The Dark Lady

I said. “I have seen a photograph of her from the days when Man was still Earthbound.”
    He shook his head. “You may have seen someone who looked like her.”
    “I could not be mistaken. I have seen the evidence.”
    “I don't suppose Mallachi could be mistaken either,” replied Heath. “After all, he painted her.”
    “I wonder if I could speak to this Mallachi,” I said.
    “I don't see why not,” answered Heath. “Of course, I'll have to track him down. He doesn't live on Charlemagne.”
    “I would appreciate it.”
    “I'll see what I can do,” said Heath. “By the way, how many other portraits of the Dark Lady does Abercrombie own?”
    “Twenty-seven.”
    A predatory look passed across Heath's face. “Are any of them by well-known artists?”
    “Why do you wish to know?” I asked.
    He smiled disarmingly. “I'm just making conversation— unless you prefer sitting here in silence until nightfall.”
    “You are an admitted art thief,” I replied. “I do not know if I can answer your question.”
    “You're hurting my feelings, Leonardo.”
    “If so, then I am sorry.”
    “I'm a very sensitive person.”
    “I have no doubt of it,” I said.
    “But you still won't tell me anything about Abercrombie's collection?”
    “I require ethical guidance from the House of Crsthionn before I reply.”
    “Crsthionn,” he repeated. “That's not the word you used before.”
    “Crsthionn is my House. Earlier I was speaking about the House of Ilsthni.”
    “So you were,” he said. “They're the jewelers and you're the art dealers.” He paused. “Tell me something, Leonardo.”
    “If I can.”
    “Why do you look so different from the jewelers? After all, you're all members of the same race.”
    “We are physically as similar to each other as human beings are,” I replied.
    “Structurally, perhaps— but you're orange and violet, and you've got broad stripes all over you. The other Bjornns were covered with circles, and were green and black.”
    “Men come in different colors, and yet you are all Men. It is our Pattern and our color that determine which of the thirty-one Houses we will enter, and yet we are all Bjornns.”
    “You mean you're stuck with a profession based on the markings you have at birth?”
    “Were you not, by your own admission, forced into your own immoral profession due to an accident of birth?” I asked.
    “Touché.” He grinned. He paused for a moment. “Still, had my parents not squandered away my birthright, I would have had numerous fields open to me. You, evidently, did not.”
    “You make it sound limiting, and I assure you it is not. Every profession has numerous different duties and disciplines connected with it.”
    “But you still have to enter that profession,” he persisted.
    “We become part of that House,” I said. “There is a difference.”
    “I don't see it.”
    “Unlike you, we are descended from herd animals, and so we have an overriding instinct to belong, to be a part of the Family. The greatest tragedy that can befall a Bjornn is to be born with a Pattern other than those of the thirty-one Houses.”
    “Does it happen often?” asked Heath.
    “Perhaps once in two thousand times,” I replied. “The child is ostracized, and dies almost immediately.”
    “It sounds rather barbaric to me.”
    “Far from it. The race strives for genetic purity, and to allow a non-Patterned into the society is to court disaster.”
    “How many generations are you inbred?” he asked.
    “You still do not understand,” I said. “Mating frequently takes place between members of different Houses, expressly to avoid the less desirable traits of intensive inbreeding. I myself am such a product. My mother was of the House of Krylken, and my father, whose Pattern I bear, was of the House of Crsthionn.”
    “So he raised you?”
    “I was raised by my Pattern Mother.”
    “I'm getting all confused,” said Heath. “I thought your mother didn't have the same Pattern.”
    “She did not. I was given to a matriarch of the House of Crsthionn— my Pattern Mother— and it was her obligation to see that I was cared for and instructed in the ethos of the House of Crsthionn.”
    “What about your father?”
    “What about him?”
    “Didn't he have something to say about it?”
    “I have never met him. He left Benitarus II before I was born.”
    “Why? Had he broken some law, or were they just upset with his choice of wives?”
    “Neither,” I replied.