“He is very kind,” said Kurt. “You have never owed me all of the things you have done for me. Your oath never bound you this far.”
“Those who share the hearth of Elas,” said Kta, “have been few, but we never forget them. We call this guest-friendship. It binds your house and mine for all time. It can never be broken.”
He spent the days much in Kta’s company within Elas, talking, resting, enjoying the sun in the inner court of the house where there was a small garden.
One thing remained to trouble him: Mim was unusually absent. She no longer came to his rooms when he was there.
No matter how he varied his schedule, she would not come; he only found his bed changed when he would return after some absence. When he hovered about the places where she usually worked, she was simply not to be found.
“She is at market,” Hef informed him on a morning when he finally gathered his courage to ask.
“She has not been much about lately,” Kurt observed.
Hef shrugged. “No, lord Kurt. She has not.”
And the old man looked at him strangely, as if Kurt’s anxiety had undermined the peace of his morning too.
He became the more determined. When he heard the front door close at noon, he sprang up to run downstairs; but he had only a glimpse of her hurrying by the opposite hall into the ladies’ quarters behind the rhmei. That was the territory of Ptas, and no man but Nym could set foot there.
He walked disconsolately back to the garden and sat in the sun, staring at nothing in particular and tracing idle patterns in the pale dust.
He had hurt her. Mim had not told the matter to anyone, he was sure, for he would have had Kta to deal with if she had.
He wished desperately that he could ask someone how to apologize to her, but it was not something he could ask of Kta or of Hef; and certainly he dared ask no one else.
She served at dinner that night, as at every meal, and still avoided his eyes. He dared not say anything to her. Kta was sitting beside him.
Late that night he set himself in the hall and doggedly waited, far past the hour when the family was decently in bed, for the chan of Elas had as her last duties to set out things for breakfast tea and to extinguish the hall lights as she retired to bed.
She saw him there, blocking her way to her rooms. For a moment he feared she would cry out; her hand flew to her lips. But she stood her ground, still looking poised to run.
“Mim. Please. I want to talk with you.”
“I do not want to talk with you. Let me pass.”
“Please.”
“Do not touch me. Let me pass. Do you want to wake all the house?”
“Do that, if you like. But I will not let you go until you talk with me.”
Her eyes widened slightly. “Kta will not permit this.”
“There are no windows on the garden and we cannot be heard there. Come outside, Mim. I swear I want only to talk.”
She considered, her lovely face~ looking so frightened he hurt for her; but she yielded and walked ahead of him to the garden. The world’s moon cast dim shadows here. She stopped where the light was brightest, clasping her arms against the chill of the night.
“Mim,” he said, “I did not mean to frighten you that night. I meant no harm by it.”
“I should never have been there alone. It was my fault. Please, lord Kurt, do not look at me that way. Let me go.”
“Because I am not nemet, you felt free to come in and out of my room and not be ashamed with me. Was that it, Mim?”
“No.” Her teeth chattered so she could hardly talk, and the cold was not enough for that. He slipped the pin off his ctan, but she would not take it from him, flinching from the offered garment.
“Why can I not talk to you?” he asked. “How does a man ever talk to a nemet woman? I refrain from this, I refrain from that, I must not touch, must not look, must not think. How am I to-?”