Dying of the Light

maybe. Is that right? Ah,

I cannot say. Tough moral issue, utter truth! Maybe Jaan's duels serve some purpose, eh, for his people, for us. But your duel is utter folly, serves nothing, just gets you dead. And Gwen stays with Jaan and Garse forever, until they lose a duel maybe, and then it is not so pleasant for her.'

Ruark paused and finished his wine, then swiveled around on his stool to pour himself another glass. Dirk sat very still, Gwen's eyes on him, her patient stare heavy enough to feel. His head pounded. Ruark was confusing everything, he thought again. He had to do the right thing, but what was it? Suddenly all his insights and his decisions had evaporated on him. The silence lay thick over the workroom.

'I won't run,' Dirk said at last. 'I won't. But I won't duel, either. I'll go there and tell them my decision, refuse to fight.'

The Kimdissi swirled his wine and chuckled. 'Well, a certain moral courage is in that. Utter truth. Jesus Christ and Socrates and Erika Stormjones and now Dirk t'Larien, great martyrs of history, yes. Maybe the Redsteel poet will write something on you.'

Gwen gave a more serious answer. 'These are Braiths, Dirk, Braith highbonds of the old school. On High Kavalaan itself you might never be challenged to duel. The highbond councils recognize that offworlders don't adhere to then: code. But this is different. The arbiter will rule you forfeit, and Bretan Braith and his holdfast- brothers will kill you or hunt you down. By refusing to duel, in their eyes, you'll have proven yourself a mockman.'

'Ican't run,' Dirk repeated. His arguments were all gone suddenly; he had nothing left but emotion, a determination to face the dawn and see it through.

'You push away your only sanity, yes, in truth. It is no cowardice, Dirk. The bravest choice of all, think that way, to risk their scorn by flight. Even then, you face peril. Probably they hunt you, Bretan Braith if he lives, the others if not, you know? But you'll live, avoid them maybe, help Gwen.'

'I can't,' Dirk said. 'I promised them, Jaan and Garse.'

'Promise? What? That you'd die?'

'No. Yes. I mean, Jaan had me promise to be a brother to Janacek. They wouldn't be in this duel if Vikary hadn't been trying to get me out of trouble.'

'After Garse pushed you in,' Gwen said bitterly, and Dirk started at the sudden venom in her quiet tones.

'They could die tomorrow too,' Dirk said uncertainly. 'And I'm responsible for that. Now you say I should desert them.'

Gwen stepped very close to him and lifted her hands. Her fingers lightly grazed his cheeks as she brushed gray-brown hair back from his forehead, and the wide green eyes stared into his. Suddenly he remembered other promises: the whisperjewel, the whisperjewel. And times long gone came flashing back, and the world spun, and right and wrong began to melt and run together.

'Dirk, listen to me,' Gwen said slowly. 'Jaan has been in six duels because of me. Garse, who doesn't even love me, has shared four of those. They've killed for me, for my pride, my honor. I didn't ask it, no more than you asked for their protection. It was their conception of my honor, not my own. But still, those duels were for me as much as this one is for you. Despite that, you asked me to leave them, to return to you, to love you again.'

'Yes,' Dirk said. 'But– I don't know. I've left a trail of broken promises.' His voice was anguished. 'Jaan named me keth.'

Ruark snorted. 'If he named you dinner, you would jump into the oven, eh?'

Gwen just shook her head sadly. 'You feel what? A duty? An obligation?'

'I guess,' he said reluctantly.

'Then you've answered yourself, Dirk. You've told me what my answer to you must be. If you feel so strongly that you have to fulfill the duties of a shortterm keth, a bond that doesn't even have any reality on High Kavalaan, how can you ask me to discard the jade- and-silver? Betheyn means more than keth.'

Her soft hands left his face. She stepped back.

Dirk's hand shot out and caught her by the wrist. The left wrist. His grip closed around cold metal and polished jade. 'No,' he said.

Gwen said nothing. She waited.

For Dirk, Ruark was forgotten, the workroom had faded to darkness. There was only Gwen, staring at him, eyes green and wide and full of-what? Promises? Threats? Lost dreams? She waited, all silent, and he fumbled over his words, never knowing what he would say next. And the jade-and-silver was cool in his hand, and he was remembering:

Red teardrops full of love, wrapped in silver and velvet, burning fiercely cold.

Jaan's face: high cheekbones, the clean square jaw, the receding black hair, and the easy smile. His voice, quiet as steel, always even: But I do exist.

The white ghost towers of Kryne Lamiya, wailing, mocking, singing bright despair while a distant drum sounded its low, meaningless booms. In the middle of it all, defiance, resolution. Briefly he had known what to say.

The face of Garse Janacek: distant (the eyes blue smoke, the head held stiffly, the mouth set), hostile (ice in his sockets, a savage smile at play behind his beard), full of bitter humor (his eyes snapping, his teeth bared in death's own grin).

Bretan Braith Lantry: a tic and a glowstone eye, a figure of fear and pity with a cold and frightening kiss.

Red wine in obsidian goblets, vapors that stung the eye, drinking in a room full of cinnamon and a strange fellowship.

Words. A new and special kind of holdfast-brother, Jaan said.

Words. He will be false, Garse promised.

Gwen's face, a younger Gwen, slimmer, with eyes somehow wider. Gwen laughing. Gwen crying. Gwen in orgasm. Holding him, her breasts flushed and red, the blush spreading over her body. Gwen whispering to him, Ilove you, I love you. Jenny!

A solitary black shadow, poling a low barge down an endless dark canal.

Remembering.

His hand trembled where it gripped her. 'If I do not duel,' he said, 'you will leave Jaan, then? And come with me?'

Her answering nod was painfully slow. 'Yes. I thought of it all day, talked about it with Arkin. We had planned it so he would bring you up here, and I'd tell Jaan and Garse that I had to work.'

Dirk unfolded his legs from beneath him, and they tingled to the jabs of a hundred tiny knives as the sleep and the stiffness ran out of them. He stood up, and he was decided. 'You were going to do this anyway, then? It's not just because of the duel?'

She shook her head.

'Then I'll go. How soon can we leave Worlorn?'

'Two weeks and three days,' Ruark said. 'No ship till then.'

'We'll have to hide,' Gwen said. 'All things considered, it's the only safe course. I wasn't sure this afternoon whether I should tell Jaan my decision or simply leave. I thought maybe we would talk, then go up together to face him. But the duel business settles it. You would not be allowed to leave now.'

Ruark climbed down off his stool. 'Go, then,' he said. 'I'll stay, keep watch, you can call and I tell you what happens. Safe enough for me, unless Garsey and Jaantony lose their duel. Then I'd come quick, run and join you, eh?'

Dirk took Gwen's hands. 'I love you,' he said. 'Still. I do.'

She smiled gravely. 'Yes. I'm glad, Dirk. Maybe it will work again. But we have to move fast, lose ourselves thoroughly. From now on, all Kavalars are poison to us.'

'All right,' he said. 'Where?'

'Go down and get your things, you'll need warm clothing. Then meet me up on the roof. We'll take the aircar and decide after we're on our way.'