You know better, Aiela sent him. Simultaneous with the words came rage, concern for them, fear of Chimele. Daniel seized wrathfully upon the latter, which Aiela vehemently denied.
Daniel. Think. You don’t know •where you’re going or what you’re going to do with that girl. All right. Defeat. Aiela recognized the loathing Daniel felt for what they had asked him to do. Human as he was, he had been able to cross the face of Priamos unremarked, one of the countless mercenaries that looted and killed in small bands at the amaut’s bidding. He was a rough man, was Daniel: he could use that heavy-barreled primitive gun that hung from his belt. His slender frame could endure the marches, the tent-camps, the appallingly primitive conditions under which the human force operated. But he had no heart for this. He had been rackingly sick after the only killing he had done, and Anderson, the mercenary captain, had put him on the notice he would be made an example if he failed in any order. This threat was nothing. If Daniel could ignore the orders of Chimele of Ashanome, nothing the brutish Anderson could invent was enough; but Anderson fortunately had not realized that.
I can’t help you, Aiela said. That child cried for home, and you lost all your senses, every other bond. Now I suppose I’m the enemy.
No, Daniel thought, irritated by Aiele’s analysis. You aren’t. And: I wish you were—for it was his humanity that was pained.
Listen to me, Daniel. Accept my advice and let me guide you out of this incredible situation.
The word choice might have been Chimele’s. Daniel recognized it. “Kill the girl.” Why don’t you just come out with the idea? “Kill her, one life for the many.” Say it, Aiela. Isn’t that what Chimele wants of me? He hugged the sleeping child so tightly it wakened her, and she cried out in memory and fought.
“Hush,” he told her. “Do you want to walk awhile?”
“”I’ll try,” she said, and he chose a smooth place on the dirt road to set her down, she tugging in nervous modesty at the hem of her tattered gown. Her feet were cut with stubble and, bruised with stones. She limped so it hurt to watch her, and held out her hands to balance on the edges of her feet. He swore and reached out to take her up again, but she resisted and looked at him, her elfin face pale in the moonlight.
“No, I can walk. It’s just sore at first.”
“We’re going to cut west when we reach the other road. Maybe we’ll find a refugee family—there’s got to be somebody left.”
“Are you going to leave those men and not go back?”
The question disturbed him. Aiela pressed him with an echo of the same, and Daniel screened. “They’ll have my hide if they find me now. Maybe I’ll head northwest and pick up with some other band.” That for Aiela. A night’s delay, a day at the most. I can manage it. I’ll think of something. “Or maybe I’ll go west too. I’ll see you safe before I do anything.”
A man alone can’t make it across that country, Aiela insisted. Get rid of her, let her go. No! listen, don’t shut me out. I’ll help you. Your terms. Give me information and I’ll take your part with Chimele.
Daniel swore at him and closed down. Even suggesting harm to the girl tore at Aiela’s heart; but he was afraid. His people had had awe of the iduve fed into them with their mothers’ milk, and he was not human; Daniel knew the kallia so well, and yet there were still dark corners, reactions he could not predict, things that had to do with being kallia and being human. Aiela’s people had no capacity to fight: it was not in the kalliran nature to produce a tyranny, not in a culture where there was no supreme executive, but a hierarchy of councils. One kallia simply lacked the feeling of adequacy to be either tyrant or rebel. Giyre was supposed to be mutual, and he had no idea how to react when trust was betrayed. Kallia were easy prey for the iduve: they always yielded to greater authority. In the kalliran mind it just did not occur that it could be morally wrong, or that the Order in which they believed did not exist off Aus Qao.