“I would be pleased,” said Niun, “if you would send to tie she’pan your apology.”
Duncan sat quietly for a moment, arms on knees. At last he nodded, changed the gesture for a mri one. “When she needs me,” he said, “I will come. Tell her so.”
“I will tell her.”
“Tell her I am sorry.”
“I will tell her that too.”
Duncan looked at him for a moment, and then gathered himself up and stood looking at the dus. He gave a low whistle to it: it whuffed in interest and heaved itself up and came, followed to the corner where the” pallets were.
And for a long time the human sat and worked over the dus, grooming it and soothing it, even talking to it, which seemed to please the beast. The dus settled, slept. In time, the man did.
Three days later the siren sounded, and they left Nhequuy and its sun. The next world was also without life.
CHAPTER Fifteen
DUNCAN TURNED from the Screen that showed the stars and found his dus behind him always, always the beast was with him, shadow, herald, partaker of every privacy of his life. He found no need to touch it. It sighed and settled against his back. He felt it content.
It was strange, when a pain ceased, that it could be gone some considerable time before it was missed.
And that when that pain was gone, it could not be accurately remembered.
Duncan had known in this place, hi kel-hall, upon a certain instant, that he was no longer in pain: he had realized it, sitting here upon the floor; and he could remember the moment, the details, the place that the dus had been lying, the fact that Niun had been sitting exactly so, across the room sewing, that day: odd occupation for a mri warrior, but Duncan had learned well enough that a man tended all his own necessities in the Kel save food, that was taken in common.
Niun’s face had been intent, the needle pursuing a steady rhythm. He had worked with skill, as Niun’s slender hands knew so many skills. It would take years to learn the half of what Niun’s native reflexes and the teaching of his masters had done for him.
Not an arrogant man, Niun: prideful, perhaps, but he never vaunted his abilities… save now and again when they practiced a passage of arms with the yin’ein that Duncan had made to match the beautiful old weapons that were Niun’s. Then Niun was sometimes moved, perhaps from the sheer ennui of practicing with a man with whom he could not extend himself to make a move so fast the eye could not follow it, so tiny and deft and subtle that Duncan hardly knew what had happened to him. Niun did such things, Duncan had noticed also, when he himself had almost settled into smugness in his practice with Niun. The mri subtly informed his student that he was still restraining himself. Restraint.
It governed the kel’en’s whole being.
And Niun’s restraint made peace where there was none: extended to a human who provoked him, to dusei that at times grew restive and destructive in their confinement extended even to Melein.
There was none of them, Duncan reflected with sudden grim humor, that wanted to disturb Niun, neither human, nor dusei, nor child-queen who relied on him. It was Niun’s peace that was on them. The most efficient killers in all creation, Stavros had said of the mri.
He spoke of the Kel, of Niun’s kind.
He had spoken before humankind even suspected the waste of stars that now surrounded them.
The record would be traced out, human ships tracking them to dead world after dead world; and there was no other conclusion that could occur to the Haveners manning those ships, but that they were tracing something monstrous to its source.
Duncan absently caressed the shoulder of his dus, thinking, as the same fearful thoughts had circled through his brain endlessly in the passing days staring helplessly at Niun, whose imagination surely was sufficient to know what pursued them.
Yet there was no mention of this from Niun; and Melein, having asked her questions, asked nothing more; Niun went to her, but Duncan was not permitted, continuing in her disfavor.