Free High Couch of Silistra by Janet Morris Page A

may not be suited for Arlet. I think you will have to wait and see. Men change here. I would say to you that I know you are suited for Astria.” I took his hand. “M’lennin is not. He is, however, a man who would be at home in Arlet. Perhaps you and he could exchange posts. I would relax the trade embargo for the right man. You might find Astria profitable if such an arrangement were made.”
    Dellin, soon to be of Arlet, dug in the dirt with a stick.
    “I would think you would want me less, not more. I could not protect you, could not even control myself. As you said, I might have got us both killed.” Self-recrimination was a cutting edge in his voice. The torchlight flickered.
    I shrugged. It had cost me to put that offer into words.
    “Perhaps I liked what I saw in you when you bested yourself and endured them. A boy would have died there, for his purity and honor. M’lennin is such a boy. In Astria we are in need of a man, sure enough of his strength to act on his own standards. Would you trade Arlet for Astria, Khaf-Re Dellin?”
    He stood abruptly and extended his hand to me.
    “You speak of the Well but not the Well-Keepress. It is too soon for me to know what I will do, Estri, when I have lived in Arlet. As you say, men change here. And even if I wanted it, it might not come about. Offer me the Well-Keepress, and I will accept. These Wells, both of them, interest me less and less.”
    He stepped among the bodies, and he stooped among the corpses, collecting weapons and leathers and bits of food. He picked up the torch, half-burned, and another which he gave to me. I took the weapons and belts, and he gathered some coals and wood and we carried them to the hollow and made a fire and cooked chunks of meat on sword points. Santh snored peacefully.
    “I must dispose of this chaldra,” I said, “and then, if you choose, we will discuss the disposition of the Well-Keepress.” I had thought hard on how to answer without rejecting him. I did not entirely succeed.
    “I see no way to dissuade you,” he said.
    “Would you have Santh with you in Arlet?” I asked.
    “Do you think I need him?”
    “I need him and cannot take him into the Well.”
    “If that great beast wants to come to Arlet,” he said slowly, “I would not be able to stop him. If he would be in the Liaison’s there, I will allow it. If you would, also, prefer it to the Arletian Well, I would allow that also.”
    “I must be there for Ristran’s man to find me, in the Well.”
    “Then I will know where to find you, should I care to buy your use.”
    I threw food and sword into the dirt. I went to him and put my head in his lap.
    “Do not be angry with me for the way I must live, Khaf-Re,” I pleaded. I found I truly cared.
    He rubbed my shoulder and kissed me gently on the lips.
    “Women are not so free on M’ksakka,” he said gently.
    “On Silistra,” I whispered, “we are all bound.”
    When I awoke, Dellin was leaning over tending a fresh-made fire in the dim dawn light. Beside the fire lay three fat black harths. He had hunted us breakfast with the longbow he had taken from the camp of the chaldless.
    He had also appropriated for himself a vest of thick hide circles, linked together, such as is popular among the slayers. It protects the vital organs, coming low over the hips, but leaves the wearer’s arms and legs unencumbered. Beneath it he wore a short leather breech, of tas. Around his waist was slung a Silistran pocket belt, so named because of its many compartments, of wide parr-hide from which hung a short sword in a tooled scabbard and a knife in sheath. He had a thong across his brow, to keep his shoulder-length hair back from his face as he poked the crackling logs and the sparks flew. In the light of sun’s rising, he looked very Silistran, squatting before the fire in his leathers.
    I went to him and knelt beside him, fingering the harth carcasses.
    “I found your viewer and holos among the loot from the hover,”