seemed the cloud-city’s anchor to solid earth.

A door hissed open in the other room and he walked back. Djan was with him. She wore a silver-green suit, thin, body-clinging stuff. Her coppery hair was loose, silken and full of static. She had a morning look about her, satiated and full of sleep.

“It’s near noon,” he said.

“Ah,” she murmured, and looked beyond him to the window. “So we’re bound in again. Cursed fog. I hate it. Like some breakfast?”

“No.”

Djan shrugged and from utensils in the carved wood cabinet prepared tea, instantly heated. She offered him a cup; he accepted, nemet-schooled. It gave one something to do with the hands.

“I suppose,” she said when they were seated, “that you didn’t come here in this weather and wake me out of a sound sleep to wish me good morning.”

“I almost didn’t make it here, which is the situation I came to talk to you about. The neighborhood of Elas isn’t safe even by day. There are Sufaki hanging around who have no business there.”

“The quarantine ordinances were repealed, you know. I can’t forbid their being there.”

“Are they your men? I’d be relieved if I thought they were. That is, if yours and Shan t’Tefur’s aren’t one and the same, and I trust that isn’t the case. For a long time it’s been at night; since the first of Nermotai, it’s been even by day.”

“Have they hurt anyone?”

“Not yet. People in the neighborhood stay off the streets. Children don’t go out. It’s an ugly atmosphere. I don’t know whether it’s aimed at me in particular- or Elas hi general, but it’s a matter of time before something happens.”

“You haven’t done anything to provoke this?”

“No. I assure you I haven’t. But this is the third day of it I finally decided to chance it. Are you going to do anything?”

“I’ll have my people check it out, and if there’s cause I’ll have the people removed.”

“Well, don’t send Shan t’Tefur on the job.”

“I said I would see to it. Don’t ask favors and then turn sharp with me.”

“I beg your pardon. But that’s exactly what I’m afraid you’ll do, trust things to him.”

“I am not blind, my friend. But you’re not the only one with complaints. Shan’s life has been threatened. I hear it from both sides.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t choose to give my sources. But you know the Indras houses and you know the hard-line conservatives. Make your own guess.”

“The Indras are not a violent people. If they said it, it was more in the sense of a sober promise than a threat, and that in consideration of the actions he’s been urging. You’ll have riots in the streets if Shan t’Tefur has his way.”

“I doubt it. See, I’m being perfectly honest with you, a bit of trust. Shan uses that apparent recklessness as a tactic, but he is an intelligent man, and his enemies would do well to reckon with that.”

“And is he responsible for the late hours you’ve been keeping?”

Her eyes flashed suddenly, amused. “This morning, you mean?”

“Either you’re naive or you think he is. That is a dangerous man, Djan.”

The humor died out of her eyes. “Well, you’re one to talk about the dangers of involvement with the nemet.”

“You’re facing the danger of a foreign war and you need the goodwill of the Indras Families, but you keep company with a man who talks of killing Indras and burning the fleet.”

“Words. If the Indras are concerned, good. I didn’t create this situation; I walked into it as it is. I’m trying to hold this city together. There will be no war if it stays together. And it will stay together if the Indras come to their senses and give the Sufaki justice.”

“They might, if Shan t’Tefur were out of it. Send him on a long voyage somewhere. If he stays in Nephane and kills someone-which is likely, sooner or later-then you’re going to have to apply the law to him without mercy. And that will put you in a difficult position, won’t it?”

“Kurt.” She put down the cup. “Do you want fighting in this city? Then let’s just start dealing like that with both sides, one ultimatum to Shan to get out, one to Nym, to be fair-and there won’t be a stone standing in Nephane when the smoke clears.”

“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 him 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 has 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 comer 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 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 relationships 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 was 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 things 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? Typically 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.”