Mim was there in her nightrobe. With a sob of relief she flung herself into his arms and hugged him tightly.
“Hush,” he said, “it’s all right; it’s all right, Mim.”
They were framed in the doorway. He brought her inside and closed and barred the heavy door. Mim stood wiping at her eyes with her wide sleeve.
“Is the house awake?” he whispered.
“Everyone finally went to bed. I came out again and waited in the rhmei. I hoped-I hoped you would come back. Are you all right, my lord?”
“I am well enough.” He took her in his arm and walked with her to the warmth of the rhmei. There in the light her large eyes stared up at him and her hands pressed his, gentle as the touch of wind.
“You are shaking,” she said. “Is it the cold?”
“It’s cold and I’m tired.” It was hard to slip back into Nechai after hours of human language. His accent crept out again.
“What did she want?”
“She asked me some questions. They held me all night Mim, I just want to go upstairs and get some sleep. Don’t worry. I am well, Mim.”
“My lord,” she said in a tear-choked voice, “before the phusmeha it is a great wrong to lie. Forgive me, but I know that you are lying.”
“Leave me alone, Mim, please.”
“It was not about questions. If it was, look at me plainly and say that it was so.”
He tried, and could not. Mim’s dark eyes flooded with sadness.
“I am sorry,” was all he could say.
Her hands tightened on his. That terrible dark-eyed look would not let him go. “Do you wish to break the contract, or do you wish to keep it?”
“Do you?”
“If it is your wish.”
With his chilled hand he smoothed the hair from her cheek and wiped at a streak of tears. “I do not love her,” he said; and then, tribute to the honesty Mim herself used: “But I know how she feels, Mim. Sometimes I feel that way too. Sometimes all Elas is strange to me and I want to be human just for a little time. It is like that with her.”
“She might give you children and you would be lord over all Nephane.”
He crushed her against him, the faint perfume of aluel leaves about her clothing, a freshness about her skin, and remembered the synthetics-and-alcohol scent of Djan, human and, for the moment, pleasing. There was kindness in Djan; it made her dangerous, for it threatened her pride.
It threatened Elas.
“If it were in Djan’s nature to marry, which it is not, I would still feel no differently, Mim. But I cannot say that this will be the last time I go to the Afen. If you cannot bear that, then tell me so now.”
“I would be concubine and not first wife, if it was your wish.”
“No,” he said, realizing how she had heard it. “No, the only reason I would ever put you aside would be to protect you.”
She leaned up on tiptoe and took his face between her two silken hands, kissed him with great tenderness. Then she drew back, hands still uplifted, as if unsure how he would react. She looked frightened.
“My lord husband,” she said, which she was entitled to call him, being betrothed. The words had a strange sound between them. And she took liberties with him which he understood no honorable nemet lady would take with her betrothed, even hi being alone with him. But she put all her manners aside to please him, perhaps, h4 feared, to fight for him in her own desperate fashion.
He pressed her to him tightly and set her back again. “Mim, please. Go before someone wakes and sees you. I have to talk to Kta.”
“Will you tell him what has happened?”
“I intend to.”
“Please do not bring violence into this house.”
“Go on, Mim.”
She gave him an agonized look, but she did as he asked her.
He did not knock at Kta’s door. There had already been too much noise in the sleeping house. Instead he opened it and slipped inside, crossed the floor and parted the curtain that screened the sleeping area before he spoke Kta’s name.