Courtship Rite

60

THE PARTY FLOWED from Aesoe’s seething energy, pulsing with his pulse, beating at the skull’s temples to the music of God. And Aesoe took the stage of his celebration to reveal in compact speech his newest Racial Future, every word arranged for the cymbals of oratory so that Vision seemed to blend with the dancing.

At his side was the faithful Liethe woman known to the Palace as Sieen. His friends were glad she was there to fill the void of Kathein’s abandonment. Sieen was the symbol of the continuity of loyalty. She praised her man. She defended him. She advised him. Tonight when the whisky was poured, she added color to his Vision by describing troop carriers, longer than planets, stuffed with loyal kembri scarred-men as they slipped across nebulae to bar the reaching Riethe. Aesoe smiled at this dream, vaster than any thoughts of Hoemei.

The Fire Dance came late in the evening when the party was building to a sensual throb and enough barrels of whisky had been emptied so that even a sky lit up by the stellar explosion of Getan seed did not seem preposterous. Redflies, under the persona of Star, modified her dance to the constraints of the Circling Focus of Seduction. The elemental flame of her motion darted through the audience or warmed the fire watchers with licking undulations but always her eyes found a moment’s heartbeat to settle upon the radiating cicatrice of Kasi, to flit away, to be pulled again into his aura. He drifted closer like a convection current drawn to a temple torch.

Her arms rose, her head flashed and stilled while her hair continued its sweeping caress of her shoulders. One smile flew from her face and did not return. Humility, as Sieen, was in place and on tiptoes whispering, “She is a virgin,” to the ears of a heart caught admiring the smile, now disappearing on downcast eyelashes as the fire burnt to ash.

Kasi turned to Sieen urgently. “Introduce me to her.”

“She makes you feel young again, does she?” said Sieen, pulling him off to the dressing rooms. “Star, this is a friend of mine. I think he liked your dancing.”

The dancer, in a clever reversal of her own dream of seduction, would not look at her guest at all, but dressed slowly so that he could be warmed by the ember glow of her body. “I’m pleased that you like me. I’m new in Kaiel-hontokae. I have no friends here.”

Later, much later, he would be allowed to touch her body and then Kaiel and Liethe would slip out for a long walk in the park or maybe along the raceway of the aqueduct where there was danger and he could protect her. Only when the dawn was red on the clouds and his desire properly fanned would she let him enter her body.

Humility, pleased with an underhanded job well done, made the sign of the Chopped Nose as she left the dressing room. That wanton will go far. She met the ghost image of her own first man. He had loved her as a farmer loves his fields and she had murdered him. Orders. Love had been the only way to get to him through his wall of guards. But where was Aesoe?

A hand was laid on her shoulder from behind. “Let’s depart before the brawl begins,” Aesoe said. “I was watching Kasi. Is he growing the lecher’s tumor?”

Alone, Aesoe’s gaiety vanished into morose depression. Sieen undressed him, massaged him, oiled him. She chattered to fill his silence. “You were great tonight. I saw! As you talked every Kaiel grew by a full thumb-height!”

“Did their breasts stop sagging?” he grumbled, half reviving.

“Mine were tingling.”

“I’ll have to work on Xoniep’s report tomorrow. God’s Nose, and early, too.”

“I have it memorized. I can tick off the essentials whenever you wish.”

He laughed. “I need a hundred more like you.” But a secret thought caused the relapse of depression. He stopped Sieen’s hands, got up, went to his study.

She knew he had chosen to stand and stare at the portrait of Kathein and think his thoughts. It was not a true likeness, but clever paint that put into her face the strength of character that Aesoe wished she really had. The artist was a floor-kisser who had never seen more than the feet of his patrons.

Humility left for the bedchamber, calculating the necessities, here the pillows fluffed, there the curtains parted to make best use of the dawn light he would never see again. She undressed and chose to wear only the golden ankle chains with their dangle of jewels, gifted to Sieen by Aesoe and worn now by a dozen se-Tufi Sieens, that faithful myth who loved him so much he could do no wrong, so much she took his love when he gave it and called in her replacement when he didn’t. He often chided her for her tolerance of his foibles.

She recited the cue mnemonic of the Attributes of the Male as keyed to Aesoe, checking out every detail that might facilitate his pleasure. She arranged the candles. She brought down the delicate goblet that Kathein had given him, cold with the soft blue of fine glass. Her other fingers took hold of a tiny cut monstrosity, a gift from the Prime Predictor that had brought tears to the eyes of some Sieen long ago when Aesoe had been a more thoughtful man. It was one of his cues. The Liethe who drank from that glass was Sieen. She found a bottle of common Oza, a liquid as pale blue as Kathein’s goblet, pale as the dew on the flowers of Assassin’s Delight. How he loved this common Oza that was brewed in a thousand cellars!

She fluffed her hair and styled it with silver combs in fantastic shapes that would not keep by themselves. All to be beautiful for him. She chose a position on the pillows from the Bewitchments of Form, plucking her instrument with a calling sound to seduce him from Kathein’s portrait as the green bower of a desert well calls the stricken traveller.

“God’s Sweet Smile but you’re ravishing. I’m the wrong man for you. Tell your crone to demand more coin.” He stood by the door, the riot of his fierce cicatrice somehow muted.

“I adore you. I am happy. There will be happiness for you, too. Kathein will come back.” Her words triggered the rage to the forefront of his eyes. Protected by the White Mind, she did not react as she read those eyes. The decision to destroy has been made. Hoemei, my love! Hide! Hide!

“Kathein return to me? I see no such vision.”

“You do not know women. Hoemei is a fantasy to her. She’s in love with a sinewed man who can reach as far as the stars. I know. Hoemei will disillusion her. She will be back. She will cry and the tears will yet wet your feet and roll between your toes because she will be sorry and you will forgive her because you love her. This time when she comes to you she will appreciate you as she never has.” Sieen changed the tone of her voice from hope to doom. “But if you destroy Hoemei, her fantasy will stay intact and her emotion will set like lava cooling to stone. I caution patience. Wait. Calm yourself.”

Humility’s anguish was great at the telling of these lies.

“It will take too long.” He made the gesture of impatience. “Disillusionment will come to an old woman when I am long-used soup stock. I cannot wait. I am too old.”

“One week. It will take no longer.”

“You dream!”

Sieen smiled as the prophetess smiles. “I promise you.”

She could see the tension drain from him before he spoke. “I will give him one more week to live.”

She abandoned her stringed instrument. Arms about his neck, smiling, she reached up to kiss him, not as a prophetess but as a lover. “In the meantime, I’m glad to have you all to myself. For the whole of a week!”

He laughed and lifted her feet off the rug by the crotch so that the kissing might be easier for her. He carried her body to the pillows. She squirmed away.

“Some Oza first!”

“Oza! When I have you?”

“It clears your head. It cleans your bile. Besides, it sweetens your mouth so that you are all the more kissable!” While she spoke, she was pouring the Oza on top of a single dew drop of the essence of the blue petals of her Assassin’s Delight. This poison did not survive in the body and so could not contaminate the Funeral Feast. She handed him Kathein’s goblet. Liethe fingers took her own.

“To love,” she said. “May we live long enough to taste all of its pleasures!”

He drank. She drank. He flirted with the jewels at her ankle. She took him in love, knowing exactly how much time she had. Every motion was Liethe perfect, the touches, the pauses, the rhythm, the sighs. Clumsy Kathein had never honored him like this. She straddled him, her hands tender on his carved face, her arms compressing her breasts. “Remember me my love. Remember this heartbeat of time, for in the end it is all we have.”

“My little friend,” he said and pulled her to him, giving her his semen. The union was so complete that in her shudders she felt the very poison in his blood. The tears came and he kissed her eyes.

She was holding his head in her lap, tousling his hair, whispering endless nothings while the fuzziness that he thought was alcohol came upon him. His hands jerked. “Sieen. My heart!”

She found no last words. He died. She bawled. Of what use is the White Mind when you are alone with a dead lover? For a moment she calmed herself enough to remove all evidence of the crime. Then she went back to the pillows and hugged the corpse and did not stop crying.

“Oh Aesoe! Why did you break the rules so often?” Sobs caught her again. She pulled her voice into a half choking, half lecturing tone. “You can break the rules but there are consequences. Didn’t your teacher ever tell you that? Silly man.” She talked to his body, to herself, affectionately patting Aesoe from time to time, pulling the covers over him so he would not get cold, kissing him.

“I’m sorry. I wanted to figure out another way. But no one helped. I didn’t know how. Why do we always use the solutions of our training? You too!” she scolded. “I don’t want to kill people. I want to love them!” She touched her lips to the still-warm lips. “You were a great man and I loved you and I’m mad at you!”

She tried to surround his cooling body with her body to give him warmth.

But in the morning she woke beside a statue of Aesoe done in alabaster, a low relief of symbols carved on its surface. She ran her fingers along the cold stone and there were no more tears.