Robert Silverberg - The Longest Way Home

“I dwelled among Masters at Ludbrek House. They taught me to read so I could serve them better.”

She laughed. “Taught a stable-boy to read, so he could be a better stable-boy?”

“Yes. And the utility case that you saw—I stole that when I fled from Ludbrek House. The books, too. I swear to you, Thayle, by whatever god you want me to swear by—”

“No.” She put her hand over his mouth. “Don’t lie, and don’t blaspheme. That’ll make everything worse. I know what you are. It has to be true. You hadn’t ever heard of Eysar, and you don’t know the names of our holidays, and there are a thousand other things about you that just aren’t right. I don’t know if anyone else here has seen it, but I certainly have.”

He was stymied. He could bluff all he liked, but nothing he could ever say would convince her. She thought that she knew what he was, and she was sure that she was right, and she was right, and Joseph would have to be the best actor in the world to make her believe now that he was of the Folk. Even that might not be good enough. She knew what he was. His life was in her hands.

He wondered what to do. Run back to the house, collect his things, get himself away from this place while he still could? He did not feel ready for that, not now, not so suddenly. Night was coming on. He had no idea which way to go. He would have to live off the land again, at a time when he was still not entirely recovered from his last attempt at that.

Thayle said, as though reading his mind, “You don’t need to be afraid of me, Waerna. I’m not going to tell anyone about you.”

“How can I be sure of that?”

“It would be bad for you, if I did. Stappin would never forgive you for lying to him. And he couldn’t let a runaway Master live among us, anyway. You’d have to leave here. I don’t want that. I like you, Waerna.”

“You do? Even though I’m a Master?”

“Yes. Yes. What does your being a Master have to do with it?” That strange glow was in her eyes again. “I won’t say a word to anyone. Look, I’ll swear it.” She made a sign in the air. She uttered a few words that Joseph could not understand. “Well?” she said. “Now do you trust me?”

“I wish I could, Thayle.”

“You can say a thing like that, after what you just heard me swear? I’d be furious with you, if you were Folk. But what you just said would tell me you’re a Master if nothing else I knew about you did. You don’t even know the Oath of the Crossing! It’s a wonder no one else here has caught on to you before this.” Joseph realized that somewhere in the last moments Thayle had taken both his hands in hers. She stood up on tiptoe, so that her face was very close to his. Softly she said, “Don’t be afraid of me, Waerna. I won’t ever bring you harm. Maybe the Oath of the Crossing doesn’t mean anything to you, but I’ll prove it to you another way, tonight. You wait and see.”

Joseph stared at her, not knowing what to say.

Then she tugged at him. “Let’s go back, all right? It’s getting near time for dinner.”

His mind was swirling. He wanted very much to believe that she would not betray him, but he could not be sure of that. And it was deeply troubling to realize that his secret was in her hands.

The evening meal was a tense business for him. Joseph ate without saying a word, looking down into his plate most of the time, avoiding the glances of these people with whom he had lived for weeks, people who had taken him in, cared for him, bathed him when he was too weak, fed him, clothed him, treated him as one of their own. He was convinced now that they all knew the truth about him, had known it a long while, not just Thayle but her brother also, and Simthot, and Saban. He must have given himself away a hundred times a day—whenever he failed to recognize some reference that any of the Folk from anywhere on Homeworld would have understood, whenever he said something in what he hoped was idiomatic Folkish that was actually phrased in a way that nobody who was truly of the Folk would ever phrase it.

So they knew. They had to know. And probably they were in constant anguish over it, debating whether to tell Stappin that they were sheltering a member of the enemy race here. Even if they wanted to protect him, they might fear that they were endangering their own safety by holding back on going to the governor and reporting what they knew. Suppose Stappin had already worked out his real identity also, and was simply waiting for them to come to him and report that the boy they were harboring was actually a fugitive Master? The longer they waited, the worse it would be for them, then. But possibly they were just biding their time until some appropriate moment, some special day of the Folkish year that he knew nothing about, when you stepped forward and denounced the liars and impostors in your midst—

In the evenings Saban and Simthot, and sometimes Velk as well, would settle in the front parlor to play a game called weriyel, which involved making patterns with little interlocking pieces of carved bone on a painted board. Joseph had explained, early on, that this game had not been known to him in his days at Ludbrek House, and they had seemed to take that at face value; Velk had taught him the rules, and some evenings he played with them, although he had not yet developed much skill at it. Tonight he declined to join them. He did not want to remind them of how badly he played. He was sure that his lack of knowledge of the rules of weriyel was one more bit of evidence that he was no true man of the Folk.

Thayle never took part in the weriyel games. Most evenings she went out—to be with her lover Grovin, Joseph assumed. He did not really know, and he scarcely felt free to ask her. Lately he had taken to imagining the two of them going off to some secluded grove together and falling down to the ground in a frenzied embrace. It was not a thought that he welcomed in any way, but the harder he tried to rid his mind of it, the more insistently it forced itself upon him.

Though darkness was slow to come on these summer nights and it was much too early to think about going to sleep, Joseph, uncomfortable now in the company of his hosts, retired early to his room and sprawled glumly atop his bed, staring upward, hands locked behind his head. Another night he might have spent the time reading, but now he was fearful of that, not wanting Saban or Velk to come in without warning, as they sometimes did, and find him with the little reader in his hands. It was bad enough that Thayle, spying on him late at night through the window—and why had she done that?—had seen him reading. But it would be the end of everything for him here if one of others actually walked in and caught him at it.

Joseph saw no solution for his predicament other than to leave Eysar Haven as soon as possible. Tomorrow, even, or perhaps the day after: pack his belongings, say his farewells, thank Saban and her family for their hospitality, head off down the road. There was no need for him to sneak away, as he had done when leaving the Indigenes. These people did not own him. He was merely a guest in their midst. And, though Joseph had agreed to repay them for his lodgings by helping them with the harvest, they would very likely be happy enough to see him get on his way without waiting around for harvest-time, suspecting what they surely did about his real identity. It was the only sensible thing to do: go, go quickly, before the anomaly of a Master dwelling in a Folkish town became too much for anyone to tolerate.

Finally it was dark enough to try to sleep. He got under the covers. But he was still all awhirl within, and he lay stiffly, hopelessly awake, shifting from one position to another and finding none to his liking. There was not going to be any sleep for him at all this night, Joseph decided.