“I was worried. You’ve seemed so weary lately.”

“Have I? I’ve never felt better.”

“Dear Koshmar—”

“Do I look sick? Has my fur lost its sheen? Is the glow gone from my eyes?”

“I said you’ve seemed weary,” Torlyri said. “Not that you were ill.”

“Ah. So you did.”

“Sit here awhile with me,” said Torlyri. She sank down on a smooth slab of rose-pink marble that rose at its far end in the form of a grinning sapphire-eyes face, all jaws and teeth, and beckoned Koshmar down beside her. Her hand rested lightly on Koshmar’s wrist, rubbing back and forth.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” Koshmar asked, after a while.

“I want only to be with you. See, what a brilliant day this is! The sun rises higher and higher as we move deeper into the New Springtime.”

“It does, yes.”

“Kreun is carrying an unborn, the child of Moarn. Bonlai bears Orbin’s child now too. The tribe grows.”

“Yes. Good.”

“Praheurt and Shatalgit will have their second one soon. They have asked Hresh to name it for your mother, Lissiminimar, if it’s a girl.”

“Ah,” Koshmar said. “I’ll be glad to hear that name again.”

She wondered how it went between Torlyri and her Helmet Man these days. She never dared ask. Somehow Koshmar had managed to withstand Torlyri’s involvement with Lakkamai, even her mating with Lakkamai; but a man like Lakkamai, who hardly ever spoke and seemed to have nothing within him, could not have been any threat to her. It was all bodily pleasure between Torlyri and Lakkamai. But this, with the Helmet Man — the animated look about Torlyri whenever she and he were together, the way she moved, the light in her eyes — and the long hours she spent off at the Beng settlement — no, no, it was different, it was a deeper thing by far.

I have lost her to him, Koshmar thought.

Torlyri said, after another silence, “The Bengs offer us another of their feasts one week from now. I bear the word of that from Hamok Trei this day. They want us all to come; and they’ll open their oldest wines, and kill their best meat-animals. It is to celebrate the high day of their god Nakhaba, who I think is the greatest of their gods.”

“What do I care what the Bengs call their gods?” Koshmar snapped. “Their gods don’t exist. Their gods are fantasies.”

“Koshmar—”

“There will be no feasting with the Bengs for us, Torlyri!”

“But— Koshmar—”

She swung around sharply to face the offering-woman. An idea came to her, so suddenly that it made her head spin and her breath go short, and she said, “What would you say if I told you that we’re going to leave Vengiboneeza in two or three weeks, a month at most?”

“What?”

“And therefore we’ll need all the time we have between now and then to get ready for our departure. We can’t spare any of it for Beng feasts.”

“Leaving — Vengiboneeza—”

“There’s nothing but trouble here for us, Torlyri. You know that. I know that. Hresh came to me and said, ‘Leave, leave.’ I wouldn’t hear of it. But then my eyes saw the truth. Then my path became clear. I asked myself what we must do to save ourselves, and the answer came — we must go away from this place. It is death here, Torlyri. Look, do you see the stone sapphire-eyes grinning at us there? The joke’s on us. We came here just to dig around and find some useful things of the former world, and we have stayed — how many years is it, now? In a city that never belonged to us. In a city that mocks us in its very stones. And now a city that is full of arrogant strangers who wear absurd costumes and worship imaginary gods.”

Alarm flickered in Torlyri’s dark eyes. Koshmar saw it and realized miserably that her ruse had succeeded, that she had drawn from Torlyri the truth, that which she had dreaded but which she had desperately needed to know.

“Are you serious?” Torlyri said.

“I’m having the order drawn up, and I’ll announce it very shortly. We’ll take everything with us that may be of value to us, all the strange devices that Hresh and his Seekers have collected, and off we’ll go, into the warm southland, as we should have done years ago. Harruel was right. There is poison in this city. He couldn’t get me to see that, and so he left. Well, Harruel is rash, and Harruel is a fool; but in this case he saw more clearly than I. Our time in Vengiboneeza is over, Torlyri.”

Torlyri looked stunned.

With rising energy now Koshmar reached for her. A passion that she had not felt for weeks, for months, had begun to burn in her. Hoarsely she said, “Come, now, beloved Torlyri, dear Torlyri! We are alone here. Let us twine — it’s been so long, hasn’t it, Torlyri? — and then we’ll go back to the settlement.”

“Koshmar—” Torlyri began, and faltered.

“Shall we twine?”

Torlyri’s lips and nostrils were quivering. Tears glistened in the corners of her eyes.

In a low muffled voice Torlyri said, “I will twine with you, yes, if that is what you want.”

“Isn’t it what you want? You said you had gone looking for me so that you could enjoy the pleasure of being near me. Is there any better way of being near me than to twine?”

Torlyri looked toward the ground. “I’ve already twined once this day,” she said. “It was — my duty, you understand — someone came to me in need of the offering-woman’s consolation, and I must never refuse that, and — and—”

“And you’re too tired to do it again so soon.”

“Yes. Precisely.”

Koshmar looked at her squarely. Torlyri flinched away.

She will not twine with me, Koshmar thought, because then her soul will be open to me and I will see the depths of her love for the Helmet Man. Is that it?

No. No. For we twined not that long ago, and I have already seen what she feels for the Helmet Man, and she knows that I have seen it. It’s something else that she wishes to hide from me, then. Something new, something even more serious. And I think I can guess what it is.

“Very well,” Koshmar said. “I can live without a twining this afternoon, I suppose.”

She rose, and signaled to Torlyri that she should do the same.

“Koshmar, are we truly going to leave Vengiboneeza in a few weeks?” Torlyri asked.

“A month, perhaps. Six weeks, maybe.”

“A moment ago you said a month at most.”

“We’ll leave when we’re ready to leave. If it takes us a month, then we’ll leave in a month. If it takes two months, then two months.”

“But we will definitely leave?”

“Nothing could alter my resolve in that.”

“Ah,” Torlyri said, turning away as though Koshmar had struck her. “Then everything is ended.”

“What do you mean?”

“Please. Let me be, Koshmar.”

Koshmar nodded. She understood everything now. Torlyri would not twine with her because there was one thing Torlyri dared not tell her, which was that if the People were actually to leave Vengiboneeza she would not be leaving with them. She meant to stay behind with her Helmet Man; for she knew that Koshmar certainly would not permit the Helmet Man to come with the tribe, even if he might wish to do such a thing.

Torlyri is lost to me forever, then, Koshmar thought.

Together they walked back to the settlement in silence.