Kenri looked down.
“Of course he can,” said Nivala.
The Honorable Oms tittered. “New tax,” he said. “Slap a new tax on, quick. I’ve got a tumy merchant reeling. New tax’ll bring him to his knees.”
“Hold your jaw,” from Canda snapped.
Nivala sat straight. “Yes, be still!” she shouted. “Why are you here?” To her uncle, desperately: “You will be our friend, won’t you?”
“I hope so,” said from Canda.
Through rising winds, Kenri heard Oms:
“I got to tell you ’bout this. Real funny. This resident merchant in Kith Town, not a spacer but a tumy just the same, he lost big on a voyage. My agent bought the debt for me. If he doesn’t pay, I can take his daughter under contract. Cute little piece. Only the other tumies are taking up a collection for him. Got to stop that somehow. Never mind the money. They say those tumy girls are really hot. How ’bout that, Kenri? Tell me, is it true —”
Kenri stood up. The room around him lay as sharp as if he saw it in open space. He no longer heard the music. A metallic singing filled his skull.
He did hear Nivala: “Oms! You whelp!” and from Canda: “Silence!” The sounds came from light-years away. His left hand caught hold of the tunic and hauled the Honorable Oms to his feet. His right hand made a fist and smote.
Oms lurched back, fell, and moaned where he lay. Nivala quelled a scream. From Canda leaped to his own feet.
“Arrest me,” Kenri said. A detached fraction of him wished he could speak less thickly. “Go on. Why not?”
“Kenri, Kenri.” Nivala rose, too. She reached for him. He saw at the edge of vision but didn’t respond. Her arms dropped.
Oms pulled himself to an elbow. Blood coursed from his nose. “Yes, arrest him,” he squealed. “Ten years’ penance confinement. I’ll take everything he’s got.”
From Canda’s shoe nudged his grandson in the ribs, not gently. “I ordered you to stay quiet,” he said. Oms whimpered, struggled to a sitting position, and rocked to and fro.
“That was reckless of you, Lieutenant Shaun,” stated from Canda. “However, it was not unprovoked. There will be no charges or lawsuit.”
“The Kith girl —” Kenri realized he should first have said thanks.
“I daresay she’ll be all right. They’ll raise the money for her father. Kithfolk stick together.” The tone hardened. “Bear in mind, you have renounced that allegiance.”
Kenri straightened. A hollow sort of peace had come upon him.
He remembered a half-human face and eyes without hope and A man’s only alive when he has something bigger than himself to live and die for. “Thank you, sir,” he said belatedly. “But I am a Kithman.”
“Kenri,” he heard.
He turned and stroked a hand down Nivala’s hair. “I’m sorry,” he said. He never had been good at finding words.
“Kenri, you can’t go, you mustn’t, you can’t.”
“I must,” he said. “I was ready to give up everything for you. But not to betray my ship, my people. If I did that, in the end it would make me hate you, and I want to love you. Always.”
She wrenched away, slumped onto the bench, and stared at the hands clenched in her lap. The blonde tresses hid her face from him. He hoped she wouldn’t try to call him tomorrow or the next day. He didn’t know whether he hoped she would take treatment to adjust her mind-set or wait and recover naturally from him.
“We’re enemies now, I suppose,” the colonel said. “I respect you for that more than if you’d worked to be friends. And, since I presume you’ll be shipping out and we’ll never meet again — luck to you, Lieutenant Shaun.”
“And to you, sir. Good-bye, Nivala.”
The Kithman passed through the ballroom, ignoring eyes, and through the anteroom to the ascensor. Well, he thought vaguely on his way down, yes, I will be shipping out.
I do like Theye Barinn. I should go around soon and see her.
The time felt long before he was back in Kith Town. There he walked in empty streets, breathing the cold night wind of Earth.