Chimele’s breath was an audible hiss. “And your life in the nasul was always on scant tolerance and we have hunted you back again. Your m’melakhia is e-takkhe—e-takkhe and unspeakably offensive to me.”
A fierce grin came to Tejef’s face. He seemed to grow, and set hands on knees as he fell to kneel on the carpets. His gesture of submission was itself insolence; slowly he inclined his body toward the floor and as slowly straightened.
Arle cried out, a tiny sound, piercing the intolerable heaviness in the air. Isande hugged her tightly, silencing her, for Ashakh sent a staccato message to the three idoikkhei simultaneously: Do not move!
“Go!” Chimele exploded. “If you survive in the nasul, I will perhaps not seek to kill you. But there is vaikka you have yet to pay, o Tejef no-one’s-getting.”
“My sra” answered Tejef with cold deliberation, “will have honor.” But he backed carefully from her when he had risen.
“You are dismissed,” Chimele said, and her angry glance swept the hall, so that Tejef had no more than cleared the door before others began to disperse in haste, projections to wink out in great numbers, the concourse clearing backwards as the iduve departed into that part of the ship that was theirs.
“Stay,” she said to the nasithi-katasakke when they would as gladly have withdrawn; and she ignored them when they had frozen into waiting, and bent a fierce frown on Aiela. The idoikkhe sent a signal that made him wince.
M’metane, it is your doing that I bear this disadvantage. It is your doing, that gave this being arastiethe to defy me, to draw aid from others. Your ignorance has begun what you cannot begin to comprehend. You have disadvantaged me, divided the nasul, and some of us may die for it. What are you•willing to pay for that, m’metane that I honored, what vaikka can you perceive that would be adequate?
He stared at her, pain washing upward from the idoikkhe, and was stricken to realize that not only might he lose his life, he might in truth deserve it. He had Isande’s misery to his account; now he had Chimele’s as well.
And in the disadvantaging of an Orithain, he had threatened the existence of Ashanome itself.
“I did what was in me to do,” he protested.
Ashakh saved him. He realized that when the pain cleared and he heard Isande and Daniel’s faint, terrified presences in his mind, and felt the iduve’s viselike grip holding on his feet.
“Chimele,” said Ashakh, “that was not disrespect in him: it was very plain kalliran logic. And perhaps there is merit in his reasoning: after all, you found chanokhia in him, and chose him, so his decisions are, in a manner of speaking, yours. Perhaps when one deals with outsiders, outsider-logic prevails, and events occur which would not occur in an iduve system.”
“I perceive your m’melakhia for these beings, Ashakh, and I am astounded. I find it altogether excessive.”
The tall iduve glanced aside, embarrassed. “I comprehend the chanokhia that Tejef found in these beings, both human and kallia.”
“You were responsible for swinging the takkhenes of Ashanome toward Tejef—your vaikka for Chaikhe.”
Again he had looked toward her, and now bowed his head slightly. “Chaikhe is dhisais—as Rakhi can tell you: beyond vaikka and no longer appropriate for my protection. I understand what you did, since you did not spare Rakhi, for whom you have most regard, and I admire the strength and chanokhia of your action, o Chimele. You disadvantaged me repeatedly in your maneuvering, but it was in the interests of Ashanome.”
“Is it in our interests—what you have done?”
“Chimele,” said Rakhi softly, and such a look went between them that it seemed more than Rakhi might have spoken to her in that word, for Chimele seemed much disquieted.
“Khasif,” said Chimele suddenly, “can you be takkhe with this matter as it is?”
Khasif bowed. “I have brought you Tejef; and that vaikka is enough. He is sra to me, Chimele, as you are. Do not ask me questions.”
“Chaikhe—” Chimele said.
“Orithain,” said Rakhi, “she has followed your orders amazingly well: but remember that she was scarcely out of the dhis when she acquired Tejef’s interest.”