Courtship Rite

47

THE LIGHT-HEARTED se-Tufi Who Walks in Humility had been too long independent during the easy life of her lengthy journey between hives. The crones of Soebo were well aware of her loose behavior. They put her on a rigorous schedule to rebuild her discipline.

Mind Control occupied her attention after waking — the Resting Power Positions rebalanced her body and the Oina Thought Frameworks rebalanced her mind. Then, after morning meal, whenever the se-Tufi Who Pats Flesh was available, Humility was drilled in the ways of High Wave Ogar tu’Ama so that she might know the persona of Comfort, a sympathetic woman sensitively aware of the peculiar nature of a widower who had loved only one woman for two-thirds of his life and still grieved.

But Flesh was not always available to train Humility. Flesh specialized in political intrigue and she had lucked onto a bigger game than Ama, who was, after all, only a spokesman for the Mnankrei who did not follow the Swiftness Faction. Winterstorm Master Nie’t’Fosal, of the Central Watch of the Swift Wind, was demanding. She could no longer afford to give Ama the attention the Liethe clan thought desirable but, simultaneously, much as she needed an alter ego, she had little time to be a tutor. Thus Humility caught her when she could, and tu’Ama pined away for a woman who could seldom meet him.

To keep their young assassin under strict crone control, Humility was given other assignments than her Comfort role.

Many of the crones were fascinated by the rayvoice. Their link with Kaiel-hontokae still astonished them. Such magic was arcane and seemingly beyond the powers of the most able seducer of men, but they were not unaware of their extraordinary fortune in having a woman among them who had some small skill with the mysteries of the voice that was everywhere.

Humility was granted a team of ten Liethe, some of them still too young to be apprenticed as courtesans and concubines, but quick and dexterous and patient and accustomed to ruthless discipline, some older and wise in the ways of logic. Two had high jeweler skills, as full in their knowledge of metals and gems as Humility was in her knowledge of death. One of the Liethe knew the working of tungsten, a rare metal which was malleable in its ultra-pure form and a metal more resistant to the depredations of heat than any other substance known to Getan chemistry.

When she was not with Flesh, Humility guided the rayvoice team until the dusk of high sunset dimmed the tower rooms. The darkness was used for Body Control, building again the supple performance of the dancer (and fighter). At low dawn she assumed various house duties — garbage disposal, cleaning, cooking, weaving — then again went to work with the rayvoice until the thankful arrival of low sunset, a sparse meal, and finally the surcease of the mat on her stone floor.

She had no trouble teaching the winding of coils and rolling of electron absorbers and the making of the copper maps. She could even explain the formulae by which the numbers on the maps were changed so that the devices might stay within the realm of magic, but the electron jars were beyond her abilities. She knew when a jar was moral and when one was stubbornly useless; she even had pictures of their assembly — but she did not know how to make them.

And so it was with some wonder that she watched a woman who could spin the finest gold filigree sit down at the table and fashion nets from silver. Small jeweler’s tools built the docks and posts while, as a group, the women debated the tiny dimensions and gaps. Delicate blowing with a torch produced the glass house. Still it was not enough. The electrons needed their vacuum. This obstacle was overcome when a Liethe sister borrowed a clever mercury pump from one of the Mnankrei’s dormant gene-synthesis programs.

Their first four jars were totally immoral. With the fifth they learned how to precipitate out the final oxygen by oxidation inside the jar. But their real success only came with the twelfth jar. By the eighteenth jar they could consistently duplicate their efforts.

Soon after the first triumphant demonstration to the crone mothers, the entire rayvoice program was abruptly terminated. Humility’s teammates, all long residents of Soebo, some emotionally committed to their lovers, were shipped off one night by the new crone mother. They were angry, and yet obedient in the haste with which they prepared themselves. More and more of the established residents of the hive had been leaving. There was a heavy influx of newcomers — like herself — who had been imported for a purpose. She wondered what it meant.

Unexpectedly, Humility met’t’Fosal in her Radiance persona before she met tu’Ama in her role as Comfort.

The One Who Pats Flesh had been putting too much sureness in the Radiance she was creating for Fosal. It made him uneasy. He was a man who believed that women who were not afraid of men were dangerous. He beat her for no other reason than to restore the dominance-submissive balance. He did not stop. His rage at her willfulness subsided and still he beat her for pleasure. She had never witnessed such behavior. To have it directed against her was terrifying.

The crone mother who was in charge of investigating Nie’t’Fosal was a se-Tufi, the se-Tufi Who Rings the Soul’s Bell, and so she thought she could convince this young sister to continue her affair with Fosal. Flesh refused. The crone argued with guile and cunning. Flesh begged for another assignment, anything, a task no matter how demeaning, anything except to be touched by Fosal again. Soul’s Bell finally laughed and called Humility.

“You are to see him tonight.”

“But I have not been fitted to the mask of Radiance.”

“Flesh will drill you until the highnode sun.”

“That is not enough time.”

Flesh made a noise of contempt. “He cannot perceive even the grossest differences. I could train you during the fall of a pebble from my toe to the ground! He’ll beat you; that’s what you have to know!”

Part of Humility’s training had been Kontaing, the art of being beaten without being injured. There were ways to absorb blows harmlessly. “I will not know what to say to him.”

Soul’s Bell folded her hands. Her face was inscrutable. “You will have a sharp change in personality due to the beating. You will be afraid, unsure of yourself, desperate to please. You will have found the man you could be willing to die for if he would but ask of you such sacrifice.”

“Is he so insensitive he would believe that?” asked Humility.

“Yes,” said the crone.

“How can you bear to be with such an insect!” Flesh stormed with scorn, directed not at her sister but at the man.

“It is my vocation.”

“Do not harm him!” warned the old one severely.

“No.” The Queen of Life-before-Death bowed submissively. “You have instructions?”

“Yes. Obey him.”

A call came from the Temple of the Wind for five dancers to entertain at a feast. They were taken by masked Mnankrei boys to the upper terrace where the walls had been shaped with many slits that spoke in eerie tune with the wind. Humility found that she would be dancing only for males. The Mnankrei women, invisible in the world of pleasure, did not seem to attend their men when they were drinking heavily and speaking loudly.

A veiled crone mother chaperoned her children. She was still almost too young to be a hag, and she was the least of the hive mothers, but she was used to authority, and used to being silent, and to sparing her efforts. Only once did she slow Humility, indicating with the lightest hand a tall Mnankrei. “Winterstorm Master Nie’t’Fosal,” whispered her wise voice almost teasingly.

The wizard creator of the deviant underjaw. The man who experiments with the bodies of unwilling women. The man who has beaten the mask known as Radiance. The man I now fear and love for I am Radiance.

She pretended shock to see him here, the smallest gasp, a hair’s breadth widening of eyes, a toe-length withdrawal. She stared at him for a moment of confused love so that she might have time to fix his face in her mind’s file. She saw a broadly muscled giant whose eyebrows were so thick that they were braided into the design of his hair. His beard hid his face like seaweed growth upon a drowned corpse. He said nothing. She bowed, then propelled herself along the terrace into the friendly arm of another Mnankrei who saw her to the stage where the opening dance was to begin.

Her eyes returned to the Winterstorm Master all through the dances. He was a center of power. Soebo would not fall until he fell. Hoemei was a fool to expect a man like that to crumble without taking the world with him. It was self-deluded wishing to believe that such a ruthless tyrant was primed to destroy himself! Hoemei is only a man, a beloved man, groping in the dark like us all. Such a thought shook her, made her feel alone, almost as if God had failed to cross His Sky.

When their chaperone led them away from the celebration, Fosal appeared and stood between the frightened Radiance and the others. The older Liethe tried to protect her but the Storm Master furled her sails. Radiance, still frightened of him, but wanting to be with him, aided his kidnapping and the crone was left helpless. How easy it was to manipulate this leader of men.

He took her to some male den deep in the Temple and ordered her to bring them all drinks in great crystalline mugs while he played chess with a friend, discussing the Gathering, sometimes seriously, sometimes as a joke. She watched him attack across the board recklessly with his White God and his Priests, penetrating deep into his opponent’s squares, leaving his Child exposed. He’s foolish, she thought, seeing how he could be annihilated.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he growled. “Radiance. You’ve been watching. How do I get out of this scrape?”

You can’t. She put an arm around him. “You’ll find a way.”

His opponent, an older priest with a face which had been half burned away by a fire he had survived, moved his Horse for the kill, covering with the Black Queen, destroying the line of White Farmers. Fosal simply continued his wild attack, having never lost control, and made checkmate in five more moves. It sobered Humility.

He set up the board again. When one of his sons arrived, Fosal ordered Radiance into a pillowed room adjoining the game room so that she might take his son in sex. He had promised her to him.

“But I want you.”

“Later. If you please my Beil.”

He pushed out a Farmer in the opening move of the second game. But he did not finish his attack because he was losing and that bored him. He wandered for a while, muttering to himself of plans and strategy, finally pushing through the curtains to stand over his son while he invented bawdy jokes about the helpless humpings of inexperienced youth. Eventually his joking turned to impatience and he threw his son out and took her himself. Humility was ready for violence but a gentle mood overtook him once he was relaxed on the pillows.

“Are you still mad at me?” she asked with a tremble in her voice.

He laughed the universal Getan laugh. “You’ve been a good girl today. Why should I be angry?”

“I want to be a good girl.” She ran a finger along his nose, then withdrew in fear. He pulled her back to his body and took her. She had expected him to be impotent. He was not known as a womanizer. He had children but no wives, no permanent female companionship. The Liethe had tried to reach him many times before and had never broken through his aloofness, his lack of interest, his active dislike of women. But he was not impotent. His power was prolonged and stable and he even seemed to enjoy his clumsily unself-conscious thrusting.

“I like your dancing,” he said to make conversation.

“Thank you.”

When he was through with her he would not let her go but set her upon a pillow where he could touch her and watch her. “I don’t understand why you like me,” he said.

“I don’t like you; I love you.”

Impulsively he carried her through the curtains into the game room and ordered all the games to stop. He ordered some music, which was quick to arrive, and then ordered her to dance, which she did. He stared at her, smiling, clapping his hands, drinking whisky when he wasn’t clapping. He was too big ever to get drunk. Still, his mind began to wander.

She waved the musicians into a subsiding quietness, a sea calming after a storm. She stopped dancing. He was lost in some aspect of his own world.

“I have to go now,” she said quietly.

That roused him. “No, no. You’re coming with me. I’m not through with you.”

For a while they simply walked in the city streets, bundled against the wind. Then he led her to a tower apartment where Radiance had never been. “I work here. The thinking work. It’s lonely overseeing a city, planning a clan’s next move in a wild game for our rightful place. I cook for myself. I do everything myself here,” he said proudly, showing her. He took out bread and carved off two big slices and laid a brown spread over them, giving one slice to Humility. That, she supposed, was probably what he meant by “cooking”.

“I could move up here. I could help you.”

“It’s no place for a woman. I don’t even have men here. I like to work alone.”

“Am I here because you like me?”

“Very much.”

“May I stay here?”

He ate his slice of bread in one bite. That prevented him from answering her immediately. “You can stay for one more sexing; then you have to go. I have too many worries. I have to be alone.”

“Couldn’t I help?”

“What could you do for me!” he protested, and she knew he had a favor to ask. He was being too mild. She could almost see his muscles tense while he held in his abrasiveness, pleased at her love for it gave him control, but unwilling to test it with further brutality.

“I can do anything you want. I’m that kind of woman. I can at least try.”

“There are things a woman can’t do.”

“What?” she challenged.

“Chase the Kaiel away.”

“You’re worried about the Gathering, aren’t you?”

“No, but I’m thinking about it. They’re coming here to burn us all alive.”

“That’s horrible. I’m frightened. I hear they’ve been murdering folk all across northern Mnank.”

He had undressed and was pouring whisky from a cut glass bottle by a hexagonal window that beamed reddish sunlight over his illustrated body. “The Liethe are priest’s women. Am I correct?” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes.”

“Kaiel?”

“We’ve always avoided the Kaiel,” she said truthfully. She paused just long enough for him to tense. She watched the pressure on his whisky glass. “But yes. Our code would allow us to service the Kaiel.”

“They must be bored to starvation after such walking and their seasick journey across the Njarae. A spice of entertainment might cheer them. They could use a roll on the ground with an affectionate wench.”

“I wouldn’t want to do that.”

He laughed. “For me you would. If I wanted it.”

“They’re the enemy,” she said with revulsion.

Absently he went to his evaporation cooler and lifted out a small vial, sturdily blown from blue cobalt glass, padded in a basket wrap. “If this was secretly added to the common meal, they’d all die. It is a poison that grows and can be transmitted from man to man. They’d all die. They’d take it from each other and die.”

“That’s not my work.” She was masking her refusal with tones of irresolution while she spoke but, at the same time, was thinking, My God, the crones have told me to obey this man.

“The Kaiel will not admit me to their camp,” he continued. “They will welcome you.”

She reached for the vial curiously, holding it by the tips of her fingernails.

“You’ll save us all,” he insisted. “A whiff of my powder turns a man into an idiot.”

Joesai would be out there, beyond the city, waiting impatiently but only because of Hoemei’s orders. I’ll see him again. It was a disturbing thought.

“I’ll give your Liethe the Palace of Morning as a reward. It’s beautiful. Have you ever been in the cupola at dawn?” He knew the Liethe were for hire.

She smiled wistfully.

“You’re a delightful woman today.”

“A thrashing mellows me.”

“Will you do it?”

So that was what he wanted and why he had been almost solicitous. “Let me think.”

Joesai! Humility remembered how Hoemei had given her to Joesai for the evening, not like’t’Fosal had given her to his son, but like a man shares a wife with his beloved husband. She remembered Hoemei’s trust. She remembered Joesai’s suspicion. He had been funny to love, unused to affection from women and so easily pleased, easily bamboozled, but never wholly willing to forget his mistrust. He told her that his mistrust kept him alive in those few times when trust was fatal. He had known nothing about the transient pleasures of life. He was not used to courtesans. He treated her like a wife, like some beloved. Of all the men she had ever known, that experience had been the most painful. Even Hoemei, who held her in great respect, saw her as a sybarite. Perhaps she had been so touched by Joesai only because she had been so in love with his brother-husband.

“I’ll go,” she said. “I’m afraid.”

“Just be what you are. I’ll show you how to use the vial and how to protect yourself.”

It was a naked grin that he fixed upon her.