The mri still had power to surprise him. Duncan sat back in confusion, all his reckonings of them in disorder. “She will see me, then.”
“Whenever you would decide to ask. Go and speak to her. The doors are not locked.”
Duncan rested yet a moment, all impetus taken from him; and then he gathered himself to his feet and started for the door, the dus behind him. “Duncan.” He turned. “My brother of the Kel,” said Niun softly, “in all regard for you remember that I am the she’pan’s hand, and that should you err with her I must not tolerate it.”
There was, for the moment, a ward-impulse in the room: the dus backed and its ears lay down. “No,” said Duncan. It stopped. And he drew the av-tlen from his belt, and would have laid aside all his weapons. “Hold these if you suspect any such thing of me.” It was demeaning to surrender weapons; Duncan offered, knowing this, and the mri flinched visibly.
“No,” Niun said.
Duncan slid the blade back into place, and left, the dus walking behind him. Niun did not follow: the sting of that last exchange perhaps forbade, and his suspicion would worry at him the while Duncan reckoned it, that although Niun slept by him, though he let down his guard to him in weapons-practice, to teach him, Melein’s safety was another matter: the kel’en was deeply, deeply uneasy.
To admit a tsi’mri to the she’pan’s presence, armed: it surely went against the mri’s instincts.
But the doors had been unlocked.
The doors had always been unlocked, Duncan supposed suddenly; he had never thought to try them. Melein herself had slept with unlocked doors, trusting him; and that shocked him deeply, that the mri could be in that regard so careless with him.
And not careless.
Prisons, locked doors, things sealed, depriving a man of weapons all these things went against mri nature. He had known it from the beginning in dealing with them: no prisoners, no capture and even in the shrine, the pan’en was only screened off, not locked away.
Even controls, even that had always been accessible to him, any time that he had decided to walk where he had been told not to go; he might have quietly gone forward, sealed the doors, and held the ship could, at this moment.
He did not.
He went to the door that was Melein’s, to that dim hall, painted with symbols, vacant of all but a chair and the mats for sitting. He entered it, his steps loud on the tiles.
“She’pan,” he called, and stood and waited: stood, for it was the she’pan who offered or did not offer, to sit. The dus settled heavily next to him, resting on its hindquarters finally sank down to lay its head on the tiles. A sigh gusted from it.
And suddenly a light step sounded behind him. Duncan turned, faced the ghost-like figure in the shadow, white-robed and silent. He was not veiled. He was not sure whether this was polite or not, and glanced down to show his respect.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“To beg your pardon,” he said.
She answered nothing for a moment, only stared at him as if she waited for something further.
“Niun said,” he added, “that you were willing to see me.”
Her lips tautened. “You still have a tsi’mri’s manners.”
Anger came on him; but the statement was the simple truth. He smothered it and averted his eyes a second time to the floor. “She’pan,” he said softly, “I beg your pardon.”
“I give it,” she said. “Come, sit down.”
The tone was suddenly gracious; it threw him off his balance, and for an instant he stared at her, who moved and took her chair, expecting him to settle at her feet.
“By your leave,” he said, remembering Niun, “I ought to go back. I think Niun wanted to follow me. Let me go and bring him.”
A frown creased Melein’s smooth brow. “That would reproach him, kel Duncan, if you let him know why. No. Stay. If there is peace in the House, he will know it; and if not, he will know that. And do not call him by his name to me; he is first in the Kel.”