Courtship Rite

64

A FEW WINDOW-FRAMED globes added their green glow to the night sky. Then, like a black cloud across the stars, a shadow passed into the yard, examining the stairways and balconies and the footholds in the face of the wall. The Queen of Life-before-Death clutched the black shawl that made her invisible by night, waiting for the globes to be shrouded. Gaet had left her with women and she was resentful. She wanted to be with Hoemei. It was her duty to be with men. Her knees were like jelly knowing this was the most important night of her whole life. Someone inside the mansion covered the globes.

She heard sea noises. She was a wave rising as it ran toward shore at the very heartbeat before it crested, foaming, roaring, to lay itself on the beach.

As silently as God flowing across His Sky she moved up the stairs. With an assassin’s stealth she stole through the window-door open to the night breeze. She knelt beside the figure on the pillows, colored by the pale reflection of a waxing Scowlmoon across the sea. She longed to touch him but pulled her fingers back. Hoemei. This was the man she was raising to the highest position on Geta.

His sudden darting hands reached out to grab her by the arms, paralyzing her.

“It’s just me,” said her soft Liethe voice.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to dance at your wedding.”

“You’re early.”

“No I’m not. I’m your beloved Honey.”

“You gave me heart failure. I thought you were an assassin for the Expansionists.”

“They’ve hired me to enchant you and take you away with me to the North Axis where we can go around in circles together for the rest of our lives and not bother anyone.”

He dismissed the notion. “Gaet must have sent you,” he sighed.

“I have a present for you.” She brought out a tiny strip of dried and salted Aesoe. “Eat it. It will make you strong. I have a gut feeling that you’re going to need all your strength.”

He looked at her, wondering at the symbolism and the smug smile on her starlit face. “Are you thinking that they’ll make me Prime Predictor? Have you been listening to gossip at the Archives?”

She stuffed the fragment of Aesoe into his mouth. “That’s not the kind of strength I mean. Silly. You’re going to need all your strength to make love to me — now.”

He munched and laughed. “Be a good woman and tell me what Gaet is cooking. I have a shortage of spies.”

“Ask Joesai.”

“I’m not speaking to him.”

“Gaet ran away with Kathein and Oelita. He was looking very hard-crotched. I think they are off to the South Axis for a cozy ice cave to be away from us mortals. I couldn’t bear the idea of you being left alone — so I came to console you.”

“Hmmm. Do you still have your job at the Palace?”

“No, silly. Not unless you hire me after your triumphant return to Kaiel-hontokae. If you love me, you’ll hire me. Do you love me?”

“Only a besotted fool loves a Liethe.” He was undoing her black robe.

He wasn’t shy anymore. He had changed. She liked his hands. “Are you a besotted fool?”

“All kinds of a whiskied fool this last week.”

“Do you have remorse?”

“Yes.”

“Let me make you feel better.”

She prolonged the loving of their bodies until the moon was three-quarters full. Then she couldn’t hold her grief in any longer. She let her fingers run over the rough texture of his scars and sobbed. “You forgot me! You left me all alone! You didn’t care! You don’t think about me because you know you’ll always have me!” He rocked her and patted her and kissed her tears away and she liked that. Rocking her, he rocked himself to sleep. She watched him wide-eyed, loving him.

Happy now, she rose stealthily to her feet and unhooked a covered globe from the wall. In the corridor by the mirror she unwrapped it to fix her hair so that she might be less mussed in her beauty. The globe was dim enough for her to think to feed it and clean the scum from its filters.

Then she brought herself to Joesai’s room where she smashed her toe on one of Jokain’s wooden toys and, biting her tongue, found a place above the messy desk to hang the globe. She read some paragraphs of what Joesai had been writing. It was the sober list of attributes that a warrior clan would have to possess. She sat near him on the pillows. He was a sounder sleeper than Hoemei, and she had to pull his ears.

“Ho!” he started.

She rubbed his chest gently. “I see you still wear the amulet I gave you.”

“It has brought me luck.”

“Not luck. It has magic Liethe power.”

“How did you get here?”

“You were dreaming about me and the amulet summoned me. It’s a superior way of travelling.”

“What was I dreaming about?”

“You were dreaming about making love to me!” She kissed him.

“I don’t believe you. I must have been dreaming about Comfort.”

She smiled in the swinging light like an apparition and touched the carved charm to her breast. “I am Comfort. I told you when I gave you the amulet that it would protect you. All you had to do was need me and I would be there, pazam! just like I’m here now! I take on different names depending on my mood.” She straddled him.

“Ho! I’ve never heard a more unlikely story. How do you travel so fast?”

“I don’t; I live in the amulet,” she said mischievously.

“So that’s why you are such a small handful.”

She had not wanted to talk to Hoemei during their body loving, but she wanted to talk to Joesai with every thrust. “You’re beautiful,” she said.

“I’m ugly.”

“You’re my master!”

“That’s why I’m underneath.”

“I’d like to be your woman at your Ritual Suicide.”

“I’d rather be your man at your Ritual Suicide.”

“Do you like se-Tufi women?”

“I’ll take three of them at the breaking of fast, slow-fried.”

“What was it like to make love to Comfort?”

“We did it with a stone in her God’s Eye.”

“That’s a romantic story.”

“For an encore she poisoned me!”

“I love you.”

“Now you’re getting wax-mouthed.”

“But I do!”

He had to be silent while he held her in the final heaving embrace. He sighed. She kissed him, wet little kisses while the tension went out of their bodies.

“You can go back into your amulet now,” he said.

“No,” she teased.

“I was afraid of that.”

“You have to come with me.” She unhooked the bioluminous globe in one hand and pulled Joesai to his feet with the other. “Every pleasure has its price!”

The smooth-skinned Liethe with the sapling legs and rounded hips and firm small breasts and laughing face dragged the fiercely symboled Kaiel giant down to Hoemei’s quarters. The two naked brothers confronted one another guiltily.

“You have to hug each other!” she ordered. When they did, she made them hug her, too. She cried while she dressed — a wave finally smashing into the beach — and disappeared into the dawn.