Page 16 of Something Human

“I know what that is. Skar, we call them. Sakar, skar, kahar—those are the three classes. The owned, the owners, and the set-apart. My family belongs to the skar. Their land is in the foothills of the mountains. Adares, have you seen mountains?”

“Certainly. The island of Pheme is mostly mountains, inland.”

“Ah, I see. I thought somehow that you would only know the sea, which I have never seen yet.”

“You can see the sea from here—from the gallery of the temple of Anaxe, anyway. When you’re back on your feet … ” It would be a while before he was well enough to want to climb stairs just for a view, and would he still be here then, idling about the temple complex with Adares? It seemed unlikely.

“Mountains are different, though.” Rus ignored the awkward topic, as usual. “They don’t do anything—they just are. It takes a whole week to travel from the headman’s village to my father’s summer pastures, because it is so difficult getting through the mountains. So I do not see my parents often. And you? Are your parents alive?”

“Yes. In Pheme. It takes a week to get there too, by sea, if the wind is in your favour and you have a good pilot. I used to go home more often, in the days when I could still take a whole month off to make the trip.”

“Do you miss Pheme?”

“No. My family writes me pitiful letters. Yours?”

Rus gave him a look. “They don’t read.”

“Oh, right—that’s just you with your set-apartness. To tell the truth, I do miss my family, when I’m away for too long. Not the city they live in, just them.”

“What do they do?”

“They’re aristocrats. They’re like the mountains—they don’t do anything, they just are.”

Rus laughed. “But you left home to come to Tios and do things.”

“More or less.”

“Is Tios like Pheme?”

“Not very much. Pheme is bigger, of course. The biggest city in the world. And it’s crowded—there isn’t much space to expand, between the coast and the mountains. The buildings have four and five storeys in some places, all carved up into apartments—rooms, you know, that people rent.”

“Up, off the ground?” Rus gestured, looking rather alarmed. “One on top of another, you mean, stacked up?”

“Yes, exactly—stacked one on top of another.”

“Is it safe?”

“Not entirely, no. But Tios isn’t crowded like that—they built the walls deliberately with plenty of space inside for new streets and more houses. Then they ran out of money before they could build walls all the way out to the mouth of the narrows—but that’s another matter. Tios is a different colour than Pheme, too.”

“Ah, is the stone different?”

“That’s right. Here it’s yellow limestone. In Pheme they build mostly in brick, pinkish brick—and the temples and civic buildings are made of imported marble, which is white, so the painted carvings show up better than they do here. But I like the limestone. It has a warm look. I like the way Tios looks.”

“It is your home. You love it.”

“It’s true. I’ve lived here for five years. I came here when I was your age, and I knew right away that I wanted to stay. My parents have never really understood. Every time I would try to explain to them that I wanted to stay in Tios, they would think it meant I was in love with a local girl. They thought that was the only possible reason I could want to stay here. They would tell me, ‘You should bring her back to Pheme—she’d be much happier.’ They don’t understand—I am much happier in Tios, and there is no local girl.

“I mean, there are local girls, of course—it wouldn’t be much of a place if there weren’t. There are lots of wonderful girls, in fact, lots of daughters of colonists who were born here, and like it here, and lots of women in the local tribes who are quite charming. When I have time to catch my breath between one crisis and the next, I am sure … you know … I probably will fall in love with one of them. But I made up my mind about Tios without falling in love with anybody.”

Why had he found it so awkward to say that about the local girls? He’d got halfway through his explanation and felt as if he was talking unnecessarily loudly.

Rus nodded but didn’t immediately reply. Finally he said, “I think I know how you feel. Not about the girls, I mean—about your parents.”

“Tell me.”

“I also wanted a different life than my parents, and I did what I could to get it—and they do not understand, not really. I told you we have the three classes, and the kahar, we are supposed to be at the top—set apart for the service of the gods. And so it is in Heva—in the Great Pattern of the world—but in the minds of men and women it is not so simple. My parents respect the gods, yes, but they distrust men who answer only to them—many people do. I was chosen, when I was eleven—it is a competition, you have to enter and do well, in order to be chosen. My father gave me permission to enter, but neither he nor my mother liked it when I was chosen. Still they don’t like it, and it has been eight years.

“It isn’t irrevocable until the initiation—you have to stop growing before you can have tattoos. That was three years ago for me. So there is no going back, now.” He held up his hands against the light for a moment, looking at them thoughtfully. “I am what I am.”