Courtship Rite

by Donald Kingsbury

  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.

  61

  Brilliant by night, bright enough to be seen by day, God passed seven times between sunset and sunset for two hundred days to watch my Trial, to guide me across the roadless Kalamani for I had no maps. The Kalamani is no place for man. I slaked my thirst by distilling the juices of insects. My comrades died and there was no one to honor their flesh but me. Life was chewing the sun-dried strips of their life. All honor to my comrades!

  Harar ram-Ivieth from his Following God

  MOST OF KAIEL-HONTOKAE seemed to be at the Funeral Feast. The tables of food at the Temple of Human Destiny would have ended a famine. The great gongs never stopped sounding. Aesoe was the steaming centerpiece, below the stained glass, skinned, dressed, decorated, roasted, no longer human. The entertainment that whirled around him never ended. His three Liethe danced for him a mourning song that crawled from the blacks and browns of a dirge to the ebullient roses and reds and pinks of birth. Aesoe’s little children fluttered about being important, serving the food, keeping order.

  Men gave speeches and men wept, cooks rolled in carts of food, choirs sang, whisky flowed, robed Kaiel flowed about their temple like trapped floodwaters from a sudden melt.

  The Queen of Life-before-Death found herself huddled under a table to avoid the crush, savoring her own small strip of Aesoe, dreaming dreams, feeling his strength. She saw a black and purple robe pass by and grabbed at its legs. The wearer of the robe looked down. She peered out smiling.

  “I’m Honey — just in case you didn’t recognize me.”

  “Who but Honey would be hiding under a table?” grinned Gaet.

  “That’s a hat you’re wearing?” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?” she asked breathlessly.

  “I thought Polite Form required my presence. Travelled my bum off non-stop by skrei-wheel. God’s Laugh if I won’t be bow-legged for weeks! Wasn’t sure it was safe for Hoemei to come. Joesai is in the bush somewhere chasing his tail and Teenae didn’t even want me to come.”

  “Did Kathein reach Sorrow safely? Aesoe was so upset!”

  “If it didn’t give him heart failure! Kathein’s arrival was a surprise! There will be a wedding when Joesai and I get back. This unfortunate Feast makes it easier.”

  Honey pulled Gaet’s head down to her ear level. “You’re such a hypocrite,” she whispered. “Why do you say ‘unfortunate’ when you mean ‘fortunate’!”

  “Not ‘hypocrite’; the word is ‘diplomat’,” he corrected. “Let’s get out of here. They’ve run out of meat. Funerals are a pain when there are more than twenty people. Never get enough to eat.”

  “May I just go with you? Just like that?”

  “I give shelter to the unemployed. Or shall I be your private escort to the hive?”

  “Not there!”

  “My humble home?”

  “God yes. Is it still standing?” she teased. “I thought the Expansionists might have burned it down by now.”

  Halfway there she couldn’t resist the question that was dominating her mind. “Do you think they’ll make Hoemei Prime Predictor?” She was clinging to Gaet’s arm.

  He grinned and bumped her hip affectionately. “I think you like my brother.” He was teasing.

  “I want to know!”

  “Yes. It is checkmate. Hoemei was blocked every which way by Aesoe. Aesoe was the key piece. So the Black Queen took him off the board and now it is a new game and I believe Hoemei has control.”

  Gaet escorted her through the maran’s darkened city mansion, straight to his room. He brought out gold coin and gave it to her without any preliminaries in repayment for the sexual favors he was obviously expecting. She stiffened. Suddenly their camaraderie was gone and she felt alone in the whole universe. “That’s not the way it is done,” she said coldly. “All money matters are handled by the crones. A gift as bonus might be welcome if I were to please you enough.”

  He laughed while he undressed. “I offer my apologies,” he said without being the least contrite. “I’m used to the way wives handle their husbands.”

  “I’m not your wife.” She was surprised at her anger.

  He was staring at her as if she was a child on the auction block. “You could have been. Hoemei really loved you. He wanted me and Joesai to love you, too. We were very short of a woman then. It is hard for two women to keep up with three men.”

  He was making her more angry. “The Liethe never marry.”

  “I know. So does Hoemei. He’s a family man and not an old reprobate like me.”

  She pushed his money back across the table.

  “I was just cutting out the middleman. The crones will never know. Keep it. Consider it an advance. You’re coming out to Sorrow to dance at our wedding. My invitation. I know you want to see him.”

  The anguish was there again, and indecision. She knew she would do anything to see Hoemei again, just to pass him in the halls of Sorrow’s Temple, anything. She’d walk across a world to spend an evening with him.

  Gaet threw up his hands. “I can’t argue with you. Not now. I’m dead on my feet. I didn’t think I’d make the Feast.” He turned around and fell like a collapsing building onto the pillows and was sound asleep, still half dressed.

  She stared at him, no longer angry. Perhaps he thought I was out of a job and needed help. He would not comprehend the ethic of the hive. She wasn’t used to friends. She moved the gold coins with her fingers. Impulsively she tidied the room. Gently she finished undressing him so that he would not wake. She put his things away. She put her own gown away, and the money with it. By the time she found courage to sleep with him, he had the pillows well toasted. It was cozy under the covers. It was good to sleep with a warm body again.

  62

  The multiple apparitions of futures fight their spectral game on the deadly field of the present, destroying one another, until, heartbeat by heartbeat, the victor comes alive, takes on substance, mass, inertia, the glory of a summer form or the cancerous monster of some mad being, the very warmth of his solid body dissipating the wraiths of the lost futures — to reign in ephemeral glory for a day before twilight makes of him the corpse upon which the next phantom battle begins to rage.

  From the essay “Futures” by Hoemei maran-Kaiel

  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.”