“What good is that, without understanding? How few of them ever shared understanding, from my words or from the patterns I wove that spoke more than words. As for myself, I tried so hard to learn, to share the Valan thinking. I even became a trader, trading a bolt of seasilk—for you. And at the last, I could well have become a death-hastener, and then Death would have sailed the waves from one pole to the other. It was only for love of you that I did not.”
She saw him wipe a tear from his cheek and thought, This time I’ve gone too far, but I have to make certain he knows his own mind. “Are you quite sure you want to share our lot, Spinel, now that you know it’s forever?”
“You know I am.”
Merwen paused a moment. “Then go share the news with Nisi. She may not be sure.”
Nisi the Deceiver had come back unexpectedly, just before all the other Valans started to leave. She promptly Unspoke everyone and withdrew alone, and for that she won respect from the Gathering.
Spinel remembered how Nisi had stood up for him, when he first came to Shora and everyone seemed to hate him. “Merwen says I should tell her,” he told Lystra.
“Someone has to tell her,” Lystra agreed. “It’s right that you should.”
The next day, Spinel and Lystra approached Nisi on her isolated offshoot raft. Nisi hugged her knees and did not acknowledge the visitors. Like Spinel, she had let her hair grow out, and the strands knitted over her forehead.
Spinel knew that Nisi was determined to make no sign. Her crime still weighed heavily upon her, and that was right. But suppose she really did want to go back? To lose Valedon forever—the thought was so awful that Spinel himself had not let himself think of it yet. On Shora he had Lystra, and that was what mattered. But it was hard to say what mattered most for Nisi. “Nisi, you have to hear this, just once. Valans are leaving, all of them, to come no more. It’s your last chance; do you understand?”
Nisi made no sign.
Suddenly he added, “Nisi, speak with me—or I’ll go Unspoken.”
Startled, Lystra stared at him. Why should Spinel care to share Nisi’s withdrawal?
Spinel himself was scared, and not sure just what he had intended. He watched Nisi anxiously, but she kept still. “Look, I didn’t mean it; that is—”
Lystra’s expression was scandalized. Spinel had to follow through on his impulse.
“Berenice!” He rushed to her, kneeling on the raft to look into her face, pouring out in Valan, “Lady Berenice, you can’t do this to me. You know I couldn’t keep quiet a whole year: I’d die for sure. Please, Lady Berenice.”
Her gaze descended perceptibly, and a smile tugged at her lips. “Spinel, you’re still a commoner, after all.”
“Well,” he said shamefacedly, dismayed at how quickly he reverted to his old ways. “I can’t change what I am overnight.”
“Nor can I. And yet, one can’t stop changing, either.” She took his hand and laced her fingers with his, as only Valans could, and Spinel felt ice tickle down his spine. Nisi looked up and past him again. “If Ral had only asked me to share protecting, I would have gone back with him. What else is love for? But it’s too late for us. Here,” she said, and handed him a whorlshell of exquisite pink and yellow swirls. “It’s for his daughter; I promised, once. When you return to Valedon, will you…?”
“I will.”
She withdrew from him, then, to her silence.
Lystra pulled him roughly away. “Spinel! You didn’t say you’re going back?”
“I—I don’t know.” A sense of loss overwhelmed him. The tide lapping in the harbor, the towering limestone cliffs, even the spurt of a ripe tomato on his tongue, and the feisty old market vendors, and his father and mother: all of it he would never see again. “I just can’t bear not to go back, even to visit. Oh, why does it all have to be so impossible?” The day he turned purple, he was sure that he would never face such a terrible choice again. But now, when he might never see home again, it seemed that he had yet to really make that choice.
“You’re one of us now,” Lystra insisted. “You’ve said it, and you know it. Why should you return to that ocean of despair?”
“I’m a troublesharer. Merwen never expected me to stay here. She wanted me to share learning on Valedon, as she did: to weave words like a Spirit Caller. Yes, because all they really need is a spirit to call on—the spirit of Shora, not the Patriarch. This is what I can share.”
“Have you lost your head? What do you expect to do with such barbarians?”
“I can do more than sing for them.”
“Spinel, of all the Valans who’ve come here, how many shared? Stay here and be safe. Help raise our daughters; yes, we need daughters so that the departed souls can find new homes. That’s what Merwen brought you here for.”
Spinel was so overcome that he could say nothing at first. To think that even Lystra would want to share his blood, for all his hated lineage, to make a child that might have hair or lack webs between the fingers. His hand brushed her scalp. “But Lystra, are we really safe, even here? Will our daughters be safe?”
For that Lystra had no answer.
“Death-hasteners say they won’t come back, but they could change their minds, especially when Malachite returns. We can’t rest until every one of them shares healing.”
Lystra turned away. “Well, then, do what you have to.”
“You could come too, Lystra.”
“Who, me? To that dry bone of a planet?”
Back at Raia-el, they talked for long hours, until the sun was gone and the half-moon of Valedon had risen high in the sky.
17
SPINEL LEAPED OUT of the boat and tied it to a post at the former traders’ raft. Lystra followed, warily. Ahead of them rose the moonferry, with the same old creased fins and crackled insignia. Spinel had the feeling it was bound to collapse after just one more trip.
Captain Dak looked much the same, several days unshaven, his brow etched with deep herringbone wrinkles that belied his easy grin. His breath came sour, and he was sure to have a bottle hidden away somewhere.
“Hey there, Dak; how’s business?”
Dak’s jaw shifted sideways. “It wouldn’t be half bad, if I’d earned a pension from ten thousand years of service. And yourself, starling?”
“Oh, all right. Listen, how much would a pair of tickets come to, one-way?”
“The same as always—and there’s none but one-way.” His body shook with laughter, then abruptly he was serious again. “Might I ask who they’re for?”
“Why, us, of course. You know Lystra, don’t you?” Spinel put his arm around her. “Lystra the Intemperate One.”
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am. Uh”—Dak kneaded his bristly chin—“no offense, but you folks do plan to put something on, don’t you?”
“Well…I guess we figured we could get clothes when we reach Valedon.” Spinel looked uncertainly at Lystra, whose frown was thick with distaste.
Dak waved his hand dismissively. “I can scrounge up an old shirt for you.”
“Gee, Dak, thanks a lot.”
“I don’t know what for. I’m ferrying you to certain death.”
Spinel stared at him.
“Don’t you have ears, starling? Haven’t you heard how it is? Valans don’t want the least thing to do with catfish anymore. They’ll shoot you on sight.”
Spinel put his hands at his hips. “You can’t scare us, Dak; we know all about it. We just won a war.”
“Then why start another? Listen: maybe you could make it back, if you clear up that skin of yours, but your lady friend can forget it. Not another passenger would even board my ship with her on it.”
“What?” Spinel’s mouth hung open with dismay. “That’s outrageous.”
“It’s plain fact.” Dak lowered his voice sympathetically. “Starling, of all the planets I’ve known, you’re standing on the coziest one right now, do you hear? The only one free of the Patriarch. Whatever do you want to leave for?”
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“We can’t ever be safe here, not so long as Valans are all out there.”
“And you aim to set them straight, is that it?” Dak nodded. “And once that’s settled, you’ll move on to Arcturon, and Sol-Rex, and even Torr itself, I suppose.”
“Well…”
“You’ll never be ‘safe’ otherwise,” Dak assured him. “The whole universe’ll blow up, anyhow, in another hundred billion years; you plan to solve that one too?”
“You got to start somewhere.”
Dak shook his head. “A fool shares gold with strangers. Look.” He thumbed at the door of his ship. “I’m still available to whoever wants the Ocean Moon. It takes two to ‘share learning,’ starling.”
“And one to start…” He turned to Lystra—
She was gone.
The bundle of herbs and medicines for the ferry ticket sat on the raft, but Lystra’s craft was a dark shape shrinking across the sea behind her glider squid.
“Lystra!” Spinel’s cry set off a flock of clickflies swirling in surprise, but Lystra was too far away to hear. He skipped back to the edge of the dock and stood there, dazed.
Lystra had left him alone. Alone to think it out, for the last time, and here he was stumbling through it. Was Dak right, after all? Why had Spinel left Chrysoport the second time, if not because his own people stopped their ears to what he tried to share?
Patience…he had more of that, now, but still infinitely less than the Impatient One.
Lystra’s craft sped on, and his heart strained after it, taut as the harness of the glider squid. Could he bear to stay here, a freak for the rest of his life? What did that matter, if Lystra would carry a child in whose veins his own blood swam?
With a sudden thought, he reached into his package for the seashell that Nisi had given him. Then he walked back toward Dak. “You know, if you think it’s so great here, why not come back after your last trip? You’re more than welcome on Raia-el.”
“Who, me?” Dak’s voice deepened. “I’m too old, starling. Seen too many planets come and go.”
“Shora is even older than you are.”
“I’m too young, then. Too young to settle down.” His grin twisted.
Spinel smiled sadly, knowing that the old man was sure to end his days planet-bound, one way or another. “Just don’t say I never asked. Could you do me one last favor?” He handed Dak the whorlshell. “Send this to that Commander, the one who got sent back to Sardis. Tell him it’s from Berenice, who still loves him.”
Dak blinked. “Whatever you say, starling.”
There, he was quits now; and who could say what might come of it? “And if you’re ever in. Chrysoport, Dak, you can tell them—” His throat ached too much to swallow. “Just tell them the door is still open.” Spinel hugged Dak hard, and the man’s stubble scraped his cheek. Then he spun around, sprinted to the water’s edge, and dove, his starstone dancing on the chain as his body knifed the waves. He plowed outward, fast as he could swim, his head lifting every few minutes to spot the speck of Lystra in the distance, where a friendly fanwing dipped and soared overhead like a hand beckoning, Come, lovesharer, come home.
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