Courtship Rite

24

THE CARAVAN OF a hundred and twenty men stretched along the Itraiel desert. Behind them lay the mountain range called The Pile of Bones and, to their left, the implacable Swollen Tongue. Here the land was flat or gently rolling, but greener, though the vegetation was never more than waist high.

Three massive Ivieth clansmen pulled the wagon in which she rode. There had been four but one had died. That meant meat for a day. The woman who bore the outward name Humility, yet who was driven by a more lethal inward name, had enjoyed the stringy toughness of roast Ivieth but was less pleased with the walking that became necessary to alleviate the load on the remaining three porters. Without a full team, the passengers often had to push the wagon themselves when the road was rough.

Tonight they were making camp on a rise where the Ivieth kept a murky well but maintained no permanent settlement. She ran to exercise her limbs, dancing even, for she was a dancer and the suppleness of her body gave her great delight. When she skipped too far from the caravan road a giant Ivieth trundled after her. The Ivieth herded their passengers with care.

“Wanderlust is not wise,” his voice boomed reproachfully.

“Look!” She held up a spray of blue flowers whose tips deepened to purple. “Have you ever seen anything so gay?” She shook off her hood and put the sprig in her hair, defying the giant to be angry with her.

“It is not wise to touch what you do not know.” He checked her leggings to see that she was properly protected for a walk in the desert.

“These innocent little blue flowers?” Humility grinned up at him and slipped her slim fingers around the elbow of her self-appointed protector. His elbow brushed her shoulder. She let him lead her back through the brush to safety elated by her uncommon discovery.

In the blue flower lurked a poison rare enough that it was unrecorded in the literature. The petals, when sun-dried and then leached in alcohol, yielded a sweet essence so powerful that drops of it could kill a man. It numbed like one whisky too many, filling the body with a rosy warmth, a pleasant drunken stupor, and then the heart stopped. Assassin’s Delight was the only name by which she knew the flower.

Her own name was recorded as se-Tufi’87 but she was addressed as the se-Tufi Who Walks in Humility. Like every Liethe woman Humility wore her line signature in scar. The se-Tufi were signed by seven nodules running from the base of each eye to the jawline like a string of jewels, and a bracelet of nodules on the upper left arm. She was not adorned with the sign for 87 because every Liethe of a line expected to be used interchangeably with her sisters. Unlike the bodies of normal women, Liethe were uncut except for the line signature. Humility also carried a secret name which she had taken, as was the custom, on the night when she had seduced her first priest — a white-haired priest of Saie, now dead. The name locked in her breast was Queen of Life-before-Death and that was how she thought of herself.

After pressing her precious flower, Humility used her brass mirror to retouch the facial makeup she wore to disguise her almost scarless features under appropriate artistry. It was taboo for a Liethe to reveal her clan while travelling. She ate rations of biscuit and honey and mash standing up against the wheel of her wagon, and then wandered ahead to spend the last of the evening by the fire of the Ivieth, her cowl over her head against the sudden cold.

She loved the Ivieth songs. It was the musician in her. How they sung about Scowlmoon! She could not imagine what it was like to have a moon in the sky since she had lived all of her life on the far side of the planet. As if it were a slowly rising cookie in the sky’s oven, the moon nudged above the horizon, day by day a little higher. It was exciting.

The giants laughed so. They enjoyed their songs so. How could she resist snitching a small harp and singing to them one of their own ballads? Liethe Code would not permit her to sing a Liethe song. Liethe music was for the priests. She threw her melodiously high voice farther than the reach of the fire.

They arrived in Kaiel-hontokae by night. She hardly noticed the approach, so intent was her interest in the moon. For a week the moon had dominated the horizon, growing. Now it was fully risen. All through each day it waned until by sunset there remained but a thin sickle arcing above the distant mountain line. The sickle reversed to become a bowl during the blazing yellow-reds of Getasun’s retreat and then began to fatten as the wagons squeaked westward into a purpling night. Scowlmoon! It was huge! The moonless world of her youth had vanished!

She left the wagon and walked toward this moon, hypnotized. Even the stars dimmed in its glory! It lit the land! She had a shadow at night, a pale extension of herself that disappeared down the road! Great Scowlmoon brought music to her feet and song to her heart. What a night for loving in a landscape erotic with the soft red pallor of sinister death.

Finally she begged one of the Ivieth to let her ride on his shoulders. She was scarcely a burden for him. She was such a small thing, clinging to his hair, her legs crossed upon his chest. That was her perch when she first saw Kaiel-hontokae by moonlight, the ghost form of the aqueducts, the shadowed symmetry of the buildings.

Ho! she thought as they mounted the crest of a hill and glimpsed distantly the cadaverous ovoids of the Palace celebrated in song but never seen, mine enemy who will be my lover! Skillfully she lifted her feet to the Ivieth’s shoulders and rose in perfect balance with her arms outstretched. The Ivieth reached a hand to steady her. She kicked it aside. Slowly she doubled over, and made a half twist, and then a head stand, her hair buried in his, her feet toed to the zenith, so that she might view a Palace turned upside down.

The cell she was assigned in the Liethe hive at Kaiel-hontokae had been built within the buhrstone walls of an old whisky cellar. There was floor for a sleeping mat and upright space for simple wooden furniture — but no tapestries, no luxuries at all. She woke early, prayed, and, to clear away the mood-residue of dreams, assumed the mental attitude of White Mind while placing her body successively in the Three Positions.

Then, unhurriedly, to work. She allocated a sun-height of time to her memory drills, today a review of two songs and the mnemonic key to her genetic file.

A face sneaked into her room, giggled and retreated. Humility leapt up, barefooted, still bare-breasted, and peered down the hallway. “Hey!”

The face reappeared, cloaked in hair robe and also with bare feet. A face with bare feet. Her face with bare feet. She giggled. Humility’s clone sister smiled in reply. “The se-Tufi Who Cocks Her Ear,” said the woman, cocking her ear in formal introduction.

“The se-Tufi Who Walks in Humility,” came the formal response coupled with the flat hand and the drop of the eyelid gesture that was universally associated with humility. The Liethe of the same genetic line used these quick signals to recognize each other.

“Would you like to break fast? Come.”

The kitchen was austere, but there were bins of flour and potatoes and ample jars of ground bees and spices. “I’d like pancakes and honey.”

They began to mix the batter and gossip as if they had always known each other. “Have you heard the fame of Aesoe? You’re my replacement. I’m pregnant by him. This time it is a girl.” She meant: this time it did not have to be aborted. “The old crone is sending me to hivehome to have the baby. I’ve never travelled so far. I was born in Oiena. You’ve travelled.” Cocked Ear would already have exchanged data with other se-Tufi sisters about Humility and have it accessible in her genetic performance files even though they had never met. “What’s it like to walk so far? I get to cross the Njarae by ship!”

“I saw the moon last night!” Humility was rapturous.

“Is that all that happens when you travel! I’m afraid of rape. Were you ever raped?”

Humility slid out of her chair and, before she had turned around, began a forward thrust that took her into the air as a rotating ball which uncoiled, feet first, to hit the far wall with a devastating thump. She fell back into a cartwheel and landed gracefully where she had begun, on her feet. “You should see the look of surprise on a man’s face when you smack him in the chest that way!” She went back to the pancakes.

“Where did you learn such ferocity?”

Humility only smiled. The training had been part of her assassin’s course. “Ugh. Travelling is mostly getting out and pushing your own wagon when the Ivieth die on you. That was the most interesting day of my last trip. I’ve never been to an Ivieth funeral before. You’re lucky you get to sail across the Njarae. I’ve read so many poems about the Njarae that I get hoiela wings fluttering in my brain just thinking about it. Imagine the ocean at night with Scowlmoon in the sky and the sails out and one of those munchy Mnankrei with his smelly arm around you on deck, tucking you under his armpit. I swoon.”

Cocked Ear curled her nose.

Humility was instantly aware of the hostility. She was surprised. The Liethe had been Mnankrei allies for centuries. It was widely believed among the Liethe that the Mnankrei would rule all of Geta come the Union. Liethe who had served Mnankrei lovers were proud of it. Humility had once strangled a wandering priest who carried messages against the Mnankrei. “The Mnankrei have kalothi,” she said.

“The Mnankrei are evil!”

“Beetle piss.” Humility took a mouthful of pancake. “You’ve been living in Kaiel-hontokae too long. It’s time you were moving on.”

“The Kaiel have a magic ear in the Palace that can listen to the Mnankrei talking right now! What those sailors are doing frightens me.”

“Who’s telling you about magic ears?”

“Aesoe!”

“The Kaiel are vowed enemies of our Mnankrei! Do you believe everything a fat old priest tells you? They love pulling off a girl’s legs and eating them right up to your brains!”

Cocked Ear smiled a little laugh that made the beads of scars down her cheek part like a curtain. “I know he does. He laughs afterwards too. He had this poor Kaiel woman over the other day and while she was piling the furniture up against her door, he was coming through the window! Thank our God for Mind Control. I had to go into White Mind to keep a bland face. Aesoe is such an adorable baby. I worry that he’s going to have a heart attack.”

Humility was choking on her pancake, wide-eyed. “You’re in love with him!”

“I am not!”

“It’s just that he’s a good bum kisser?” Humility teased.

“I’ll miss him,” Cocked Ear admitted. “I hope his daughter grows into the greatest line the Liethe have ever known! He adores us. He really does!”

“Recksh,” she gurgled. “And I have to sleep with this man?”

“All the time knowing that he thinks you are me while you’re cooing at him!” the sister retaliated.

“God’s Streak, this is going to take some getting used to.”

“Our old crone is only going to give you three high days to assemble your act.”

Humility’s eyes widened. “So soon?”

“She’s going to work you down to soup stock!”

“Don’t we ever wear out?” The hive mother, Humility knew, was of the same se-Tufi line as they were. She was the notorious se-Tufi Who Finds Pebbles.

“No, we don’t wear out, we just get bitchier.”

Humility thought about that. The hive mother had lived five of Humility’s lives. That was a lot of bitchiness. “Why the hurry?”

“The se-Tufi Who Sings at Night has been filling out Aesoe’s threesome this week but she is to be sent south. That leaves only four of you for three roles. I’ll be here for a while as a back-up, but not for long.”

“What kind of a kalothi-zero is this Aesoe? His ego is so big he needs three mistresses and for ten thousand sunrises he never notices that they are playing a shell game with him and he never even notices that they aren’t aging? This is the man who overlords the Kaiel? This is the man who has delusions of grandeur that cover the whole land? The Mnankrei will skin him alive!”

“He likes to sleep with his head pillowed on your breasts. And he snores.” Cocked Ear was enjoying herself.

“I’m going to love this! Women have killed men for less!”

“And when he calls you Honeybee, your reflex action is to snuggle up and suck at his ear lobe.”

Another woman entered the kitchen, taller than a se-Tufi, fuller of hip and more sultry of face, wearing a signature of eight nodules on her forehead. The jawline was almost familiar. She made the sign of the berry, hurriedly, and headed for the pancake batter, but when Humility returned the sign of humility, she stopped and broke into a smile.

“I don’t know you!”

They introduced themselves formally. She belonged to a daughter line of the se-Tufi which was not yet established over the full age range, having been founded only half a lifetime ago with the melding of se-Tufi and be-Mami ova. Such a line, like most Liethe lines, had no father.

Three introductions later, as the kitchen filled up, the crone appeared in the doorway looking straight at Humility, the first really older version of herself Humility had ever met. It was a shock. She was old. Humility knew well the map of her own line. This woman would be close to death — but her mind would still be strong, her ways demanding, and her energy relentless if economical.

“Your drill begins now,” said the crone mother severely.

“Yes old one.” Humility was on her feet and bowing. She did not finish her pancakes.