The dusei crowded close to them, disturbed.
“Do not worry for yourself,” Niun said to him suddenly.
“I do not.”
“The killing,” said Niun, “was bitter.”
And he settled on the sand where they stood, with a mri’s disregard for furniture. Duncan knelt down beside him, watched as Niun drew from his robes a folded cloth that held the j’tai that he had received of Merai’s death, watched as Niun began to knot them to the belt that should hold them, so that their cords let them hang freely in his robes.
Complicated knots. Mri knots. Niun’s slender fingers wove designs he had not yet mastered, meanings he had not yet learned, intricacies for intricacy’s sake.
He tried to think only of that, to shut from his mind what he had seen in the tent, the shout that still echoed in his ears, hundreds of voices lifted, and himself the enemy.
About them appeared blue-robes, striking the tent of assembly, the oldest boys and girls taking the poles down, bearing the brunt of the work, and the women and middle-years children aiding. Only the littlest children hi their mothers’ arms sometimes raised a whimper hi all the confusion, and the little ones that could walk finally slipped discipline and began a game of tag among then busy elders, uncomprehending what changes had turned then” world upside down.
“The Face that Snules,” said Niun of them. “Ah, Duncan, it is good to see.”
A cold closed about Duncan, a foreboding heavy as the she’pan’s alleged Sight… the children’s voices in the dark as the tent came down, laughter…
The towers that had fallen on Kesrith…
“Let me go back,” Duncan said suddenly. “Niun, ask the she’pan. Now, tonight, let me go back to the ship.”
The mri turned, looked at him, a piercing and wondering look. “Fear of us?”
“For you. For them.”
“You left your markers. The she’pan has already said that it was enough. She gave you her word on the matter. If you go back, they will take you back, and we will not permit that.”
“Am I a prisoner?”
Niun’s eyes nictitated. “You are keKen of this Kel, and we will not give you away. Do you wish to go back?”
For a moment Duncan could not answer. The children shouted, laughed aloud, and he winced at the sound. “I am of this Kel,” he said at last. “And I could serve it best there.”
“That is for the she’pan to decide, and she has already decided. If she wishes to send you, she will send.”
“Better that. I am not wanted here. And I could be of use there.”
“I would die a death myself if harm came to you. Stay close by me. No kel’en that has won the seta’al would challenge you, but the unscarred might… and no unscarred will trespass with me. Put such thoughts out of your mind. Your place is here, not there.”
“It is not because I would run from them that I ask. It is because of what I hear. Because you have not learned of all that you have seen. Dead worlds, Niun.”
“Sov-kela,” said Niun, and his voice was edged, “have care.”
“You are preparing to fight.”
“We are mri.”
The beast beside him stirred. Duncan held to it, his blood pounding in his ears. “The survival of the species.”
“Yes,” said Niun.
“For that, you would do what, Niun?”
“Everything.”
There was long silence.
“Will you,” asked Niun, “seek to go back to them?”
“I am at the she’pan’s orders,” he said at last. “With my own kind, I can be damned no more than I am. Only listen to me sometimes. Is it revenge you want?”
The mri’s nostrils flared, rapid breathing, and his hands moved over the dus’ velvet skin, long-fingered and oddly graceful. “Species survival. To gather the People. To have our homeworld. To be mri.”
He was answered. The human in him would not understand it; but kel-law did… to be the sum of all things the mri had ever been, and that meant to be bound by nothing.
No agreements, no conditions, no promises.
And if it pleased the mri to strike, they would strike, for mri reasons.