“Have I touched on something painful?” Ylith asked softly. “Did you find the Guardians of Elas somewhat resentful of your presence, or did you imagine that you were nemet?”
“Elas,” he said, “was home to me.”
“You married there.”
He looked up, startled, surprised into reaction.
“Did she consent,” she asked, “or was she given?”
“Who… told you of that?”
“Elas-in-Indresul examined Kta t’Elas on the matter. I ask you, did she consent freely?”
“She consented.” He put away his anger and assumed humility for Mini’s sake, made a bow of request. “Methi, she was one of your own people, born on Indresul’s side. Her name was Mini t’Nethim e Sel.”
Ylith’s brows lifted in dismay. “Have you spoken with Lhe of this?”
“Methi?”
“He is of Nethim. Lhe t’Nethim u Kma, second-son to the lord Kma. Nethim is of no great friendship to Elas. T’Elas did not mention the house name of the lady Mim.”
“He never knew it. Methi, she was buried without her right name. It would be a kindness if you would tell the lord Kma that she is dead, so they could make prayers for her. I do not think they would want to hear that request from me.”
“They will ask who is responsible for her death.”
“Shan t’Tefur u Tlekef and Djan of Nephane.”
“Not Kurt t’Morgan?”
“No.” He looked down, unwilling to give way hi her sight. The nightmare remembrances he had crowded out of his mind in the daylight were back again, the dark and the fire, and Nym standing before the hearthfire calling upon his Ancestors with Mim dead at his feet. Nym could tell them his grievances in person now. Nym and Ptas, Hef. They had walked and breathed that night and now they had gone to join her. Shadows now, all of them.
“I will speak to Kma t’Nethim and to Lhe,” she said.
“Maybe,” Kurt said, “you ought to omit to tell them that she married a human.”
Ylith was silent a moment. “I think,” she said, “that you grieve over her very much. Our law teaches that you have no soul, and that she would have sinned very greatly in consenting to such a union.”
“She is dead. Leave it at that.”
“If,” she continued, relentless in the pursuit of her thought, “if I admitted that this was not so, then it would mean that many wise men have been wrong, that our priests are wrong, that our state has made centuries of error. I would have to admit that in an ordered universe there are creatures which do not fit the order; I would have to admit that this world is not the only one, that Phan is not the only god. I would have to admit things for which men have been condemned to death for heresy. Look up at me, human. Look at me.”
He did as she asked, terrified, for he suddenly realized what she was saying. She suspected the truth. There was no hope in argument. It was not politically or religiously expedient to have the truth published.
“You insist,” she said, “that there are two universes, mine and yours, and that somehow you have passed into mine. By my rules you are an animal; I reason that even an animal could possess the outward attributes of speech and upright bearing. But in other things you are nemetlike. I dreamed, t’Morgan. I dreamed, and you were dead in my dream, and I looked on your face and it troubled me exceedingly., I thought then that you had been alive and that you had loved a nemet, and that therefore you must have a soul. And I woke and was still troubled, exceedingly.”
“Kta,” he said, “did nothing other than you have done. He was troubled. He helped me. He ought to be set free.”
“You do not understand. He is nemet. The law applies to him. You… can be kept. On him, I must pronounce sentence. Would you choose to die with Kta, rather than enjoy your life in confinement? You could be made comfortable. It would not be that hard a life.”
He found surprisingly little difficult about the answer. At the moment he was not even afraid. “I owe Kta,” he said. “He never objected to my company, living. And that, among nemet, seems to have been a rare friendship.”