Dying of the Light

'Fine. What about Garse, then? I haven't had as much a chance to talk to him. Garse is equally enlightened, no doubt?'

That stopped her. 'Garse…' she began. She stopped and shook her head dubiously. 'Well, Garse is more conservative.'

'Yes,' said Dirk. Suddenly he seemed to have it all. 'Yes, I think he is, and that's a big part of your problem, isn't it? On High Kavalaan it's not man and woman. No, it's man and man and maybe woman, but even then she's not so terribly important. You may love Jaan, but you don't care for Garse Janacek all that damn much, do you?' 'I feel a lot of affection for-'

'Do you?'

Gwen's face went hard. 'Stop it,' she said.

Her voice frightened him. He drew back, suddenly and sickeningly aware of the way he had been leaning across the table, pressing, pushing, jabbing, attacking, and taunting her, he who had come to care and to help. 'I'm sorry,' he blurted.

Silence. She was staring at him, her lower lip trembling, while she drew herself together and gathered strength. 'You're right,' she finally said. 'Partly, anyway. I'm not… well… not entirely happy with my lot.' She gave a forced ironic chuckle. 'I guess I fool myself a lot. A bad idea, fooling yourself. Everyone does it, though, everyone. I wear the jade-and-silver and tell myself I'm more than a heldwife, more than other Kavalar women. Why? Just because Jaan says so? Jaan Vikary is a good man, Dirk, really he is, in many ways the best man I have ever known. I did love him, maybe I still do. I don't know. I'm very confused right now. But whether I love him or not, I owe him. Debt and obligation, those are the Kavalar bonds. Love is only something Jaan picked up on Avalon, and I'm not quite sure he's mastered it yet, either. I would have been his teyn, if I could. But he already had a teyn. Besides, not even Jaan would go that far against the customs of his world. You heard what he said about the duels-and all because he searched some old computer banks and found out one of their Kavalar folk heroes had tits.' She smiled grimly. 'Imagine what would happen if he took me to teyn! He would lose everything, just everything. Ironjade is relatively tolerant, yes, but it will be centuries before any holdfast is ready for that. No woman has ever worn the iron-and-glowstone.'

'Why?' Dirk said. 'I don't understand. All of you keep making these comments-about breeding women and heldwives and women hiding in caves afraid to come out, all that stuff. And I keep not quite believing it. How did High Kavalaan get so twisted up anyway? What do they have against women? Why is it so critical that the founder of Ironjade was female? Lots of people are, you know.'

Gwen gave him a wan smile and rubbed her temples gently with her fingertips, as if she had a headache she was hoping to massage away. 'You should have let Jaan finish,' she said. 'Then you'd know as much as we do. He was only warming up. He hadn't even gotten to the Sorrowing Plague.' She sighed. 'It is all a very long story, Dirk, and right now I don't have the goddamn energy. Wait till we get back to Larteyn. I'll hunt up a copy of Jaan's thesis and you can read it all for yourself.'

'All right,' Dirk said. 'But there are a few things I'm not going to be able to read in any thesis. A few minutes ago you said you weren't sure if you loved Jaan anymore. You certainly don't love High Kavalaan. I think you hate Garse. So why are you doing all this to yourself?'

'You have a way of asking nasty questions,' she said sourly. 'But before I answer, let me correct you on a few points. I may hate Garse, as you say. Sometimes I'm quite sure that I hate Garse, though it would kill Jaan to hear me say that. At other times, however– I wasn't lying before when I told you that I feel considerable affection for him. When I first arrived on High Kavalaan, I was as dewy-eyed and innocent and vulnerable as I could be. Jaan had explained everything to me beforehand, of course, very patiently, very thoroughly, and I had accepted it. I was from Avalon, after all, and you can't get more sophisticated than Avalon, can you? Not unless you're an Earther. I'd studied all the weird cultures humanity has spread among the stars, and I knew that anyone who steps into a starship has got to be prepared to adapt to widely different social systems and moralities. I knew that sexual- familial customs vary and that Avalon was not necessarily wiser than High Kavalaan in that area. I was very wise, I thought.

'But I wasn't ready for the Kavalars, oh no. As long as I live I will never forget a second of the fear and the trauma of my first day and night in the holdfasts of Ironjade, as Jaan Vikary's betheyn. Especially the first night.' She laughed. 'Jaan had warned me, of course, and– Hell, I just wasn't ready to be shared. What can I say? It was bad, but I lived. Garse helped. He was honestly concerned for me, and very much for Jaan. You might even say he was tender. I confided in him; he listened and cared. And the next morning the verbal abuse started. I was frightened and hurt; Jaan was baffled and gloriously angry. He threw Garse halfway across the room the first time he called me betheyn-bitch. Garse was quiet for a little while after that. He rests fairly often, but he never stops. He is truly remarkable, in a way. He would challenge and kill any Kavalar who insulted me half so badly as he does. He knows that his jokes enrage Jaan and provoke terrible quarrels-or at least they did. By now Jaan has become dulled to it all. Yet he persists. Maybe he can't help himself, or maybe he honestly loathes me, or maybe he just enjoys inflicting pain. If so, I haven't given him much joy these past few years. One of the first things I decided was that I wasn't going to let him make me cry anymore. I haven't. Even when he comes out and says something that makes me want to split his head with an axe, I just smile and grit my teeth and try to think of something unpleasant to say back to him. Once or twice I've managed to throw him off his stride. Usually he leaves me feeling like a crushed bug.

'Yet, in spite of everything, there are other moments as well. Truces, little ceasefires in our never-ending war, times of surprising warmth and compassion. Many of them at night. They always shock me when they come. They're too intense. Once, believe it or not, I told Garse I loved him. He laughed at me. He did not love me, he said loudly, rather I was cro-betheyn to him and he treated me as he was obliged to treat me by the bond that existed between us. That was the last time I even came close to crying. I fought and I fought, and I won. I did not cry. I just shouted something at him and rushed out into the corridor. We lived underground, you know. Everyone lives underground on High Kavalaan. I wasn't wearing much except my bracelet, and I ran around crazy, and finally this man tried to stop me-a drunk, an idiot, a blind man who could not see the jade-and-silver, I don't know. I was so furious I pulled his sidearm out of its holster and smashed him across the face with it, the first time I'd ever hit another human being in anger, and just then Jaan and Garse arrived. Jaan seemed calm, but he was very upset. Garse was almost happy, and spoiling for a fight. As if the man I'd overpowered hadn't been insulted enough, Garse had to tell me that I should pick up all the teeth I'd knocked out and hand them back, that I had quite enough already. They were lucky to avoid a duel over that comment.'

'How the hell did you ever get involved in a situation like this, Gwen?' Dirk demanded. He was struggling to keep his voice from breaking. He was angry with her, hurt for her, and yet oddly-or perhaps not so oddly-elated. It was all true, everything Ruark had told him. The Kimdissi was her good friend and her confidant; no wonder she had sent for him. Her life was a misery, she was a slave, and he could set it right, him. 'You must have had some idea what it would be like.'

She shrugged. 'I lied to myself,' she said, 'and I let Jaan lie to me, although I think he honestly believes all the lovely falsehoods he tells me. If I had it to do. over– But I don't. I was ready for him, Dirk, and I needed him, and I loved him. And he had no iron-and-fire to give me. That he had given already, so he gave me jade-and-silver, and I took it just to be near him, with only the vaguest knowledge of what it meant. I'd lost you not long before. I didn't want Jaan to go as well. So I put on the pretty little bracelet and said very loudly, 'I am more than betheyn,' as if that made a difference. Give a thing a name and it will somehow come to be. To Garse, I am Jaan's betheyn and his cro-betheyn, and that is all. The names define the bonds and duties. What more could there possibly be? To every other Kavalar it is the same. When I try to grow, to step beyond the name, Garse is there, angry, shouting betheyn! at me. Jaan is different, only Jaan, and sometimes I can't help myself and I begin to wonder how he really feels.'

Her hands came up on the tablecloth and became two small fists, side by side. 'The same damn thing, Dirk. You wanted to make me into Jenny, and I saved myself by rejecting the name. But like a fool I took the jade- and-silver, and now I am heldwife and all the denials I can utter won't change that. The same damn thing!' Her voice was shrill, her fists clutched so tightly the knuckles were turning white.