The Faded Sun Trilogy Read Free Page B

him as did the robes, a distinguishing mark of the only caste of the People that might deal with outsiders. The black robes, the
siga,
were held about the waist and chest with belts that bore his weapons, which were several; and also they should have held
j’tai,
medallions, honors won for his services to the People: they held none, and this lack of status would have been obvious to any mri that beheld him.
    Being of the Kel, he could neither read nor write, save that he could use a numbered keyboard and knew mathematics, both regul and mri. He knew by heart the complicated genealogies of his House, which had been that of Nisren. The name-chants filled him with melancholy when he sang them: it was difficult to do so and then to look about the cracking walls of Edun Kesrithun and behold only so few people as now lived, and not realize that decline was taking place, that it was real and threatening. He knew all the songs. He could foresee begetting no child of his own who would sing them, not on Kesrith. He learned the songs; he learned languages, which were part of the Kel-lore. He spoke four languages fluently, two of which were his own, one of which was the regul’s, and the fourth of which was the enemy’s. He was expert in weapons, both the yin’ein and the zahen’ein; he was taught of nine masters-of-arms; he knew that his skill was great in all these things.
    And wasted, all wasted.
    Regul.
    Tsi’mri.
    Niun flung a rock downslope, which splashed into a hot pool and disturbed the vapors.
    Peace.
    Peace on human terms, it would be. Regul had disregarded mri strategists at every crucial moment of the war. Regul would spend mri lives without stinting and they would pay the bloodprice to edunei that lost sons and daughters of the Kel, all because some regul colonial official panicked and ordered suicidal attack by the handful of mri serving him personally to cover his retreat and that of his younglings; but far less willingly would that same regul risk regul lives or properties. To lose regul lives would mean loss of status; it would have brought that regul instant censure by regul authorities, recall to homeworld, sifting of his knowledge, death of himself and his young in all probability.
    It was inevitable that humans should have realized this essential weakness of the regul-mri partnership, that humans should have learned that inflicting casualties on regul would have far more effect than inflicting those same casualties on mri.
    It was predictable then that the regul should have panicked under that pressure, that they would have reacted by retreat, precipitous, against all mri counsel to the contrary, exposing world after world to attack in their haste to withdraw to absolute security. Consequently that absolute security could not exist.
    And that regul would afterwards compound their stupidity by dealing directly with the humans—this too was credible, in the regul, to buy and sell war, and to sell out quickly when threatened rather than to risk losing overmuch of their necessary possessions.
    The regul language contained no word for courage.
    Neither had it one for imagination.
    The war was ending and Niun remained worldbound, never having put to use the things that he had learned. The gods knew what manner of trading the merchants were doing, what disposition was being made of his life. He foresaw that things might revert to what they had been before the war, that mri might again serve individual regul—that mri would fight mri again, in combat where experience mattered.
    And gods knew how long it would be possible to find a regul to serve, when the war was ending and thingswere entering a period of flux. Gods knew how likely a regul was to take on an inexperienced kel’en to guard his ship, when others, war-wise, were available.
    He had trained all his life to fight humans, and the policies of three species conspired to keep him from it.
    He rose up of a sudden, mind set on an idea that had been seething