“Your father—” Jing began.
“Died among the first. So did Lord Waw-Yint. There is no use in speaking of his heir. Ntah is a land of rotting carcasses, and all who used to live there have run away.”
Qat’s girl companion uttered a groan of misery. Jing said slowly, “We must find you quarters. The Count has treated me kindly, as has his daughter. You will be made welcome.”
Surrounded by the high-piled parchments on which he was recording their discoveries, Jing sat blindly staring at the overcast sky. His mind was fuller of despair than ever in his life before; he wanted to renounce consciousness and retreat to dreams, where Ntah would last for all eternity and its glory never fade.
Behind him creepers rustled. A soft familiar voice said, “Is it true about your homeland?”
He did not turn. “Yes, Lady Rainbow. If Qat says so, he speaks the truth. I no longer have a home.”
“You have made one here,” she said. “By your kindness to me from the beginning, when first you told me I was not after all accursed; when you said you were surprised I had not found mates in spite of my misshapenness; when you opened my sight to a heaven full of so many stars it’s absurd for any one of us petty beings to count on reading his or her fate up yonder—Oh, Jing!” Spreading her mantle, she embraced him as he made to rise. “You have caused me to love you, poor twisted creature that I am! Let me prove that you have a home wherever I am and for as long as I may live!”
She hesitated, and added in an altered voice, “That is, if you do not find me totally repulsive.”
There was a moment of absolute stillness. Jing looked at her, and saw through her outward form, to the bright keen mind within. And his oath of celibacy was to lost Ntah…
They were both very clumsy, but they found it funny, and afterwards he was able to say, in full possession of his rational faculties, “But your father? He cares nothing for our work, and may despise me.”
“He is sad and sick and this winter has shown him he too can grow old. He has spoken much about over-close breeding, as one sees with canifangs, and has even mentioned the idea of a grandchild. Inwardly I think I may be normal, and most certainly you and I cannot be cousins to any degree. We shall find out. If not—so be it.”
She refolded her mantle about her. Checking suddenly, she said, “Jing, if tomorrow you decide you never want to see me again—if you feel it was only misery which made you desire me—I shan’t care, you know. You’ve given me such a gift as I never hoped for.”
“And you,” he said fondly, “have given me such courage as an hour ago I thought I’d never enjoy again.”
“So you want my ill-starred daughter?” grunted the Count, when with difficulty his attendants had roused him from the mist of dreams in which he now passed most of his time. His ruptured tubules had been unable to heal, owing to his corpulence, and he slumped in his sitting-pit like a half-filled water-bladder. “Well, I always thought you were crazy and now you’re proving it. Or have you scried something in the stars to show she’s fitter than she looks? Wish you’d do the same for me!”
“I want her,” Jing said firmly, “because she possesses a sharp mind, a keen wit and an affectionate nature.”
“More than I could say of most of the women I’ve taken,” the Count sighed. “Had I been gifted with a son … You want a grand celebration? You want mating-presents?” Suddenly he was suspicious.
“Nothing but your authority, Father, to continue our work together as mates as well as friends,” said Rainbow.
“Hah! Work, you call it! Wonderful benefits it’s brought us all your gabble about stars the naked eye can’t see—and the same goes for your people, Jing! Wiped out by plague, so they tell me! Still, you’re of good stock, and maybe cross-breeds are what’s been lacking in our lines. I’d rather believe too many cousins mated with cousins to keep control of the best homes and richest land, than that I was cursed by the Maker!”