"Rubbish! He's not omniscient! Why, you little fool, he didn't even
recognize me. He thought I was Rakhal!" I wasn't too sure, myself, but
Miellyn needed reassurance. "Or take _me_ to the Mastershrine. I can
find Rakhal in that scanning device of Evarin's." I saw refusal in her
face and pushed on, "If Evarin's there, I'll prove he's fallible enough
with a skean in his throat! And here"--I thrust the Toy into her
hand--"hang on to this, will you?"
She put it matter-of-factly into her draperies. "I don't mind that. But
to the shrine--" Her voice quivered, and I stood up and pushed at the
table.
"Let's get going. Where's the nearest street-shrine?"
"No, no! Oh, I don't dare!"
"You've got to." I saw the _chak_ who owned the place edging round the
door again and said, "There's no use arguing, Miellyn." When she had
readjusted her robes a little while ago, she had pinned them so that
the flat sprawl of the Nebran embroideries was over her breasts. I put a
finger against them, not in a sensuous gesture, and said, "The minute
they see these, they'll throw us out of here, too."
"If you knew what I know of Nebran, you wouldn't _want_ me to go near
the Mastershrine again!" There was that faint coquettishness in her
sidewise smile.
And suddenly I realized that I didn't want her to. But she was not
Dallisa and she could not sit in cold dignity while her world fell into
ruin. Miellyn must fight for the one she wanted.
And then some of that primitive male hostility which lives in every man
came to the surface, and I gripped her arm until she whimpered. Then I
said, in the Shainsan which still comes to my tongue when moved or
angry, "Damn it, you're _going_. Have you forgotten that if it weren't
for me you'd have been torn to pieces by that raving mob, or something
worse?"
That did it. She pulled away and I saw again, beneath the veneer of
petulant coquetry, that fierce and untamable insolence of the
Dry-towner. The more fierce and arrogant, in this girl, because she had
burst her fettered hands free and shaken off the ruin of the past.
I was seized with a wildly inappropriate desire to seize her, crush her
in my arms, taste the red honey of that teasing mouth. The effort of
mastering the impulse made me rough.