Painfully reminded, as he said it, that he was in debt to many people, mostly for cash.
'I am a servant,' said Sesno Felvus, with these words withdrawing from familiarity into the distance of ritual, and thus sealing up in secrecy the knowledge of all which had passed between them. 'I am a servant not just of the Great God but of the people. As you serve your family, as you serve your people, so it is my pleasure and my privilege to be of service to you.'
So spoke Sesno Felvus, and that was when Hatch – succored by a priest of his religion, succored and nourished, comforted and healed – that was when Hatch knew that he was still of the Frangoni, still truly of the Frangoni, regardless of what the Nexus had done to him. The Frangoni rock was his home, his life, his world – the place where he was accepted and protected, where he was valued and honored.
Despite the manner of his father's death.
'There is yet one thing more which I need,' said Hatch, affirming his new knowledge to himself by meticulous attention to the rituals of his faith.
'Speak.'
'I think that Lupus Lon Oliver will yield to me in accordance with your wisdom, but maybe he will fight. If he does, then I must fight for the instructorship. If I fight and win, then I will need a dispensation to accept the instructorship, for to take that job I needs must take an oath to value the Nexus more than my god.'
'Asodo Hatch,' said Sesno Felvus, becoming stern and formal, 'as High Priest of the Great God Mokaragash in the city of Dalar ken Halvar I give you a dispensation to take such an oath.'
Then Hatch thanked the High Priest, said formal words of parting, then went out into the dustlight of the sunheat day.
'Hatch,' said Sesno Felvus.
Hatch turned. The High Priest was standing in the doorway.
'What?' said Hatch, forgetting the courtesies and using a mode of colloquial interrogation which he immediately regretted.
'To survive is victory sufficient,' said Sesno Felvus.
Then nodded, then withdrew into the shadowspace of his quarters. To survive. To survive? What was the old man talking about? Life? Illusion-tank dueling? The fate of the Frangoni race?
Hatch remembered one of the old sayings from the teachings of Dith-zora-ka-mako:
'Wisdom lies but a hair from the idiot.'
In Hatch's estimate, Sesno Felvus had on this occasion failed to manage that hair-fine differentiation between wisdom and… well, not idiocy, not exactly. But platitude. Felvus, Sesno, a platitudinous old Frangoni male | | But still!
Disregarding that lapse into platitudinity, Sesno Felvus had wrought a minor miracle of revelation, and Hatch felt almost lightheaded as he started off down Cap Uba, retracing his steps toward Zambuk Street.
Selling the instructorship outright to Lupus Lon Oliver, allowing his warrior's pride to be bought and sold… the idea was not exactly enrapturing, but… it was a solution! And it was so obvious! Obvious to Sesno Felvus, even though the High Priest was so far removed from the center of immediate crisis. But of course one goes to such a person for advice precisely because such an individual, being free of the turbulence of the moment, is much better placed to consider the options and see the obvious.
But what if Lupus Lon Oliver refused to bribe Asodo Hatch in accordance with Sesno Felvus's suggestion?
What if Lon Oliver refused, and Gan Oliver refused likewise, and Hatch had to fight?
What if Hatch fought and lost? What if he lost and went down in flames, dying in the torn wreckage of a singlefighter? Burning, screaming, falling, down and down, down to the steaming jungles of Cicala or the turbid seas of Yo? What if – 'Go-la!'
Hatch stopped, startled. He was still on the temple precincts, no place for anyone to be addressing him in Nexus Ninetongue. So who – A Frangoni?
Yes, it was a Frangoni!
No person of the purple would ever speak anything other than Frangoni upon such sacred soil. Yet here was Son'sholoma Gezira, he who was son of Vara Gezira, and there was no doubt that he had used the Nexus form of address.
Keeping company with Son'sholoma Gezira were half a dozen young men, all of whom looked anxious. They were barefooted, and wore nothing but loincloths, as befitted their station in life.
All belonged to the didimo caste, and the didimo were hewers of wood and drawers of water. There was precious little wood to hew in Dalar ken Halvar, but nevertheless the caste distinctions had not weakened in the generations since the Frangoni who now dwelt in the City of Sun had departed from the Elephant Coast, and it was wrong for one of low caste to open a conversation with one of higher status on such sacred soil.
'May we speak?' said Son'sholoma, still using the Code Seven which served as the Commonspeak of the Nexus.
'Who speaks to me here speaks to me in the tongue proper to the place,' said Hatch, phrasing his anger in Frangoni.
Only three years earlier, Hatch and Son'sholoma had been peers in the Combat College, but much had changed since then.
Son'sholoma had disgraced himself, for one thing. Now Hatch spoke roughly, and he spoke in the mode of war, making his anger plain.
Son'sholoma had breached the protocols fitting to Temple Isherzan.
Hatch was all the more angry because his faith in the propriety of the customs of his own people was so weak – and weak at a time when he was trying to draw emotional support from his unity with the traditions of his people.
'Have I offended you?' said Son'sholoma, sounding surprised.
Son'sholoma Gezira was not prepared for Hatch to be so fiercely the Frangoni, because of course Son'sholoma had no knowledge of the truly strenuous combat of cultures which Hatch was manfully endeavoring to resolve in favor of his Frangoni half.
'Your tongue is the offence,' said Hatch, with an intolerance which rejected all his Nexus training.
The caste difference he could overlook. After all, when Hatch and Son'sholoma had trained together in the Combat College, they had shared their lives without any regard for caste. But this was not the Combat College. This was Cap Uba, the Frangoni rock, the island of refuge, the place which was theirs and theirs alone in a culture otherwise alien, and nobody should ever compromise the emotional security of that place by speaking there in a foreign tongue.
'I meant no offence, brother,' said Son'sholoma.
Hatch stiffened, quite shocked. This time his shock was quite genuine. It owed nothing to Hatch's inner conflicts. Hatch was shocked because Son'sholoma had switched languages, abandoning the Commonspeak of the Nexus to phrase his apology in the Motsu Kazuka of the Nu-chala-nuth. Hatch remembered Beggar Grim speaking that very day of brotherhood, of the Way of the Nu-chala-nuth, and he remembered the beggar's terrifying hope. Hope of being first made Real then made equal, and then – most terrifying of ambitions, this – enriched out of his beggarhood into the full liberties of manhood.
Grim's beggar-babbling had made only a momentary impression on Hatch, but he was shocked rigid to find Son'sholoma Gezira speaking atop the Frangoni rock in Motsu Kazura, the tongue of the Nu-chala-nuth, a religion which should by rights have died out of memory twenty thousand years ago.
'I give you five words,' said Hatch, speaking Frangoni, and again speaking very much in the mode of war.
In the Frangoni, to offer someone 'five words' was a threat.
The person thus threatened had 'five words' in which to explain themselves, with the implication being that dire consequences would follow if the explanation proved inadequate.
'Brother,' said Son'sholoma, still speaking the Motsu Kazuka of the Nu-chala-nuth, albeit haltingly. 'I want you to me the teaching. You my teacher, the Way.'
His atrocious accent, his stumbling grammar, the hesitation of his tongue – all these things told Hatch that Son'sholoma had scarcely the barest rudiments of Motsu Kazuka at his command. But Son'sholoma had learnt enough of that language to ask something utterly appalling.
'I don't understand a word you're saying,' said Hatch, in his native Frangoni.
'Then understand me now,' said Son'sholoma Gezira, at last consenting to use that same Frangoni tongue. 'I
