Courtship Rite

39

NOE WATCHED JOESAI leave the city with eighty men — only ten of them experienced — her heart filled with foreboding. She had climbed by herself to the tallest raceway of the Northern Aqueduct so that she could keep her husband in sight as long as possible, a climb she had not attempted since a distant day as an adventurous child. Its arches and levels had seemed easy then to a mind unused to assessing danger but had seemed deadly to two-father who whipped her with a cane for the climb. Now, the daring in her still unquenched, Noe held herself by the brickwork and looked out over the first column of the Gathering, ignoring the icy splashes of water that ripped by her hand.

Joesai was taking his column by the eastern route around the Wailing Mountains to avoid Mnankrei spies, planning to cut through to the coast at a point far north along the Barrier Pass. Hoemei’s original scheme was a shambles. Aesoe had forced the departure of the Advance Court so prematurely that they carried only thirty rifles and were missing some supplies altogether. Maybe Aesoe had done that deliberately to derange Hoemei’s plans since his prediction of the outcome was already registered with the Archives.

Noe was furious at Joesai for the trouble he had caused them, but she also remembered that the family had sent him to Sorrow with Death Rite in mind and only little Teenae by his side to restrain his hand. It was, in the end, a mutual decision that had caused the trouble. Even Oelita had contributed. One’s life was not a dead chip on a roiling spring river. As a consequence, Joesai had been isolated, dressed for the spit fire, and banished from Kaiel-hontokae for the rest of his (short?) life. Was it for him alone to carry the ire of the Expansionists? Of the maran, he was the most vulnerable — and so her first duty was to him.

Noe waited impatiently the few days it took the og’Sieth to assemble twenty more tested rifles of the new quick reload design and then followed her husband with her own party at a forced pace, ruthlessly wearing out her Ivieth so that she might catch up with Joesai. Karval ngo-Ivieth, her lead porter, found fresh clansmen where he could and the pace never slackened. Sometimes when she was ready to drop, he carried her, without complaint, like a scarf about his neck.

“Karval,” she once asked him, “what is your opinion of this Gathering?”

“It is a matter between the priests.”

“How are we to rule wisely if we know not the feelings of the underclans? Come! If your resistance hides disagreement, I must hear! The Kaiel do not fear dissent, nor do we harm dissenters.”

Karval considered. “The Mnankrei interfere with our breeding rights,” was his only comment, but those words were weighted with disapproval.

Ah, so Hoemei may really have the scent! If Mnankrei fingers no longer touched the soul of the underclans of Soebo, then, given forbearance by Joesai, it might be possible, as Hoemei thought, for Joesai to inspire a revolt and to survive by taking its leadership. Aesoe anticipated no such resentment in Soebo. His plans were built around the death of a martyr. The Mnankrei were Noe’s enemy, but Aesoe was also her enemy.

Noe’s studies of The Forge of War had left her wondering that Getan clans had not invented the game of war themselves. The intrigue, the conflict, the hatred, the rivalry, the clash of ambition was there, the raw material of Riethian war. Perhaps her Ivieth’s answer was the clue. On Riethe the clans were organized vertically. They had fierce up and down loyalty but only the weakest lateral loyalty. One priest clan of Riethe could set their under-clansmen to killing fellow underclansmen of another priest realm, something inconceivable on Geta where horizontal loyalty was unbreakable and enforced by swift death.

She tried to imagine what would happen if the Ivieth of the Mnankrei, half of whom must have wandered in from another realm, were ordered to kill the Ivieth of the Kaiel. What would they do? Laugh? Grow red with rage? Gape at such foolishness? Politely ignore the order? Kill Mnankrei? No Ivieth would destroy the bridges and roads of another Ivieth, nor harm the travellers that their Geta-wide clan-vow protected. Noe smiled at a preposterous thought she could not have entertained a few weeks previous — how difficult was conflict when priest had to march against priest, and ethics forbade the killing of more enemies than one could eat!

Oh, those Riethe leaders were spoiled with their bowls of sunfire, their poison gases, and their specialized killer clans; the willingness of farmer to kill farmer, brother to kill brother, sister to kill sister, husband to kill wife, and right hand to stab left! Here we priests have to do it all ourselves! And God’s Wings, on foot!

Karval called rest at a spring near grassy and bramble-filled foothills. Noe collapsed onto the ground beside the rifle wagon. She remembered that Gaet would touch these tools but not use them in his hands, pointed at something. Her coward husband!

She unpacked the topmost of the lethal tools while they rested, loaded it curiously, carefully, and lying prone on the ground, held it against her shoulder. After breathing deeply — twice — she squeezed the metal thumb, immediately forgetting where she had aimed in her surprise. She never saw the pebble strike. Five lead pebbles later, meticulously flung into the hide of an old tree, she felt ready to attack any man who might attack her husband. She was sad she was not going to Soebo with him. She would be stuck on the coast, working with her seagoing relatives, keeping open the sea-leg of the Gathering’s supply line.

They found Joesai camped outside of the village of Tai. He was on a flat hill above the farmlands, teaching one of his fresh creche girls how to catch knives and throw them. Her hair was tied in a bun, her breasts shimmering with sweat and blood from a minor gash on her shoulder. The girl yelled and ran to Noe’s wagons where she emerged waving a rifle in triumph, the hontokae carved into her face distorted by a smile.

Noe hurried her husband to his tent and fed him water, caressing him as she did so, eager for his body. “A bloodthirsty pride of children I have here,” he glowed.

“We must forbid them to be Riethe,” she said. “It is important.”