Courtship Rite

16

SEA PRIEST TONPA, Storm Master, sat in his carved swivel chair, long hair braided into his beard, his face scarred with the flying-storm-wave design, examining Teenae, who stood naked, ankles manacled, wrists manacled in brass chain, holding her head high, guarded by two erect seamen. He felt fatherly amusement for the tiny girl but was quite willing to hide that in order to properly terrify her.

Tonpa could see in the quivering of her mouth that she was not taking her humiliation well. Probably she was being silent to hide her near-tearful state. These Kaiel, who watered down their stock with the genes of the underclans, were all bluff. As the saying went, they were the kind who could only play games on a steady table.

“We arrive here,” he said severely, “after having run a storm to bring in relief supplies to the south. This port is an out-of-the-way call on our return, but we think of it as our sacred obligation to warn of the plague that brings famine to the Stgal communities below, for it must come here as the wheat ripens. And what do we find? Lies. Slander against the Mnankrei. It is not to be tolerated.”

He waited for her reply. She did not reply but stood rigidly stiff, her expression slightly disgusted as if the ship-smell of ripe sea creatures and salt offended her mountain nose.

“We hear of this act perpetrated against one of the most respected women of this community. True, she is a heretic. True she speaks falsehood and foolishness, but she does not lie. So who is the source of these lies? The innocent folk who live here are willing to listen to lies about the Mnankrei just as they are willing to listen to lies about the Kaiel, so they look no farther for truth. But we are the Mnankrei and so we look for the source of these vicious lies. Of course we suspect the Kaiel.

“Are not the Kaiel known for their devious lies and their arrogance? The kaiel insect spreads false scent so it can control. The priest insects who have usurped this name spread calumny for the same purpose. But the salt spray that clears the nose gives us immunity from such ensnarement.

“Was it hard to find you? It took a day. You stand on my deck against your will, shaved of your dignity, in fetters. We also have spies. Our spies are more brilliant than your spies. Haven’t we Culled for intelligence week by week while you baby-eaters wait for famine to tell you when to Cull?” He paused and cleaned his fingernails with the point of his knife. “A Kaiel posing as an o’Tghalie. True Kaiel deception. Futile. The wind that fills our sails does not need feet. Speak! Defend yourself or confess!”

To abate the adrenalin terror, the manacled woman clenched her fists and breathed heavily, breasts rising and falling with her chest, but she would not reply.

Tonpa flipped his knife and it sank into the deck, vibrating. One of the seamen recovered the thin weapon, returning it with a bow. The Storm Master never took his eyes off Teenae. He accepted a mug of warm broth from a boy who emerged up a ladder and still he did not unlock his nude victim from the brig of his gaze. He grew impatient.

“This woman you wish dead, whom you have so cowardly attacked in the name of the Mnankrei, is coming aboard ship. You know she is in no danger here. But because of your lies, she was difficult to persuade. I have had to offer hostages. You will have to face her.” He watched Teenae flinch and laughed the great laugh. “She does not know the truth.” He watched Teenae shrink. “I do.” He watched Teenae turn her head away ever so slightly. She was breaking. “I give you a choice. You may face her and keep silent and make your Contribution through Ritual Suicide to the larder of this ship which has sacrificed so much to bring food to those threatened with starvation, or you may speak with honor the truth and escape with only your nose being cut from your face for the crime of slander. Speak!”

Teenae was glaring at him with a hatred that had overwhelmed her fear — for the moment. Tonpa shrugged, deliberately feigning indifference. “It’s been a long voyage. Be stubborn. The men will not object to the taste of fresh meat.” He watched her eyes dart between her two guards. They were grinning. Her hatred crumbled to fear and he had her.

“I will speak the truth to Oelita — but not for my life,” she said with loathing.

“Because you are honorable, of course.” He couldn’t resist that last whiplash. A gesture told the guards to take her away.

Tonpa followed her down to the lower deck but his ever-alert eyes caught the stare of one of his sailors as the prisoner was escorted past him. Arap was a big boy, bigger than Tonpa, and useful in a storm for his untiring ferocity. He was young, very young; he had no more than fuzz for a beard but he was precocious with the women, a jolly soul who could convince a matron twice his age that she was young again, and never failed to try.

“What a waste!” he sighed to his master, his hand gesturing in open grip as if he would take heaven by her round buttocks.

“Nothing is to be wasted,” replied Tonpa to provoke Arap. “Every finger of her is lean meat.”

“Storm Master, sir! How c’d you? A comely girl like that-un? Leave me have the appetizer. You c’n have the steak.”

“She’d scratch your eyes out!”

“Not me, sir!”

“Follow me,” said Tonpa abruptly.

Arap whitened. “Sir, if I’ve offended you…”

“You have not offended me.” The Mnankrei priest brought Arap of the lesser clans into his luxurious cabin and set him down in the velvet seat by the desk, amused at the boy’s discomfort. Clan code did not permit a seaman to enter the Storm Master’s cabin and Arap had never been here before. He did not want to sit in the velvet seat but he obeyed orders. The room impressed him.

“Shall I give the wench into your hands?” Tonpa teased.

Arap was sweating. “We c’d all have a go at her, sir. Perhaps I c’d train her up not to fight too hard.” The sailor was growing appalled at his position. It was a trap and whatever he said was coming out wrong. A horrible suspicion was dawning. Their master was known to lead by the ear. “Sir, you’re not liable to assign me to butcher her? Really, sir, I lack skill in such art.”

“You think of me in harsh terms, Arap.”

“No, sir.”

“I know exactly what you say about me below decks!”

Arap mentally began to ready himself for keel-hauling. “Them’s only jokes, sir,” he said helplessly.

“I’m assigning you to guard duty on this Teenae. The first watch you will only smile at her and do her silent favors of the smallest kind. Other seamen will discuss recipes with her in a somewhat bawdy way. When she is sufficiently terrorized, you will become very tender with her. Appear infatuated to the extent that you are willing to risk your life for her. Tell her your jokes about me; the one about how I bail a boat will do nicely,” he added wryly.

Arap was near to fainting.

“See that she knows you consider me to be a monster. Tell her our plans, exactly as they have been told to you.”

“But, sir…”

“Then help her escape.”

“We’re to leave the wind have those legs?”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t collect whatever gratitude she might offer. But don’t use force or I’ll give you fifty lashes. Wet your oar gently if you wet it at all.”

“Sir, I’ve b’n set with the party to row ashore and burn the silos.”

“I know.”

“I’m to spill that in her ear?”

“That’s what I said.”

“And I’m to take my way with her?”

“If you’re clever. I doubt that you are. In any event she is to escape.”

The illumination of day and then night passed dimly over the only nearby porthole. Smells in the dark cubicle where Teenae was chained sifted through the air and she could hardly see the man-boy who brought her food. He was the one who had been kind to her when the cook and his assistants were down making ribald jokes in very bad taste. She didn’t want to eat now but if only she could get those chains unlocked for a few minutes! “Please, if you take the chains off I can eat.”

He would not do that, but he sat down beside her and fed her the gruel carefully. “Don’t be afraid of old Lace Beard. He never does much more’n keel-haul a man. Can’t stomach killin‘ even if it means a good meal. Course the men’ve b’n complainin’ ’bout the food and sometimes he gotta keep the peace. I’d be suspectin’ the worst he’d do is make you ship’s whore and then you’d be lucky ’cause I’d take care of you.”

She backed away as far as the chains would let her.

“For you, I’d even dunk a bath.” He offered the food again. “Don’t make such a face! We don’t get better’n this ourselves. Don’t to worry. He’s goin’ to let you go.”

“Without my nose!” she sobbed.

“It’s a pretty nose. Maybe he’ll let me keep it for a souvenir.”

Teenae spat gruel at him but became infected by the great laugh as he had wanted her to.

“What’d he say to you?” asked the boy who was taller than she. “A mean wind he is. He struts ’round on deck and makes pious sayin’s at us like as if we don’t’ve enough with settin’ and riggin’.”

“He told me the Kaiel are rotten liars and Mnankrei are saints,” she laughed.

Arap glanced over his shoulder furtively. “Us underclan folk get to see the rope-deck. Saints. I’ll tell you. Do my soul a favor for the poor folk of Sorrow. You’re gettin’ off the ship and you c’n warn ’em. Next midnight we’re to shore and burnin’ the granary on the peninsula, so’s we c’n tack ’round and sell ’em wheat. That’s what we’re here for. Keel-haul the Stgal. Old Lace Beard can’t kill a tender meal like you, but he c’n starve a thousand without sheddin’ a tear.”

She started to comment, and he slammed a hand over her mouth. “You want ’em to serve me for soup? Now how ’bout a little kiss ’fore I go?” He put his arm around her.

“Don’t you touch me.”

“What a silly pout for a chained-up girl to say.” He kissed her and it was the kiss of a large boy who had been too long away from home and was hungry to be tender to a woman. Death didn’t seem so close when somebody kissed you like that.

“When is Oelita coming aboard?” asked Teenae.

“It’s all set for after sunup.”

“And when is Tonpa going to chop off my nose?”

“Soon as the woman leaves.”

“Why don’t you take off my manacles?”

“You’re thinkin’ escape,” he grinned.

“I’m thinking about my nose!”

“I’d be skinned alive and rolled in salt, was I to unfetter you.”

“You could always run away with me.”

A pale beam from Scowlmoon reflected off the brig wall, so faintly illuminating her legs that the scarified design of them was invisible, leaving only the shape of legs like those of a young child. He felt his lust rouse. He could do what he wanted and there would be no painful consequences. Slowly his hand touched her thighs, caressing them, moving slowly down to the manacles, knowing that she would not stop him while he was close to doing what she wanted him to do. She remained silent. Excited fingers worked with the locks around her ankles. “I sh’dn’t be doin’ this,” he said hollowly.

“The wrists, too,” she replied.

“No,” he said.

He put his arm around her as gently as he could and with all the care his hand knew, caressed her body. She sent him neither resisting signals nor encouraging signals. The total power of his situation annoyed him. Having that much power was never any fun. He wanted her to like him. Slowly he won her body, while he restlessly suppressed the surf of his own desire. Once, with a barely perceptible motion, she snuggled up to him. Triumph welled in the sailor. It was going to be worthwhile.

“You smell funny,” she said clinically.

Ashamed, he remembered that he hadn’t bathed. He moved away.

“Don’t go away,” she said, alarmed.

But he left in panic and found another part of the ship where he could wash himself in salt water. He scrubbed the important parts of him until they were red. Then he came back with some old blankets so that she could have a pillow and found her struggling with the hand manacles. She was crying.

“You came back,” she said petulantly.

“I got blankets to make you more comfy.” And he put the blankets on the deck and molded her into them and tried to take her, but she kept her legs closed.

“How can I hold you if you don’t take off these damn hand manacles!” There was a thread of anger in her voice.

He hurried to unlock them, and she held him and they maneuvered for a less awkward position and he held her tightly while his lust commanded him because he was afraid that she might run away too soon. “You’re a pretty woman. I c’d go for you. You’re the prettiest I’ve ever had.” He kept talking to her to try to make her feel loved the way women liked, and the more passively she took his thrusts the more talkative he became. For a while he was swallowed up in his own pleasure but after the release came and he found this sweating woman in his arms, lying with her head tilted, her mind somewhere else, he grew affectionately worried. “What’re you thinkin’ ’bout, babe?”

“About my nose,” she said quietly.

She listened carefully as he told her how to escape. She had to wait until he was off watch. Then she had to count the next guard’s pacing. When he had passed the fourth time she was to count to fifty and then throw off her still unlocked shackles and push open the porthole, which Arap would have unlocked, and then jump into the sea and swim ashore.

The time came. She counted to fifty by the thumping of her heart and made for the tiny hole in the side of the ship and slithered out, hanging for a moment by her fingertips before she dropped feet first into the moonlit bay. She had never swum before in water over her head, nor in anything bigger than a river pool. It did not matter. She was ready to fly if she had to.

The salt water closed around her head and she bobbed to the surface, hearing cries from the upper deck. Her plunge had been seen. For one heartbeat she felt what it must have been like for her husbands to grow up in their creche, outwitting the death trials. Terror and hope. Then her o’Tghalie mind took over. This is what she had been bred for. This was a problem. Without even knowing how she did it, her body created a powerful swimming stroke that pulled her through the water at minimal energy cost.