had caught up to her in physical maturity, she was still more adult in her bearing than my bondbrother or I, her voice more smoothly modulated, her manner more poised, and it was impossible for me to shake off that notion that she was senior sister to us. Who soon must accept some suitor, lest she become overripe and sour in her maidenhood; I was suddenly certain that Halum would marry while I was off hiding in Glin, and the thought of some sweaty stranger planting babies between her thighs so sickened me that I turned away from her at the table, and lurched to the window to gulp the humid air into my throbbing lungs.
“Are you unwell?” Halum asked.
“One feels a certain tension, bondsister.”
“Surely there’s no danger. The septarch’s permission has been granted for you to go north.”
“There is no document to show it,” Noim pointed out.
“You are a septarch’s son!” Halum cried. “What guardian of the roads would dare to trifle with you?”
“Exactly,” I said. “There is no cause for fear. One feels only a sense of uncertainty. One is beginning a new life, Halum.” I forced a faint smile. “The time of going must be here.”
“Stay a while longer,” Halum begged.
But we did not. The servants waited in the street. The groundcars were ready. Halum embraced us, clasping Noim first, then me, for I was the one who would not be returning, and that called for a longer farewell. When she came into my arms I was stunned by the intensity with which she offered herself: her lips to my lips, her belly to my belly, her breasts crushed against my chest. On tiptoes she strained to press her body into mine, and for a moment I felt her trembling, until I began myself to tremble. It was not a sisterly kiss and certainly not a bondsisterly kiss; it was the passionate kiss of a bride sending her young husband off to a war from which she knows there is no coming back. I was singed by Halum’s sudden fire. I felt as though a veil had been ripped away and some Halum I had not known before had flung herself against me, one who burned with the needs of the flesh, one who did not mind revealing her forbidden hunger for a bondbrother’s body. Or did I imagine those things in her? It seemed to me that for a single protracted instant Halum repressed nothing and allowed her arms and lips to tell me the truth about her feelings; but I could not respond in kind—I had trained myself too well in the proper attitudes toward one’s bondsister—and I was distant and cool as I clasped her. I may even have thrust her back a little, shocked by her forwardness. And, as I say, there may have been no forwardness at all except in my overwrought mind, but only legitimate grief at a parting. In any event the intensity went quickly from Halum; her embrace slackened and she released me, and she appeared downcast and chilled, as if I had rebuffed her cruelly by being so prim when she was giving so much.
“Come now,” Noim said impatiently, and, trying somehow to rescue the situation, I lifted Halum’s hand and touched my palm lightly to her cool palm, and smiled an awkward smile, and she smiled even more awkwardly, and perhaps we would have said a stumbling word or two, but Noim caught me by the elbow and stolidly led me outside to begin my journey away from my homeland.
TWELVE
I INSISTED ON OPENING myself to a drainer before leaving Salla City. I had not planned on doing so, and it irritated Noim that I took the time for it; but an uncontrollable yearning for the comforts of religion rose up in me as we neared the outskirts of the capital.
We had been traveling almost an hour. The rain had thickened, and gusty winds slammed it against the windscreens of our groundcars, so that cautious driving was in order. The cobbled streets were slippery. Noim drove one of the cars, I sitting sullenly beside him; the other, with our servants, followed close behind. The morning was young and the city still slept. Each passing street was a surgery to me, for a segment of my life was ripped off by it: there goes the palace compound, there go the spires of the House of Justice, there the university’s great gray blocky buildings, there the godhouse where my royal