The Ordinary Read Online Free Page B

while. Precision in the design, in the casting of the latch, the closure. She would not have been surprised to see it in a Hormling structure. Yet she had been led to believe the Erejhen were backward, primitive metalworkers, at a level of civilization much lower than the Anin.
    Later, a knock on the door, and there was Himmer. One of the house staff waited behind him with a tray, and Himmer was carrying another. “We’re being fed,” he said. “I was hoping you’d let me join you.”
    He was speaking Alenke. Jedda said, in Erejhen, to the porter, “You’re very kind to bring me food, don’t mind my friend, he’s from the south.”
    The porter smiled in recognition, setting the tray on a wooden table in the room, while Himmer stood patiently, his belly hanging over his trousers. The householder, a pretty boy of sixteen or so, looked Himmer up and down. “Those southerners,” he asked Jedda, still in Erejhen, “do they all look like that?”
    Jedda burst into laughter. The boy was looking at her suspiciously. “How did you learn to talk the true talk?”
    â€œI knew a teacher,” she answered, and he laughed, so she guessed she had used the phrase properly. Said with that inflection, it meant, none of your business.
    â€œWhy don’t they let us go into the city to find dinner?” Jedda asked the boy.
    â€œYou shouldn’t be wandering,” he answered. “The city is a strange place for you.”
    â€œYou don’t trust us.”
    He shrugged. “Why should anybody?” That was the best she could understand of the word he used, an impersonal pronoun of indifference. The phrase sounded as though it were one of their formulas for interaction. “You can walk around tomorrow.”
    â€œWhat’s your name?” she asked.
    â€œKirin,” he answered, but she would have guessed that. Every one of them will tell you his name is Kirin, Opit had told her. And every one of the women will tell you her name is Kartayn .
    When he was gone, she had to repeat the conversation for the benefit of Himmer, minus the reference to his physique. “How did you learn the language?” he asked.
    â€œFrom the Anin. In Charnos. I spent two years there.”
    â€œThe Anin?”
    â€œI know, they’ll all tell you they don’t speak the northern language, and most of them don’t, but some of them come as close to speaking it as anybody can. I’ve learned what I could absorb. The Anin have very close ties with these people, regardless of what they want us to think.”
    Himmer was watching her in a peculiar way. She had known he was attracted to her, had guessed this moment might come. They sat down to a meal together, his tray and hers, on the heavy wooden table, more wood than anybody could afford in the outer world, and for a mere piece of furniture. They were both stroking the grain of it, the precious substance, and looking at one another. “Did you ever dream there was such a place?” Himmer asked.
    â€œNo.” She was whispering as she looked around.
    â€œRelax, it’s not working, remember? When was the last time you were in a place where the stats didn’t work?”
    They began to eat, real meat that neither of them was used to, with fresh vegetables and fruit and some delicate small sweet dishes like nothing on Senal. Wine, so rare on Senal that only the highest levels of the Ministries could afford to drink it. They ate their fill, not nearly all the food on the trays, and then toasted each other and sipped. The wine was going to her head, a delicious rush of flavors across the tongue and around the mouth, so many tastes at once, and even a texture, a silkiness on the tongue. “No wonder people pay so much money for this,” Jedda said.
    â€œI’m thinking the same thing.” Himmer was looking down into his cup. “I had a glass of wine before we left Béyoton.