cleaned. We were on the watch for fleas, but there seemed to be less than in most haylofts. After a scanty and not very good dinner, Melle was ready to go to bed. She had borne the journey well, but every day of it had taken her to about the limit of her small strength. The last couple of days she had had spells of tears and snappishness, like any tired child. I was pretty stretched myself, but I felt a nervous energy in me, here in the city, that would not let me rest. I asked Melle if she’d be worried if I went out for a while. She was lying holding her Ennu figure against her chest, her beloved poncho pulled up over the bedcover. “No,” she said, “I won’t worry, Beaky.” But she looked a little sad and tremulous. I said, “Oh, maybe I won’t go.”
“Go
“All right. I’ll be back before dark.”
She ignored me, squeezing her eyes shut. I went out.
As I came out into the street the same two young men were coming by, a bit out of breath from the climb up, and the one who’d winked saw me. “Chose the fleas, eh?” he said. He had a pleasant smile and was openly curious about me. I took this second meeting as an omen or sign which I should follow. I said, “You’re students of the University?”
He stopped and nodded; his companion stopped less willingly.
“I’d like to know how to become a student.”
“I thought that might be the case.”
“Can you tell me—at all—how I should—Whom I should ask—“ “Nobody sent you here? A teacher, a scholar you worked with?” My heart sank. “No,” I said.
He cocked his head with its ridiculous but dashing velvet cap. “Come on to the Gross Tun and have a drink with us,” he said, “I’m Sampater Yille, this is Gola Mederra. He’s law, I’m letters.”
I said my name, and, “I was a slave in Etra.”
I had to say that before anything else, before they were shamed by finding they had offered their friendship to a slave.
“In Etra? Were you there in the siege?” said Sampater, and Gola said, “Come on, I’m thirsty!”
We drank beer at the Gross Tun, a crowded beer hall noisy with students, most of them about my age or a little older. Sampater and Go-la were principally interested in putting away as much beer as possible as fast as possible and in talking to everybody else at the beer hall, but they introduced me to everyone, and everyone gave me advice about where to go and whom to see about taking classes in letters at the University. When it turned out I knew not one of the famous teachers they mentioned, Sampater asked, “There was nobody you came here wanting to study with, then, a name you knew?” “Orrec Caspro.”
“Ha!” He stared at me, laughed, and raised his mug. “You’re a poet,
then!”
“No, no. I only—“ I didn’t know what I was. I didn’t know enough to know what I was, or wanted to do or be. I’d never felt so ignorant,
Sampater drained his mug and cried, “One more round, on me, and I’ll take you to his house ”
“No, I can’t—”
“Why not? He’s not a professor, you know, he keeps no state. You don’t have to approach him on your knees. We’ll go right there, it’s no distance.”
I managed to get out of it by insisting that I must be going back to my little brother. I paid for our beer, which endeared me to them both, and Sampater told me how to get to Caspro’s house, just up another street or two and around the corner. “Go see him, go see him tomorrow,” he said. “Or, listen, I’ll come by for you.” I assured him I’d go, and would use his name as a password, and so I got away from the Gross Tun and back to the Quail, with my head spinning.
Waking early, lying thinking as the daylight grew in the low room, I made up my mind. My vague plans of becoming a student at the University had dissolved. I didn’t have enough money, I didn’t have enough training, and I didn’t think I could become one of those ligh-thearted fellows at the Gross Tun. They were my age, but we’d reached our age by different roads.
What I wanted was work, to support myself and Melle. In a city this size, without slaves, there must be work to do, I knew the name of only one person in Mesun: so, to him I would go. If he couldn’t give me work, I’d find it elsewhere.
When Melle woke I told her we were going to buy some fine new city clothes. She liked that idea. The sour landlady told us how to get to the cloth market at the foot of the hill of the citadel, and there we found booths and booths of used clothing, where we could get decked out decently or even somewhat grandly.
I saw Melle looking with a kind of wistful awe at a robe of worn but beautiful patterned ivory silk. I said, “Squeaky, you don’t have to keep being Miv, you know.”
She hunched up with shyness. “It’s too big,” she murmured. In fact it was a robe for a grown woman. When we had admired it and left it behind she said to me, “It looked like Diero.” She was right.
We both ended up with the trousers, linen shirt, and dark vest or tunic that men and boys in Mesun wore. For Melle I found an elegant small velvet vest with buttons made of copper pennies. She kept looking down at her buttons as we climbed back up to the citadel. “Now I will never not have some money,” she said.
We ate bread with oil and olives at a street vendor’s stall, and then I said, “Now we’ll go and see the great man.” Melle was delighted. She flitted up the steep stone street ahead of me. As for me, I walked in a kind of dogged, blind, frightened resolution. I had stopped back by the inn for the small packet wrapped in reed-cloth which I now carried.
Sampater’s directions had been good; we found what had to be the house, a tall, narrow one set right against the rock of the hill, the last house on the street. I knocked.
A young woman opened the door. Her skin was so pale her face seemed luminous. Melle and I both stared at her hair—I had never seen such hair in my life. It was like the finest gold wire, it was like a sheep’s fleece combed out, a glory of light about her head. “Oh!” Melle said, and I almost did too.
The young woman smiled a little. I imagine that we were rather funny, big boy and little boy, very clean, very stiff, standing staring round-eyed on the threshold. Her smile was kind, and it heartened me.
“I came to Mesun to see Orrec Caspro, if—if that is possible,” I said.
“I think it’s possible,” she said. “May I tell him who…”
“My name is Gavir Aytana Sidoy. This is my—brother—Miv—”
“I’m Melle,” Melle said. “I’m a girl.” She hunched up her shoulders and looked down, frowning fiercely, like a small falcon.
“Please come in,” the young woman said. “I’m Memer Galva. I’ll go ask if Orrec is free—“ And she was off, quick and light, carrying her marvelous hair like a candle flame, a halo of sunlight.
We stood in a narrow entrance hall. There were several doorways to rooms on either side.
Melle put her hand in mine. “Is it all right if I’m not Miv?” she whispered.
“Of course. I’m glad you’re not Miv.”
She nodded. Then she said again, louder, “Oh!”
I looked where she was looking, a little farther down the hall. A lion was crossing the hall.
It paid no attention to us at all, but stood in a doorway lashing its tail and looked back impatiently over its shoulder. It was not a black marsh lion; it was the color of sand, and not very large. I said with no voice, “Ennu!”
“I’m coming,” a woman said, and she appeared, crossing the hallway, following the lion.
She saw us and stopped. “Oh dear,” she said. “Please don’t be afraid. She’s quite tame, I didn’t know anybody was here. Won’t you come on in to the hearth room?”
The lion turned around and sat down, still looking impatient. The woman put her hand on its head and said something to it, and it said, “Aoww,” in a complaining way.
I looked at Melle. She stood rigid, staring at the lion, whether with terror or fascination I couldn’t tell. The woman spoke to Melle: “Her name is Shetar, and she’s been with us ever since she was a kitten. Would you like to pet her? She likes being petted,” The woman’s voice was extraordinarily pleasant, low-pitched, almost hoarse, but with a lulling in it. And she spoke with the Uplands accent, like Chamry Bern.
Melle clutched my hand more strongly and nodded.
I came forward with her, tentatively. The woman smiled at us and said, “I’m Gry.”
