what he had feared, to show, to prove her sexual vulnerability. She was still only half-awake, clinging to him.
Another man had come in. Kergat said nothing.
It took Teyeo some time to recognise the second man as Batikam.
When he did, his mind remained quite blank.
He managed to say the makil's name. Nothing else.
'Batikam?' Solly croaked. 'Oh, my God!'
'This is an interesting moment,' Batikam said in his warm actor's voice. He was not transvestite, Teyeo saw, but wore Gatayan men's clothing. 'I meant to rescue you, not to embarrass you, Envoy, Rega. Shall we get on with it?'
Teyeo had scrambled up and was pulling on his filthy trousers. Solly had slept in the ragged pants
their captors had given her. They both had kept on their shirts for warmth.
'Did you contact the Embassy, Batikam?' she was asking, her voice shaking, as she pulled on her sandals.
'Oh, yes. I've been there and come back,
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indeed. Sorry it took so long. I don't think I quite realised your situation here.'
'Kergat has done his best for us,' Teyeo said at once, stiffly.
'I can see that. At considerable risk- I think the risk from now on is low. That is . . .' He looked straight at Teyeo. 'Rega, how do you feel about putting yourself in the hands of Hame?' he said. 'Any problems with that?'
'Don't, Batikam,' Solly said. 'Trust him!'
Teyeo tied his shoe, straightened up, and said,
'We are all in the hands of the Lord Kamye.'
Batikam laughed, the beautiful full laugh they remembered.
'In the Lord's hands, then,' he said, and led them out of the room.
In the Arkamye it is said, 'To live simply is most complicated.'
Solly requested to stay on Werel, and after a recuperative leave at the seashore was sent as Observer to South Voe Deo. Teyeo went straight home, being informed that his father was very ill. After his father's death, he asked for indefinite leave from the Embassy Guard, and stayed on the farm with his mother until her death two years later. He and Solly, a continent apart, met only occasionally during those years.
When his mother died, Teyeo freed his family's assets by act of irrevocable manumission, deeded
over their farms to them, sold his now almost valueless property at auction, and went to the capital. He knew Solly was temporarily staying at the
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Embassy. Old Music told him where to find her. He found her in a small office of the palatial building.
She looked older, very elegant. She looked at him with a stricken and yet wary face. She did not come forward to greet or touch him. She said, 'Teyeo, I've been asked to be the first Ambassador of the Ekumen to Yeowe.'
He stood still.
'Just now — I just came from talking on the ansible with Hain —'
She put her face in her hands. 'Oh, my God!' she said.
He said, 'My congratulations, truly, Solly.'
She suddenly ran at him, threw her arms around him, and cried, 'Oh, Teyeo, and your mother died, I
never thought, I'm so sorry, I never, I never do — I thought we could — What are you going to do? Are you going to stay there?'
'I sold it,' he said. He was enduring rather than returning her embrace. 'I thought I might return to the service.'
'You sold your farm? But I never saw it!'
'I never saw where you were born,' he said-There was a pause. She stood away from him. and they looked at each other.
'You would come?' she said.
'I would,' he said.
Several years after Yeowe entered the Ekumen, Mobile Solly Agat Terwa was sent as an Ekumenical liaison to Terra; later she went from there to Hain, where she served with great distinction as a Stabile. In all her travels and posts she
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was accompanied by her husband, a Werelian army officer, a very handsome man, as reserved as she was outgoing. People who knew them knew their passionate pride and trust in each other.
Solly was perhaps the happier person, rewarded and fulfilled in her work; but Teyeo had no regrets.
He had lost his world, but he had held fast to the one noble thing.
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Stse
He sat beside his father by the great irrigation tank. Fire-copied wings soared and dipped through the twilight air. Trembling circles enlarged, interlocked, faded on the still surface of the water. 'What makes the water go that way?' he asked, softly because it was mysterious, and his father answered softly, 'It's where the araha touch it when they drink.' So he understood that in the center of each circle was a desire, a thirst. Then it was time to go home, and he ran before his father, pretending he was an araha flying, back
through the dusk into the steep, bright-windowed town.
His name was Mattinyehedarheddyuragamurus-kets Havzhiva. The word havzhiva means 'ringed pebble,' a small stone with a quartz inclusion running through it that shows as a stripe round it. The people
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of Stse are particular about stones and names. Boys of the Sky, the Other Sky, and the Static Interference lineages are traditionally given the names of stones or desirable manly qualities such as courage, patience, and grace. The Yehedarhed family were traditionalists, strong on family and lineage. 'If you know who your people are, you know who you are,' said Havzhiva's father. Granite. A kind, quiet man who took his paternal responsibility seriously, he spoke often in sayings.
Granite was Havzhiva's mother's brother, of course; that is what a father was. The man who had helped his mother conceive Havzhiva lived on a farm; he stopped in sometimes to say hello when he was in town. Havzhiva's mother was the Heir of the Sun. Sometimes Havzhiva envied his cousin Aloe, whose father was only six years older than she was and played with her like a big brother. Sometimes he envied children whose mothers were unimportant. His mother was always fasting or dancing or traveling, had no husband, and rarely slept at home. It was exciting to be with her, but difficult. He had to be important when he was with her. It was always a relief to be home with nobody there but his father and his undemanding grandmother and her sister the Winter Dancekeeper and her husband and whichever Other Sky relatives from farms and other pueblos were visiting at the moment.
There were only two Other Sky households in Stse, and the Yehedarheds were more hospitable than the Doyefarads, so all the relatives came and stayed with them. They would have been hard put to afford it if the visitors hadn't brought all sorts of farm stuff, and if Tovo hadn't been Heir of the Sun.
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She got paid richly for teaching and for performing the rituals and handling the protocol at other pueblos. She gave all she earned to her family, who spent it all on their relatives and on ceremonies, festivities, celebrations, and funerals.
'Wealth can't stop,' Granite said to Havzhiva.
