Chimele leaned over to take the nasith’s hand and pressed it gently. “Hail Chaikhe, brave Chaikhe. I am not of a disposition ever to become dhisais. I shall bear my children for Ashanome’s sake as I do other things, of sorithias. Yet I •know how strong must be your m’melakhia for the child: you are born for it, your nature yearns for it as mine does toward Ashanome itself. I am disadvantaged before the enormity of your gift, and I mean to refuse it. I think you may serve me best as you are.”
“The sight of me is not abhorrent to you?”
“Chaikhe,” said Chimele with gentle laughter, “you are a great artist and your perception of chanokhia is usually unerring; but I find nothing abhorrent in your happiness, nor in your person. Now it is a bittersweet honor I pay you,” she added soberly, “but Tejef has always honored you greatly, and so, katasathe, once desired of him, you now become a weapon in my hands. How is your heart, Chaikhe? How far can you serve me?”
“Chimele,” Ashakh began to protest, but her displeasure silenced him and Cbaikhe’s rejection of his defense finished the matter. He stretched his long legs out before him and studied the floor in grim silence.
“Once,” said Chaikhe, “indeed I was drawn to Tejef, but I am takkhe with Ashanome and I would see him die by any means at all rather than see him take our arastiethe from us.”
“Where Chaikhe is,” murmured Chimele, “I trust that all Ashanome’s affairs will be managed with chanokhia.”
CHAPTER 9
“MY LORD nas kame.”
Aiela came awake looking into the mottled gray face of an amaut, feeling the cold touch of broad fingertips on his face, and lurched backward with a shudder. There was the yielding surface of a bed under his back. He looked to one side and the other. Isande lay beside him. They were in a plaster-walled room with paned doors open on a balcony and the outside air.
He probed at Daniel’s mind and found the contact dark. Fear clawed at him. He attempted to rise, falling on the amaut’s arms and still fighting to find the floor with his feet.
“O sir,” the amaut pleaded with him, and resorted at last to the strength of his long arms to force him back again. Aiela struggled blindly until the gentle touch of Isande’s returning consciousness reminded him that he had another asuthe. She felt his panic, read his fear that Daniel was dead, and thrust a probe past him to the human.
Not dead, her incoherent consciousness judged. Let go, Aiela.
He obeyed, trusting her good sense, and blinked sanely up at the amaut.
“Are you all right now, my lord nas kame?”
“Yes,” Aiela said. Released, he sat on the edge of the bed holding his head in his hands. “What time is it?”
“Why, about nine of the clock,” said the amaut. That was near evening. The amaut used the iduve’s ten-hour system, and day began at dawn.
That surprised him. It ought to be dark in Weissmouth, which was far to the east of Daniel and Tejef’s ship. Aiela tried to calculate what should have happened, and uneasily asked the date.
“Why, the nineteenth of Dushaph, the hundred and twenty-first of our colony’s—”
Aiela’s explosive oath made the amaut gulp rapidly and blink his saucer eyes. A day lost, a precious day lost with Chimele’s insistence on sedation; and Daniel’s mind remained silent in daylight, when the world should be awake.
“And who are you?” Aiela demanded.
The amaut backed a pace and bowed several times in nervous politeness. “I, most honorable sir? I am Kleph son of Kesht son of Griyash son of Kleph son of Oushuph son of Melkuash of karsh Melkuash of the colony of the third of Suphrush, earnestly at your service, sir.”
“Honored, Kleph son of Kesht,” Aiela murmured, trying to stand. He looked about the room of peeling plaster and worn furniture, Kleph in nervous attendance, hands ready should he fall. On Kleph’s shoulder was the insignia of high rank: Airela found it at odds with the amaut’s manner, which was more appropriate to a backworld deckhand than a high colonial official. Part of the impression was conveyed by appearance, for Kleph was unhappily ugly even by amaut standards. Gray-green eyes stared up at him under a heavy brow ridge and the brow wrinkled into nothing beneath the dead-gray fringe of hair. Most amauts’ hair was straight and neat, cut bowl-fashion; Kleph’s flew out here and there in rebel tufts. The average amaut reached at least to the middle of Aiela’s chest. Kleph’s head came only scantly above Aiela’s waist, but his arms had the growth of a larger man’s and hung nearly past his knees. As for mottles, the most undesirable feature of amaut complexion, Kleph’s face was a patchwork of varishaded gray.