He bowed his head again and matched pace with the guards, Kurt beside him. The nemet was a pitiable figure in the hard, uncompromising light of day, his clothing filthy, his face unshaved-which in the nemet needed a long time to show.
Through the streets, with people stopping to stare at them, Kta looked neither to right nor to left. Knowing his pride, Kurt sensed the misery he felt, his shame in the eyes of these people; he could not help but think that Kta t’Elas would have attracted less comment in his misfortune had he not been laden with the added disgrace of a human companion. Some of the murmured comments came to Kurt’s ears, and he was almost becoming inured to them: how ugly, how covered with hair, how almost-nemet, and caught with an Indras-descended, more the wonder, pity the house of Elas-in-Indresul to see one of its foreign sons in such a state and in such company!
The gangplank of the first trireme at the dock was run out, rowers and crew scurrying around making checks of equipment. Spread near its stern was a blue canopy upheld with gold-tipped poles, beneath which sat Ylith, working over some charts with Lhe t’Nethim and paying no attention to their approach.
When at last she did see fit to notice them kneeling before her, she dismissed Lhe back a pace with a gesture and turned herself to face them. Still she wore the crown of her office, and she was modestly attired in chatem and pelan of pale green silk, slim and delicate in this place of war. Her eyes rested on Kta without emotion, and Kta bowed down to his face at her feet, Kurt unwillingly imitating his action.
Ylith snapped her fingers. “It is permitted you both to sit,” she said, and they straightened together. Ylith looked at them thoughtfully, most particularly at Kta.
“Ei, t’Elas,” she said softly, “have you made your decision? Do you come to ask for clemency?”
“Methi,” said Kta, “no.”
“Kta,” Kurt exclaimed, for he had hoped. “Don’t -”
“If,” said Ylith, “you seek in your barbaric tongue to advise the son of Elas against this choice, he would do well to listen to you.”
“Methi,” said Kta, “I have considered, and I cannot agree to what you ask.”
Ylith looked down at him with anger gathering in her eyes. “Do you hope to make a gesture, and then I shall relent afterward and pardon you? Or do they teach such lack of religion across the Dividing Sea that the consequence is of little weight with you? Have you so far inclined toward the Sufak heresies that you are more at home with those dark spirits we do not name?”
“No, Methi,” said Kta, his voice trembling. “Yet we of Elas were a reverent house, and we do not receive justice from you.”
“You say then that I am in error, t’Elas?”
Kta bowed his head, caught hopelessly between yea and nay, between committing blasphemy and admitting to it.
“T’Elas,” said Ylith, ‘-‘is it so overwhelmingly difficult to accept our wishes?”
“I have given the Methi my answer.”
“And choose to die accursed.” The Methi turned her face toward the open sea, opened her long-fingered hand in that direction. “A cold resting place at best, t’Elas, and cold the arms of Kalyt’s daughters. A felon’s grave, the sea, a. grave for those no house will claim, for those who have lived their lives so shamefully that there remains no one, not even their own house, to mourn them, to give them rest. Such a fate is for those so impious that they would defy a father or the Upei or dishonor their own kinswomen. But I, t’Elas, I am more than the Upei. If I curse, I curse your soul not from hearth or from city only, but from all mankind, from among all who are born of this latter race of men. The lower halls of death will have you: Yeknis, those dark places where the shadows live, those unnameable firstborn of Chaos. Do they still teach such things in Nephane, t’Elas?”
“Yes, Methi.”
“Chaos is the just fate of a man who will not bow to the will of heaven. Do you say I am not just?”