Page 14 of Something Human

Suddenly Adares realized how odd this whole situation was, with Rus unmistakably displaying himself and looking bashful about it—as well he might, with a body like that. It was like the invitation to share the bed, which seemed so boldly flirtatious that it had to be innocent. Adares felt again as if he should say that he was a ladies’ man, and had to remind himself again that it would probably make matters worse. Also, in this situation, it was starting to feel like it would have been a lie.

“How long did it take to draw all that?” he said instead.

“To draw? A couple of hours. You mean how long did it take to ink it.” He shrugged. “I don’t know exactly. They do it in stages over a week, and I was, what do you call it? Drugged—most of the time.”

“Drugged?” said Adares, intrigued. “Really?”

Rus nodded. “Part of the initiation. Our healers have a great knowledge of such things—and they did not get it from the Kossian books. The drugs for the initiation—that’s when I had the tattoos done—they’re part of the ceremony, to make it easier to feel you’re giving yourself up to the gods. It’s supposed to be a good feeling.”

“Supposed to be?”

“I didn’t like it.” He brushed past that quickly. “The initiation drugs are sacred, you’re not allowed to use them again. But we do have others—just different combinations of the same things, and they are for pain of all kinds. Our healers are good. Though,” he added, running a hand gingerly over the bandages on his leg, “I think yours must be good too.”

Adares frowned. “I didn’t know. I mean, that you had drugs and so on.”

He went to check the temperature of the water on the brazier, though he knew it would not be hot yet.

“You could use some of those drugs now, couldn’t you? All I can give you is wine, and it’s not much use.”

“That’s all right. If I were drugged, we couldn’t talk.” He had drawn his good leg up and wrapped his arms around it, so that the blue curls on his forearms lay across the matching designs on his shin. He seemed more at ease now.

“You’re not thinking that I should have left well enough alone and let your own people take care of you?” said Adares, only half jokingly.

“Adares. You saved my life. Our headman knows that the bull-riders win his battles for him—if we don’t die on the field, we are taken care of. And our healers know some things about Phemian ways. They looked at the arrow in me, and they said, ‘It’s poisoned. You won’t live.’ When I found you, I had been left to die, the same as you had. I … went looking on the battlefield for survivors, to be useful in the time I had left.” He mentioned this almost apologetically, and Adares thought he did not want to be praised for it.

“In all fairness,” Adares said, “my people didn’t really leave me to die. Or … I wouldn’t think so. I think they must have believed I was dead already.”

“They probably did not even know where you were,” said Rus reasonably. “You were completely hidden under that cart.” He looked at Adares thoughtfully for a moment. “I have not stopped to wonder how you got there in the first place. Now that I think about it, it is something rather strange.”

“I ran into it,” Adares said simply. He was surprised not to find this more difficult to talk about. “On purpose. I can remember why I did it—we were trying to take out as many of your siege machines as we could, as a kind of last-ditch strategy. And I could see that if this one went down, it would break up the charge, like a big rock on the shoreline—the wave would break on either side of it.

“All that more or less makes sense. What I can’t remember is whether I had any idea of surviving after I charged into the thing. I don’t suppose I did. I was riding downhill—I was on the right flank of the division that was trying to retreat, just in front of where this charge was coming across—and I just galloped straight at the thing, which took the driver by surprise, as you can imagine. He tried to get out of the way, but he couldn’t turn his horses sharply enough, and the whole cart pitched up onto two wheels—I suppose the men inside were thrown out, if they hadn’t jumped clear already. I couldn’t stop in time, of course—my horse was killed when she slammed into the cart, and the whole thing just came down on top of both of us. I don’t know whether I ended up buying enough time for the retreat or not.”

Rus sat staring up at Adares in silence for so long that Adares finally said, “What?”

“I thought you said you were a … what did you say you were?”

“An administrator. But I had military training—I did say that.”

“And great courage—that is what you did not say. To sacrifice yourself on the battlefield like that—I do not think that is the normal job of an ‘administrator.’”

Adares laughed. “Oh, well—in the colonies it sometimes seems nobody does just their normal job. When I first came to Tios, I was landed with that awful post in the public works office. I came expecting a job as a junior assistant to the archon, and ended up working for the man in charge of inspecting public drains.”

Once again, Rus accepted the change of topic with equanimity. “What would they be, public drains?”

“Big pipes, laid under the streets, where the waste water from the gutters, and the fountains—and the public toilets, but you won’t know what those are either—is all collected, and channelled into the main drain, which empties out into the sea.”

“And that is how you thought you could get back into Tios—from this drain.”

“Yes.”

“And the public toilets?”

“Here,” said Adares, hoisting the jug of water off of the brazier. “This should be warm enough now.”

He emptied the jug into the half-full tub by the bed. Rus shifted over on the bed and levered himself down to sit in the tub without assistance, while Adares hovered. When he was seated in the water, he looked up at Adares with a little, wry smile.

“Here,” said Adares, offering him a cloth and the glass vial of soap that he had found in the pharmacy. “You wash, and I will regale you with the wonders of Phemian public toilets.”