60

At midday, from Noim’s estate in southwestern Salla, I phoned the Duke of Sumar to confirm my safe arrival — it was he, of course, who had arranged for my bondbrother to meet me at the border — and then I put through a call to Halum. Segvord had told her just a few hours earlier of the reasons for my disappearance. “How strange this news is,” she said. “You never spoke of the drug. Yet it was so important to you, for you risked everything to use it. How could it have had such a role in your life, and yet be kept a secret from your bondsister?” I answered that I had not dared to let her know of my preoccupation with it, for fear I might be tempted to offer it to her. She said, “Is opening yourself then to your bondsister so terrible a sin?”

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