Brothers of Earth

by C. J. Cherryh

  There was a long walk between the iron outer gate and the wooden main door of the Afen, for that space Kurt argued with them, then found them fanning out to prevent him from the very door toward which they were tending.

  He knew the game. They wanted him to resist. He had done so. Now they had the excuse they wanted, and they began to close up on him.

  He ran the only way still open, to the end of the courtyard, where it came up against the high peak of the rock on which the Afen sat, a facing wall of gray basalt. It was beyond the witness of anyone on the walk between the wall-gate and the door.

  They herded him. He knew it and was willing to go as long as there was room to retreat, intending to pay double at least on one of them when they finally closed in on him. T'Senife, who had insulted Nym, that was the one he favored killing, a slit-eyed fellow with a look of inborn arrogance.

  But to kill him would endanger Elas; he dared not, and knew how it must end. He risked other's lives, even fighting them.

  A small gate was set in the wall near the rock. He bolted for it, surprising them, desperately flinging back the iron bar.

  A vast courtyard lay beyond it, a courtyard paved in polished marble, with a single building closing it off, high-columned, a white cube with three triangular pylons arching over its long steps.

  He ran, saw the safety of the familiar wall-street to his left, leading to the main street of Nephane, back to ! the view of passersby.

  But for the sake of Elas he dared not take the matter into public. He knew Nym and Kta, knew they would involve themselves, to their hurt and without the power to help him.

  He ran instead across the white court, his sandalled feet and those of his pursuers echoing loudly on the deserted stones. The wall-street was the only way in. The precinct was a cul-de-sac, backed by the temple, flanked on one side by a high wall and on the other by the living rock.

  His pursuers put on a sudden burst of speed. He did likewise, thinking suddenly that they did not want him to reach this place, a religious place, a sanctuary.

  He sprang for the polished steps, raced up them, slipping and stumbling in his haste and exhaustion.

  Fire roared inside, an enormous bowl of flame leaping within, a heat that filled the room and flooded even the outer air, a phusmeha so large the blaze made the room glow gold, whose sound was like a furnace.

  He stopped without any thought in his mind but terror, blasted by the heat on his face and drowned in the sound of it. It was a rhmei, and he knew its sanctity.

  His pursuers also had stopped, a scant few strides behind him on the steps. He looked back. T'Senife beckoned him.

  "Come down," said t'Senife. "We were told to bring you to the Methi. If you will not come down, it will be the worse for you. Come down."

  Kurt believed him. It was a place of powers to which human touch was defilement-no sanctuary, none for a human-no kindly Ptas to open the rhmei to him and make him welcome.

  He came down to them, and they took him by the arms and led him down and across the courtyard to the open gate of the Afen compound, barring it again behind them.

  Then they forced him up against the wall and had their revenge, expertly, without leaving a visible mark on him.

  It was not likely that he would complain, both for the personal shame of it and because he and his friends were always in their reach, especially Kta, who would count it a matter of honor to avenge his friend, even on the Methi's guard.

  Kurt straightened himself as much as he could at the moment and t'Senife straightened his ctan, which had come awry, and took his arm again.

  They brought him up a side entrance of the Afen, by stairs he had not used before. Then they passed into familiar halls near the center of the building.

  Another of their kind met them, a stripe-robed and braided young man, handsome as Bel, but with sullen, hateful eyes. To him these men showed great deference. Shan t'Tefur, they called him.

  They discussed the betrothal, and how they had been too late.

  "Then the Methi should have that news," concluded t'Tefur, and his narrow eyes shifted toward a room with a solid door. "It is empty. Hold him there until I have carried her that news."

  They did so. Kurt sat on a hard chair by the barred slit of a window and so avoided the looks that pierced his back, giving them no excuse to repeat their treatment of him.

  At last t'Tefur came back to say that the Methi would see him.

  She would see him alone. T'Tefur protested with a violently angry look, but Djan stared back at him in such a way that t'Tefur bowed finally and left the room.

  Then she turned that same angry look on Kurt.

  "Entering the temple precincts was a mistake," she said. "If you had entered the temple itself I don't know if I could have saved you."

  "I had that idea," he said.

  "Who told you that you had the freedom to make contracts in Nephane, marrying that nemet?"

  "I wasn't told I didn't. Nor was Elas told, or they wouldn't have allowed it. They are loyal to you. And they were not treated well, Djan."

  "Not the least among the problems you've created for

  me, this disrespect of Elas." She walked over to the far side of the room, put back a panel that revealed a terrace walled with glass. It was night. They had a view of all the sea. She gazed out, leaving him watching her back, and she stayed that way for a long time. He thought he was the subject of her thoughts, he and Elas.

  At last she turned and faced him. "Well," she said, "for Elas' inconvenience, I'm sorry. I shall send them word that you're safe. You haven't had dinner yet, have you?"

  Appetite was the furthest thing from his mind. His stomach was both empty and racked with pain, and with an outright fear that her sudden shift in manner did nothing to ease. "You," he said, "frightened the wits out of my fiancee, made me a spectacle in the streets of Nephane, and all I particularly care about is-"

  "I think," said Djan in a tone of finality, "that we had better save the talk. / am going to have dinner. If you want to argue the point, Shan can find you some secure room where you can think matters over. But you will leave the Afen-if you leave the Afen-when I please to send you out."

  And she called a girl named Pai, who received her orders with a deep bow.

  "She," said Djan when the girl had gone, "is chan to the Afen. I inherited her, it seems. She is very loyal and very silent, both virtues. Her family served the last methi, a hundred years ago. Before that, Pai's family was still chan to methis, even before the human occupation and during it. There is nothing in Nephane that does not have roots, except the two of us. Forget your temper, my friend. I lost mine. I rarely do that. I am sorry."

  "Then we will have out whatever you want to say and I will go back to Elas."

  "I would think so," she agreed quietly, ignoring his anger. "Come out here. Sit down. I am too tired to stand up to argue with you."

  He came, shrugging off his apprehensions. The terrace was dark. She left it so and sat on the window ledge, watching the sea far below. It was indeed a spectacular view of Nephane, its lights winding down the crag below, the high dark rock a shadow against the moon. The moonlit surface of the sea was cut by the wake of a single ship heading out.

  "If I were sensible," said Djan as he joined her and sat down on the ledge facing her, "if I were at all sensible I'd have you taken out and dropped about halfway. Unfortunately I decided against it. I wonder still what you would do in my place."

  He had wondered that himself. "I would think of the same things that have occurred to you," he said.

  "And reach the same answer?"

  "I think so," he admitted. "I don't blame you."

  She smiled, ironic amusement. "Then maybe we will have a brighter future than other humans who have held Nephane. They built this section of the Afen, you know. That's why there is no rhmei, no heart to the place. It's unique in that respect, the fortress without a heart, the building without a soul. Did Kta tell you what became of them?"

  "
Nemet drove them out, I know that."

  "Humans ruled Nephane about twenty years. But they involved themselves with the nemet. The mistress of the base commander was of a great Indras family, of Irain. Humans were very cruel to the nemet, and they enjoyed humiliating the Great Families by that. But one night she let her brothers in and the whole of Nephane rose in rebellion against the humans on the night of a great celebration, when most of the humans were drunk on telise. So they lost their machines and fled south and became the Tamurlin in a generation or so, like animals. Only Pai's ancestor On t'Erefe defended the humans in the Afen, being chan and obliged to defend his human lord. The human methi and On died together, out there in the hall. The other humans who died were killed in the courtyard, and those who were caught were brought back there and killed.

  "Myself, I have read the records that went before their fall. The supply ship failed them, never came back, probably after reporting to Aeolus; it was destroyed on its return trip, another war casualty, unnoticed. The years passed, and they had made the nemet here hate them. They had threatened them with the imminent return of, the ship for twenty years and the threat was wearing thin. So they fell. But when we arrived, the nemet thought the threat had come true and that they were all to die. For all my crewmates cared, we might have destroyed Nephane to secure the base. I would not permit it. And when I had

  freed the nemet from the immediate threat of my companions, they made me methi. Some say I am sent by Fate; they think the same of you. For an Indras, nothing ever happens without logical purpose. Their universe is entirely rational. I admire that in them. There is a great deal in these people that was worth the cost. And I think you agree with me. You've evidently settled very comfortably into Elas."

  "They are my friends," he said.

  Djan leaned back, leaned on the sill and looked out over her shoulder. The ship was nearly to the breakwater. "This is a world of little haste and much deliberation. Can you imagine two ships like that headed for each other in battle? Our ships come- hi faster than the mind can think, from zero vision to alongside, attack and vanish. But those vessels with their sails and oars-by the time , they came within range of each other there would be , abundant time for thought. There is a dreadful deliberateness about the nemet. They maneuver so slowly, but they do hold a course once they've taken it."

  "You're not talking about ships."

  "Do you know what lies across the sea?"

  His heart leaped; he thought of Mim, and his first terrible thought was that Djan knew. But he let nothing of that reach his face. "Indresul," he said. "A city that is hostile to Nephane."

  "Your friends of Elas are Indras. Did you know?"

  "I had heard so, yes."

  "So are most of the Great Families of Nephane. The Indras established this as a colony once, when they conquered the inland fortress of Chteftikan and began to build this fortress with Sufaki slaves taken in that war. Indresul has no love of the Nephanite Indras, but she has never forgotten that through them she has a claim on this city. She wants it. I am walking a narrow line, Kurt Morgan, and your Indras friends in Elas and your own meddling in nemet affairs are an embarrassment to me at a time when I can least afford embarrassment. I need quiet in this city. I will do what is necessary to secure that."

  "I've done nothing," he said, "except inside Elas."

  "Unfortunately," said Djan, "Elas does nothing without consequence in Nephane. That is the misfortune of wealth and power. That ship out there is bound for Indresul. The Methi of Indresul has eluded my every attempt to talk. You cannot imagine how they despise Sufaki and humans. Well, at last they are going to send an ambassador, one Mor t'Uset ul Orm, a councillor who has high status in Indresul. He will come at the return of that ship. And this betrothal of yours, publicized in the market today, had better not come to the attention of t'Uset when he arrives."

  "I have no desire to be noticed by anyone," he said.

  The glance she gave him was ice. But at that moment Pai-lechan and another girl pattered into the hall cat-footed and brought tea and telise and a light supper, setting it on the low table by the ledge.

  Djan dismissed them both, although strict formality dictated someone serve. The chani bowed themselves out.

  "Join me," she said, "in tea or telise, if nothing else."

  His appetite had returned somewhat. He picked at the food and then found himself hungry. He ate fully enough for his share, and demurred when she poured him telise, but she set the cup beside him. She carried the dishes out herself, returned and settled on the ledge beside him. The ship had long since cleared the harbor, leaving its surface to the wind and the moon.

  "It is late," he said. "I would like to go back to Elas."

  "This nemet girl. What is her name?"

  All at once the meal lay like lead at his stomach.

  "What is her name?"

  "Mim," he said, and reached for the telise, swallowed some of its vaporous fire.

  "Did you compromise the girl? Is that the reason for this sudden marriage?"

  The cup froze in his hand. He looked at her, and all at once he knew she had meant it just as he had heard it, and flushed with heat, not the telise,

  "I am in love with her."

  Djan's cool eyes rested on him, estimating. "The nemet are a beautiful people. They have a certain attraction. And I suppose nemet women have a certain... flattering appeal to a man of our kind. They always let their men be right."

  "It will not trouble you," he said.

  "I am sure it will not." She let the implied threat hang in the air a moment and then shrugged lightly. "I have nothing personal against the.child. I don't expect I'll ever have to consider the problem. I trust your good sense for that. Marry her. Occasionally you will find, as I do, that nemet thoughts and looks and manners-and nemet prejudices-are too much for you. That fact moved me, I admit it, or you would be keeping company with the Tamurlin, or the fishes. I would rather think we were companions, human and reasonably civilized. This person Mim, she is only chan; she does at least provide a certain respectability if you are careful. I suppose it is not such a bad choice, so I do not think this marriage will be such an inconvenience to me. And I think you understand me, Kurt."

  The cup shook in his hand. He put it aside, lest his fingers crush the fragile crystal.

  "You are gambling your neck, Djan. I won't be pushed." "I do not push," she said, "more than will make me understood. And I think we understand each other plainly."

  VII

  The gray light of dawn was over Nephane, spreading through a mist that overlay all but the upper walls of the Afen. The cobbled street running down from the Afen gate was wet, and the few people who had business on the streets at that hour went muffled in cloaks.

  Kurt stepped up to the front door of Elas, tried the handle in the quickly dashed hope that it would be unlocked, then knocked softly, not wanting to wake the whole house.

  More quickly than he had expected, soft footsteps approached the door inside, hesitated. He stood squarely before the door to be surveyed from the peephole.

  The bar flew back, the door was snatched inward, and

  Mim was there in her nightrobe. With a sob of relief she flung herself into his arms and hugged him tightly.

  "Hush," he said, "it's all right; it's all right, Mim."

  They were framed in the doorway. He brought her inside and closed and barred the heavy door. Mim stood wiping at her eyes with her wide sleeve.

  "Is the house awake?" he whispered.

  "Everyone finally went to bed. I came out again and waited in the rhmei. I hoped-I hoped you would come back. Are you all right, my lord?"

  "I am well enough." He took her in his arm and walked with her to the warmth of the rhmei. There in the light her large eyes stared up at him and her hands pressed his, gentle as the touch of wind.

  "You are shaking," she said. "Is it the cold?"

  "It's cold and I'm tired." It was hard to slip back into Nechai after hours of human la
nguage. His accent crept out again.

  "What did she want?"

  "She asked me some questions. They held me all night Mim, I just want to go upstairs and get some sleep. Don't worry. I am well, Mim."

  "My lord," she said in a tear-choked voice, "before the phusmeha it is a great wrong to lie. Forgive me, but I know that you are lying."

  "Leave me alone, Mim, please."

  "It was not about questions. If it was, look at me plainly and say that it was so."