ISANDE CAME AWAKE slowly, aware of aching limbs and the general disorientation caused by drugs in her system. Upon reflex she felt for Aiela, and knew at once that she did not lie upon the concrete at the port. She was concerned to know if she had all her limbs, for it had been a terrible explosion.
Isande. Aiela’s thoughts burst into hers with an outpouring of joy. Pain came, cold, darkness, and the chill of earth, but above all relief. He read her confusion and fired multilevel into her mind that she must be aboard Tejef’s ship, and that amaut treachery and human help had put her there. A shell had exploded near them. He was whole. Was she? And the others?
Under Aiela’s barrage of questions and information she brought her blurred vision to focus and acknowledged that indeed she did seem to be aboard a ship. Khasif and Mejakh—she did not know. No. Mejakh—dead, dead—a nightmare memory, of the inside of an aircraft, Mejakh’s corpse a torn and bloody thing, the explosion nearest her.
Are you all right? Aiela persisted, trying to feel what she felt.
I believe so. She was numb. There was plasmic restruct on her right hand. The flesh was dark there. And hard upon that assessment came the realization that she, like Daniel, like Tejef, was trapped on the surface of Priamos. Aiela could be lifted offworld. She could not. Aiela would live. At least she had that to comfort her.
No! and with Aiela’s furious denial came a vision of sky with a horizon of jagged masonry, the cold cloudy light of stars overhead. He hurt, pain from cracking his head on the pavement, bruises and cuts beyond counting from clambering through the ruins to escape—Escape what? The ship inaccessible? Isande began to panic indeed; and he pleaded with her to stop, for her fear came to him, and he was so overwhelmingly tired.
Another presence filtered through his mind—Daniel. Although his thoughts reached to Weissmouth and back, he stood in a room not far away. A pale child—Arle, her image never before so clear—slept under sedation: he worried for her. And in that room was a woman whose name was Margaret, a poor, broken thing kept alive with tubings and life support. A dark man sat beside the woman, talking to her softly, and this was Tejef.
Rage burned through Isande, rejected instantly by Daniel: Murderer! she thought; but Daniel returned: At least this one cares for his people, and that is more than Chimele can do.
Blind! Isande cried at him, but Daniel would not believe it.
Chimele would be a target I would regret less.
And that disloyalty so upset Isande that she threw herself off the bed and staggered across the little room to try the door, cursing at the human the while in such thoughts as she did not use when her mind was whole.
I cannot reason with Daniel, said Aiela; but he knows the choice this world has and he will remember it when he must. Humans are like that.
Kill him, Isande raged at Daniel. You have the chance now: kill him, kill him, kill him!
Daniel foreknew defeat, weaponless as he was; and Isande grew more reasoning then and was sorry, for Daniel was as frightened as she and nearly as helpless. Yet Aiela was right: when the time came he would make one well-calculated effort. It was the reasonable thing to do, and that, he had learned of the iduve—to weigh things. But he resented it: Chimele had more power to choose alternatives than Tejef, and stubbornly refused to negotiate anything.
Iduve do not negotiate when they are winning or when they are losing. Isande flared back, hating that selective human blindness of his, that persistence in reckoning everyone as human; and that Tejef you honor so has already killed millions by his actions; by iduve reckoning, his was the action that began this. He knew what would happen when he sheltered here among humans.
Tejef has given us our lives, Daniel returned, with that reverence upon the word life that a kallia would spend upon giyre. Tejef was fighting for his own life, and that struck a response from the human at a primal level. Still Daniel would kill him. The contradictions so shocked Isande that she withdrew from that tangle of human logic and fiercely agreed that it would certainly be his proper giyre to his asuthi and Ashanome to do so.
The thought that echoed back almost wept. For Arle’s life, for this woman Margaret’s, for yours, for Aiela’s, I will try to kill him. I am afraid that I will kill him for my own—I am ashamed of that. And it is futile anyway.
You are not going to die, Aiela cast at them both, and the stars lurched in his vision and loose brick rattled underfoot as he hurled himself to his feet. I am going to do something. I don’t know what, but I’m going to try, if I can only get back to the civilized part of town.
Through his memory she read that he had been trying to do that for most of the night, and that he had been driven to earth by human searchers armed with lights, hovercraft thundering about the ruined streets, occasional shots streaking the dark. He was exhausted. His knees were torn from falling and felt unsure of his own weight If called upon to run again he simply could not do it.
Try the ship, she pleaded with him. Chimele will want you back. Aiela, please—as long as you can hold open any communication between Daniel and myself—the revulsion crept through even at such a moment—we are a threat to Tejef.
Forget it. I can’t reach the port. They’re between me and there right now. But even if I do get help, all I want is an airship and a few of ths okkitani-as. I’m going to come after you.
Simplest of all for me to tell Tejef where you are, she sent indignantly, and I’m sure he’d send a ship especially to transport you here. Oh, you are mad, Aiela!
One of Tejef s ships is an option I’m prepared to take if all else fails. That was the cold stubbornness that was always his, world-born kallia, ignorant and smugly self-righteous; but she recognized a touch of humanity in it too, and blamed Daniel.
Aiela did not cut off that thought in time: it flowed to his asuthe. No, said Daniel, I’m afraid that trait must be kalliran, because I’ve already told him he’s insane. I can’t really blame him. He loves you. But I suppose you know that.
Daniel was not welcome in their privacy. She said so and then was sorry, for the human simply withdrew in sadness. In his way he loved her too, he sent, retreating, probably because he saw her with Aiela’s eyes, and Aiela’s was not capable of real malice, only of blindness.
Oh, blast you, she cried at the human, and hated herself. Stop it, Aiela sent them both. You’re hurting me and you know it. Behave yourselves or I’ll shut you both out. And it’s lonely without you.
“Your asuthi,” asked Tejef, coming through Daniel’s contact. He had risen from Margaret’s side, for she slept again, and now the iduve looked on Daniel with a calculating frown. “Does that look of concentration mean you are receiving?”
“Aiela comes and goes in my mind,” said Daniel. Idiot, Aiela sent him: Don’t be clever with him.
“And I think that if Isande were conscious, you might know that too. Is she conscious, Daniel? She ought to be.”
“Yes, sir,” Daniel replied, feeling like a traitor. But Isande controlled the panic she felt and urged him to yield any truth he must: Daniel’s freedom and Tejef’s confidence that he would raise no hand to resist him were important. Iduve were unaccustomed to regard m’metanei as a threat: they were simply appropriated where found, and used.
Through Daniel’s eyes she saw Tejef leave the infirmary, his back receding down the corridor; she felt Daniel’s alarm, wishing the amaut were not watching him. Potential weapons surrounded him in the infirmary, but a human against an amaut’s strength was helpless. He dared go as far as the hall, closed the infirmary door behind him, watching Tejef.
Then came the audible give of the door lock and seal. Isande backed dizzily from the door, knocking into a table as she did so. Tejef was with her: his harachia filled the little room, an indigo shadow over all her hazed vision. The force of him impressed a sense of helplessness she felt even more than Aiela’s frantic pleading in her mind.
“Isande,” said Tejef, and touched her. She cringed from his hand. His tone was friendly, as when last they had spoken, before Reha’s death. Tejef had always been the most unassuming of iduve, a gentle one, who had never harmed any kameth—save only Reha. Perhaps it did not even occur to him that a kameth could carry an anger so long. She hated him, not least of all for his not realizing he was hated.
“Are you in contact with your asuthi?” he asked her. “Which is yours? Daniel? Aiela?”
Admit the truth, Aiela sent. Admit to anything he asks. And when she still resisted: I’m staying with you, and if you make him resort to the idoikkhe, I’ll feel it too.
“Only to Aiela,” she replied.
“This kameth is not familiar to me.”
“I will not help you find him.”
A slight smile jerked at his mouth. “Your attitude is understandable. Probably I shall not have to ask you.”
“Where is Khasif?” Aiela prompted that question. She asked it.
The room winked out, and they were projected into the room that held Khasif. The iduve was abed, half-clothed. A distraught look touched his face; he sprang from his bed and retreated. It frightened Isande, that this man she had feared so many years looked so vulnerable. She shuddered as Tejef took her hand in his, grinning at his half-brother the while.
“Au, nasith sra-Mejakh,” said Tejef, “the m’metane-tak did inquire after you. I remember your feeling for her: Chimele forbade you, but any other nas has come near her at his peril, so she has been left quite alone in the matter of katasukke. I commend your taste, nasith. She is of great chanokhia.”
Knowing Khasifs temper, Isande trembled; but the tall iduve simply bowed his head and turned away, sinking down on the edge of his cot. Pity touched her for Khasif: she would never have expected it in herself-—but this man was hurt for her sake.
The room shrank again to the dimensions of Isande’s own quarters, and she wrenched herself from Tejef’s loose grip with a cry of rage. Aiela fought to tell her something: she would not hear. She only saw Tejef laughing at her, and in that moment she was willing to kill or to die. She seized the metal table by its legs and swung at him, spilling its contents.
The metal numbed her hands with the force of the blow she had struck, and Tejef staggered back in surprise and flung up an arm to shield his face. She swung it again with a force reckless of strained arms and metal-scored hands, but this time he ripped the wreckage aside and sprang at her.
The impact literally jolted her senseless, and when she could see and breathe again she was on the floor under Tejef’s crushing weight. He gathered himself back, jerked her up with him. She screamed, and he bent both her arms behind her and drew her against him with such force that she felt her spine would be crushed. Her feet were almost off the floor and she dared not struggle. His heart pounded, the hard muscles of his belly jerked in his breathing, his lips snarled to show his teeth, a weapon the iduve did not scorn to use in quarrels among themselves. His eyes dilated all the way to black, and they had a dangerous madness in them now. She cried out, recognizing it.
The rubble gave, repaying recklessness, and Aiela went down the full length of the slide, stripping skin from his hands as he tried to stop himself, going down in a clatter of brick that could have roused the whole street had it been occupied. He hit bottom in choking dust, coughed and stumbled to his feet again, able to take himself only as far as the shattered steps before his knees gave under him. In his other consciousness he lurched along a hallway—Isande’s contact so heavily screened by shame he could not read it: guards at the door—Daniel crashed into them with a savagery unsuspected in the human, battered them left and right and hit the door switch, unlocking it, struggling to guard it for that vital instant as the recovering guards sought to tear him away.
“Khasif!” Daniel pleaded.
One of the guards tore his hand down and hit the close-switch, and Daniel interposed his own body in the doorway. Aiela flinched and screamed, anticipating the crushing of bones and the severing of flesh—but the door jammed, reversed under Khasif’s mind-touch. The big iduve exploded through the door and the human guards scrambled up to stop him—madness. One of them hit the wall, the echo booming up and down the corridor; the other went down under a single blow, bones broken; and Daniel flung himself out of Khasif’s way, shouting at him Isande’s danger, the third door down.
Khasif reached it, Daniel running after, Aiela urging him to get Isande out of the way—clenching his sweating hands, trying to penetrate Isande’s screening to warn her.
She gave way: Tejef’s face blurred in double vision over Daniel’s sight of the door. Khasif’s ominous tall form outlined in insane face and back overlay, receding and advancing at once. Isande cried out in pain as Khasif tore her from Tejef and hurled her out the door into Daniel’s arms: Daniel’s face superimposed over Khasif’s back, and then nothing, for Isande buried her face against the being that had lately been so loathsome to her, and clung to him; and Daniel, shaken, held to her with the same drowning desperation.
Metal crashed, and little by little Khasif was giving ground, until he was battling only to hold Tejef within the room. . Ship’s controls! Aiela screamed at his asuthi. They tried. Section doors prevented them, and amaut guards and humans converged from all sides, forcing them into retreat. Khasif stood as helpless as they under the threat of a dozen weapons.
Tejef occupied the hallway, a dark smear of blood on his temple. He gave curt orders to the armed humans to hold the nasith for him at the end of the hall. Aiela shuddered as he found that look resting next on Isande and on Daniel.
“Go to your quarters,” Tejef said very quietly. But when Daniel started to obey, too, Tejef tilted his head back and looked at him from eyes that had gone to mere slits. “No,” he said, “not you.”
Aiela, Isande appealed, Aiela, help him, oh help him! For she knew what Daniel had done for her.
Do as Tejef tells you, said Aiela. Daniel—give in, whatever happens: no temper. No resistance. They react to resistance. They lose interest otherwise.
“Sir,” said Daniel in a voice that needed no dissembling to carry a tremor, “sir—I acted not against you. For Isande, for her. Please.”
The iduve stared at him for a long cold moment. Then he let go a hissing breath. “Get out of my sight. Go to your quarters, and stay there or I will kill you.”
Go! Aiela hurled at Daniel: Bow your head and don’t look him in the eyes! Go! And blessedly the human ignored his own instincts, took the advice, and edged away carefully. He’s all right, he’s all right, Aiela said then to Isande, who collapsed in the wreckage of her quarters, crying. He probed gently to know if she were much hurt.
No, she flung back. No. Fear leaked through, shame, the ultimate certainty of defeat. Go away, go away, she kept thinking, o go away, reach the ship and leave. I learned to survive after losing Reha. It’s your turn. We’ve lost whatever chance we had because of me, because I started it, I did, I did, nothing gained.
It’s all right, came Daniel’s unbidden intervention. He shook all over, he was so afraid, alone in his quarters. It was a terrible thing for a man of his kind to yield down screens at such a moment: but along with the fear another process was taking place: he was gathering his mental forces to replot another attack. Of a sudden this humanish stubbornness, so different from kalliran methodical process, came to Isande as a thing of elethia. She wept, knowing his blind determination; and she appealed to Aiela to reason with him.
Luck, said Aiela, is what humans wish each other when they are in that frame of mind. I do not believe in luck: kastien forbids. But trust him, Isande. You’re going to be all right.
And that was a hope as irrational as Daniel’s, and as little honest. He did not want to tear his mind away, but the triple flood of thoughts distorted his perceptions and tore at his emotions. At last he had to let them both go, for he, like Daniel, was determined to try; and he knew what they would both say to that.
He had come at last near the streets of the occupied quarter. The sounds and smells of a habish told him so, and guided him down the alley. It lacked some few hours until daylight, but by now even most of the night-loving amaut had given up and gone home. The place was quiet.
Thus, at the most one other street lay between him and the safety of headquarters, but far more effort would be needed to thread the maze of Weissmouth’s alleys, with their turnings often running into the impassable rubble of a ruined building. Aiela had no stomach for recklessness at this stage; but neither had he much more strength to spend on needless effort. He tried the handle of the habish’s alley door, jerked it open, and walked through, to the startled outcries of the few drunken patrons remaining.
He closed the front door after him and found to his dismay that it was not the headquarters street after all: but at least it was clear and in the right section of town. He knew his way from here. The headquarters lay uphill and he set out in that direction, walking rapidly, hating the spots of light thrown by the occasional streetlamps.
A dark cross-street presented itself. He took it, hurrying yet faster. Footsteps sounded behind him, silent men, running. He gasped for air and gathered himself to run too, racing for what he hoped was the security of the main thoroughfare.
He rounded the corner and had sight of the bulk of the headquarters building to his left, but those behind him were closing. He jerked out his gun as he ran, almost dropping it, whirled to fire.
A hurtling body threw him skidding to the pavement. Human bodies wrestled with him, beat the gun from his hand and pounded his head against the pavement until he was half-conscious. Then the several of them hauled him up and forced him to the side of the street where the shadows were thick.
He went where they made him go, not attempting further resistance until his head should clear. They held him by both arms and for half a block he walked unsteadily, loose-jointed. They were going toward the headquarters.
Then they headed him for a dark stairs into the basement door of some shop.
He had hoped in spite of everything that they were mercenaries in the employ of the amaut authorities that had muddled their instructions or simply seized the opportunity to vent their hate on an alien of any species at all. He could not blame them for that. But this put a grimmer face on matters.
He lunged forward, spilling them all, fought his way out of the tangle at the bottom of the steps, kneed in the belly the man quickest to try to hold him. Other hands caught at him: he hit another man in the throat and scrambled up the stairs running for his life, expecting a shot between the shoulders at any moment.
The headquarters steps were ahead. For that awful moment he was under the floodlights that illumined the front of the building, and rattling and pounding at the glass doors.
An amaut sentry waddled into the foyer and blinked at him, then hastened to open. Aiela pushed his way past, cleared the exposed position of the doors, leaned against the wall to catch his breath, staggered left again toward bnesych Gerlach’s darkened office door, blazoned with the symbols of karsh Gomek authority.
“Most honorable sir,” the sentry protested, scurrying along at his side, “the bnesych will be called.” He searched among his keys for that of the office and opened it. “Please sit down, sir. I will make the call myself.”
Aiela sank down gratefully upon the soft-cushioned low bench in the outer office while the sentry used the secretary’s phone to call the bnesych. He shook in reaction, and shivered in the lack of heating.
“Sir,” said the sentry, “the bnesych has expressed his profound joy at your safe return. He is on his way. He begs your patience.”
Aiela thrust himself to his feet and leaned upon the desk, took the receiver and pushed the call button. The operator’s amaut-language response rasped in his ear.
“Get me contact with the iduve ship in the port,” he ordered in that language, and when the operator protested in alarm: “I am nas kame and I am asking you to contact my ship or answer to them.”
Again the operator protested a lack of clearance, and Aiela swore in frustration, paused open-mouthed as an amaut appeared in the doorway and bowed three times in respect. It was Toshi.
“Lord Aiela,” said the young woman, bowing again. “Thank you, Aphash. Resume your post. May I offer you help, most honorable lord nas kame?”
“Put me in contact with my ship. The operator refuses to recognize me.”
Toshi bowed, her long hands folded at her breast. “Our profound apologies. But this is not a secure contact. Please come with me to my own duty station next door and I will be honored to authorize the port operator to make that contact for you with no delay. Also I will provide you an excellent flask of marithe. You seem in need of it.”
Her procedures seemed improbable and he stood still, not liking any of it; but Toshi kept her hands placidly folded and her gray-green eyes utterly innocent. Of a sudden he welcomed the excuse to get past her and into the lighted lobby; but if he should move violently she would likely prove only a very startled young woman. He took a firmer grip on his nerves.
“I should be honored,” he said, and she bowed herself aside to let him precede her. She indicated the left-hand corridor as he paused in the lobby, and he could see that the second office was open with the light on. It seemed then credible, and he yielded to the offering motion of her hand and walked on with her, she waddling half a pace behind.
It was a communications station. He breathed a sigh of relief and returned the bow of the technician who arose from his post to greet them.
And a hard object in Toshi’s hand bore into his side. He did not need her whispered threat to stand still. The technician unhurriedly produced a length of wire from his coveralls and waddled around behind him, drawing his wrists back.
Aiela made no resistance, enduring in bitter silence, for if Toshi were willing to use that gun, he would be forever useless to his asuthi. He was surely going to join Isande and Daniel, and all that he could do now was take care that he arrived in condition to be of use to them. It was by no means necessary to Tejef that he survive.
They faced him about and took him out the door, down a stairs and to a side exit. Toshi produced a key and unlocked it, locked it again behind them when they stood on the steps of some dark side of the building.
Fire erupted out of the dark. The technician fell, bubbling in agony. Toshi crumpled with a whimper and scuttled off the steps against the building, while Aiela flung himself off, fell, struggled to his feet and sprinted in blind desperation for the lights of the main street.
Faster steps sounded behind him and a blow in the back threw him down, helpless to save himself. His shoulder hit the pavement as he twisted to shield his head, and humans surrounded him, hauled him up, and dragged him away with them. Aiela knew one of them by his cropped hair: they were the same men.
They took him far down the side street away from the lights and pulled him into an alley. Here Aiela balked, but a knee doubled him over, repaying a debt, and they forced him down into the basement of a darkened building. When they came to the bottom of the steps, he began to struggle, using knee and shoulders where he could; and all it won him was to be beaten down and kicked.
A dim light swung in the damp-breathing dark, a globe-lamp at the wrist of an amaut, casting hideous leaping shadows about them. Aiela heaved to gain his feet and scrambled for the stairs, but they kicked him down again. He saw the amaut thrust papers into the hands of one of the humans, snatching the stolen kalliran pistol from the man’s belt before he expected it and putting it into his own capacious pocket.
“Ffife ppasss,” the amaut said in human speech. “All ffree, all run country, go goodpye.”
“How do we know what they say what you promised?” one made bold to ask.
“Go goodbpye,” the amaut repeated. “Go upplandss, ffree, no more amautss, goodbpye.”
The humans debated no longer, but fled, and the amaut went up and closed the street door after them, waddling down the steps holding up his wrist to cast a light that included Aiela upon the floor.
It was Kleph, his ugly face more than usually sinister in the dim lighting. Cold air and damp breathed out from some dark hole beyond the light, an amaut burrow, tunnels of earth that would twist and meet many times beneath the surface of Weissmouth. Aiela had not been aware that this maze yet existed, but it was expected. He knew too that one hapless kallia could be slain and buried in this earthen maze, forever lost from sight and knowledge save for the idoikkhe on his wrist, and amaut ingenuity could solve that as well.
“What are you after?” Aiela asked him. “Are you here to cover your high command’s mistakes?”
“Most honorable sir, I am devastated. You were given into my hands to protect.”
Aiela let go a small breath of relief, for the fellow did not reasonably need to deceive him; but it was still in his mind that Kleph had access to humans such as had attacked them at the port, and had just evidenced it. The little fellow waddled over and freed him, put his arm about him, helping him and compelling him at once as they sought the depths of the tunnel. Shadows rippled insanely over the rudimentary plaster of the ulterior, the beginnings of masonry.
“Kleph,” Aiela protested, “Kleph, I have to find a way to contact my ship.”
“Impossible, sir, altogether impossible.”
The squat little amaut forced him around a corner despite his resistance; and there Aiela wrenched free and sought to run, striking the plaster wall in the dark, turning and running again, following the rough wall with his hands.
He did not come to the entrance when he expected it, and after a moment he knew that he was utterly, hopelessly lost. He sank down on the earthen floor gasping for breath, and leaned his shoulders against the chill wall, perceiving the bobbing glow of Kleph’s lamp coming nearer. In a moment more Kleph’s ugly face materialized at close quarters around the corner, and he made a bubbling sound of irritation as he squatted down opposite.
“Most honorable sir,” said Kleph, rocking back on his heels and clasping his arms about his knees in a position the amaut found quite comfortable. “There is a word in our language: shakhshoph. It means the hiding-face. And, my poor lord, you have gotten quite a lot of shakhshoph since you arrived in our settlement. One is always that way with outsiders: it is only decency. Sometimes too it hides a lie. Pay no attention to words with my people. Watch carefully a man who will not face you squarely and beware most of all a man who is too polite.”
“Like yourself.”
Kleph managed a bow, a rocking forward and back. “Indeed, most honorable sir, but I am fortunately your most humble servant. Anyone in the colony will tell you of Kleph. I am a man of most insignificant birth; I am backworld and my manners want polish. I have come from the misfortune of my origin to an apprentice clerkship with the great karsh Gomek, to ship’s accountant, to my present most honored position. My lord must understand then that I am very reluctant to defy the orders of bnesych Gerlach. But we observe a simple rule, to choose a loyalty and stay by it. It is the single wisdom of our law. Bnesych Gerlach gave my service to the ship in the port, and as you serve the lord of that ship, I am interested in saving your life.”
“You—chose a remarkable way of demonstrating it”
“They have injured you.” Kleph’s odd-feeling hand most unwelcomely patted Aiela’s neck and shoulder. “Ai, most honorable sir, had I the opportunity I would have shot the lot of them—but they will take the passes and disappear far into the uplands. If one wishes to corrupt, one simply must pay his debts like a gentleman. They are filthy animals, these humans, but they are not stupid: a few corpses discovered could make them all flee my employ in the future. But for the passes to get them clear of our lines, they will gladly do anything and suffer anything and seek my service gladly.”
“Like those that fired a shell among us at the port?”
Kleph lifted a hand in protest. “My lord, surely you have realized that was not my doing. But I am Master of Accounts, and so I know when men are moved and ships fly; and I have human servants, so I know when these things happen and do not get entered properly in the records. Therefore I am in danger. There are only two men on this world besides myself who can bypass the records: one is under-bnesych Yasht, and the other is bnesych Gerlach.”
“Who hired it done?”
“One or the other of them. No shakhshoph. It is what I told you: one chooses a loyalty and remains constant; it is the only way we know to survive—as for instance my own lords know where my loyalty in this matter must logically lie, and so I shall need to stay out of sight until the crisis is resolved: a cup of poisoned wine, some such thing—it is only reasonable to eliminate those men known to serve the opposition. I am highly expendable; I am not of this karsh, and therefore I was given to the lord in the port. I also was meant to be eliminated at the port; and now it is essential that we both be silenced.”
“Why?” Aiela had lost his power to be shocked. His mind simply could not grasp the turns of amaut logic.
“Why, my lord nas kame, if the population of this colony realizes the bnesych serves the other lord, it would split the colony into two factions, with most bloody result. We are not a fighting people, no, but one protects his own nest, after all—and the bnesych has many folk in this venture who are not of karsh Gomek: out-karsh folk, exiles, such as myself. Such loyalties can be lost quickly. There is always natural resentment toward a large karsh when it mismanages. And if it no longer appears the action at the port was on human initiative, it would be most, most distressing in some quarters.” He pressed his broad-tipped fingers to Aiela’s brow, where there was a swelling raised. “Ai, sir, I am sorry for your unhappy state, and I did try to find you before you wandered into a trap, but you were most elusive. When I knew you had entered the headquarters and when I saw the northside lights out, I acted and disposed my human agents at once, or you would be in the other lord’s hands before dawn.”
“Get me to the ship at the port,” Aiela said, “or get me a means to contact them, or there are going to be people hurt.”
“Sir?” asked Kleph, his squat face much distressed. He gulped several times in amaut sorrow. “O sir, and must the great lords blame those who are guiltless? See, here am I, out-karsh, helping you. Surely then your masters will understand that not all of us in this colony are to blame. Surely they will realize how faithfully we serve them.”
It was impossible to tell Kleph that the iduve did not understand the custom of service and reward, or that harm and help were one and the same to them. Aiela made up his mind to a half-truth. “I will speak for you,” he said, “maybe—if you help me.”
“Sir, what you ask is impossible just now, if you only under—“
“It had better not be impossible,” Aiela said.
Kleph rocked back and forth uncomfortably. “The port— these tunnels are not complete, nor shored properly all the way, and your—hhhunhh—size will not make the passage easy. But at this hour, honest folk will be abed, and no human mercenary would be down here; they fear such places.”
“Then take me to the port.” Aiela gathered his stiffening legs under him, straightening as much as he could in this low-ceilinged chamber. Kleph scrambled up with much more agility and Aiela snatched at his collar, for it occurred to him Kleph could run away and leave him to die in these tunnels, lost in a dark maze of windings and pitfalls. He knew of a certainty that he could not best the creature in a fight or hold him if he were determined, but he intended to make it clear Kleph would have to harm him to avoid obeying him.
“You recovered my gun,” Aiela said. “Give it back.”
Kleph did not like it. He bubbled and boomed in his throat and twisted about unhappily, but he extracted the weapon from his belly-pocket and surrendered it. Aiela bolstered it without letting go Kleph’s collar, and then pushed at the little fellow to start him moving. They came to tunnel after tunnel and Kleph chose his way without hesitation.
Light burst suddenly like a sun exploding, heat hit their faces, and the stench of ozone mingled with the flood of outside air. A shadow of manlike shape dropped from above into their red-hazed vision, and Aiela hauled back on Kleph to flee. But the pain of the idoikkhe paralyzed his arm and he collapsed to his knees, while beside him on his face Kleph groveled and gibbered in terror, his saucer eyes surely agony, for the amaut could scarcely bear noon daylight, let alone this.
“Aiela,” said a chill, familiar voice, and the idoikkhe’s touch was gentle now, a mere signature: Ashakh.
Aiela expelled his breath in one quick sob of relief and picked himself up to face the iduve, who stood amid the rubble of the tunnel and in the beam of light from the street above.
What of the amaut? asked the pulses of the idoikkhe. Will you be rid of him?
“No,” Aiela said quickly.
A response in which I find no wisdom, Ashakh replied. But he put the small hand weapon back in his belt and looked down on the amaut, coming closer. “Get up.”
Kleph obeyed, crouching low and bowing and bobbing in extreme agitation. The light at his wrist swung wildly, throwing hideous shadows, leaping up and down the rough walls. Ashakh was a darkness, dusky of complexion and clad in black, but his eyes cast an uncanny mirror-light of dun rose hue, damped when he moved his head.
This person was aiding you? Ashakh asked.
“If Kleph is right, bnesych Gerlach was behind what happened at the port, and Kleph risked a great deal helping me.”
“Indeed,” mused Ashakh aloud. “Do you believe this?”
“I have reason to.”
As you have reason for letting this amaut live? I fail to understand the purpose of it.
“Kleph knows Weissmouth,” said Aiela, “and he will be willing to help us. Please,” he added, sweating, for the look on Ashakh’s grim face betokened a man in a hurry, and the iduve understood nothing of gratitude. He misliked being advocate for Kleph, but it was better than allowing the little fellow to be killed.
Chimele values your judgment; I do not agree with it.
But Ashakh said no more of killing Kleph, and Aiela understood the implication: it was on his shoulders, and vaikka was his to pay if his judgment proved wrong.
“Yes, sir,” said Aiela. “What shall we do?”
“Have you a suggestion?”
“Get a ship and get the others out of Tejef’s hands.”
Ashakh frowned. “And have you a means to accomplish this?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, we shall go to the port, and this person will guide us.” Ashakh fixed the trembling amaut with a direct stare and Kleph scurried to get past him and take the lead. The tall iduve must bend to follow as they pursued their way through the winding passages.
“Do they know—does the Orithain know,” Aiela asked, “what happened?”
We had a full account from Tesyel, who commands the base ship. And then in un-Ashakh fashion, the iduve volunteered further conversation. Chimele sent me to find you. I was puzzled at first by the direction of the signal, but remembering the amaut’s subterranean habits I resolved the matter—not without giving any persons trying to track us a sure indication of the direction of our flight. We had best make all possible haste. And I still mislike this small furtive person, Aiela-kameth.
“I can only decide as a kallia, sir.”
Honor to your self-perception. What are your reasons for mistrusting Gerlach?