The Faded Sun Trilogy Read Online Free PDF Page A

the Nom and walked onto the public square, where the cold wind swept through the city.
    He walked swiftly, as if he had a place to go and went there of his own will. He imagined that every regul on the street knew his shame and was laughing secretly. This was not beyond all possibility, for regul tended to know everyone’s business.
    He did not slow his pace until he was walking the long causeway back from the city’s edge to the edun, and then indeed he walked slowly, and cared little for what passed his eyes or his hearing on the road. The open land, even on the causeway, was not a place where it was safe to go inattentive to surroundings, but he did so, tempting the Gods and the she’pan’s anger. He was sorry that nothing did befall him and that, after all, he found himself walking the familiar earthen track to the entrance of the edun and entering its shadows and its echoes. He was sullen still as he walked to the stairs of the Kel tower and ascended, pushing open the door of the hall, reporting to kel’anth Eddan, dutiful prisoner.
    “I am back,” he said, and did not unveil.
    Eddan had the rank and the self-righteousness to turn a naked face to his anger, and the self-possession to remain unstirred.
Old man, old man,
Niun could not help thinking,
the seta’al are one with the wrinkles on your face and your eyes are dimmed so that they already look into the Dark. You will keep me here until I am like you. Nine years, nine years, Eddan, and you have made me lose my dignity. What can you take from me in nine more?
    “You are back,” echoed Eddan, who had been his principal teacher-in-arms, and who adopted that master/student manner with him. “What of it?”
    Niun carefully unveiled, settled crosslegged to the floor near the warmth of the dus that slept in the corner. It eased aside, murmured a rumbling complaint at the disturbance of its sleep. “I would have gone,” he said.
    “You distressed the she’pan,” Eddan said. “You will not go down to the city again. She forbids it.”
    He looked up, outraged.
    “You embarrassed the House,” Eddan said. “Consider that.”
    “Consider
me,
” Niun exclaimed, exhausted. He saw the shock his outburst created in Eddan and cast the words out in reckless satisfaction. “It is unnatural, what you have done, keeping me here, I am due something in my life—something of my own, at least.”
    “Are you?” Eddan’s soft voice was edged. “Who taught you that? Some regul in the city?”
    Eddan stood still, hands within his belt, old master of the yin’ein, in that posture that chilled a man who knew its meaning:
here is challenge, if you want it.
He loved Eddan. That Eddan looked at him this way frightened him, made him reckon his skill against Eddan’s; made him remember that Eddan could still humble him. There was a difference between him and the old master, that if Eddan’s bluff were called, blood would flow for it.
    And Eddan knew that difference in them. Heat rose to his face.
    “I never asked to be treated differently from all the others,” Niun declared, averting his face from Eddan’s challenge.
    “What do you think you are due?” Eddan asked him.
    He could not answer.
    “You have a soft spot in your defense,” said Eddan. “A gaping hole. Go and consider that, Niun s’Intel, and when you have made up your mind what it is the People owe you, come and tell me and we will go to the Mother and present your case to her.”
    Eddan mocked him. The bitter thing was that he deserved it. He saw that this over-anxiousness was what had shamed him before the regul. He resumed the veil and gathered himself to his feet, to go outside.
    “You have duties that are waiting,” Eddan said sharply. “Dinner was held without you. Go and assist Liran at cleaning up. Tend to your own obligations before you consider what is owed to you.”
    “Sir,” he said quietly, averted his face again and went his way below.

Chapter Three
    The ship, a long voyage out from