Page 72 of Something Human

Rus drew a breath and let it out before trusting himself to reply. “I am sorry he didn’t find me.”

“Tch,” said Unumus. For a moment he looked as if he would walk on past Rus, but then he stopped, arms folded over his chest. “Gunthanaruth may like your friendship with the Phemian headman,” he said, “but I don’t.”

Had the whole village guessed what was between him and Adares? This time he needed several breaths to remain calm.

“Do you not?” he said. What he wanted to say was, Why do you imagine I would care?

“It makes you neglect your duty as kahar. It was for his sake that you performed the mask dance out of season, was it not?”

“It was not!” Rus almost laughed. This was what Unumus was worked up about? “I didn’t even know he was here when I agreed to do that.”

Unumus sneered at him for a moment, but couldn’t come up with a reply. He had overreached himself in his anger, and apparently forgotten that Rus had—as far as he knew—not met Adares yet when he agreed to do the mask dance. But he was in the right, Rus thought. He had neglected his duty because of Adares. Oh, how he had. He stood waiting for Unumus to say something that he would have to admit was true.

“Can you deny,” Unumus said finally, “that the Phemian has been a bad influence?”

Rus waited a moment to see if there would be more. Then he did laugh. “Yes, Unumus. Yes, I can deny that.”

Unumus opened his mouth and closed it again, frowning ferociously. He looked as if he could sense that something had slipped past him there, but he couldn’t tell what. He must have decided to cut his losses then, because he turned, tossing his head so that his long hair bounced behind him, and walked rapidly on toward the kahar hall, leaving Rus alone on the green. Rus stood and watched him go until he disappeared around the curve of the hall. He felt tired, as if he had no strength left even to feel anything—anger or alarm or even contempt—for Unumus and his accusations.

The kahar hall was white and silver in the moonlight ahead of him, the lines of the freshly-painted decoration around its outer wall dark and indistinct under the shadowing eaves. It was the first time since the repainting that Rus had walked up from this direction in the dark, and he saw the year’s pattern as if for the first time. The painting was unplanned, laid down according to certain rules about how the lines should flow into and around one another, like his own tattoos. There was no picture, only the pattern, a representation of Heva, like a metaphor. And yet as Rus walked up across the green, he saw very clearly the form of a face under the eaves of the kahar hall.

He stopped and stood staring at it. It took up most of the space between the roof and the grass at the base of the wall. It was neither a man’s nor a woman’s face, but it was piercingly realistic in the darkness, like a Pseuchaian painting, although it was formed from the swirls and lines of Luth decoration. It was staring back at him, eyes wide and knowing, smiling a little, a secretive smile of invitation.

He stood still. He knew that when he moved, when he took another step, the face would be gone. It was not really there. They had not painted a face on the kahar hall. It was a trick of the shadows and moonlight in the particular place where was standing, on this particular night. He could probably have made it dissolve into its constituent lines before his eyes if he concentrated.

He remembered Adares saying that he thought the gods would not speak to him in dreams.

He had always felt his connection to the Great Pattern to be the thing that made the most sense in his life. He remembered how he used to feel about it as a boy. He had imagined Heva as a thing that was aware of him, that desired his happiness, because someone had once said to him that to be happy was to fulfil your place in the Great Pattern. When he grew older, of course, he understood that people meant such things in an abstract way, not that the force that ordered the world, that made flowers blossom and snow melt and horses gallop also cared for his happiness.

As he stood there looking at the kahar hall in the moonlight, he was certain that it did.

To be happy is to fulfil your place in the Great Pattern. It didn’t mean that you kept the world moving properly just by doing whatever gave you the greatest pleasure. It meant that you should do what was right, that happiness lay in being just and in knowing yourself—that was how the Kossians would have put it.

It meant that you defied that knowledge at your peril.

He stood a few moments longer looking into the face of Heva and feeling it looking back at him. A movement by the door of the kahar hall caught his eye, and he moved himself, and when he looked back at the wall, as he had expected, the face was gone—nothing had changed, the lines were still there, but the illusion was broken.

When he walked back to the kahar hall, he found Suthus sitting outside, on a log by the hall door, looking at the stars, as he often did.

“I heard that you were looking for me, my lord?”

“Ah, Rusanarath. Yes—it’s nothing urgent.” He patted the log beside him, and Rus sat. “You’ll have heard that the Phemians are staying an extra day?”

“No, I hadn’t.” How long had he been standing out there on the green?

“A couple of them got stung with goatweed and will be too sore to ride. Gunthanaruth wants us to take the rest to see the herd of cattle that were reported in White-Water Valley. Not on the hunt—I’ve talked him out of that lunacy. Just to look at them.”

“Do they want to do that?” said Rus doubtfully.

“Well, they haven’t seen the cattle before.”

“Yes, they have.”

Suthus took a moment to realize what he meant. “Ah! Yes, I don’t suppose Gunthanaruth thought … In any case, they agreed. I don’t think they were insulted. But you’ll ride with us, I hope?”

“Of course. If that is what you want. If you don’t need me to stay here.”

“Well, Archon Phyleros likes you, and I’m sure he’d rather you were along than have to spend a whole day listening to me talk about … I don’t even know what I would talk about!” He laughed, and Rus got the impression that the real reason Suthus wanted him along was because he was somehow nervous about having to entertain Adares all day.