Metal crashed, and little by little Khasif was giving ground, until he was battling only to hold Tejef within the room. . Ship’s controls! Aiela screamed at his asuthi. They tried. Section doors prevented them, and amaut guards and humans converged from all sides, forcing them into retreat. Khasif stood as helpless as they under the threat of a dozen weapons.
Tejef occupied the hallway, a dark smear of blood on his temple. He gave curt orders to the armed humans to hold the nasith for him at the end of the hall. Aiela shuddered as he found that look resting next on Isande and on Daniel.
“Go to your quarters,” Tejef said very quietly. But when Daniel started to obey, too, Tejef tilted his head back and looked at him from eyes that had gone to mere slits. “No,” he said, “not you.”
Aiela, Isande appealed, Aiela, help him, oh help him! For she knew what Daniel had done for her.
Do as Tejef tells you, said Aiela. Daniel—give in, whatever happens: no temper. No resistance. They react to resistance. They lose interest otherwise.
“Sir,” said Daniel in a voice that needed no dissembling to carry a tremor, “sir—I acted not against you. For Isande, for her. Please.”
The iduve stared at him for a long cold moment. Then he let go a hissing breath. “Get out of my sight. Go to your quarters, and stay there or I will kill you.”
Go! Aiela hurled at Daniel: Bow your head and don’t look him in the eyes! Go! And blessedly the human ignored his own instincts, took the advice, and edged away carefully. He’s all right, he’s all right, Aiela said then to Isande, who collapsed in the wreckage of her quarters, crying. He probed gently to know if she were much hurt.
No, she flung back. No. Fear leaked through, shame, the ultimate certainty of defeat. Go away, go away, she kept thinking, o go away, reach the ship and leave. I learned to survive after losing Reha. It’s your turn. We’ve lost whatever chance we had because of me, because I started it, I did, I did, nothing gained.
It’s all right, came Daniel’s unbidden intervention. He shook all over, he was so afraid, alone in his quarters. It was a terrible thing for a man of his kind to yield down screens at such a moment: but along with the fear another process was taking place: he was gathering his mental forces to replot another attack. Of a sudden this humanish stubbornness, so different from kalliran methodical process, came to Isande as a thing of elethia. She wept, knowing his blind determination; and she appealed to Aiela to reason with him.
Luck, said Aiela, is what humans wish each other when they are in that frame of mind. I do not believe in luck: kastien forbids. But trust him, Isande. You’re going to be all right.
And that was a hope as irrational as Daniel’s, and as little honest. He did not want to tear his mind away, but the triple flood of thoughts distorted his perceptions and tore at his emotions. At last he had to let them both go, for he, like Daniel, was determined to try; and he knew what they would both say to that.
He had come at last near the streets of the occupied quarter. The sounds and smells of a habish told him so, and guided him down the alley. It lacked some few hours until daylight, but by now even most of the night-loving amaut had given up and gone home. The place was quiet.
Thus, at the most one other street lay between him and the safety of headquarters, but far more effort would be needed to thread the maze of Weissmouth’s alleys, with their turnings often running into the impassable rubble of a ruined building. Aiela had no stomach for recklessness at this stage; but neither had he much more strength to spend on needless effort. He tried the handle of the habish’s alley door, jerked it open, and walked through, to the startled outcries of the few drunken patrons remaining.
He closed the front door after him and found to his dismay that it was not the headquarters street after all: but at least it was clear and in the right section of town. He knew his way from here. The headquarters lay uphill and he set out in that direction, walking rapidly, hating the spots of light thrown by the occasional streetlamps.
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