Courtship Rite

62

FOG HAD BEEN CRAWLING through the cracks between the hills so that there was no sea to be seen, only the pale cleaver of Scowl-moon hanging in the whiteness. Noe found them beside the road and parked her skrei-wheel next to theirs where they had been resting and eating bread. She crossed her arms to warm herself against the flowing fog.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t home when your wirevoice message came through.”

She was glancing at Honey. Gaet could sense her distress. He rose. “You forgot your cloak. You’re cold.”

She shrugged, a shiver warming her. “I thought you were alone.”

“I brought Honey to dance at our wedding. She’s been a good friend to Hoemei, more loyal to us than to Aesoe. Somehow with his death it seemed appropriate to bring her.”

“You have a flair for complicating matters.” Noe’s voice was the sting of a bee.

Listening, Honey pulled her black scarf around her face, like the sheathing of a beekeeper, but imperturbable eyes watched Noe. She did not rise. The Liethe woman’s very demeanor chastised Noe for her bad manners.

With a flicking gesture of impatience at Gaet, Noe turned to sit beside the woman who had been the mistress of her husbands, reaching into her pack for bread to feed both travellers. “I’m not myself. I welcome any guest of Gaet.” Her voice was briefly warm again. “You may have come in vain. There may be no wedding.”

“Eh?” Gaet queried.

“You,” Noe turned savagely to one-husband, “may not even find a family to greet you!”

Gaet was diplomatically inserting himself between the two women. “I see I’m behind on the gossip. Has Kathein changed her mind again?” He laughed.

“Sometimes I despise you!”

Gaet caught her bitter mood for the first time, and the fog clutched his heart. “Someone has died?”

She took his hand and kissed him on the cheek, then compulsively put spread on a slab of bread for the silent Honey. “Joesai is home.”

Gaet grunted. “Since when is that bad news?”

“He brought Oelita with him. He found her in the desert, mothering twins by Hoemei.”

“Ah,” said Gaet. “She’ll be welcome in Sorrow.” There was more to the story. He waited.

“Joesai expects us to marry his Heretic.”

Gaet laughed the great laugh. He could not restrain himself, even to match Noe’s mood. “Did Joesai bring her in tied to a pole and drugged?”

The answer carried deep puzzlement. “She loves him. There is a bond between them. I don’t understand it.”

“God’s Sky!” said Gaet.

“Joesai and Hoemei have been fighting. I’ve never seen rage like that. They’re brothers! I was frightened. Teenae was terrified. She and Oelita ran away to the village and left me and Kathein holding the pot. Kathein wants to return to Kaiel-hontokae and I’ve had to use persuasion to keep her here until you arrived.” Noe was crying.

“Shall I speak to Hoemei?” said Honey with great concern. She reached across Gaet to comfort the sobbing woman. “I have certain catalytic powers.”

“You stay out of this! You’d steal him from us!”

Gaet slipped his arm around one-wife. “Your foul mood staggers without reason. Our Liethe friend will steal no one. They are a gentle clan, and Honey is the gentlest of them. Their place is to serve. The man who thinks to abandon his family and elevate his Liethe always fails. The Liethe are known to be incorruptible in the purpose they have set for themselves.”

“Speaking to Hoemei would do no good,” said Noe, disconsolate. “My husbands have lost their reason.”

Gaet laughed. “Such is the price we pay for having women in our lives. I’d best end my rest and begin the peacemaking process.”

“There will be no peace! Don’t you think we’ve tried?”

Gaet was staring at the wind-shaped trees in the gully beside the road, trees older than any man alive, short trees which had fought off the violence of the sea a thousand times and stayed rooted. “I think it was Hoemei who taught me when we were still in the creches that when a problem is insoluble, then it is essential to change the problem.” He rose. “Noe, I’d best go on alone. Take care of Honey for me, and remember, she’s a little afraid of Kaiel women. Make her your friend.”

Honey rose, too. “I could go with you. I won’t get in the way.”

“No.”

“We could all go together,” Honey pleaded.

“No.”

“It is all right,” said Noe. “We’ll go back to the village and visit Teenae and Oelita. Gaet knows what he’s doing. If he’d been here none of this would have happened.”

Gaet pushed his way through the trail to the maran’s coastal mansion, cursing the bump that had put a wobble in his wheel. Another job, retensioning the spokes! For a moment he stopped to examine the damage, but also to give himself time to think out his attack on his brothers. He turned the skrei-wheel upside down.

The maran were a strange group, viable because of the different substance of their individual abilities. Gaet knew that most of the world saw him as the easygoing lackey of his family. If Noe wanted to go to the theater he would go. If Hoemei had a political deal to make, Gaet would negotiate a resolution of the conflicts. He was known for his pleasures. He was too pliable to be seen as a strong man. And yet this family was his creation and he valued it above all other things in his life.

He spun the damaged wheel and watched it wobble. That was his skill — retensioning the spokes.

Some of his weakness was an illusion of his magic. As a child he had learned to appear to be giving way while he was leading. He retreated into carefully constructed traps. It had been no easy job to weld together the bonds between Hoemei and Joesai. It had taken trickery. They still clashed. They were still rivals, Joesai envying Hoemei’s analytical skill and Hoemei envying Joesai his game with danger. From time to time they had to be played off against each other.

He could already surmise the forces behind this clash. Neither Joesai nor Hoemei had been particularly adept in their handling of women. Joesai had been clumsy and Hoemei had been shy. Yet it had been Hoemei who had persisted in the pursuit of Kathein, the only dangerous game he had ever deliberately dealt himself. And Joesai had plunged into his conflict with Oelita, sure that he did not want her, sure of the soundness of the tradition from which he worked — only to find himself in play with a woman who could manipulate the nuances of wisdom that could never be embedded in tradition. Oelita had forced him to be rational.

How could Hoemei ever give up the danger that he had survived without the aid of Joesai’s defending fist? He would be fundamentally attached to Kathein. How could Joesai ever give up the feeling for philosophy that he had found far from Hoemei’s mind? He would be fundamentally attached to Oelita.

When Gaet finally arrived at the Coastal Predictor’s mansion, and quietly hung up his skrei-wheel before slipping upstairs, he found Joesai reading in the upper room overlooking the Njarae. Of the three rocky islands that rose from the sea only the ghost of the Child of Death peered through the fog at them. Joesai inserted a cloth marker in the book and turned down the wick of the lamp, until the pallor of the room’s bioluminous globe provided the dominant light.

“I’m pleased that you located Oelita,” said Gaet.

His largest brother let the book sag and stared at Gaet, unspeaking. The design of his face looked like the carvings from a death urn.

Gaet began again. “I hear of troubles.”

“Hoemei pulled a knife on me.”

Like the squabbles of little boys accusing one another. “And to get even, no doubt, you whacked him over the head with the latest philosophy.”

Joesai smiled wanly, turning his head to the invisible horizon. Gaet wondered if his brother was remembering how accusations were handled at the creche — a boy was punished for whatever crime he had loudly thrown upon another.

“So the old reprobate is dead,” said Joesai, changing the subject.

“That’s good for you. Your exile will be lifted by the new Prime Predictor.”

Joesai laughed, half in amusement and half cynically. “Maybe not!”

“God’s Eyes, brother, don’t look so glum. We haven’t run out of alternatives yet. The plan is not the strategy.”

“Oelita is a good woman. I think Kathein has betrayed us.”

Gaet became cold. “I don’t want to hear what you have to say about that right now. I want you to think about compromises. I’ve never yet seen a compromise between two adversaries that didn’t give them both more than each would have taken from his original plan.”

Joesai wasn’t listening. The rug and the stone tiles of the floor had captured his restless eyes. “I’m paralyzed. Fighting my own brother…”

Gaet did not let him finish. “I’ll be busy in the next few days. You’ll be doing some baby watching for me.” He began to leave.

Joesai grabbed his arm and took it in the wrist-to-wrist grip. “You old compromiser.” He squeezed. “Say hello to Oelita for me. I mucked that up again.”

For a while Gaet spent time in the kitchen with the servants, working the accounts and discussing the fight. The story they told was different than Noe’s story. Then he walked along the balcony and stopped beside the green glass of Hoemei’s window. He stared at the poignant love scene. They were still on the pillows together in a sleeping embrace. That was dangerous. If Kathein felt too unwanted, she would return to Kaiel-hontokae and take Hoemei with her. Such a schism could grow into divorce.

One-husband ducked inside and found the room of Jokain, first-son. They always thought of him as first-son even though they had never married Kathein. He was awake and busy building houses. The rug was the sea and blocks were on the sea, dredging for iron-reed. He did not speak but held up a hand so that Gaet would know not to walk all over the landscape and create ship-smashing waves with his feet.

Gaet smiled. Here was the savior of mankind. Kathein, for all her ruthless reason, was a religious fanatic, and yet… maybe she was right. This boy had a better chance of discovering the true nature of God than his flawed parents. “What are you building?”

“Those are boats. These are big houses, and those are little houses and that is a house for the sky-eye.”

“I need your help, Jokain. Your gene-father is building a real sky-eye on the roof and I want you to see that he does it right so that you can look at the stars with him. You are in charge of making sure that he gets up in the morning on time and dresses and eats all of his food.”

Jokain carefully placed another block. “Jo and Kath fight,” he said, and with the back of his hand knocked down his building with one sweep.

Gaet dropped to his haunches and wrapped his arms around the boy. “You know what families are for? We take care of each other when bad things happen like fights. You take care of Jo and I take care of Kath.”

“Who takes care of Ho?”

“Maybe I’ll send the twins to make him smile.”

Jokain thought it over. “What stars do I get to see?”

“Nika is bright these days. Nika is a planet like Geta with moons. You can look at the mountains of Scowlmoon. Maybe you can catch God.”

“Will Jo smile?”

“Sure. He likes you a whole lot.”

When Gaet arrived at Sorrow’s inn he was amused to find Honey wrapped up in the children. Gatee and the twins were down on the docks and Honey had them playing chasing games. That woman-shy creature had found a perfect way to avoid his wives.

First and foremost he gave Oelita his warmest greetings. If she couldn’t think of him as her husband, he wanted her to feel very strongly that she was his friend. There were no real obstacles between them. Gaet had been primarily responsible for seeing that the Kaiel contract with her people was kept and he knew there was no reasonable way she could fault him.

She hesitated but when she felt his warmth, she hugged him. “I’m glad to be back,” she said.

“What’s happening at the house?” asked Teenae, anxiously.

“I have my brothers on a stake. I did my creche father’s pre-butchery script on Joesai and Hoemei and spent the morning with Kathein. I was going to bring her into Sorrow with me, but the thought of handling five women at once weakened my nerve.”

“A likely story,” chided Noe.

He looked down the docks. “How’s Honey?”

“She loves my children,” said Oelita.

“She’s shy,” said Noe. “She reminds me of Joesai’s se-Tufi in Soebo, always finding a way out of a conversation.”

“Is it safe to leave those maniac husbands alone?” Teenae was still worried.

“Everything is under control. Jokain has Joesai by the nose. And I’m going to leave the twins with Hoemei.” He watched Oelita while he said that.

“No!” The Gentle Heretic was suddenly frightened.

“With your consent.” He took her hand and gestured for Honey to bring the children.

They put together two tables near the windows of the inn. Honey found high chairs for the children and retreated to the kitchen.

“Honey!” said Teenae, trying to recall her.

Gaet held out a negative hand. “Let her serve us if she so wishes. That’s the way she is.”

“Hoemei doesn’t like me!” pleaded Oelita. “I’m sorry I’ve caused your family so much trouble. Joesai had me wrapped up in his dreams. The changes in him gave me faith in mankind again.”

“Hoemei doesn’t dislike you,” Gaet explained patiently. “He was just defending Kathein. Marriage is like juggling. Anybody with any kalothi at all can handle two balls. Anything after three is complicated. Hoemei was up to six and doing well, and then somebody slipped in a seventh ball and he dropped everything. Oelita, you are no ordinary seventh!”

The twins started to kick each other. Their mother turned to quiet them and Honey arrived with sweetsticks for them to suck.

“There’s a reason I want him to take care of your twins,” said Gaet.

“Hoemei is gentle,” interjected Honey. “More than you know.” She ran her fingers shyly through Oelita’s hair, along the scalp, communicating gentleness. “He’ll love your children because they are his, too. He’ll see that they were raised in the desert and that way know your strength.”

“What good will that do!” cried Oelita morosely.

Gaet used one of his oldest tricks in reply. He reached into Oelita’s philosophy and picked out one of her dearest maxims. “You have told us that love changes us away from violence. That’s what I’m doing. While your children are with their father, you will be with Kathein.”

“No. I can’t do that! It’s too painful. I lived on struggle, not willing to die, not willing to hope. Joesai brought me a dream and now that dream is ashes. Either Kathein or I shall lose, and if one of us loses, we both lose.”

Gaet began a story. “Two men each dreamed a house and woke up at dawn intending to make real the house of their minds. They both planned to use the same tree as a center beam, each unaware of the dream of the other. How is such a problem resolved? They can fight and destroy each other’s foundations. They can fight and one can win. Or one can arbitrarily give up his dream. But that assumes there is but one tree on all of Geta and only one way of building a house. What if these two talked, bargained, explored? Maybe there is a second tree that two men can carry. Maybe a single conversation will suggest a whole new architecture. That’s why you must talk to Kathein.”

“Do that,” said Honey quietly. “Gaet is known as the best arbitrator in all of Kaiel-hontokae.”

Oelita looked at Teenae for support. “Kathein is a good woman,” said her friend.

Noe was waiting for her to say yes.

She turned away from them all. The dining room was gay with its oiled wooden tables and aroma of spices from the kitchen. Getasun had banished the fog. Sorrow was alive. “I’ll try.”

“We took the White Wound together. Remember? It wasn’t easy, either.”