Courtship Rite

25

THE SQUEAK WOKE Oelita to a sudden sitting position. Panic located the intermittent noise at the window. Then she saw the screw between the bars, happily turning and pausing in an erratic fashion, pulling together two heavy nuts that were, in turn, pushing a rigid framework against the bars, bending them and in the process slowly extracting them from their stone base. It was fascinating because no one could be out there. She watched for a while. The screw turned and paused, turned, grunted, protested, paused again. A bar broke loose and the machine sagged. Instantly she grabbed the rhomboid shape and pondered for a moment how to reset it between the remaining bars. She would have to rewind the screw until the machine was thin again. “Shall I reset it?” she asked the sky, bewildered.

“Ho,” came a voice on the wind, “that would save me a nasty trip. Any guards?”

“They’re asleep.”

“Is the bent bar free?”

“I think I can work it free.”

“Don’t drop it outside… make a racket to wake God!”

“Where are you?”

“I’m the beetle on the windowsill.”

For thumping heartbeats she said no more, but just reset the screw and removed the loosened bars. The screw was being worked by a metal rod from above. Finally she could stick her head out and look down below, far below, at the Temple’s base. The height was sickening. Normally it wouldn’t have bothered her. “Are you coming inside to help me?” she asked weakly.

“No. You’re coming outside to help yourself.”

“I’ll never get down!”

“All you need to do is crawl out the window and gravity will take it from there.”

“I hate your sense of humor!”

“Ho! I thought this was a good time for levity.”

She had no choice. Her heart was racing and she began to crawl out the window, clawing for a grip that found only smooth stone. When she saw the man above her, she froze in terror. It was Joesai, the Kaiel murderer. The wind that was trying to blow her away and her own expectations had changed the voice.

“Ready for Trial Three?” He was grinning in supernatural stance on a ledge above her, a ledge half a footprint in breadth,

“I’m going back inside.”

“There’s a door in that room, and it is Death’s door. Your choice.”

She was so paralyzed that she couldn’t even return. “You’ll kill me!”

“No,” he grinned. “Won’t have to.”

She took the harness he lowered to her, made from the hide of some unfortunate pauper. It fitted around her waist and under her crotch. Iron rings were sturdily woven into the belt. He showed her how the ropes attached and how to walk down the wall with her weight being held by a piton, but mostly the wind took his words and she had to reason out the process. He let her lower herself while he backed her up and then he lowered himself while she backed him up. Once he screamed because she was doing something wrong but it was too late and a piton gave away and all the security of the rope was gone. She fell. Terror. But the second rope went taut and she was slammed against the stone. She never even paused. She just secured herself and called up the signal. “Ready! Go!” He dropped and secured himself. “Ready! Go!” he shouted down at her. When they reached a ledge on the first large buttress the terror came back again and she had to fight it off before she could move on.

“In Trial Four you have to climb up.” He laughed the great laugh while they shared this ledge built for one and a half.

“Why don’t you just push me off!” she replied savagely.

“Kiss me or I will.”

She was clinging to him, but not out of love.

“We have to go,” he said.

“I can’t.”

He waited patiently. He waited longer than he wanted to wait. “You’ve shown at least half of the courage you need to get down.”

“If this is a Trial in a Death Rite, you shouldn’t be helping me.”

“I’m not. I’m not carrying you on my back, am I?”

They reached the roof. He lowered the ropes and harness to a strategically placed lackey after being given the all clear signal. Then they jumped. The waiting small crowd had robes for them and they faded into the town. Joesai indicated a gaming tavern up a side street. “Ho! I have thirst after such a climb!”

“No,” Oelita protested, pulling at his robe. She didn’t want to risk it.

“You really think the Stgal cowards will come after you now?”

“They were going to murder me!”

“Never. They were merely working on a ruling to give you special permission to contribute your known Ainokie gene to the Great Chromosome Sink.” Joesai laughed, picked her up and carried her into the tavern, continuing the conversation by whispering into her ear. “And you pissed on them by waving your kalothi while they sat in ponderous debate. They’ll have their heads tucked up their arseholes tonight!”

He set her down on the tile floor while their companions swarmed up the stairs behind them, then made a flourish to the startled customers. “May I present the Gentle Heretic!” And he took her arms roughly, and, stripping the sleeves from them, held her arms up, wrists out, unslashed wrists, in the universal gesture of high kalothi. The barkeep was weeping. Both drinkers and gamers cheered, raising their mugs. An old man went to his knees on the floor. Joesai bought the house a round of mead, courtesy of Aesoe’s coin vaults.

She was sitting at her table with fingers around her mead when Joesai brought her a handful of spiced wheat sticks to help along her thirst. “I don’t understand you,” she said. “I don’t understand your morals. I don’t understand your beliefs, even your loyalties. Why do you do what you do? Is it possible that we might stop your little game and start something simple? Perhaps a friendly bout of chess?”

“I always lose at chess.”

“I noticed. You’re a fool for a set-up — that move where your opponent threatens a piece and you rush up to protect it, and two moves later you have lost your defender.”

Joesai clanked her mead mug with his and smiled wryly. “Then you know I didn’t burn the silo?”

“I wasn’t sure. I told you I didn’t understand you.”

“Life is a race to outwit Death.”

“No it isn’t. Life is peace if you create that peace.” She looked him in his eyes and saw the transit of a dark moon across a green and alien planet. “Peace?” she implored.

He laughed. “Till tomorrow!”

When they took her home, Joesai’s two men commanded a patrol of men who checked out every intersection and alley and doorway before they moved forward. He told her there was no danger but he wanted to be thorough. He offered to lead her out of Sorrow to some strongpoint she could hold.

It was while they were waiting for patrol feedback at a corner that Oelita got impatient and peered around Joesai up the street, touching him, her hands holding one of his arms. She wondered then if she could seduce him. She had always been honest with her favors, not promising what she could not give, and had found that genuine affection with a little physical spice bonded men to her and often changed them. Why not keep him with her for a few days?

Where will I go? She could go to Nonoep’s farm. It was the logical place from which to mastermind a defense against the Mnankrei. Nonoep knew how to extract safe food from all kinds of profane vegetation. They could defeat the Mnankrei that way. But he was Stgal and, for all his rebellious nature, carried their fatal trait of helplessness in the face of large projects.

In a dire emergency Nonoep could probably provide food for ten people, but town-scale production would frustrate and defeat him. He was Stgal, dreamy, amoral, self-centered, finicky about detail to a point where he lost track of deadlines and schedules. He would make a huge batch of jam and forget to have pots to put it in. She laughed, remembering.

Perhaps if Joesai were with her, organization of volume profane food production might be possible. She could keep him close to her. Surely a man could not harm a woman who pleased him. She wondered how Nonoep would receive another man. He was not the domestic type. But she had made love to the glassblower and he had not minded.

Of course Joesai had his woman. Teenae had hinted that there was place for another. She was recovering from her wounds somewhere and he would go back to her. I liked Teenae. Teenae liked me. Perhaps together? Teenae, she knew, would relish humiliating the Mnankrei. Such a ruthless game of kol she played!

Whatever was done, had to be done soon. Once the sea priests came with their wheat and their administrators, it would all be over. It frightened her to be trusting the Kaiel. They were just as violent as the Mnankrei. They coveted this land just as much. What was the difference between Teenae being hung from the mast of a ship, and the way Joesai had fixed her in an iron-reed basket to drown? But I can reach Joesai, she thought. I’ll reach him tonight.

When her convoy arrived home she simply ignored the pandemonium of the neighbors finding her safe and the refusal of her guards to leave her. She showed Joesai the incredible view through pale green windows at the front of the house overlooking the Temple. Her house was built on the high ground above the town. “I love it up here but I chose this building for its safety.”

“You’re almost at the height of the tower!”

“My tower of Life and their tower of Death.”

“Teenae enjoyed it up here.”

“She told you?”

“Yes.”

“Is she well?”

“She’s chattering again. She was telling me about your insect collection and that little crystal you have.”

“I remember that the crystal impressed her. She called it a Voice of God. You Kaiel are such superstitious people.”

“I find it superstitious to think of God as a rock. And dangerous. Could I see the crystal? It is probably just very nice glass.”

Oelita was indignant. “It is not glass!” She went and brought it.

“The place was such a mess when Teenae was here. I’d just moved and didn’t know how to use my space yet.”

Joesai took the crystal reverently and she could see his excitement. “It is a Frozen Voice of God.”

“What does that mean to you?”

They were interrupted by the entrance of the ironsmith who had made the pitons for the tower climb. Joesai greeted him warmly and set down the crystal and took Oelita over to tell her what a great help he had been. “I can’t believe you’re safe,” said the huge man, moved almost to tears. Their eyes locked fondly. When she looked around again, Joesai was gone and so was the crystal.

There was no way he could have passed through to the rear of the house. He had to be on the balcony. Outside she noticed the iron-reed spikes running down her front wall, but only because she had just mastered the descent of the tower facing and walls no longer seemed like barriers to her.

She wheeled around, returning to the house. “That man!” She was furious. “Thief! God’s bane! He’s a liar!” she stormed. “Maiel! Herzain! He’s taken my crystal! Can we catch him! It’s a nothing crystal, but I found it and I want it back!”

One of her friends came forward. He was of the iron-reed dredgers. “No need to chase them. I know where their boat is beached. It’s the most likely place for them to go.”

“I want my crystal back! Can you get it for me?”

“There’s only three of them.”

“But I don’t want them hurt! I forbid that!”

Suddenly she decided she couldn’t rely on any of them. There was that stupid incident of the stabbing of Teenae. Would they never learn! “I’ll go with you.” She brought out a blow dart, a weapon not known in Sorrow but given to her when everyone thought she needed protection. Oelita had liked the weapon because it was effective and harmless. The darts carried distillate from the fur of the dreaded ei-cactus. Actually the ei-cactus was harmless — if its fur penetrated through the skin a man was knocked down within four heartbeats but the paralysis was only temporary. The danger was in being alone and falling into a clump with one’s skin exposed to the fur and dying of starvation or exposure, conscious but too helpless to move a muscle.

They set up an ambush and nobody came. Oelita was ready to give up. Her temper had subsided and she was becoming more aware of her own danger and her own necessity to leave Sorrow when suddenly the three of them appeared, feeling quite safe. She felled the youth with the broken ribs immediately. One of her men grabbed Joesai and she took out both him and her own man. The third man she pricked while he was being held by the iron-reed dredger and the ironsmith.

She recovered the crystal and had the three Kaiel tied up before they revived. They remained conscious. It amused her to bind them with a puzzle knot that could only be undone by the victim who had time, patience, and perception. She ordered their boat repaired. The storm had damaged it extensively and the sail was ripped. When she saw Joesai painfully flexing his fingers, she sat down beside him, unmindful of the gravel beach that cut into her knees.

“That’s Trial Four of the Death Rite! Do you understand?”

He muttered an unintelligible reply through a reluctant tongue.

“If I attack men who are as dangerous as you, I risk my life. That counts! That’s Trial Four!”

She cried. She was afraid of death. She was afraid for her people. For a while she walked along the beach in despair. How could she go to her friend Nonoep, who had run from responsibility? She thought of her beloved followers. Was there one among them who could lead? No. They were not priests. They weren’t bred to lead. Why was it that if one sought to escape the tyranny of the priests one had only the priests to turn to?

Wisdom matured in crisis. She felt ignorant. She had made it a policy not to deal with the priests. She had scorned the Kaiel and loathed the Mnankrei, but were they not part of humankind with their own special skills? I should have preached to them. I should have won them over. Now it was too late. I have been afraid of them. She wove visions of heretical trial. She remembered the slaughter of the Arant and the new clan of Kaiel sitting in Judgment Feast. It was a horrible vision.

Oelita ran along the beach and then became afraid that she had gone too far from her friends and turned back. She cut across the sea to make the trip shorter. Ah, water and tradition had much in common. If you fought it, stamped it to death with your feet, as she stamped and slapped it now in her hurry, the brine/tradition merely splashed aside and when you were gone, flowed back as if you never were.

Her people up ahead were dutifully repairing Joesai’s sail.

Like the squall that brings the rain, sudden hope lashed over her desert despair. Joesai had made her less afraid of trial. I’ll be brave. She trembled as she had when the men closed in on her at Gold Creek and as she had when she actually made the decision to crawl down the outside of that tower wall. I’ll go to Kaiel-hontokae. She could use the crystal as hostage for her safety.