Dying of the Light

Garsey, so his grievance against Dirk would go unsettled. He demanded that the second duel be stayed till Dirk could be found. The arbiter said yes to him. A Braith tool, the arbiter, yes, agreed with everything the animals wanted. Roseph high-Braith, they called him, an utter malevolent little man.'

'The Ironjades,' Dirk said. 'Jaan and Garse. Did they say anything?'

'Jaantony, no. He said nothing at all, no, just kept standing very still in his corner of the death-square. All the rest of them were running around, shouting and yelling and being Kavalar. Nobody else was even in the square but Jaan, no, but he kept standing there looking around, like he expected the duel to start any second. Garsey, now, he got very angry. First, when you did not come, he made jokes about you being sick, then he got very cold and silent for a time, quiet as Jaan was, but later he was a little less angry, I think, so he began to argue with Bretan Braith and the arbiter and the other dueler, Chell. All the Braiths were here, to witness perhaps. I did not know we had so much company in Larteyn, no. Well, I did abstractly, yes, but it is different when they come together all in one place. A pair of Shanagates came also, though not the Redsteel poet, so we were short three, you two and him. Otherwise, perhaps it was a city council meeting, everyone dressed up formally.' He chuckled.

'Do you know what's going to happen now?' Dirk said.

'Do not worry,' Ruark said. 'You two. will hide and catch the ship, yes. They cannot track you down, a whole planet to hunt! The Braiths, I think, will not even look. Truth, they had you named a mockman.

Bretan Braith demanded it, and his partner spoke about old traditions, and others of the Braiths too, and the arbiter said yes, that if you did not come to duel you are no true man at all. So they will hunt you, maybe, but not with special purpose, you are now just another animal to kill, any other will do as well.'

'Mockman,' Dirk said hollowly. Oddly, he felt as if he had lost something.

'To Bretan Braith and those, yes. Garse, I think, will try harder to find you, but he will not hunt you like an animal. He swore that you would duel, duel Bretan Braith and then duel him, or maybe him first.'

'What about Vikary?' Dirk said.

'I have told you, he said nothing at all, nothing.'

Gwen rose from the bed. 'You've only been talking about Dirk,' she said to Ruark. 'What about me?'

'You?' Ruark's pale eyes blinked. 'The Braiths said you were mockman too, but Garse would not allow it. He talked very strong of dueling any who touched you. Roseph high-Braith waffled. He wanted to call you mockman as well as Dirk, but Garsey was very angry, and I understand Kavalar duelers can challenge arbiters who make bad decisions, though they are still bound to follow the decision, truth. So, sweet Gwen, you are still betheyn and protected, and they will only bring you back if they catch you. Afterwards, you will be punished, but it will be a punishment of Ironjade. In truth, they did not talk of you overmuch, many more words were spent on Dirk. You are only a woman, eh?'

Gwen said nothing.

'We'll call you again in a few days,' Dirk said.

'Dirk, it must be a picked time, no? I am not always in this dust hole.' Ruark gave another little chuckle at that.

'In three days, then, at dusk again. We've got to give some thought to how we're going to get to the ship. I figure that Jaan and Garse will cover the space-field when the time comes.'

Ruark nodded. 'I will think on it.'

'Can you get us weapons?' Gwen asked suddenly.

'Weapons?' The Kimdissi made a clucking noise. 'Truth, Gwen, the Kavalar is seeping into your blood. I am from Kimdiss. What do I know of lasers and such, violent things? I can try, however, for you, for Dirk my friend. We will talk of it when we speak again; now I must go.'

His face dissolved, and Dirk blacked out the wall-screen before turning to face Gwen. 'You want to fight them? Is that wise?'

'I don't know,' she said. She walked to the door slowly, turned, walked back again. And then stopped; the compartment was so small that it was impossible to pace with any real vehemence.

'Voice!' Dirk said as sudden inspiration struck. 'Is there a gun shop in Challenge? A place where we can purchase lasers or other weapons?'

'I regret to inform you that the norms of ai-Emerel prohibit the carrying of personal weaponry,' the Voice replied.

'Sport weapons?' Dirk suggested. 'For hunting and target practice?'

'I regret to inform you that the norms of ai-Emerel prohibit all blood sports and games based on sublimated violence. If you are a member of a culture where such pursuits are esteemed, please be assured that no insult is intended to your homeworld. These forms of recreation are available elsewhere on Worlorn.'

'Forget it,' Gwen said. 'It was a bad idea anyway.'

Dirk put his hands on her shoulders. 'We won't need weapons in any case,' he said with a smile, 'though I'll admit that it might make me feel a little better to be carrying one. I doubt that I'd know how to use it if the time came.'

'I would,' she said. Her eyes-her wide green eyes-had a hardness in them that Dirk had never seen. For a single strange second he was reminded of Garse Janacek and his icy blue disdain.

'How?' he said.

She waved impatiently and shrugged, so that his hands slid off her shoulders. Then she turned away from him. 'In the field, Arkin and I use projectile guns. To fire tracer-needles when we're trying to keep track of an animal, study its patterns of migration. Sleep darts too. And there are sensor implants the size of a thumbnail that will tell you everything you might want to know about a life form-how it hunts, what it eats, mating habits, brain patterns during various stages of the life cycle. Enough clues like that, and you can work out a whole ecosystem from the data that different species are reporting back. But you have to plant your spies first, and you do that by immobilizing the subjects with darts. I've fired thousands of them. I'm good. I only wish I'd thought to lug one along.'

'It's different,' Dirk said. 'Using a weapon for something like that, and shooting a man with a laser. I've never done either, but I don't think they would be at all comparable.'

Gwen leaned against the door and regarded him sourly from several meters away. 'You don't think I could kill a man?'

'No.'

She smiled. 'Dirk, I'm not the little girl you knew on Avalon. In between then and now I spent several years on High Kavalaan. They were not easy years. I've had other women spit in my face. I've heard Garse Janacek deliver a thousand lectures on the obligations of jade-and-silver. I've been called mock-man and betheyn-bitch by other Kavalar men so often that sometimes I find myself answering to them.' She shook her head. Beneath the broad headband pulled tight across her forehead, her eyes were hard green stone. Jade, Dirk thought inanely, jade as in the armlet she still wore.

'You're angry,' he said. 'It's easy to get angry. But I've known you, love, and you're essentially a gentle person.'

'I was. I try to be. But it's been a long time, Dirk, a long, long time, and it's been building, and Jaan Vikary has been the only part of it that's been any good at all. I've told Arkin; he knows how I feel, what I've felt. There have been times when I've come so close-so damned close. With Garse especially, because in a very odd way he is part of me, and very much a part of Jaan, and it hurts more when it's someone who you care about, someone you could almost love if it weren't for…'

She stopped. Her arms were crossed tightly across her chest and she was frowning, but she stopped. She must have seen the expression on his face, Dirk thought. He wondered what it was.

'Maybe you're right,' she said after a little bit, uncrossing her arms. 'Maybe I couldn't kill anyone. But, you know, I feel as if I could sometimes. And right now, Dirk, I would very much like to have a gun.' She laughed a small unfunny laugh. 'On High Kavalaan, of course, I wasn't allowed to go armed. Why does a betheyn need a sidearm? Her highbond and his teyn protect her. And a woman with a gun might shoot herself. Jaan… well, Jaan has fought to change a lot of things. He tries. I'm here, after all. Most women never leave the safe stone of their holdfasts once they take the jade-and-silver. But for all his trying, and I do respect it, Jaan doesn't understand. He's a highbond, after all, and he's fighting other things as well, and for everything I tell him, Garse tells him something else. Sometimes Jaan doesn't even notice. And the small things,