Page 50 of Something Human

For a moment Rus didn’t realize what he was going to say, and by the time it struck him, it was too late—not that there had ever really been anything he could have done. But now Unumus was off and running, describing Rus’s dream—or something vaguely like Rus’s dream—in more detail than Rus had related it to him, and adding a long diatribe on its significance.

Gunthanaruth’s bard could not hide his impatience with the diatribe, but he thanked Unumus for the news when he finally finished, and he looked across at Rus to say, “My lord will be glad to hear this, kahar, that the goddess has so favoured you.” He offered a friendly smile. “He asked me for news of you in particular. And are you quite recovered from your injuries?”

Talk moved on, and no one returned to the topic of the dream while they sat around the hearth. It was a little esoteric, especially the way Unumus had framed it, not the sort of thing to discuss casually. But Rus knew he would have questions to answer when he was alone with Kuth and Genet.

That didn’t happen until the following morning. Rus had been out for an early ride, and came back by way of their house, hoping to join them for breakfast. He met Kuth at the woodpile outside.

“Rus! You’d better come in. Genet wants to know about this vision that you somehow failed to mention to us.”

“I’m sure she does,” said Rus, sliding down from his horse and setting her loose to graze as best she could on the sparse vegetation around the house. “I assure you, it wasn’t what Unumus made it sound.”

Kuth rolled his eyes. “We know that, kahar. Come inside.”

Genet looked up from where she sat by the hearth as they came through the door. She had bread baking on a pan, and the house was warm and fragrant with the smell.

It was a large, round, well-kept house, with hangings on the walls and rugs on the floors, the roof-posts carved and painted, bunches of dried herbs, flowers, and onions hanging from the rafters. Kuth and Genet both held positions of high status and lived comfortably. The paraphernalia of their trades—his medicines and her ink and needles—were stored in painted chests around the edges of the room, and the family’s sleeping-platform on the far side was screened by more colourful hangings.

Genet herself, sitting by her hearth, looked, as usual, like the ideal Luth wife: blonde and rosy-cheeked, with a figure for child-bearing and for comfortably hefting and herding the children once they were born. Her arms, bare in the warmth of the house, were tattooed symmetrically in a style like Rus’s—the work, in this case, of the last vahat, Genet’s tutor. Genet and her husband were the same age, five years older than Rus. Meret, a girl as pretty as her mother, sat on the opposite side of the hearth, trying to get Gil to stay in her lap.

“Roos! Roos!” the baby announced as he came through the door. He was a favourite now.

“Ah,” said Genet, “the great mystic joins us.”

“Did you really have a vision, Rusanarath?” Meret asked, hauling her little sister back onto her lap.

Rus took a seat between Meret and her mother. “No,” he said, “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?” Meret repeated indignantly. “Why do you not know?”

“Because,” said her father, settling by the hearth himself, “it can be hard to tell what is a vision and what isn’t.” To Genet he added, “It’s as I said—he would have told us about it if he thought it important. Isn’t that right, Rus?”

Rus nodded. “I forgot about it, to be honest.”

“ROOOS!” Gil threw herself back against her sister and wriggled out of her grip to lunge for Rus, who caught her and scooped her into his own lap.

He told his story as they ate breakfast, pausing to snatch mouthfuls of bread and beans past the baby’s grabbing hands, and to offer her small pieces of bread which she would nibble and then push generously back into his face.

“I think it was just a dream,” he concluded, “because we’d been talking about painting the hall the night before, and … and I’d been having other odd dreams around that time.” And because the goddess had not been wearing his kilt pin, but he couldn’t explain that. “I wish I hadn’t told Unumus about it—I knew it was a mistake as soon as it was out of my mouth. And I suppose all dreams come from the gods in some way, but even if this was a vision, I don’t think it means what he thinks it does.”

He paused there. This was a dangerous topic for him. He didn’t think the only reason he disagreed with Unumus about chastity was because he was no longer chaste himself, but he was afraid of revealing too much.

“Of course not,” Kuth agreed. “It’s the one string to his lyre, purity this, purity that. He thinks just because he gets it out of the Kosoth books, no one can find fault with it, but I’ll tell you what. The Kosoth men don’t respect their women.”

“They don’t,” said Rus, “but what does that have to do with it?”

“It’s at the back of all this talk about purity,” said Genet. Obviously it was something husband and wife had talked of together. “When you scratch the surface, what it means is, stay away from women because they’re dirty.”

“But that’s … ” Ridiculous, of course. But she was right; that was where the logic took you. “And Unumus thinks because the kahar are set apart from women, we should think like this too.”

“What I’d like to know,” said Kuth, “is why. What’s in it for him, peddling this nonsense?”

“Oh, I think he’s sincere, in his way,” said Genet. “A zealot.”

“I think you’re right,” said Rus.

“Bread!” said the baby. “Bread bread! More bread!”

“What’s a zealot?” asked Meret.