Courtship Rite

43

AFTER A ROLLING journey in a small single-masted vessel that took her to three tiny harbor villages, the se-Tufi Who Walks in Humility found passage as High Deck Sensual on a large merchantman of the Mnankrei. It was not an ideal berth. The captain, whom she expected to be in charge, had been moved out of his cabin into the quarters of his mates by a certain Summerstorm Master Krak — a weighty official of Soebo on a tour of inspection — who was disinclined to share his appropriated luxuries with a mere woman.

Instead of being mistress of the High Room, as she had contracted, Humility found herself being shifted between two small bunks, three mates, and a captain who was in a foul mood for being ordered about at every change of tack by his finicky superior. Nor were all the seamen drafted from the Vlak or Geiniera clans as was usual. She had signed on to service the sea priests, unaware that the ship’s crew contained fifteen virile Mnankrei doing their sailing apprenticeship.

Paraded before them along the deck she paled and somehow the youths noticed. They were in awe to have a Liethe at their disposal and, among themselves, overruled their captain, deciding that their collective lust would be too much for her. They fixed up a private bed among the oily smells of the dark rope room so that she might have a place of respite from the fetid mate’s quarters. They gave her candles and smuggled special foods for which her smile was enough reward. Such unanimous gallantry warmed Humility and she responded by being free with her touches. Often she sang for them and once spent an evening by the light of Scowlmoon helping the crew mend ratlines.

One gray morning, while an easy rain was dropping upon the sea, a small ship hailed them and a wounded man was brought aboard. The patrol had tried to stop a boat smuggling the false judges of the Kaiel across to Mnank. Explosions had thrown pellets at them and one of the men had taken a lead ball into his stomach. Humility tended the man that she might hear him speak of this wonder. The rifle! How would these men of the sea respond to this awesome Kaiel magic?

“We couldna come close,” said the sailor in his pain. The wound was days old, but movement to the larger ship had opened the hole and his suffering was fresh.

“At what distance were you taken?” asked Krak.

“Five hundred man-lengths.”

Krak was surprised and asked for more details to confirm the estimate. Finally he shrugged. “Are you frightened?” he asked sarcastically of a young Mnankrei who seemed most awed by this report of metal flung through the air like seed popping from the ripened pod of a hurler.

“The game has changed,” came the reply, revealing neither fear nor foolhardiness.

“The sand is stirred but the beach remains,” quoted Krak, calling upon a common Mnankrei proverb. “Let me instruct you. In the blood of this poor man’s belly you see demonstrated a mastery of metal — a tinkerer’s skill, worthy of the og’Sieth perhaps. But I ask you, why do the priests rule and not the og’Sieth? God gave the priestly clan no special privilege. Is it that we rule because priestly skills have proven their seniority? Knowledge of the sacred and the profane dominates all else. Lo! This lead ball flies across 500 man-lengths to attack us. Shall we tremble as we contemplate the vastness of 500 man-lengths? I tell you that the sacred skill of the Mnankrei can extend a Black Hand across 500 thousand man-lengths and clean a city bare. To what avail is a lead ball against the forces we command? Will not the Kaiel die even before they have seen as specks those they presume to judge? Will not they die while thinking they are safe because they are beyond the range of flying stones!” He laughed. “The mite, on guard against the carnivorous flea, flies into the maw of the maelot.”

Krak dismissed the litter bearers, indicating that they should carry the wounded man below decks. He was happy with some secret knowledge. Humility, her assassin’s mind alert to allusions of death, was left to wonder at a perishing over which riflemen could not prevail.

The ship rode out a storm with furled sails. Continuous heavy winds brought them into Soebo harbor, a long extension of the river. The sea’s violence still grumbled as a cold drizzle but Humility braved the wetness to catch her first sight of the waterfront.

Ancient stone structures of the uniquely massive Mnankrei design reached into the bay, crusted at the waterline, some of them built on the ruins of older structures. Ships cluttered the wharves and canals. Flotsam floated and bobbed on the water, carrying with it the slight smell of sewage. Endlessly the city rose over the hills of the river valley.

Humility had never imagined that she would be so happy to see land again. One of the young Mnankrei, sensing her mood, pulled out a small flute and began to play to her from his seat on the wet ropes. She turned and listened. She picked up the melody. For a while she hummed along, then began to sing in her high voice of a city that waited for sailors to return from the sea. Soon she had an audience.

A tall Geiniera, stooped from the low ceilings of the ship, brought out a flask of whisky, brewed from the somber barley of Mnank, and passed it around to the beardless Mnankrei he had been training in the lore of the sea. They drank. They clapped. The captain stepped from the warmth of the High Room onto the cold of the upper deck to watch. Soon she was dancing for these men who were her friends, Liethe in every movement and flirting gesture, thriving on their attention.

She had arrived at the greatest city on all of Geta, a city of rumor and fame and debauchery, that nurtured a Liethe settlement unequaled in size except for Hivehome on the islands of the Drowned Hope. This was civilization and she could dance to its glory on the deck of one of its magnificent vessels. Kaiel-hontokae was but a desert village grim in its determination, a waystation in her past. Kaiel-hontokae had only Hoemei, her lover, whom she still remembered a little, a man so deliciously arrogant that he was foretelling the imminent fall of this great city which would crumble, he said, on the day he chose to touch it.

She laughed. Did all lovers seem so foolish once they had been abandoned?