Some time later, Nirithu still sat huddled on the floor, his head tucked into the crook of one arm to hide his tears. At least, that was what he hoped anyone who came into the cell would see, and it was true enough as far as it went. He had been weeping off and on for he wasn't sure how long, and no doubt the elbow of his white mourning robe was stained with tears and paint. What he hoped they wouldn't see—if anyone came at all—was that his other hand was gripping the leg of the low stool, and that he held his legs tucked underneath himself, prepared for a spring.
He felt ridiculous. His feet were falling asleep, though he kept shifting them slightly. You won't do anything. You don't have the guts, he told himself. Or else: You will try, and you will fail, and you'll get nothing for your trouble but a beating and a longer list of charges. And most often: No one's coming. Why should they? They're going to leave you here to rot.
That, at least, was presently proven false. Light flickered dimly at the grille in the door, and footsteps sounded in the corridor. Two sets of footsteps. Nirithu had been hoping for one, though the guards had done everything in pairs until now and there was no particular reason to stop.
You'll fail, and get nothing for your trouble…
"Son of Lirun! Nirithu?" The door opened a sliver. Nirithu could tell how much by the wedge of light on the floor. He didn't look up yet, but he recognized the voice—Ruthikil. His cousin. If he were spectacularly lucky, Nirithu could add kin-slaying to his list of offenses.
You won't do anything. You don't have the guts.
"There now, there's no need to carry on like this," said Ruthikil.
Nirithu raised his eyes warily, trying not to let the movement show. Ruthikil stood within reach, a dented bowl of something that smelled distinctly unappetizing in one hand, the other held near the knife at his hip. Someone—Miphim, presumably—still stood outside the door with a lamp. Wait.
"It's a few days at the most, and ten blows with the long staff, and you can't say you haven't earned them. You Bimuun may think you're the lords of creation, but—anyhow. Here's your dinner. You may as well eat it." Seeing that Nirithu made no move to take the bowl, he turned aside to set it down on the bed. Nirithu came up from his crouch, too soon or too slow, because Ruthikil caught the movement and was already turning back and drawing his knife by the time the stool caught him glancingly on the chin. He lunged forward, leaving a line of bright pain along Nirithu's ribs before Nirithu could bring down the stool more accurately this time square on top of his head.
Ruthikil bellowed, his eyes going vague. His next knife-thrust fell wide of the mark, and he staggered and caught himself on the wall. Miphim rushed in and made a grab for Nirithu, but Nirithu dove under his arm for the corridor, and won free with a wriggle and a torn robe. He leaned all his weight against the door, letting his breath out in a sob as the bar slammed home.
Pounding and curses came from the other side of the door, but there was no one to hear them yet besides Nirithu. The walls here were thick. He put his hand to his chest and felt it hot and sticky with blood. Stumbling down the corridor blindly, he trailed his hand along the wall and searched for answers by habit, but his source was gone and the stones were as silent as the dead. He got turned around twice before he found his way to a deserted gallery on ground level, and then moonlight made it easier. Across an internal courtyard, up a flight a stairs, the nearest door in a series of plain wooden doors. He nudged it open carefully. Risokh was alone, thank God, a darker shape against the darkness except for the whites of his eyes, which went wide and bright when Nirithu came in.
"Nirithu!" Then his voice faltered uncertainly. "They said you wouldn't come."
"They don't know me, my lord." Nirithu hardly knew himself. Lirun's youngest son who was too squeamish to serve in the physicians' tents was a lifelong acquaintance. This Nirithu—he hoped Ruthikil wasn't hurt too badly. He'd been awake and moving the last Nirithu had seen him, but head wounds were tricky things, and Nirithu hadn't dared to strike with less than his full strength. He might already be a murderer and not know it. "Listen—they've said, the elders, that they will make you testify under oath, and they didn't listen to me when I told them that your soul wouldn't bear it and it would kill you. They'll come to fetch you tomorrow morning, and we must not be here." What should they take? Nirithu's physician's kit, and whatever was left in the basket of food Rimi had sent. A spare shirt for Nirithu, definitely. The mattresses? Too bulky. Nirithu wished he might make a light, but that would be unwise both for Risokh's peace of mind and in case anyone happened to look up from below.
"No," said Risokh.
"What—no? You will die, my lord. I've seen it."
"The elders have said that I mustn't leave. And the elders' word is Law."
Not law, in the sense of whatever a guard might enforce at spear-point, but Law, which bound the Gmou Pilor together more securely than blood. Nirithu felt a moment's envy for the bird-eaters, who probably didn't have to stop for legal debates in the middle of a jailbreak. "But the elders are mistaken. And even so, they haven't judged you worthy of death, so it's permitted—to save one's life is always permitted."
"Yes," said Risokh. "I couldn't have done otherwise, I am not responsible, but that doesn't change what was done. My brother said—my cousin Lirun seeks my life, but he can protect me, only I must trust him."
It might have even been true. Or nearly true, in the way of the most insidious lies. "But I'm not your brother. Nor—nor Lirun. I'm Nirithu, your armor-bearer, and—have I ever lied to you, my lord?"
Risokh's looked into Nirithu's face searchingly. However dimly he could see it, Nirithu knew that it was himself Risokh was seeing now, and not anything else. "How would I know?"
Damn the man for speaking sense at a time like this. Only that was exactly what would happen, come sunrise. "Please, there's no time—the watch will be changing soon, and they'll discover the guards in my cell where I left them if they haven't already—"
"You... you attacked the court guards?"
Brilliant, Nirithu. That will certainly convince him that you mean him no harm. "I was locked up. For interfering with the process of justice. And there was no other way I could get to you, and I couldn't simply—sit and wait, while the elders finished what the son of Prijlidi began, and—my lord, I'm begging you—"
"Don't," said Risokh.
Nirithu shut up. He tried to catch his breath, to think of something he could say that he hadn't said already, something convincing, but there was nothing.
"Nirithu, I'll go with you," said Risokh. "Just tell me what I must do."
"Get dressed." Nirithu wouldn't let his relief overspill his heart; they were nowhere near free yet. "Not in the robe you wore to court, wait—" Too bright, too memorable. Nirithu's vision was beginning to adjust to the darkness of Risokh's cell. He couldn't make out colors but he had packed these clothes enough that he practically knew them by touch. Court clothes, court clothes, all their traveling gear was back at Horuri's. He tossed a midnight-blue robe in Risokh's direction and kept a mulberry-colored one for himself. The color would be good for hiding bloodstains, even if the robe itself were a little snug in the waist and long in the sleeves. And even if he were putting off his mourning. He tried to tell himself that Miren would have understood and approved, but Miren wouldn't have approved of any of this. No one would.
His physician's kit was in the corner where he'd left it, and he stuffed it into the basket along with the remains of Risokh's lunch. He wasn't sure what it was but his fingers ran into something sticky. Stripping off his robe and shirt with a hiss of pain when they pulled away from his cut, he shoved them into the basket too. There was no point in leaving them behind for the court sorcerer. Even the robe probably had enough linen woven in with the silk to get a reading from. He shrugged the mulberry robe on, fastened it as best as he could, pushed the cuffs impatiently away from his hands while he bound up the basket with a cord he could sling over one shoulder. "Come along," he said. "Quietly."
That, at least, was an instruction that Risokh had no trouble with. Descending the stairs, ears pricked for any indication that his escape had been discovered, Nirithu couldn't pick out any sound of footfall or breathing from behind him that might not simply have been his hopeful imagination. It wasn't until they reached the courtyard below, and there was enough light to look back and check, that he could be certain that Risokh was with him at all.
The galleries of the Great Court were deserted and silent. Twice, Nirithu saw lamplight shining from beneath a door where some scholar was sitting up late with his books; he doubled back and led them another way then, and they reached the outer gardens without seeing another living thing. This left the gate nearest Horuri's on the opposite side of the court from them, but Nirithu wanted to take it anyway. When Risokh had climbed the wall the night before, there had been no guard there.
But that was where their luck ran out. An arrow's flight from the gate, Risokh stopped, shrank back into a jasmine bush, and the next moment Nirithu heard it too, hushed voices and the soft clank of armed men moving quietly. There were pinpricks of light too, from hooded lanterns—men with no need to hide, yet some hope of not startling their quarry. "It will have to be over the wall," Nirithu whispered. They crept back the way they'd come, keeping to the deeper shadows of the trees. When they had left the guards out of sight and hearing once more, Nirithu added, "When you see a good place to climb—and well-hidden as it can be—start climbing."
In this he trusted Risokh more than himself. Without his source, he wasn't sure he could climb at all, using only the tiny chinks and fingerholds that Risokh seemed to find without effort. If Risokh escaped, but Nirithu was caught—all victories were temporary, but that one would be so temporary that it was meaningless. Nirithu unslung the basket from his shoulder reluctantly. They needed what was in it, but they needed what was around it more. He worked the rope free from the basket, kicked the basket under a bush so that it wouldn't give away where they'd gone quite so quickly, and handed the rope to Risokh. "When you reach the ledge, will you pull me up?"
Risokh nodded and started up the wall. Soon the trees hid him from Nirithu's view, although from further off, or higher up, he would be more visible now. And again Nirithu heard men approaching, but if they'd spotted Risokh, they would be running, and shouting too, probably, and they weren't. The end of the rope hit Nirithu in the shoulder. He grabbed it, braced his feet against the wall and set his teeth against a fresh flare of pain from his chest, where he had nearly forgotten being hurt. He'd barely managed to pull himself off the ground when he heard a voice, loud enough for him to recognize both the words and the speaker.
"Through here," said Sikhim. If they'd roused the court sorcerer, and he'd picked up the trail, stealth was no further use. Only speed would help. Nirithu climbed as fast as he could, regretting the months he'd sat at home lifting nothing heavier than a pestle, regretting all the times he'd finished off whatever Risokh didn't eat of his dinner since there was no sense in letting it go to waste, and especially regretting letting Ruthikil stab him.
"Nirithu?" said Risokh, when Nirithu finally gained the ledge.
"Go," said Nirithu, panting, resting his sweat-slick forehead against the stones. There were shouts from below now, and the uncovered lights of lanterns. And as soon as the decision was made that there was no need to take Risokh and Nirithu alive, there would be arrows. Sikhim used a plant source, and had no power over the stones of the wall, but he could enchant a wooden shaft to fly true even in the dark of night.
If we die now, at least we die whole. Or if not entirely whole in Risokh's case, more whole than he would be if he spoke an oath. But Nirithu didn't want to die at all.
The rope hit Nirithu's shoulder again. Risokh had reached the second ledge along the wall, and from there the top was only a bit over his head. Nirithu thought he heard an arrow whistle past him, but nothing hit. Either it was just the wind, or Sikhim wasn't as good at enchanting arrows as he ought to be; his field was the finding out of truth, not war. But given time, he would get it right eventually, if—Nirithu wouldn't look down. He wouldn't. Risokh reached down, grabbed Nirithu's hand, pulled him up to the top of the wall. Some distant part of Nirithu's mind reflected that yesterday he would have given anything for Risokh to touch him voluntarily. And I have given everything. And I will have to give more.
"They will... be waiting for us. At the bottom. Before we can reach it," said Nirithu between gulps of air.
"Yes, but there's a roof." Risokh pointed, and Nirithu had to look down. His stomach lurched. It was too far, too small a target in the dark. But if Risokh thought they could make it... then Nirithu couldn't show that he was afraid. He took a breath and jumped.
He landed awkwardly on his shoulder, and it rattled his bones all along his side. He straightened out, shrugged. Nothing seemed broken, thank God, but the movement was like plunging his skin into a fire. The cut across his chest was bleeding freely again.
And there was another hurt that had nothing to do with his physical injuries. His source was—back there, somewhere. Safe, Ruthikil had said, but that was before Nirithu had hit him over the head with a stool and locked him in a cell. Nor did it matter how safe it was. Every step of Nirithu's was taking him further from it, from any hope of ever getting it back. It was bound to him, and he to it. Stretched far enough, would the bond simply snap? So far it hadn't. His source, as Hokhiun had said, had its hooks in him, and it was getting harder to ignore their pull.
Nirithu's thoughts were interrupted by a thump, and the whoosh of Risokh's breath being knocked out of him as he landed a bit further along the roof.
"Are you all right, my lord?" Nirithu crawled over to where Risokh had landed, his balance precarious on the roof-tiles. Risokh pushed himself up to his knees and nodded.
There was a balcony below them, only a little further than Risokh was tall. A drop, not a jump, and below that a vine-hung trellis that even Nirithu could climb down with no trouble. And then they were in a courtyard, and the courtyard let out into a street that Nirithu didn't know. They had a few minutes before the court guards made it here, and they needed to be gone by then, needed somewhere to hide until the city gates opened at dawn.
Nirithu looked up, trying to get his bearings. The night sky was more than half hidden by buildings, not that he had used the stars to find his way often anyway—he'd always had a source, and had almost always traveled in company when he'd traveled at night. But he knew there was a star, brighter than most, and another one close by that pointed south, and he thought maybe he could pick them out. The Piloru quarter was at the northern end of Khippush-Jilh. Nirithu knew nothing of the city beyond Horuri's house, and the way from the north gate to Horuri's house and from there to the baths and to the court. But the court guards would have less authority in the rest of the city, where the bird-eaters lived; less authority and less familiarity. It would be better, wouldn't it, to pit his own ignorance against the guards' ignorance, rather than his ignorance against their knowledge?
And there was this, too: leaving Khippush-Jilh would be harder if they had to try to sneak past the warriors of the Gmou Bim who guarded the north gate than by any other of the city's gates, whose guards would neither know nor care who Nirithu and Risokh were. So—praying that his confused recollections were guiding him right—Nirithu kept the south star in sight and headed out into the tangle of streets. Risokh followed him.
The streets were quiet but not deserted. They passed a man sleeping in a gateway, his beggar's bowl set out hopefully in front of him, and a courtyard where two women were having a screaming argument. Turning onto a broader avenue, they were jostled by a group of men weaving their way down the street, singing the same song each to a different tune. Despite their intoxication, they were clearly coming from a formal banquet or something of that nature; their eyes were painted with bright swirls and simple shapes. Bird-eaters.
There was nothing to mark Nirithu or Risokh as Piloru. Their paint had been smudged beyond recognition and Nirithu's knife was back at the Great Court. In any case, it was their own people and not the bird-eaters who sought their lives now. Nirithu still drew closer to Risokh and stood between him and the men until they passed. He and Risokh may have been safer since they left the Piloru quarter behind, but it didn't feel that way.
Presently, the streets grew narrower, the houses closer together and more rickety, and the courtyards smaller before disappearing altogether. The city wall rose above them, the houses huddled and squashed against it, and beyond the wall Nirithu could hear the rush of the Jenpu river. In this cramped neighborhood the small open plaza in front of the gate stood out like a scab.
"I think we should make our camp a few streets back," Nirithu whispered. "Wait—" There were dark patches on the stone of the wall, down here by the river. He touched one of them and his fingers came away damp and slimy. Swallowing down a shudder, he wiped his whole hand across it, and then ran it through his hair, twisting it into ringlets. He smeared a quantity of slime over his clothes, for good measure—although the climbing he'd done had probably smirched them enough already—and then wiped whatever was left of his paint off his face with the corner of his robe. "Let me do you," he said to Risokh, "and we will look like a proper pair of beggars."
Risokh nodded and held his hands clenched by his sides while Nirithu tangled his hair and smeared his clothes in a sad parody of the way he'd prepared him for court that morning. It was hard to say what the effect would be in the daytime, but it would pass muster in moonlight and before the sun was fully risen, which was what they needed. They found an unoccupied alleyway nearby and Risokh was asleep as soon as he sat down. Nirithu stayed awake—partly to keep watch, but mostly because he was too frightened and uncomfortable to sleep. If only they had beggar's bowls it would complete the picture, and Nirithu was nearly hungry enough to eat anything that might have been dropped in them, provided he could be sure that it hadn't come from a bird.
In the end, Nirithu slept too, fitfully. It was doubtful that he got much rest, but he lost count of the number of times he found himself jerking awake, confused to find himself in a filthy alleyway. Once or twice he reached inside his shirt for his source, and had to fight down a fresh wave of panic when he found it gone. And finally he woke and knew what had woken him; it was the distant sound of gongs from the Piloru quarter, announcing the hour for dawn prayers.
He tried to rub the sleep from his eyes and succeeded only in rubbing more dirt into his face. He touched Risokh on the arm lightly, and Risokh jerked upright and hit his head on the wall.
"It's dawn, my lord," said Nirithu. "We should go."
There were more people on the streets when they ventured out, but no one paid them any mind as they slipped into the crowd of people leaving the city: fishermen on their way to their boats, laborers on their way to jobs across the river, beggars hoping that a change of place would mean a change of luck. Risokh's hands twitched as they came nearer to the gate and the mass of people pressed closer, and Nirithu himself found it difficult to keep going forward. It wasn't the crowds or the fear of being stopped by the guards at the gate, but the knowledge that in leaving Khippush-Jilh he was leaving his source behind. He didn't know if he could do it.
Truly? he asked himself in disgust. You've left behind home and family, your good name and unstained hands—and this is what you will not give up? And yet it almost seemed that his source was near enough to touch, if only he would turn aside from his course and reach out his hand—
"Rimi," said Risokh.
"Ssh," said Nirithu automatically, then looked up and followed the direction of Risokh's gaze. A woman was making her way through the crowds towards them, taller than most women and many of the men around her. Veils hid her head and face: plain workaday veils and not the fluttery things that Rimi usually wore, and yet her clothing wasn't as dingy as that of most of the people in this quarter. It might just have been a fishwife who'd used a windfall to buy the castoffs of a servant at a great house. But it wasn't. It was Rimi, and whatever she was doing here, dressed like that, she'd seen them. They couldn't run. She drew close to them, opened her hand—and it was Nirithu's source there.
"You will be needing this, I think, Nirithu," she said.
"You... you shouldn't have," said Nirithu, but he was already tucking his source inside his shirt, and nobody, nobody was getting it away from him again. "When Horuri discovers what you've done—"
Rimi laughed. That drew a few stares, and she quickly muffled her voice behind her hand. "He will never believe it. His pretty, foolish wife, who is afraid to leave her house?"
"He cannot think that of you, surely," said Nirithu, shaking his head. "How did you ever find it? And us?"
"After you were arrested, it seems that many of the Elders were uncomfortable keeping such a thing at the Great Court. Horuri solved their difficulty by offering to put it with the rest of your baggage. It wasn't difficult to lay hands on. And once I had—I knew you would be wanting to leave the city, and it was only logical that—" Rimi's eyebrows drew down in a frown. "But no, I don't think that's it. I think perhaps... it wished to be reunited with you, as you with it."
Nirithu pressed a hand against his source uncomfortably. It wasn't supposed to work that way, but—it has its hooks in you. Before he could ask Rimi anything else, though, Risokh broke in urgently.
"Rimi. I'm sorry that I—that I struck you, I—"
"Do you remember," Rimi interrupted him, "that spear that Baba brought you, one war season? The shaft was carved and inlaid with mother of pearl, and he said he'd taken it from a Poyibi chieftain that he'd killed? You were so proud of that spear! You carried it with you everywhere, until one day when you were in the baths I laid it across two stools and dropped Aunt Rushti's great brass mortar onto it."
"I do! I do remember that." Risokh shook his head wonderingly. "I was so angry."
"Well, now we're even." Rimi raised her fingertips to the level of her mouth, then held her hand out open in front of her. "You must go. I will wait for your return."
"I don't think... we can ever come back," said Risokh.
"I gave you up for lost once, when they told me you were dead," said Rimi. "I won't do it again." She turned and pushed her way back through the crowd, while Nirithu and Risokh let it carry them onwards towards the gate.
Nirithu's source had warmed to his skin, and everything was more vivid now: the morning haze and the smells of river and slum, the heat and movement of the people around him, the darting, puzzled glances of some of their eyes. The conversation with Rimi had drawn attention, and as the sun got higher it would become more obvious that Nirithu and Risokh's clothes were too fine, and their boots altogether too fine and whole. The officials of the Great Court may have had time by now to secure the cooperation of the city guard to hold their two fugitives, and they would just have to hope—
But Nirithu could do better than that now. He touched his source, and Risokh's sleeve, and felt the life in the fibers of the fabric quicken. He held a picture of water sliding off a rock face in his mind, as if he were about to cast the waterproofing spell. Then, carefully, he shifted the image, seeing the rock face first in sunlight then in deepening shadow, until it could barely be distinguished from its surroundings. Shed light like water, he directed the fibers of his clothing and Risokh's. Deflect the eyes of the curious. And—with difficulty, he pulled himself back up out of contemplation. That would have to do, or he would make himself conspicuous by standing still for too long and ruin the effect.
"Nirithu?" said Risokh, a high note in his voice.
"Here," Nirithu said softly, and Risokh's gaze settled slightly to the side of his face the way it always used to. If Risokh was doing it now, that meant—well, Nirithu knew he wasn't calm. But he was bearing it very well.
"For a moment," Risokh said, "I didn't see you—I thought—"
"It's just a spell so that no one will notice us who isn't already looking at us," said Nirithu. "I hadn't expected it to work so well." He looked down at himself, and though he knew that his robe was mulberry-colored, it was hard to see that. If Miren had known Nirithu could do this—well, that was neither here nor there now.
They slipped out of the gate with all the other dawn travelers, and if the guards were more alert than they were on any given morning, still they didn't spare a glance for Nirithu and Risokh. The road out of the gate turned into a bridge over the river, but there was another narrower and twisting path that the fishermen took to get down to their nets, and Nirithu and Risokh took that one. The river would wash away their traces, magical and otherwise. If it also interfered with Nirithu's spell, at least there weren't many fishermen about and those that were were too busy to pay Nirithu and Risokh much mind.
The sun rose higher, and Nirithu started to feel faint. He hadn't eaten since the quick bite he'd had at Horuri's the afternoon before, he had barely slept, and the cut on his chest felt stiff and numb; it should have been cleaned hours ago. Risokh didn't complain, but his steps were slowing as well, and not just to keep pace with Nirithu. His boots, Nirithu remembered with chagrin, were not quite as waterproof as Nirithu's own. They'd gone far enough. It was time to come up onto the bank of the river and find a place to rest.
There was a path by the river, and a little way up it was a high thorn hedge surrounding a mango grove. Making a gap in the hedge was no problem; even as tired as Nirithu was, the thorns moved aside to his touch. It was late enough in the season that there wasn't much fruit for picking, but it meant that they probably wouldn't have to worry about running into harvesters, or boys set to guard the grove from thieves like themselves. Nirithu managed to find a mango for Risokh and one for himself, both of them mushy and bruised, but it was food. Nirithu seated himself under a tree with his back to Risokh and an arrow's-flight away, and ate. He found himself nodding off as he did, and jerked himself awake. He couldn't sleep yet.
"My lord?" he called. "Are you finished?"
"Just a moment," Risokh answered, and in another minute he came around the tree where Nirithu was sitting.
"I didn't mean—never mind," said Nirithu. It should have been him to get up and go over to Risokh, but he was too tired to argue about that now. Risokh had his boots off and hung over his shoulder by their ties, and his wet trousers folded over one arm, and that struck Nirithu as a sensible idea. He started peeling out of his own soaked things. Risokh started when he stripped down to his shirt.
"You're hurt," he said. "I hadn't seen."
"No, it was dark, and I chose the color to hide it." Nirithu laughed weakly. "But I'm not quite good enough to overpower two guards without taking any hurt myself... oh God." His laughter was turning into sobs, and he took a deep breath. He couldn't break down in front of Risokh. It was only—all too much, now that he had a little space to rest, and he couldn't even clean his cut properly, his physician's kit was back at the Great Court, and it had all gone so wrong. "I should... I should bandage this, at least. Will you help me, my lord?"
Risokh's hands tensed, and his shoulders went stiff and unhappy, but he said, "Of course."
Enough of Nirithu's shirt was still clean and dry to make bandages out of. Risokh had no physician's training, but he was gentle and careful, and he listened to Nirithu's instructions. By the time it was done, Nirithu was feeling a little steadier. "Thank you," he said.
Risokh shrugged and looked away. It was what Nirithu had done the first day they'd met, after setting Risokh's broken arm—it might have been Nirithu's source that brought back the memory so strongly, and then again it might not. Nirithu had been feeling, then, that he was responsible for Risokh's broken arm, and hardly deserved thanks. And maybe Risokh was feeling the same way now. "I mean it, my lord," said Nirithu, touching his new bandage, which was really quite neat. "That was well done."
Risokh still had his head turned away and lowered, but the corner of his mouth twitched, as though he felt he shouldn't be pleased but couldn't help it. At such meager praise as Nirithu had given him. "You've been doing well all day. And yesterday," Nirithu went on. It was only true.
"Have I?" said Risokh. "Have we, Nirithu? Even if we've gone beyond the reach of the court guard—and I suppose we have—we've made ourselves outcasts and strangers. Where will we go?"
The words Risokh used for outcasts and strangers weren't ones a bird-eater would have recognized, but they raised the hairs on the back of Nirithu's neck. He could almost hear Biyubh's voice, towards dawn on the night of a full moon, when the songs of those who were still awake to sing them turned soft and melancholy: I am an outcast among my brothers, a stranger wherever I go. Who will give me food and shelter, or avenge me when I am slain?
In the way of things among the Gmou Pilor, it was not only a song in the old language from across the Western Sea, but also a legal text. The answer to who will give me food and shelter was: no one who didn't want fifteen blows with the long staff and to be fined the cost of five sheep. And the penalty for avenging one's outcast kinsman was death, whereas the outcast himself could be killed by anyone, without legal consequences. Risokh was right. They weren't safe yet, and might never be.
"I've been thinking about that," said Nirithu. "When... when I first became your armor-bearer, the queen asked me to be good to you—and later, in front of the entire court, she said that if any lasting harm came to you it would not be well for our house. That cannot have pleased my father, or... or any of the Gmou Bim. It certainly didn't please the Great Court when I repeated it yesterday afternoon." Nirithu paused, feeling sick. He had made such a disaster of everything. But he swallowed it down and went on. "The more I consider it, the less I understand why she made us take you in in the first place. What are you, my lord, to the queen of Gudikel?"
"If I am there, she cannot be hurt," Risokh answered, as automatically as a child asked to recite the Beginning of Wisdom. There was no emotion in his voice, but... it sounded like more forbidden sorcery to Nirithu. Was he bringing Risokh into worse danger than he had taken him out of?
"But if that's true," said Nirithu, "wouldn't she want to keep you near her? Why send you to us?"
"Because it is not true. I'm only forgetting again." Risokh's fists clenched; his voice broke. Nirithu had never actually seen Risokh angry before, and it frightened him.
"Was it... your brother who told you so?" he asked hesitantly.
Risokh shook his head. "I told it to myself. Every day, every hour. I couldn't have lived otherwise. And it was a lie."
"I don't understand," said Nirithu.
"You're meant to not understand," said Risokh with a tired sigh, as if fury was too much effort to sustain for long. "It's madness."
There was some information there, something important that Risokh was explaining as clearly as he could. It was only Nirithu who hadn't the wit to hear it. "As you say," said Nirithu. "But can you tell me this—if we go to the palace, will the queen take us in?"
Risokh was silent for a long while. "I don't know. I'm sorry, I truly don't," he said at last, very quietly. "Nirithu—if we were to—to give ourselves up to the Great Court, and show our willingness to abide by their judgement, whatever it was—do you think they might be lenient with you?"
That would depend on how badly Ruthikil was hurt. Even in the best case, Nirithu doubted it—if the elders couldn't bear the insults he'd delivered in words at the Great Court, how could they bear the insult he'd delivered in actions afterwards? And if he were put to the oath again, he would surely tell Rimi's part in their escape, and Horuri, at least, would never forgive him for that. Not that it mattered either way. If Nirithu had been willing to trade Risokh's life and soul for his own safety, he had only to have kept his silence and left when the elders dismissed him. It hurt, a little, that Risokh couldn't understand that—but Nirithu's tender pride didn't matter either. "It's not even worth considering, my lord," he said.