Time, Thorn called, lifting his hand. Thorn’s breath came in great gasps. Duun straightened not quite entirely, breathing no easier, and put his hand to his left side. (Gods, I hit him, I hurt him, O gods, his ribs-)
“That was good,” Duun said. “You got through my guard.”
(He wasn’t going to stop. If I hadn’t called halt-)
(-he’d have kept coming. He’d have taken me.) Thorn found himself trembling in the knees when he understood that.
(Not another pass, please, Duun, not another-)
The darkness ebbed from Duun’s eyes. Reason came back. Duun straightened, pricked his ears up and gave a left-sided smile that with the permanent quirk of the right side, held a deceptive innocence. “Hot bath,” Duun said. “Both of us. You’re shaking, minnow.”
“I didn’t pull that. I thought-”
“We’ll do simple figures tomorrow. I thought you were getting to that stage. We can hurt each other. No more ungoverned practice. It’s gotten too dangerous.”
(I didn’t win, I didn’t beat him, there’s no beating him without killing him-)
Duun walked away from him. Duun was limping, but not much. Thorn wiped sweat from his face and found his hand shaking.
(In everything he ever promised me-he always knew that.)
He was abysmal in his lessons. The figures floated past without meaning. He studied his history and the dates settled into his mind but the names eluded him.
“Something’s bothering you,” Sphitti said. “Do the sound-routines. You can do that.”
It insulted him. (I’m hatani, he wished to shout at Sphitti; things don’t bother me.) It was the worse because it was patently true. Cloen walked warily around him. Elanhen worked silently at his own console on something abstruse and statistical, while Betan gave Thorn looks over her shoulder and said nothing.
Can I help? the message said in the bottom of his screen.
After, he sent back, and nothing else.
(Duun had cheated him. Duun had maneuvered him all his life. But why did Duun spend his life on one student? Why did Duun have so much wealth and the countryfolk live in a tin-roofed house-but now they had Sheon; and Duun had this place, which was at the top of one of the tallest buildings in Dsonan, in the capital of the world, where power was. Why me? Why Duun? Why all this effort?)
(Why do I know so little about the things I want and so much I never wanted to know, and why do they lock the doors and guards take us where we go in this building? Guards for what? What do they guard? Us? Someone else?)
(I used to live here, Duun had said.)
(Ellud’s an old friend.)
(I grew up at Sheon. So did Duun. Where did he know Ellud from?)
The numbers blurred. Thorn keyed in letter function.
Betan Betan Betan, he wrote, and again, Betan, and filled the screen with the repeat key.
The hours dragged. The clock came up noon and in silence they shut down terminals and got up off their desks. But Thorn kept his terminal alive. He had told the guard who walked with him that he would have extra work to do. “I have to catch up in my history,” he said when Sphitti asked. The others passed him without a word to him, talking to each other- perhaps Betan had changed her mind, perhaps Betan would forget, it had only been a casual thing to her. He heard the door snick shut and turned about on his desk and saw Betan come back in.
Thorn stood up. Betan walked to his desk and they both sat down knee-to-knee on the side of it. She was grave and looked at him in a quiet way no one but Betan used, not even Duun. She sensed something amiss. He knew. His heart sped and his breath grew tight; but she smelled of flowers and herself, she always did, like sun and warmth. “Something’s wrong,” she said, but it was different the way she said it. Her face was vastly concerned, open in a way no one else was with him. “What is it?”
“I almost beat Duun yesterday.” Thorn was dismayed by the way the exaggeration leapt out so easily and then he could not take it back.