“The Kaiel have a magic ear in the Palace that can listen to the Mnankrei talking right now! What those sailors are doing frightens me.”
“Who’s telling you about magic ears?”
“Aesoe!”
“The Kaiel are vowed enemies of our Mnankrei! Do you believe everything a fat old priest tells you? They love pulling off a girl’s legs and eating them right up to your brains!”
Cocked Ear smiled a little laugh that made the beads of scars down her cheek part like a curtain. “I know he does. He laughs afterwards too. He had this poor Kaiel woman over the other day and while she was piling the furniture up against her door, he was coming through the window! Thank our God for Mind Control. I had to go into White Mind to keep a bland face. Aesoe is such an adorable baby. I worry that he’s going to have a heart attack.”
Humility was choking on her pancake, wide-eyed. “You’re in love with him!”
“I am not!”
“It’s just that he’s a good bum kisser?” Humility teased.
“I’ll miss him,” Cocked Ear admitted. “I hope his daughter grows into the greatest line the Liethe have ever known! He adores us. He really does!”
“Recksh,” she gurgled. “And I have to sleep with this man?”
“All the time knowing that he thinks you are me while you’re cooing at him!” the sister retaliated.
“God’s Streak, this is going to take some getting used to.”
“Our old crone is only going to give you three high days to assemble your act.”
Humility’s eyes widened. “So soon?”
“She’s going to work you down to soup stock!”
“Don’t we ever wear out?” The hive mother, Humility knew, was of the same se-Tufi line as they were. She was the notorious se-Tufi Who Finds Pebbles.
“No, we don’t wear out, we just get bitchier.”
Humility thought about that. The hive mother had lived five of Humility’s lives. That was a lot of bitchiness. “Why the hurry?”
“The se-Tufi Who Sings at Night has been filling out Aesoe’s threesome this week but she is to be sent south. That leaves only four of you for three roles. I’ll be here for a while as a back-up, but not for long.”
“What kind of a kalothi-zero is this Aesoe? His ego is so big he needs three mistresses and for ten thousand sunrises he never notices that they are playing a shell game with him and he never even notices that they aren’t aging? This is the man who overlords the Kaiel? This is the man who has delusions of grandeur that cover the whole land? The Mnankrei will skin him alive!”
“He likes to sleep with his head pillowed on your breasts. And he snores.” Cocked Ear was enjoying herself.
“I’m going to love this! Women have killed men for less!”
“And when he calls you Honeybee, your reflex action is to snuggle up and suck at his ear lobe.”
Another woman entered the kitchen, taller than a se-Tufi, fuller of hip and more sultry of face, wearing a signature of eight nodules on her forehead. The jawline was almost familiar. She made the sign of the berry, hurriedly, and headed for the pancake batter, but when Humility returned the sign of humility, she stopped and broke into a smile.
“I don’t know you!”
They introduced themselves formally. She belonged to a daughter line of the se-Tufi which was not yet established over the full age range, having been founded only half a lifetime ago with the melding of se-Tufi and be-Mami ova. Such a line, like most Liethe lines, had no father.
Three introductions later, as the kitchen filled up, the crone appeared in the doorway looking straight at Humility, the first really older version of herself Humility had ever met. It was a shock. She was old. Humility knew well the map of her own line. This woman would be close to death — but her mind would still be strong, her ways demanding, and her energy relentless if economical.
“Your drill begins now,” said the crone mother severely.
“Yes old one.” Humility was on her feet and bowing. She did not finish her pancakes.
25
If one is wary of an enemy bringing gifts, can there ever be the union of mankind under God’s One Sky?
THE SQUEAK WOKE Oelita to a sudden sitting position. Panic located the intermittent noise at the window. Then she saw the screw between the bars, happily turning and pausing in an erratic fashion, pulling together two heavy nuts that were, in turn, pushing a rigid framework against the bars, bending them and in the process slowly extracting them from their stone base. It was fascinating because no one could be out there. She watched for a while. The screw turned and paused, turned, grunted, protested, paused again. A bar broke loose and the machine sagged. Instantly she grabbed the rhomboid shape and pondered for a moment how to reset it between the remaining bars. She would have to rewind the screw until the machine was thin again. “Shall I reset it?” she asked the sky, bewildered.
“Ho,” came a voice on the wind, “that would save me a nasty trip. Any guards?”
“They’re asleep.”
“Is the bent bar free?”
“I think I can work it free.”
“Don’t drop it outside… make a racket to wake God!”
“Where are you?”
“I’m the beetle on the windowsill.”
For thumping heartbeats she said no more, but just reset the screw and removed the loosened bars. The screw was being worked by a metal rod from above. Finally she could stick her head out and look down below, far below, at the Temple’s base. The height was sickening. Normally it wouldn’t have bothered her. “Are you coming inside to help me?” she asked weakly.
“No. You’re coming outside to help yourself.”
“I’ll never get down!”
“All you need to do is crawl out the window and gravity will take it from there.”
“I hate your sense of humor!”
“Ho! I thought this was a good time for levity.”
She had no choice. Her heart was racing and she began to crawl out the window, clawing for a grip that found only smooth stone. When she saw the man above her, she froze in terror. It was Joesai, the Kaiel murderer. The wind that was trying to blow her away and her own expectations had changed the voice.
“Ready for Trial Three?” He was grinning in supernatural stance on a ledge above her, a ledge half a footprint in breadth,
“I’m going back inside.”
“There’s a door in that room, and it is Death’s door. Your choice.”
She was so paralyzed that she couldn’t even return. “You’ll kill me!”
“No,” he grinned. “Won’t have to.”
She took the harness he lowered to her, made from the hide of some unfortunate pauper. It fitted around her waist and under her crotch. Iron rings were sturdily woven into the belt. He showed her how the ropes attached and how to walk down the wall with her weight being held by a piton, but mostly the wind took his words and she had to reason out the process. He let her lower herself while he backed her up and then he lowered himself while she backed him up. Once he screamed because she was doing something wrong but it was too late and a piton gave away and all the security of the rope was gone. She fell. Terror. But the second rope went taut and she was slammed against the stone. She never even paused. She just secured herself and called up the signal. “Ready! Go!” He dropped and secured himself. “Ready! Go!” he shouted down at her. When they reached a ledge on the first large buttress the terror came back again and she had to fight it off before she could move on.
“In Trial Four you have to climb up.” He laughed the great laugh while they shared this ledge built for one and a half.
“Why don’t you just push me off!” she replied savagely.