Page 71 of Something Human

“Exactly.”

“But that doesn’t mean that your—”

“Will you both stop talking about his penis in my house, right now,” Kuth cut in, in an urgent whisper. “Rus, sit down.”

Rus hesitated a moment, then dropped down to sit by the hearth. He and Genet glared at one another across the ashes.

“Was it a seduction?” she said finally. “I think it would be, with one such as him.”

Rus said nothing, just sighed angrily.

“Not that it would excuse you,” she added. “You are a grown man, not a young girl, to be seduced by a … ” She gestured contemptuously, words failing her. “By such a thing.”

“Don’t call him a thing,” said Rus through clenched teeth.

There was a knock at the door. Kuth got to his feet to answer it. Rus stared into the remains of the fire.

“Hello,” said Kuth at the door, sounding surprised.

“I’m sorry to bother you so late,” said the caller.

It was Adares. Rus put his head in his hands.

“Do not be sorry,” said Kuth, automatically. “Please come in.”

Adares came in. Rus looked over his shoulder, and their eyes met for a moment. A wry expression passed over the Phemian’s face.

“Will you sit?” said Kuth.

“Thank you, no. I’m here to ask for your help. A couple of my men just came back from the woods with a strange complaint. The, ah, the girl involved says they may have touched something called goatweed? I think the words she used were ‘rolled around in it.’ She says that she warned Kagieros—the man she was out there with, ostensibly—but he doesn’t speak a word of your language and mistook her warning for an invitation, and then when he was stung by the stuff, his cries of pain brought Glaukos, who had been standing watch for them, or … well, watching was involved somehow, anyway, and he tried to come to Kagieros’s aid, or show off in front of the girl, or something, and waded in the goatweed himself. The girl, happily, stayed clear until they’d got themselves out, and I had most of this story from her. She was talking rather fast, that’s why I’m not quite sure of the details. Well, that and I don’t really care or want to know. She said you would be able to do something for them. They seem to be in quite a lot of pain.”

“Yes,” said Kuth, obviously trying not to laugh. “They would be. But it isn’t dangerous—only uncomfortable. I’ll mix up some salve and come with you. If you’ll wait. It will only take a few minutes.”

He lit another lamp and went to the chest where he kept his medicines. There was a pause just long enough to transgress against the Luth laws of hospitality before Genet looked up at Adares and said, “Please. Sit. Lord archon.”

Adares had already told Kuth and Genet to call him Adares, and they had been doing so. He looked as if he were about to remind Genet of that, but thought better of it. He sat. The three of them were at equidistant points around the hearth. None of them spoke. Genet was looking at Adares as though she was trying to see if she could set him on fire with her eyes. Rus watched her warily, waiting for her to show any sign that she was going to say something, so he could stop her. Then he glanced across at Adares, who was looking at him with a frown. The question in Adares’s eyes was clear: Are you all right? And If there’s anything I can do, here I am.

And this, after all, was what he was being offered, Rus thought. This was what he was refusing in favour of a duty he didn’t believe in and a status he didn’t want in a place where he didn’t belong. He could have Adares by his side, knowing what he was thinking, caring whether he was happy or not, wanting to do something about it.

He managed a small smile and a shake of his head. It’s nothing.

What was keeping him from going with Adares? He could pile up small answers to the question—his duty, the shame of bringing scandal on his family, uncertainty about whether it was really what Adares wanted—but maybe the real answer was that he could not imagine himself doing it. Maybe the reason he couldn’t go with Adares was because he was scared to.

Kuth finished preparing his salve, and he and Adares went out to return to the suffering Phemians. Rus got to his feet as soon as they had left.

“I should go,” he told Genet. “I’m tired. You must be too.”

“Good night,” she said stiffly.

He walked out into the night. The moon was up; it was waning, but still bright, silvering the mountain slopes in the distance and the thatched roofs of the village houses. He started across the green between Kuth and Genet’s house and the kahar hall, his mind in turmoil.

Could he just leave with Adares? Even Adares seemed not to be sure that was really possible. Adares had not actually asked him to do it. He had talked about it as a fantasy, but never proposed it as a serious option. Back at the temple in the autumn he had talked as if it wasn’t possible. Now he seemed to have changed his mind, but still he wouldn’t ask. Adares himself had lost his home and been made more or less an outlaw by his people, but he wouldn’t ask the same of Rus. Wisely, because—apparently—Rus wasn’t prepared to say yes.

Everyone had a place within the Great Pattern, and other pieces of the pattern fit in and around each person, holding them in place. Surely all of the things that held Rus here, in the Luth lands, in his role as kahar, bull-fighter, future stathan of the Luth—they must all be part of Heva.

It seems to me you left this tribe a long time ago, Genet had said.

“There you are,” said an irritable voice from behind him. He turned to see Unumus approaching from the direction of the headman’s hall. “No one has seen you since dinner, since you disappeared with the Phemian. One of the boys has been sent looking for you because Suthus wants to speak to you. I see he has wasted his errand.”