Hammerfall by C. J. Cherryh Page A

you’ll have your answer and all my effort. I’ve lied in my life. But I’ve never broken a promise.”
    The Ila drew off a glove, finger by finger, as they did in the market, as they did in a court of law. Her hand was long and white, blue-veined marble, and she offered him her fingers to touch, concluding a bargain, flesh to flesh, with no au’it to write it. Her flesh was warm as his own. She smelled of fruit and rain, smelled of wealth and water.
    â€œYour household keeps its word,” she said. “It always has. Its one virtue. Go outside. Bring my captain in.”
    He rose with difficulty. The joints of his knees felt assaulted, still aching with the fire she had loosed. A roaring was in his ears, making him dizzy. He was not fit to ride, not today; but he would. If her promise brought him the means to leave this place and walk out under the sky again, he would do that. He made out the voices past the roaring in his ears. East , they cried, east! and he realized he was set free, to do what the voices had wanted all his life. Freedom racketed about his whole being, demanding a test, demanding immediate action.
    East. East. East.
    He backed away, wobbling. The Ila rose and mounted the steps, and sat down in her chair, composed and still.
    But reaching the door he realized it had no latch, and he had no knowledge how to open it. She made a fool of him, consciously, perhaps. He gazed at it in dismay, reminded in such small detail how far the holy city was beyond his expectation.
    She opened the door, perhaps. At least it sighed a steamy breath and admitted one of her chief captains, a man scowling, hand on dagger, ready to kill.
    â€œHere are my orders,” the Ila said from her chair high at the end of the room. “Give him the madmen, an au’it, and a master caravanner, and whatever canvas and goods and beasts he requires. Marak Trin Tain is under my seal. When he goes out from this hall, respect him. When he comes back to these doors, admit him. Write it!”
    The au’it, Marak saw from the doorway, had slunk back to sit at the Ila’s feet. Quickly she spread out her book, and the au’it wrote whatever seemed good to write.
    â€œI have sent for the wife and daughter of Tain Trin Tain, and spared Tain his fate. Write it!”
    What would they cry through the holy city and through the market? Marak Trin is the Ila’s man?
    His father would hear it, sooner or later. His father would be appalled, outraged, and, yes, shamed a second time.
    But could he refuse to yield up to the Ila’s demand his cast-off wife and daughter, where he had sent his son?
    And could his son have done otherwise, when Tain Trin Tain had once bowed to the Ila and signed their armistice?
    In that sense it was not his decision. It became the Ila’s. And Tain would have known, when he threw down the damnation against his wife, that he had cleaved the two of them one from the other and thrown conscience after, a casual piece of baggage. He only hoped the Ila’s men reached Kais Tain in time for his mother’s safety.
    Love of his father? Loyalty? He no longer knew where to find that in himself. In the Ila’s promise, he had lost one direction and found another. He did not resent the pain of the Ila’s blow: lords struck when offended. It was an element, like heat, like thirst, to be endured. She had met the price, and he was bought. Had his father done as much, for all his blows through the years?
    He walked out with the captain, sure as he did so that here was a man, like his father, who had sooner see him dead. But the captain said not a word against the Ila’s wishes, took him directly to the armory and let him equip himself with good, serviceable weapons: a dagger, a boot-knife, even considering that rarest of weapons, a pistol, difficult to keep in desert dust, and hungry for metal.
    â€œSand will impair it,” the captain said, plainly not in favor of him