“It is always dangerous,” she said with perfect dignity, before he could finish, “to walk abroad at night during Cadmisan. The Sufak gods are earth-spirits, Yr-bred and monstrous. There is wild behavior and much drunkenness.”
“I will take your advice,” he said.
She came and touched her fingers to his lips and to his brow, but she took her hand from him when he reached for it, smiling. It was a game they played.
“I must be downstairs attending my duties,” she said. “Dear my husband, you will make me a reputation for a licentious woman in the household if you keep making us late for breakfast. No! Dear my lord, I shall see you downstairs at morning tea.”
“Where do you think you are going?”
Mim paused in the dimly lit entry hall, her hands for a moment suspending the veil over her head as she turned. Then she settled it carefully over her hair and tossed the end over her shoulder.
“To market, my husband.”
“Alone?”
She smiled and shrugged. “Unless you wish to fast this evening. I am buying a few things for dinner. Look you, the fog has cleared, the sun is bright, and those men who were hanging about across the street have been gone since yesterday.”
“You are not going alone.”
“Kurt, Kurt, for Bel’s doom-saying? Dear light of heaven, there are children playing outside, do you not hear? And should I fear to walk my own street in bright afternoon? After dark is one thing, but I think you take our warnings much too seriously.”
“I have my reasons, Mim.”
She looked up at him in most labored patience. “And shall we starve? Or will you and my lord Kta march me to market with drawn weapons?”
“No, but I will walk you there and back again.” He opened the door for her, and Mim went out and waited for him, her basket on her arm, most obviously embarrassed.
Kurt nervously scanned the street, the recesses where at nights t’Tefur’s men were wont to linger. They were indeed gone. Indras children played at tag. There was no threat, no presence of the Methi’s guards either, but Djan never did move obviously. He had had no difficulty returning to Elas late, probably, he thought with relief, she had taken measures.
“Are you sure,” he asked Mim, “that the market will be open on a holiday?”
She looked up at him curiously as they started off together. “Of course, and busy. I put off going, you see, these several days with the fog and the trouble on the streets, and I am sorry to cause you this trouble, Kurt, but we really are running out of things and there could be the fog again tomorrow, so it is really better to go today. I do have some sense, after all.”
“You know I could quite easily walk down there and buy what you need for supper, and you would not need to go at all.”
“Ai, but Cadmisan is such a grand time in the market, with all the country people coming in and the artists and the musicians. Besides,” she added, when his face remained unhappy, “dear husband, you would not know what you were buying or what to pay. I do not think you have ever handled our coin. And the other women would laugh at me and wonder what kind of wife I am to make my husband do my work, or else they would think I am such a loose woman that my bus-ban would not trust me out of the house.”
“They can mind their own business,” he said, disregarding
her attempt at levity; and her small face took on a determined look.
“If you go alone,” she said, “the fact is that folk will guess Elas is afraid, and this will lend courage to the enemies of Elas.”
He understood her reasoning, though it comforted him not at all. He watched carefully as their downhill walk began to take them out of the small section of aristocratic houses surrounding the Afen and the temple complex. But here in the Sufaki section of town, people were going about business as usual. There were some men in the Robes of Color, but they walked together in casual fashion and gave them not a passing glance.