The Faded Sun Trilogy by C. J. Cherryh

self. He had been as close as thought to her once, could still imagine that closeness between them. “Melein, when there are only two young men within a Kel, it is impossible that they not compare themselves and be compared by others. He had first all the things I wanted to excel in. And I was jealous and resentful. I interfered between you. It was the most petty thing I have ever done. I have paid for it, for six years.”
    She did not speak for a moment. He became sure that she had loved Medai; only daughter of an edun otherwise fading into old age, it was inevitable that she and Medai should once have seemed a natural pairing, kel’en and kel’e’en, in those days when she had also been of the Kel.
    Perhaps—it was a thought that had long tormented him—she would have been happier had she remained in the Kel.
    “The she’pan sent me,” she said finally, without answering his offering to her. “She has heard of the intention of the Kel. She does not want you to go. There is disturbance in the city. There is uncertainty. This is her firmest wish, Niun: stay. Others will see to Medai.”
    ‘“No.”
    “I cannot give her that answer.”
    “Tell her that I did not listen. Tell her that she owes Medai better than a hole in the sand and that these old men cannot get him to Sil’athen without killing themselves in the effort.”
    “I cannot say that to her!” Melein hissed back, fear in her voice, and that fear made him certain in his intentions.
    It made no more rational sense than the other desires of Intel, this she’pan that could gamble with the lives of the People, that could bend and break the lives of her children in such utter disregard of their desires and hopes.
She has given me her virtues,
he thought, with a sudden and bitter insight:
jealousy, selfishness, possessiveness, . . . ah, possessive, of myself, of Melein, the children of Zain. She sent Melein to the Sen and Medai to the regul when she saw how things were drifting with them. She has ruined us. A great she’pan, a great one, but flawed, and she is strangling us, clenching us against her until she breaks our bones and melts our flesh and breathes her breath into us.
    Until there is nothing left of us.
    “Do as you have to do,” he said. “As for me, I will do him a kinsman’s duty, truesister. But then you are sen’e’en and you do not have kinsmen anymore. Go back and say what you like to the she’pan.”
    He had hoped, desperately, to anger her, to pierce through her dread of Intel. He had meant it to sting, justenough. But her hand withdrew from the screen and her shadow moved away from him, becoming one with the light on the other side.
    “Melein,” he whispered. And aloud: “Melein!”
    “Do not reproach
me
with lack of duty,” her voice came back to him, distant, disembodied. “While he lived, I was a kinswoman to him and you were grudging of everything he had. Now I have other obligations. Say over him that the she’pan is well pleased with his death. That is her word on the matter. As for me, I have no control over what you do. Bury him. Do as you choose.”
    “Melein,” he said. “Melein, come back.”
    But he heard her footsteps retreat up hidden stairs, heard doors close one after another. He stayed as he was, one hand against the screen, thinking until the last that she would change her mind and come back, denying that answer she had made him; but she left. He could not even be angry, for it was what he had challenged her to do.
    Intel’s creation. His too.
    He hoped that somewhere in Sen-tower Melein would lay down her pride and weep over Medai; but he doubted it. The coldness, the careful coldness that had been in her voice was beyond all repentance, the schooled detachment of the Sen.
    He left the screen finally, and sat down by the corpse of Medai. He locked his hands behind his neck, head bowed on his knees, twice desolate.
    The lamps snapped and the fires leaped, the door of the edun having been left