Courtship Rite

18

STORM MASTER TONPA was waiting in a skiff behind his ship when the cry came. He could have overtaken her easily but he did not. He kept his oarsmen far enough behind her so that she had hope, but moved them fast enough in pursuit so that her desperate hope would exhaust her.

When he finally took her, Teenae raked him with her claws and his crewmen had to tie her feet while he held her. They fastened the line so that she was hauled behind the boat. Face down. She had to struggle frantically for air. Tonpa gave careful visual attention to the vigor of these splashings. If they ceased it would mean she was drowning and would need revival.

The skiff slapped safely over the waves to the mother ship. There Teenae was reeled aboard by her bound feet, recklessly swung against the hull by the cavalier sailors, and left to hang by the ankles until Tonpa himself had climbed aboard in his own good time.

The sea priest did not bother to speak to her. He ignored his clawed face. Callously he supervised his men while they lashed her into the painful four-quarter rigging, as if her limbs were the four corners of a sail replacing the furled fore-topsail. Up there her husband would be sure to see her at dawn, upside down, silhouetted, perhaps even rosily outlined.

Arap was also lashed to the rigging, but right side up, and lower down. Tonpa told Arap that pleasure set better in the memory when it was framed by pain. And then he laughed. “How else do I convince her to convince her husband that what you told her was whole truth?”

As an extra precaution he moved his ship out of the bay, silently and without running lights, to foil whatever rescue efforts her husband might attempt. There would be no need for a rescue. At dawn they would be back and what was left of her would be returned to her man.

At the fading of the stars, when Getasun was only peeking at the Njarae from behind the mountains, two rough seamen lowered Teenae and slopped salt water on her crumpled body to revive her. They towelled her down, joking cruelly. A taciturn sailor shaved the strip at the top of her head. They fed her. All the while she said nothing. For a long time she was kept below deck, and then they took her up, unclothed, to face Oelita. She would rather have died on the mast. Not only was Oelita there, but many of the townspeople she knew as well. Oelita, in disbelief, made her say what she had to say over and over again. That was a special torture.

Finally Oelita turned to Tonpa and asked with a precise electric force, “Is she speaking under duress? Are you forcing her to say this?”

“Do you imagine that people only speak Falsehood under duress? Yes, she is speaking under duress. Can you imagine this Truth to be pleasant for her? She speaks Truth under penalty of death.”

“She seems to be ill-treated.”

“I have been under no obligation to treat her well.”

“What will happen to her?”

“She loses her nose for slandering the Mnankrei and then we give her to you to do as you please.”

“You will not harm her in any way or I will slander the Mnankrei in ways you cannot imagine!”

The sea priest chuckled. “Ah, the Gentle Heretic who forgives her worst enemy. Flowers for the criminal. So be it.” He bowed. “We’ve been wronged, but yours is the graver wrong.”

“May I speak with her alone to see that she is not speaking what torture has commanded her to speak?”

“Of course.”

On the deck away from everyone, Oelita placed a shawl around Teenae’s shoulders to protect her from the sea chill. “Why? Tell me why?”

Teenae shook her head.

“Why!” Oelita insisted with a storm’s forpe.

“We were proposing to you,” she said in the tiniest of sounds while looking at the deck.

“You were what?” Lack of understanding made Oelita’s voice antagonistic.

“Proposing marriage.”

Oelita stared.

Teenae was in a state of shock. “Our marriage is incomplete. We need another.”

Finally the calm wonder with which one treats the truly insane mellowed the Heretic of Sorrow. “Is that a Kaiel custom, to murder the bride?” she asked as if she was asking about the weather.

“If you survive, you’re worthy.”

“And you think I would be willing to present my grail after such a courtship?” The grail was the bride’s gift, a layering of sacred and profane foods.

Teenae hung her head.

“Was this the way you were courted?”

“No,” said Teenae with a wistful absence. Her mind hardly functioned. “My husbands took me to the mountains. They sang songs. I was only a little girl. I didn’t even have any breasts. They were kind.” She was crying. “Don’t you see? They didn’t want you! They were ordered to marry you! We wanted another.” She sobbed. “It’s too complicated. Joesai was the wrong man to send but they had to send him because all the Kaiel they’ve sent have been murdered and he’s a violent man who is at home with murder and I was supposed to mute him and I didn’t.” Teenae spoke more but nothing that was comprehensible.

The older woman led the young one back to the Storm Master’s stateroom. “We’ll go now,” she said, defying any of the Mnankrei to stop her. They let her go, her arm around Teenae’s shoulders, having gotten what they wanted — witnesses to tell of Kaiel deceit and weakness.

Among a quiet group on the quay, Oelita reunified Joesai with his wife. “Take care of her.”

“Thank you for this favor,” he intoned stiffly.

“Am I glad to see you,” muttered Teenae, hiding her nakedness in her husband’s chest.

“I brought her back without killing anyone.” Oelita was defiant.

Joesai laughed because he was so happy to have Teenae in his arms again. The laugh blazed as a forge does while it melts steel. “But imagine the violence that has been done to my pride.” His fingers combed Teenae’s long hair. “To soothe that fire I’ll have to kill them all.”

“It is wrong to kill,” Oelita said.

“No,” he said.

“I have contempt for the traps you have laid for me, and the deception with which you have laid them. Both of you!”

“The next time we shall take more care to win your respect,” he replied ironically.

“So! You’re not going to leave me alone!”

“You read me that easily?”

“Yes! You are Kaiel! You are a creature of ritual. Ritual; that’s the plague of Geta.” She sounded frightened. “I’ll survive you!”

He was grinning like a skull. “I don’t recommend that. Then you’ll have to marry me.”

His arrogance possessed Oelita with a stormy mixture of rage and fear. “I’ll poison the grail!” she said, not knowing what she was saying.

Joesai couldn’t contain his laughter. With Teenae back, his fear was gone. “It’s wrong to kill,” he chided. All this time he was appraising the hostile crowd. He gestured his group into a defensive formation and they moved out.

Kaiel men surrounded Teenae, fast-pacing along the quay from the angry mob. Far across the bay, the Mnankrei ship was blending darkly into the waves. Only now, as Teenae was beginning to be aware that she was alive and even safe, did she have time for rage.

“That shipleech Tonpa, may his scars turn to pus! I’ll never forgive him. Never.” She felt her nose. It was still there. “Kill him for me, Joesai. You can do it. I want a new pair of boots!”

Joesai’s mind was more on immediate survival. “First your feet will have to acquire a new set of calluses. Second you will have to row to the moon. Third…”

She was in no mood to be joshed. “Kill him for me tonight while my hatred is hot enough for me to enjoy it!”

Joesai laughed. “He’s just lucky he didn’t make the mistake of beating you at a game of kol!”

“You’ll have your chance to kill him at lownode!”

“How?”

“Cut his throat at lownode!”

“And what happens at midnight’s halfmoon?” he asked cautiously.

“A Mnankrei party is going to come ashore and burn down the peninsula granary.”