He heard he’r breath shudder at last between her teeth, and forebore to breathe, himself, fearful of her mood.
“Intel,” she said at last, “still has her hand on us. The she’pan’s kel’en: she held you by her until I wonder you did not go mad; and passed you to me to see that her chosen successor succeeded not only to Edun Kesrithun, but to rule all the People. That Intel’s choice survive. She would have waded to her aim through the blood of any that opposed her. She was the she’pan. Old but age did not sanctify her, did not cleanse her of ambition or make her complacent. O gods, Niun, she was hard.”
He could not answer. He remembered the scarred and gentle-eyed Mother of Kesrith, whose hands were tender and whose mind was most times fogged with drugs; but he knew that other Intel too. His stomach tightened as he recalled old angers, old resentments Intel’s possessive, adamantine stubbornness. She was dead. It was not right to cherish resentments against the dead.
“She would have taken ship,” Melein said in a hollow voice, “and gods know what she would have done in leaving Kesrith. We no longer served regul; we were freed of our oath. She sent me to safety; I think she tried to follow. I will never know. I will never know so many things she had no time to teach me. She talked of return, of striking against the enemies of the People ravings under the komal-dreams, when I would sit by her alone. The enemy. The enemy. She would have destroyed them, and then she would have taken us home. That was her great and improbable dream, that the Dark would be the last Dark, to take us home, for we were few already; and she was, perhaps, mad.”
Niun could not bear to look at her, for it was true, and it was painful to them both.
“What shall we do?” he asked. “May the Kel ask permission to ask? What shall we do for ourselves?”
“I have no power to stop this ship. Would that I did. Duncan says that he cannot. I think that it is true. And he ”
There was long silence. Niun did not invade it, knowing it could bring no good; and at last Melein sighed.
“Duncan,” she said heavily.
“I will keep him from your sight.”
“You have given him the means to harm us.”
“I will deal with him, she’pan.”
She shook her head again, and wiped her eyes with her fingers.
The dusei came: Niun was aware of them before they appeared, looked and saw his own great beast, and welcomed it. It drew close in the wistful, abstracted manner of dusei, and sank down at Melein’s feet, offering its mindless solace.
Afterward, when Melein breathed easier, Niun felt another presence. Astonished, he saw the lesser dus standing in the doorway. It also came, and lay down by its fellow.
Melein touched it; it offered no hostility to the hand that had caused its hurt. But somewhere else in the ship there would be pain for that touching. Niun thought on Duncan, of his bitter isolation, and wondered that his dus could have been drawn here, by her whom Duncan hated.
Unless he had brutally driven it away or unless his thoughts had turned the dus in this direction.
“Go see to Duncan,” Melein said finally.
Niun received back his veil from her hands and flung it over his shoulder, not bothering to wear it. He rose, and when his own dus would have followed him he bade it stay, for he wanted it by Melein, for her comfort.
And he found Duncan, as he had thought he would, back in kel-hall.
Duncan sat still in the artificial dawning, hands loose in his lap. Niun settled on his knees before him, and still Duncan did not look up. The human had veiled himself; Niun did not, offering his feelings openly to him.
“You have hurt us,” Niun said. “Kel Duncan, is it not enough?”
Duncan lifted his face and stared toward the screen, where the world that had been called Nhequuy was no longer in view.