“Until morning,” she said. “Make your peace there. My men will get you safely to Elas, but I am not sending them through the streets with you twice in one night, dragging you past the Sufaki like a lure to violence. So stay there till morning. And if you cause me more trouble tonight, Kurt, so help me you’ll regret it.”

Kurt pushed open the heavy door of Elas, taking it out of Hef’s hands, closed it quickly upon the Methi’s guards, then turned to Hef.

“Mim,” said Kurt. “She is here, she is safe?”

Hef bowed. “Yes, my lord,—not a few moments ago she came in, also with the Methi’s guard. I beg my lord, what—”

Kurt ignored his questions, hurried past him to the rhmeiand found it empty, left it and raced upstairs to their room. There was no light there but the phusa.That light drew his eyes as he opened the door, and before it knelt Mim. He let his breath go in a long sigh of relief, slid to his knees and took her by the shoulders.

Her head fell back against him, her lips parted in shock, her face filmed with perspiration. Then he saw her hands at her heart and the dark wet stain on them.

“No,” he cried, a shriek, and caught her as she slid aside, her hands slipping from the hilt of the dragon blade that was deep in her breast. She was not dead; the outrage of the metal in her flesh still moved with her shallow breathing, and he could not nerve himself to touch it. He pressed his lips to her cheek and heard the gentle intake of her breath. Her brows knit in pain and relaxed. Her eyes held a curious, childlike wonder.

“ Ei,my lord,” he heard her breathe.

And the breath passed softly from her lips and the light from her eyes. Mim was a weight, suddenly heavy, and he gave a strangled sob and held her against him, folded tightly into his arms.

Quick footsteps pounded up the stairs, and he knew it was Kta. The nemet stopped in the doorway, and Kurt turned his tear-stained face toward him.

“ Ai,light of heaven,” Kta whispered.

Kurt let Mim very gently to the floor, closed her eyes and carefully drew forth the blade. He knew it then for the one he had once stolen and Mim had taken back. He held the thing in his hand like a living enemy, his whole arm trembling.

“Kurt!” Kta exclaimed, rushing to him. “Kurt, no! Give it to me. Give it to me.”

Kurt staggered to his feet with the blade still in his hand, and Kta’s hazy form wavered before him, hand outstretched in pleading. His eyes cleared. He looked down at Mim.

“Kurt, please, I beg you.”

Kurt clenched his fingers once more on the hilt. “I have business,” he said, “at the Afen.”

“Then you must kill me to pass,” said Kta, “because you will kill Elas if you attack the Methi, and I will not let you go.”

Kta’s family: Kurt saw the love and the fear in the nemet’s eyes and could not blame him. Kta would try to stop him; he believed it, and he looked down at the blade, deprived of revenge, lacking the courage or the will or whatever impulse Mim had had to drive it to her heart.

“Kurt.” Kta took his hand and pried the blade from his fingers. Nym was in the shadows behind him,—Nym, and Aimu and Hef—Hef weeping, unobtrusive even in his grief. Things were suspended in unreality.

“Come,” Kta was saying gently, “come away.”

“Don’t touch her.”

“We will take her down to the rhmei,” said Kta. “Come, my friend, come.”

Kurt shook his head, recovering himself a little. “I will carry her,” he said. “She is my wife, Kta.”

Kta let him go then, and Kurt knelt down and gathered up Mim’s yielding form into his arms. She did not feel right any longer. It was not like Mim—loose, like a broken doll.

Silently the family gathered in the rhmei:Ptas and Nym, Aimu and Kta and Hef, and Kurt laid down his burden at Ptas’ feet. Ptas wept for her, and folded Mim’s hands upon her breast. There was nothing heard in the rhmeibut the sound of weeping, of the women and of Hef. Kurt could not shed more tears. When he looked into the face of Nym he met a grim and terrible anger.

“Who brought her to this?” asked Nym, so that Kurt trembled under the weight of his own guilt.

“I could not protect her,” Kurt said. “I could not help her.” He looked down at her, drew a shaken breath. “The Methi drove her to this.”

Nym looked at him sorrowfully, then turned and walked to the light of the hearthfire. For a moment the lord of Elas stood with head bowed and then looked up, lifted his arms before the holy fire, a dark and powerful shadow before its golden light.

“Our Ancestors,” he prayed, “receive this soul, not born of our kindred; spirits of our Ancestors, receive her, Mim h’Elas. Take her gently among you, one with us, as birth-sharing, loving, beloved. Peace was upon her heart, this child of Elas, daughter of Minas, of Indras, of the far-shining city.”

“Spirits of Elas,” prayed Kta, holding his hands also toward the fire, “our Ancestors, wake and behold us. Guardians of Elas, see us, this wrong done against us; swift to vengeance, our Ancestors, wake and behold us.”

Kurt looked on, lost, unable even to mourn for her as they mourned, alien even in the moment of her dying. And he watched as Ptas took from Kta’s hands the dragon blade. She bent over Mim with that, and this was beyond bearing. Kurt cried out, but Ptas severed only a lock of Mim’s dark hair and cast it into the blaze of the holy fire.

Aimu sobbed audibly. Kurt could take no more. He turned suddenly and fled the hall, out into the entryway.

“It is done.” Kta knelt where he found him, crouched in the corner of the entry against the door. He set his hand on Kurt’s shoulder. “It is over now. We will put her to rest. Will you wish to be present?”

Kurt shuddered and turned his face toward the wall. “I can’t,” he said, lapsing into his native tongue. “I can’t. I loved her, Kta. I can’t go.”

“Then we will care for her, my friend. We will care for her.”

“I lovedher,” he insisted, and felt the pressure of Kta’s fingers on his shoulder.

“Is there—some rite you would wish? Surely—surely our Ancestors would find no wrong in that.”

“What could she have to do with my people?” Kurt swallowed painfully and shook his head. “Do it the way she would understand.”

Kta arose and started to leave, then knelt again. “My friend,—come to my room first. I will give you something that will make you sleep.”

“No,” he said. “Leave me alone. Leave me.”

“I am afraid for you.”

“Take care of her. Do that for me.”

Kta hesitated, then rose again and withdrew on silent feet.

Kurt sat listening for a moment. The family left the rhmeiby the left-hand hall, their steps dying away into the far places of the house. Kurt rose then and opened the door quietly, shutting it quietly behind him in such a way that the inner bar fell into place.

The streets were deserted, as they had been since the Methi’s guards had taken their places at the wall-street. He walked not toward the Afen, but downward, toward the harbor.

14

Daylight was finally beginning to break through the mists, lightening everything to gray, and there was the first stirring of wind that would disperse the fog.

Kurt skirted the outermost defense wall of Nephane, the rocking, skeletal outlines of ships ghostly in the gray dawn. No one watched this end of the harbor, where the ancient walls curved against Haichema-tleke’s downslope, where the hill finally reached the water, where the walls towered sixty feet or more into the mist.

Here the city ended and the countryside began. A dirt track ran south, rutted with the wheels of hand-pulled carts, mired, thanks to the recent rains. Kurt ran beside the road and left it, heading across country.

He could not think clearly yet where he was bound. Elas was closed to him. If he set eyes on Djan or t’Tefur now he would kill them, with ruin to Elas. He ran, hoping only that it was t’Tefur who would pursue him, out beyond witnesses and law.