“Did the ship that left a while ago leave you behind?”
“You saw a ship?”
“A small one.”
“They are no friends of mine! And who are you?”
“Joesai the Goldsmith. I’ve been looking over the gold diggings.”
“They are worked out.”
“Ho! You think that! I’ve already panned a spoonful of dust. I’ve found a source. Washing is not the only way to find gold. There is tunneling and there are no tunnels here.”
“Come into the light of my fire.”
Joesai walked down a slope and out of the underbrush. He had been farther away than she had guessed. He stopped, well out of range of her knife, a tall man, bigger than most who were not Ivieth. That softened Oelita. He could not have been one of her attackers. They were all a head shorter than he. Nor was he Mnankrei.
“You are injured,” he observed.
“A minor injury,” she replied defiantly.
“You could not use that knife.”
“My feet are deadly.”
“Are the wounds fresh?”
“Bleeding and painful.”
“Let me examine them. I’m a surgeon, better than most.” He did not move forward.
She looked at the smiling man. She knew he would go if she ordered him away. “Can you dress stabs? I can show you how. My own fingers are too swollen and weak.”
“I promise better than that.” He came forward and asked her to sit while he examined her wrists. “Let me take care of it now. I’m a master. The scar will blend with your cicatrice when I’ve finished.” He took out tools before she gave permission. “These are no ordinary wounds,” he pronounced.
“No.” She cringed as he began his work.
“You have enemies,” he said and his finger sent fire through her arm.
“All those who are loved fiercely have enemies.”
“You must be the Gentle Heretic.”
“Some call me that.”
“Cause for astonishment! My two-wife is a student of yours. She is not a great intellect. From overhearing her, I have concluded that your teachings make weak sense.”
Oelita laughed. “You may not be a flatterer, but you have a kind way. Kindness is what I preach.”
“I am ruthless when it suits me. Can you walk? We’ll do better at my camp. I have food. You need not use your hands and I’ll serve you a feast.”
“You adopt my enemies very easily.”
“Should a big man like me fear men who would attack a defenseless woman? I’ll walk you back to Sorrow. Perhaps you would grant two-wife an interview?”
“No. The Mnankrei Death Rite is upon me and I need hide. The ground has ears. No one should know my whereabouts.”
“Then I will show you where to contact her, and you may arrange a meeting whenever and however it suits you.”
They walked back up the stream, wading most of the way near the edge, jumping along rocks and boulders where the water was shallow. He showed her the outcropping that had borne gold, and where a tunnel should be carved. “Overlooked riches,” he said. “Some don’t have an eye that sees underground.”
“You trust me to know this?”
He laughed with amused force. “Hasn’t two-wife told me to trust the Gentle Heretic in all ways? But I do not need trust. I care not who digs the gold, as long as I am the one who buys it.”
Joesai’s camp was only a tent big enough to crowd two men. He built a fire and busied himself preparing cake and potatoes and a sauce he frequently insisted that she taste and judge. He was so oblivious of danger that she relaxed. Getasun rose, rouging the eastern hills, before the meal’s aroma was on the air from the bubbling pots. They ate with the full orb of Scowlmoon hanging over the thick-leaved brush trees to the west. When they stood up, they could see under the moon a faint horizon of purplish sea. He fed her and teased her as if she were a child.
“I’m beginning to see the source of your innocent philosophy. Now open your mouth like a good girl and have some potato.”
“Do your penetrating eyes also see my heart of gold?”
“There is no heart of gold in your bosom. I see a heart of flesh that pumps blood to your blushing cheeks.”
“Why do you take me as such an innocent?” She was curious. She had many lovers, old, young, high kalothi, and low kalothi. She thought it showed in the carelessly disheveled air she wore.
“The things you write about. Weren’t you the one who said we were a world of children who had never grown up after the poisons had claimed our parents?”
“I was only making a parable on that old myth! People understand myths!”
“It’s what you want us to believe — that you are the only adult.” He tossed a stone into the fire to make sparks. “I’m a living breathing adult, dead neither of the poisons nor of famine; for children look no farther than yourself.”
She had been opening her garment unobtrusively. She stopped, anger rising to lash at his incredible insult. She laughed instead, the great laugh. “Grandfather, I think it is your bedtime.”
They were tired and ready for rest. It took maneuvering for the tent to accept them both. She held him to her bosom, surprised that he merely took the warmth of her with his own arm without trying to take more of what she was willing to give. His presence made her feel safe, for the moment, from the Mnankrei. The panic was gone and somehow the pain in the wrists seemed less. Already she was able to plan how to hide and how to attack. Then they slept.
11
It is a fast bee who escapes the fei flower. Thus the magenta fei country breeds swift bees who have mastered a quick sip.
BENJIE WAS WHAT THE CLANS called a dobu, in his case, a dobu of machine design. But he was more than a creator of machines; he was a dobu, class eight, and the og’Sieth clan recognized nothing higher than the eighth level. He had the beginning of wrinkles and the easy manner of one who has already made his mistakes.
Within the workshed he held up a thumb-sized slug, fresh from his lathe. Gaet watched Benjie mask the small steel part with wax, readying it for etching.
“This is the first of five etchings,” said the dobu.
He was building a small power supply for the Great Cloister of Kaiel-hontokae. Gesturing for Gaet to follow, he walked across the shed. His apprentice was seated at a desk, working within a spot of sunlight brought in by mirrors. Her eyes and fingers concentrated on a polishing operation.
The girl wore the og’Sieth headband of the unmarried, pinned at her forehead by the brass token of the apprentice. When Benjie was sure of her competence as a machinist, duty would require him to gift her with child in a public temple ceremony and, once the baby was born, release her for marriage. Such were the clan obligations of an eighth-class og’Sieth dobu.
He took the part from his apprentice and held it in the sunbeam for Gaet. “She is almost finished, this piece needing only the furnace to diffuse hardener into its surface.”
Gaet was more interested in the girl than in steam engines. He smiled at her and she turned away.
Benjie spoke out approvingly. “My little one does excellent work; I’ll have to find a husband for her soon.”
“It’s none of your business!” she flashed. “I’m going to marry Mair and Solovan.”
Benjie laughed. “Mair is her best girlfriend. The women are growing more stubborn by the week in imposing their will upon our world’s chaos.” He paused and his look was that of a man who likes to tickle small children. “To the best of my knowledge, Mair and Solovan are not yet married.”
“But they will be. They’re friends! And Mair promised to introduce me to Solovan at the celebration tonight!”