Sam started to protest that Phaed had not said he was a killer, but then did not. It wasn’t the time.
“The Book of the Prophets is a men’s book,” Phaed replied. “We don’t go around quoting it to women. I’m not telling it to you now. You merely overhear it as I tell it to my son. Such is allowed. Women may learn by overhearing. They are so contrary, they will not learn what they are told directly. I learned that with you, Maire.”
Maire nodded. “It’s true, Phaed. I do not much like your prophets. There is too much death in them.”
“You don’t need to like them,” grinned Phaed, with a sidelong grin at Sam, as though to say, we men understand these things. “You have not had the sword revealed to you in all its glory. We are the descendents, followers of blood and the blade, Voorstod and the prophets.”
Sam shook his head. He did not believe his father really meant this. “Those were among the legends Maire left behind,” said Sam softly, reaching for his mother’s hand. “Left behind wisely, it seems, whether she knew them or not. You need not speak to her so.”
“She was always a weeper,” said Phaed in a sentimental tone. “But then, many women are. It is part of their infirmity. So, Maire, are you ready to sing for us to bring our women home? The Awateh will recollect, eventually, what he wanted you for, but I can keep you safe, at least until then, perhaps longer.”
Sam caught his breath. So, so, he would keep her safe. He had known that. His father could not do anything else.
“I cannot sing,” she choked. “The doctor says I have a growth in my throat. Your own doctors can look at it to see I tell you the truth. I will do what else I can, according to my word.”
Phaed stood up and stared for a long moment, seeing through her to the child he had married once. He remembered things about Maire Manone. He remembered her skin, her eyes, the little cries she made when he took her, there on the floor before the fire, with the Gharm watching from the corners, him heated by their eyes and her red as a flower from embarrassment. He had not thought he’d regretted her going. He had not thought he’d looked forward to her return, either, but obviously he’d fooled himself. He had wanted her back.
“Well then,” he said cheerily, without changing expression. “It seems I must keep you safe from the Awateh. How shall I go about that?”
“I wouldn’t know, Phaed,” she said.
“I suppose you’ll do well enough here,” he said. “For the time.” He did not wait for a reply. He stood and walked toward the door. “Come with me, Sam,” he said. “Or lose your head.”
Sam gaped at him. “You’re leaving Mam here alone?”
“Come with me. Leave the woman here while I decide what’s to be done with her. We’re goin’ down to Sarby. Come or have your head blown off, it’s all one to me.” He belied this by grasping Sam’s wrist. Sam threw off his father’s hand. Phaed whistled and three large men came through the door behind him. Sam fought them, Maire fought them. Maire was beaten down upon the hearth and Sam was dragged away. As Phaed went out the door, he looked back once, chuckled, and shook his head.
“You never learn, do you, Maire,” he said, going out into the eternal fogs. “Women never learn,” again, coming back from the mists. “Women never learn.” Like a chant.
“Oh, Holy Mother,” whispered Maire, the words coming from her childhood among the priests, long forgotten. “What will he do to Sam?”
“Mam!” cried Sam from the mists. He could not even fight them because they had twisted a kind of net around him and were carrying him on a pole like some trussed-up animal. It occurred to him even as he twisted and wrenched his body that these men had had experience in taking captives. Most of their captives had no doubt been Gharm, small men and women, but the procedure worked as well for him. Overwhelming force, a net to force immobility, and then jeering laughter and twisting fingers thrust through the mesh to cause additional pain and humiliation.
Nils and Pirva slipped through the door behind Maire and helped her get up. She staggered on her feet, unable to see clearly. “You must come with us,” Nils whispered. “Even if Phaed Girat intends for you to be safe here, there are other men who know you are here and who would take you to the prophet for what credit it will gain them. Men like Mugal Pye and Preu Flandry. Once they know Phaed Girat has been here and gone, those men may come to hunt you down, with sniffers. You must go.”
“I can never escape being tracked that way,” sobbed Maire.
“With us, you can. Now come. At once.” He picked up her hair brush, a notebook she had left lying by the fire. Pirva folded her nightshirt and thrust it into the pack. There was nothing else in the room that belonged to Maire.
“We should try to help Sam!” Maire cried. “That thing around his neck …”
“Sam won’t be hurt,” said Pirva. “We have spies there, where Phaed Girat lives. He has the thing to take the collar off. Phaed Girat doesn’t mean to hurt him. He wants to … to convince him.”
“Convince him of what, for God’s sake?”
“Convince him that Phaed is right,” said Pirva. “That the Cause is just. He will not hurt him so long as he can convince him.”
They dragged at her, urging her to follow them. Slipping the pack straps over her shoulders, she followed Nils through the inner door, back through a half-wrecked building and out the opposite side, for once thankful for the thick, cottony fogs that
