Kurt settled him flat again with a pillow under his head. Considering that he himself had been without sleep the better part of three days, he thought that weariness might be a major part of it, but Kta’s eyes were fixed again on infinity.
“Kta.”
The nemet did not respond and Kurt shook him. Kta did no more than blink.
“Kta, you heard me and I know it. Stop this and look at me. Who are you punishing? Me?”
There was no response, and Kurt struck Kta’s face lightly, then enough that it would sting. Kta’s lips trembled and Kurt looked at him in instant remorse, for it was as if he had added the little burden more than the nemet could bear. The threatened collapse terrified him.
Tired beyond endurance, Kurt sank down on his heels and looked at Kta helplessly. He wanted to go over to his own cot and sleep; he could not think any longer, except that Kta wanted to die and that he did not know what to do.
“Kurt.” The voice was weak, so distant Kta’s lips hardly seemed to move.
“Tell me how to help you.”
Kta blinked, turned his head, seeming for the moment to have his mind focused. “Kurt, my friend, they…”
“What have they done, Kta? What did they do?”
“They want my help and… if I will not… I lose my life, my soul. She will curse me from the earth… to the old gods… the-” He choked, shut his eyes and forced a calm over himself that was more like Kta. “I am afraid, my friend, mortally afraid. For all eternity. But how can I do what she asks?”
“What difference can your help make against Nephane?” Kurt asked. “Man, what pitiful little difference can it make one way or the other? Djan has weapons enough; Ylith has ships enough. Let others settle it. What are you? She has offered you life and your freedom, and that is better than you had of Djan,”
“I could not accept Djan-methi’s conditions either.”
“Is it worth this, Kta? Look at you! Look at you, and tell me it is worth it. Listen, I would not blame you. All Nephane knows how you were treated there. Who in Nephane would blame you if you turned to Indresul?”
“I will not hear your arguments,” Kta cried.
“They are sensible.” Kurt seized his arm and kept him from turning his face to the wall again. “They are sensible arguments, Kta, and you know it.”
“I do not understand reason any longer. The temple and the Methi will condemn my soul for doing what I know is right. Kurt, I could understand dying, but this… this is not justice. How can a reasonable heaven put a man to a choice like this?”
“Just do what they want, Kta. It doesn’t cost anyone much, and if you are only alive, you can worry about the right and the wrong of it later.”
“I should have died with my ship,” the nemet murmured. “That is where I was wrong. Heaven gave me the chance to die: in Nephane, in the camp of the Tamurlin, with Tavi. I would have peace and honor then. But there was always you. You are the disruption in my fate. Or its agent. You are always there, to make the difference.”
Kurt found his hand trembling as he adjusted the blanket over the raving nemet, trying to soothe him, taking for nothing the words that hurt. “Please,” he said. “Rest, Kta.”
“Not your fault. It is possible to reason…. One must always reason… to know…”
“Be still.”
“If,” Kta persisted with fevered intensity, “if I had died
in Nephane with my father, then my friends, my crew, would have avenged me. Is that not so?”
“Yes,” Kurt conceded, reckoning the temper of men like Val and Tkel and their company. “Yes, they would have killed Shan t’Tefur.”
“And that,” said Kta, “would have cast Nephane into chaos, and they would have died, and come to join Elas in the shadows. Now they are dead-as they would have died-but I am alive. Now I, Elas-”
“Rest. Stop this.”
“Elas was shaped to the ruin of Nephane, to bring down the city in its fall. I am the last of Elas. If I had died before this I would have died innocent of my city’s blood, and mine would have been on Djan-methi’s hands. Then my soul would have had rest with theirs, whatever became of Nephane. Instead, I lived… and for that I deserve to be where I am.”