Courtship Rite

40

So THE CRONE MOTHER had detected the rebellion Humility felt. The hag’s speech had been a lash of fury. Humility’s thoughts raged. Why must I care why those who die are condemned? I’m young! I don’t have to stay in a hive and think!

Being young had its disadvantages. Youth was subject to the absolute will of the crones. And the crone mother saw fit to drill her on the Four Justices and the Lattice of Evidence and all the rest of it barring even time out for love. She was being readied for something. They always gave you the vessel before they filled it. The vessel was bisqued and then baked to stoneware hardness by the fire of their breathing. Methane-snorting witches!

Humility knew she would be nothing without the Endless Training. There would be no palaces, no mastery of grace, no adoring men, no power, and no pleasure of the hunt and kill. The Training was the price. One even learned to love its rigor. But why the sudden hurry? It was keeping her away from Hoemei!

The hive was gray; the floor of her cell was cold; her woven mat pricked her flesh with broken fibers: all minor tortures compared with the pain she was really suffering. She lay awake imagining the se-Tufi With Saucy Nipples giggling while riding Hoemei’s rod during her stand-in at being the Honey persona. Why do I care? Humility only knew that she desperately wanted to be in the Palace with Hoemei after being away from him only a week.

Would Saucy know to bring a nightslip petal for him to smell? Why am I jealous of my own sister? In all her intricately memorized knowledge of the se-Tufi, there was no taint of jealousy. Did a se-Tufi, who felt jealous, fear her shame so much that she kept the emotion a secret from all her sisters?

Once Humility had, on orders, smothered a Lineless Liethe for jealousy. The girl had slapped her lover’s wife. It had been somber to feast upon such loveliness. Weeks later there was nothing left of the beautiful body but the warm buskins worn by the crone mother. Jealousy was a foul emotion, lethal to the cause of the Liethe. The penalty was always death.

Dawn of the high day brought an early rising and a summons by the se-Tufi hag. They shared a bun and honey.

“Don’t you ever relax?” asked Humility, trying to be offhand.

“When I travel.” A faraway look came into ancient eyes. “But I’m too old for the road. I shall die here in Kaiel-hontokae for my Feast. Keep a fingerbone for yourself. I have a special place for me in your belly. I envy you; you still have much journeying in front of you.”

Humility was quick to perceive that the reference to the road was not idle gossip. Her heart caught. “Are you telling me that I’ll be travelling for you?”

The hag grinned. “I have been training you to be my ambassador to Soebo at the Crone’s Court. In Soebo you will see how marvelously the Lattice of Evidence sifts for crime. You will know that I have taught you well.”

“But I don’t want to go to Soebo!” Humility cried.

“Ah! You’ve changed.” The old woman first chuckled, then sighed. “You must go. Serious scandal is afoot. The Liethe watch all Gatherings. We participate in our own way. You will know what to do when you get there. Your youth is over. You are ready to decide for yourself who must die. Do not be impulsive. Remember always that you are acting for me and that I shall judge you. You leave tonight.”

“Shall I not see Hoemei again?”

“No.”

Only the White Mind seared away her tears. She bowed to duty. She bowed her head to the floor. She swore allegiance to mother and hive and clan.

And cheated. Saucy Nipples was her friend and sister. They arranged a brief switching tryst so that she might say goodbye to Hoemei who would never even know that she had left. She was crazy with excitement. She bathed twice and broke flower petals upon her skin. She read the love poems of the Sexing Chant to prepare her mind.

Hoemei was tired but she did not mind. She hugged him and enjoyed the caress, not clinging too long, for to him Honey had only been away for sun-heights. He was tired so she fed him; he was tired so she undressed him and laid him upon his back while she massaged the plowings of his body; let him lie comfortably while she mounted him to feed him the pleasure of her hips. “You’re the love of my life,” she said, squeezing him with her lower self.

He only laughed because Liethe always spoke thusly to priests.

“Hoemei!” came a whisper at his door, a woman’s voice, hurried, frightened, excited.

He held his Honey to keep her from moving. “Yes? Who is it?”

“Me of course! Kathein! You’re all alone — with Joesai and Noe up north, and Gaet and Teenae on the coast. I was feeling sorry for you all day, so I’ve come to see you.”

“God,” said Hoemei, rattled.

For the Queen of Life-before-Death, the moment was pain. She had never before hated a woman, and what could be more painful than that? Slowly she lowered herself from her riding position until her breasts mingled with Hoemei’s hairy chest. She gave him one last kiss, a quick one while she stuffed the feel of his body into her memory. “She’s an old love of yours, isn’t she? Let her come. While I hide, she will be fascinated by you, and while you hold her with her back toward me, I will leave.” Humility dismounted, collected her things rapidly, and took herself behind the tapestry.

“Kathein. I’m not dressed,” he delayed.

“That’s the way I want you!”

“I’ll be right there.”

He got up and patted the tapestry, and of all the things he could have done, that pleased his Liethe the most.

“What’s happening?” said Hoemei as Kathein slipped through the door.

“Silly, you’ve dressed yourself!” she admonished him.

“I’m in a state of shock. What are you doing here? Aesoe will have us for rugs!”

Behind the oz’Numae hangings, a disheveled Humility snorted in her mind. He hasn’t learned how to handle Aesoe yet! When will he ever learn!

“I’m tired of making love to Aesoe,” she said sulkily. “He likes to sleep with his head on my breasts — and he snores!”

A sudden knowing smile erupted in hiding. Humility wondered why she was smiling while she was in such pain, and why she tolerated the agony when she could as easily go into White Mind and order any response she desired from her body. It was love. They told her it might happen someday. They told her it happened at least once to every Liethe and that if she were lucky she would be old before it did.

She felt a petulant exasperation. They want me to know why I kill! And I get stuck with being in love! She did not like growing up.

“How’s the new clan going?” Hoemei asked.

“You’re so the intellectual! How’s my clan going,” Kathein mocked. “You know how it is going! I’m surrounded by children who have to learn everything from me. I’m astonished by their speed! But I want people who have lived. I miss you all. I hate Aesoe for sending Joesai out to his death! God Above, what an astronomer he’d make!” She was crying and Hoemei took her in his arms.

Humility stuck her head out and motioned for him to pull Kathein to the cushions. He did so, holding her tightly, locking her into an embrace that generated passion from Kathein. Slowly, Humility tiptoed away, clothes in her arms. She wagged her tongue insolently, pausing just long enough to frighten him, waiting at leg’s length from Kathein’s shoeless toes, a nostalgic look on her face. If she were Hoemei’s wife, she could join him on the pillows now.

Morality! she thought sullenly and was gone, silently crying, wetting her cheeks, anguished that her last meeting with Hoemei had crumbled into such a disaster. It was the first time in her life that she remembered tears she had not faked.

She took the route through the Valley of Ten Thousand Graves to the coast, an arduous journey that one did not make frivolously. She found a proliferation of the strange skrei-wheels and charmed rides from their pedallers in exchange for a hand at pushing on the difficult grades. There was evidence of new roadwork everywhere. A conqueror lays out roads. That was axiom.

Before reaching Sorrow she turned northward through the mountains because a signalman of the Moera clan, who was not a true Moera, worked the great tower atop the Peak of Blue Concern. No command ordered her to find him but he did live along her route to Soebo and there was a standing call for his execution.

Humility first encountered Anid toi-Moera at the inn where he liked to eat, overlooking high cliffs above the sea. She waited and, after dinner, followed him into the wilderness fog. But at the perfect place for murder — a curving trail among huge trees that grew more than two man-heights tall — she hesitated.

Why did he have to die? The accursed Lattice of Evidence was prickling her mind.

The crone said he was a bearer of the foul underjaws to these parts and that he accepted coin for overhearing all messages that passed through his tower. Humility knew nothing more, not who had accused him or how his deeds had been cataloged, just that he was marked for death.

During her moment of introspection, he disappeared.

She slept in the woods to the crashing sound of waves below, stunned by her vacillation. See! It was true that no assassin should seek to understand her target! Orders were enough. The hunt and kill were enough. To be curious meant fatal irresolution.

Wearing modest robe and veil, she spent the next high day seeking Anid again, the empty Lattice of Evidence in her mind like a burr under the skin. Each branch of the Lattice had to be filled before a man was condemned. Who had filled it for Anid? Had some crone mother, at great distance, really satisfied those severe demands? What distortions and falsehood might have entered the judgment?

She found Anid on the road. Boldly she went to him and asked where she might have shoes repaired. He was curious that she would travel alone. She told him that she had a long ambition to see the sea, and truly she was awed by it. He smiled. He was a towerman, he said, and knew the best spots from which to view the ocean’s beauty. For instance, there was a cliff where the moon laid a road of light across the night waters. Please show me, she replied, making him feel that she had long been without male company, and that, though she was modest, she might be seduced by kind attention.

So he led her to a nook above the cliffs where they could be alone. They talked. She probed to hear his view of Stgal and Kaiel and Mnankrei but learned nothing. He had no opinion about famine that would separate him from a thousand others. He did not seem to lust for power or reward. He seemed to be a towerman who took pleasure in seducing wandering women. Her Lattice framework remained empty, an unsatisfying hollowness.

The rustic hideaway he had chosen was grassy, at an awesome height above the beach below, hidden by a rocky rise behind them. The slate was cracked and crumbling to gray age but was of a resistant nature that had held back the death attack of the waves like a great-grandfather watching over his clan.

“You must stay with me here to be enchanted by the moon’s waxing increase as night unfolds,” he said.

“I have no time.” She let her voice express regret, lingering on the mysteries that might come with stolen heartbeats.

“Aw, stay with me a while.”

“Do you really want…”

“I’m dying of desire.”

“If you really want me, I might be convinced.”

“I’ll be good to you.”

“I’m very inexperienced,” she said, dropping the eyelashes that peered from above the veil.

“There is no hurry. The early night after sunset covers much.”

“No. We have to do it now. Keep your back to me. Nothing looks more foolish than a woman undressing herself.”

He obeyed, careful now not to break her sudden mood.

“Promise to close your eyes?”

“They’re closed.”

The stone smashed into his skull, crushing it. She tested his pulse to see if he were dead, surprised how he clung to life. A quick twist of his head broke his neck. Thoroughness was the mark of a superior assassin. Then she pushed him off the cliff. She had been careful to let her feet follow in his tracks so that it would seem he came alone. She left no traces as she retreated, only traces upon a mind upset because it craved more than faith.

She was slightly disappointed to find that, in the end, she was merely a creature of habit.

Gazing backwards, for the view pleased her, she saw a ship far at sea, its sails full. Mnankrei by the size of it. She could pick up a ship going north, probably as wench to a Mnankrei Storm Master. She did not relish more walking or those hideous wagon rides. Fast ships fascinated her and here was a new sea to explore.