“I am sorry for you,” he said.
“Get out.”
Tears gathered to her eyes, belying everything she had said. She struggled for dignity, lost. The tears spilled free, her lips trembling into sobs. She clenched her jaw, turned her face and gestured for him to go.
“I am sorry,” he said, this time with compassion, at which she shook her head and kept her back to him until the spasm had passed.
He took her arms, trying to comfort her, and felt guilty because of Mim; but he felt guilty because of Djan too, and feared that she would not forgive him for witnessing this. She had been here longer, a good deal longer than he. He well knew the nightmare, waking in the night, finding that reality had turned to dreams and the dream itself was as real as the stranger beside him, looking into a face that was not human, perceiving ugliness where a moment before had been beauty.
“I am tired,” she said, leaning against him. Her hair smelled of things exotic on this world, lab-born, like Djan, perfumes like home, from a thousand star-scattered worlds the nemet had never dreamed of. “Kurt, I work, I study, I try. I am tired to death.”
“I would help you,” he said, “if you would let me.”
“You have loyalties elsewhere,” she said finally. “I wish I’d never sent you to Elas, to learn to be nemet, to belong to them. You want things for your cause, he wants things for his. I know all that, and occasionally I want.to forget it. It’s a human weakness. Am I not allowed just one? You came here asking favors. I knew you would, sooner or later.”
“I would never ask you deceitfully, to do you harm. I owe you, as I owe Elas.”
She pushed back from him. “And I hate you most when you do that. Your concern is touching, but I don’t trust it.”
“Nephane is killing you.”
“I can manage.”
“Probably you can,” he said. “But I would help you.”
“Ah, as Shan helps me. But you don’t like it when it’s the opposition, do you? Blast you, I gave you leave to marry and you’ve done it, you’ve made your choice, however tempting it was to-”
She did not finish. He suddenly found reason for uneasiness in that omission. Djan was not one to let words fly carelessly.
“When I came here,” he said, “whenever I come, I try to leave my relations with Elas at the door. You’ve never tried to make me go against them, and I do not use you, Djan.”
“Your little Mim,” said Djan. “What is she like? Typically nemet?”
“Not typical.”
“Elas is using you,” she said. “Whether you know it or not, that is so. I could still stop that. I could simply have you given quarters here in the Afen. No arrest decree has Upei review. That power of a methi is absolute.”
She actually considered it. He went cold inside^ realizing that she could and would do it, and knew suddenly that she meant this for petty revenge, taking his peace of mind in retaliation for her humiliation of a moment ago. Pride was important to her.
“Do you want me to ask you not to do that?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “If I decide to do that, I will do it, and if I do not, I will not. What you ask has nothing to do with it But I would advise you and Elas to remain quiet.”
XII
The fog did not go out. It still held the city the next morning, the faint sound of warning bells drifting up from the harbor. Kurt opened his eyes on the grayness outside the window, then looked toward the foot of the bed where Mim sat combing her long hair, black and silken and falling to her waist when unbound. She looked back at him and smiled, her alien and wonderfully lovely eyes soft with warmth.
“Good morning, my lord.”
“Good morning,” he murmured.
“The mist is still with us,” she said. “Hear the harbor bells?”
“How long can this last?”
“Sometimes many days when the seasons are turning, especially in the spring.” She flicked several strands of hair apart and began with quick fingers to plait them into a thin braid. Then she would sweep most of her hair up to the crown of her head, fasten it with pins and combs, an intricate and fascinating ritual daily performed and nightly undone. He liked watching her. In a matter of moments she began the next braid.