Courtship Rite

54

IN THE DAYS that followed her execution of Nie’t’Fosal, Humility stayed with moody High Wave Ogar tu’Ama, feeding him what little he could eat, listening to his self-recriminations, his foreboding, his wild plans. Her quiet sister, Flesh, who did not like to be beaten, loved this gentle man but Humility pitied him. She had been the companion of Aesoe the Prime Predictor and Hoemei the Thinker Who Could Act. She longed to teach white-haired Ogar of the slashed face the art of leadership, but he was too old. He could make fiery speeches and pinpoint moral issues but he could not delegate authority and somehow in his long life, with only one wife and no husbands to help him, he had never been simultaneously in all the places he had needed to be to block the Swift Wind.

The murder of the Winterstorm Master had shaken him. At first he was elated and gave his Comfort a rousing speech on the new glories that now awaited the Mnankrei while he broke out a special bottle of whisky. Then drunk, he became obsessed that he would be blamed for the murder. Finally, with the empty bottle hugged in both hands, he gloomed that the murder meant nothing, that the young ones of the Swift Wind would simply take over and run a more ruthless ship.

He snored away his stupor until sunrise, then contritely helped her fix the meal though Mnankrei men traditionally found kitchen work demeaning. They played game after game of chess. She could not beat him; he was a chess dobu. He refused a game of kol. Its strategy was too real.

“I’m going for a stroll. You nap,” she said.

Humility chose a direction down the Grand Avenue and then over along the Blue Canal where there were few people. When the orange furnace of Getasun became a distorted red oval at sunset, the great gongs began to sound over Soebo in a dirge for ’t’Fosal. She listened quietly. The rollings of the bass vibrations were the echo of her deed reflected off the mountainous grief of hundreds of the Mnankrei who had allied themselves with his vision. She returned home to find Ogar dressing for the Funeral Feast.

He had decided to drop overboard the grudges of the past. Death meant a new beginning. If he showed good will and partook of the body of their leader, perhaps they would show good will, too, and begin a program of reform.

“You will not go to that man’s Feast!” Humility was astonished by this new tack. “Where is your morality? How could you face your people with his flesh as part of you?” She knew of no other way to handle Ogar’s sudden rationalization than rage, but her rage was real enough.

She had to argue. She had to threaten to leave him. She called in his friends and juggled the chaos of their conflicting positions until she won. She made them write down a manifesto. Those who disapproved of the policies of ’t’Fosal would absent themselves from the Feast as a. declaration of what they stood for. It was dangerous to make a public show of opposition to the Swift Wind, and they debated the dangers interminably as they composed their manifesto, muting this phrase, and padding that one with double meanings. They were accepting the danger, with prodding, but Humility was internally enraged that they did not make the gesture spontaneously.

Thus it went.

Ogar was an old man but his vacillations carried with them the energy of the sea, sometimes calm, sometimes cresting and troughing with sickening speed. She was appalled. This was the man the crones would place as the Master of the Mnankrei? Controlling him was exhausting and she called for Flesh to spell her while she took an earned rest walking the heart of Soebo as Sugarpie.

It was as Sugarpie that she first heard the rumors telling of the sickness and death of the powerful men of the Swift Wind who had attended the somber Funeral Feast. A relieved and then gleeful Queen of Life-before-Death skipped over a puddle and began to play Miss the Crack on the cobblestones and managed twenty-seven hops before she slipped. Sugarpie wandered from bakery to n’Orap skin shop to stall to bazaar to park, her curiosity aflame, listening and provoking response and adding her own black comment now and then to the wild rumors.

Her wagging tongue was of the opinion that the virulent disease the Mnankrei priests had launched against the Gathering had got loose and been caught by the creators and it served them right for mixing the sacred and profane in ways God had never intended and God only knew but that this horrible disease which made your eyes bulge and your head wobble might break out all over the city soon enough.

Soebo was terrified by nightfall.

In the morning the rumors were even worse. Over one hundred Mnankrei had died in the night and they were being cremated in secret! It was horrifying! They had become unclean! The best of the Swift Wind were unfit to eat! And the Kaiel! The ghosts of the defeated Kaiel were advancing on the city and they were coming with the vengeful fury of the sinister winterstorm, piling the waves before them like a wall moved by the wind.

Humility had spent the night as Comfort describing to Ogar in rich detail the dying agonies of those who had been foolish enough to pay homage to the great ’t’Fosal at his Final Feast. A long night it had been, and the rumors were well into their late morning form before she heard them. Unbelievable! The judges were coming! She rushed from tu’Ama’s residence to the hive, striding, sometimes running.

“Is it Bendaein or Joesai?” she asked, breathless.

“It is Joesai the Scythe,” said the crone.

Humility turned her face because tears had burst upon her cheeks. Without dressing for the journey, she hired an Ivieth palanquin to carry her toward the Gathering as far as those giants would take her and then continued impatiently on foot, still wearing Comfort’s flighty morning dress which had been chosen to please the High Wave to make up for her teasing.

She saw them before they saw her. They were hardly the storm wave that the morning gossip described. She recognized them because each of the distant figures carried a rifle. They moved with no great speed. A small group would take some high point, whether it be hill or roof, from which to cover the flow of their fellow judges. Behind that point she assumed was the main body of Kaiel youth. She pressed on, cursing herself for not bringing walking shoes. She was captured by one of the girls she had taught to dance.

The three female riflemen handled her more roughly than any men would have. They tied her hands behind her back so tightly her fingers went numb and they dragged her along the road through the Gathering on a long leash about her neck that nearly choked the breath from her. Those they met gave her a wide detour. Even Joesai, walking with the two-wheeled supply wagons, would not come closer to her than several man-lengths.

She bowed to him, kneeling and touching her head to the ground, graceful even though her hands were tied.

“Just the woman I want to skin alive.” He was scowling.

“Why? Have I committed some crime?” She spoke up to Joesai, from her knees, defiantly.

“To some, I won’t say who, the murder of a Kaiel is no crime.”

“You are a ghost then, as the rumors in Soebo say?”

“Ho! You tease me. But three of my judges died.”

She bowed her head. “For that I am sorry. Eight Liethe also died, and more horribly.”

“The Liethe die, too? For that I am sorry,” he mocked.

“I have come for my reward,” she said brazenly.

He grunted. “I am willing to reward you with a knife to your wrists.”

“I would prefer that you transfer into the name of the Liethe the deeds to the Soebo Palace of Morning. That was to have been my present from ’t’Fosal and I want it! You, too, promised that if I helped you, the Palace of the Morning would be my gift!”

Joesai laughed a genuine laugh of amazement. “Is it usual in Soebo to reward treachery so lavishly?”

“Are you not all alive? Most of you? For that you may kiss my feet.” Her voice trembled. “I was afraid that I had miscalculated and you were all dead. But you are more than alive! You have become invulnerable! Liethe gifts are not given freely. I have earned my reward!”

He went to his haunches so that their conversation might be less awkward. “You speak like a madwoman.” He loosened her collar. “Perhaps your brain has been deprived of oxygen? I am to reward you for bringing ’t’Fosal’s sacred disease to my camp?”

Humility smiled insolently. “I did not bring the disease. I brought the antidote developed at great expense in life by the Liethe of Soebo. If I had brought you the disease you would all be mindless. The Liethe antidote mocks the disease and grants immunity but the micro-life carrier does not contain the genes that cripple.”

“What?”

“You have been immunized. We call the potion you received a tocaein.”

“The honored tocaeins of our temples are the teachers of games — not the givers of pain.”

She mocked Joesai’s seriousness. “The tocaein is indeed a teacher of games. But does he play to win? Does not the tocaein deliberately handicap his moves so that the novice grows strong by winning? So it is with our potion. It attacks you only to challenge your body to great efforts so that when the real attack comes, you are ready. Your body has matched wits with a tocaein who has taught you how to resist the deadliest of Mnankrei ploys.”

Joesai softened as one of his major worries evaporated. “You could have told us,” he said gruffly.

She watched him with a mischievous glint. “And would you have permitted me to poison your entire camp? What if I had told you that you would be vomiting and shaking in your weakness and also delirious with sunfever? You did not even trust me!”

“I trusted you because you helped me free my men from the Temple of Raging Seas.”

“You shouldn’t have. Besides I didn’t even know if the Liethe antidote would work. It was very hastily concocted.”

Joesai yowled as if stung by an angry bee. “Women like you make bitter soup.”

“Untie me, please.”

He cut her bonds. “And what news from the city?”

“The greatest minds of the Swift Wind have been murdered. Mobs are already out, shouting, gaining courage from the visible reassurance of other like minds.”

“Murdered? By who?”

“It is not known.”

“And those I left behind?”

“I know that one of your Kaiel will be leading a mob to the Temple of Raging Seas. They will find the mindless women in whom ’t’Fosal’s disease is grown and that will feed the rage and fear. The city is headless. It is yours.”

“It is not my hope to frighten the city.”

“I will introduce you to the High Wave tu’Ama. He is a just man. If you deal with him and no others, he will become leader of the Mnankrei and salvage what is left of that clan.” She paused. Studying Joesai’s mood, she took his arm affectionately as if she were about to ask for another Palace of the Morning. “Take from them their priesthood, but leave them their ships and the city will be soothed by your mercy.”

“It is a strange scene you paint. I will send men forward to confirm. If true we will move in today.”

“Strike today,” she said.

He kicked a stone. “Will the children bring me flowers?”

“Of course. And tu’Ama, the coward, will offer me to you as a present and pay the coin I cost from his vaults.”

Joesai stepped aside and gave orders. He walked for a long while beside Humility, deep in thought, absorbing some surprise. He laughed and spoke. “My brother Hoemei has vision. I would not have believed it. He told me that if I waited patiently enough, I would walk into the city unopposed.”

“A man only has vision into the future if he has friends who care enough to share his vision and make it real for him.” Hoemei taught me that, she thought, wishing she could say it. “May I ride on your shoulders?” she cajoled.

He laughed and three riflemen who had been keeping their ears cocked also laughed. “I’m the tired one,” complained Joesai. He lifted his leg and climbed onto her shoulders so that she buckled and he had to walk along on tiptoes with her head between his legs.

“You’re mean!” She was outraged.

“All right, little undecorated child.” He picked her up and threw her legs around his neck. She grabbed his hair and stooped to whisper in his ear. “When do I get my Palace?”