“Kiss me or I will.”
She was clinging to him, but not out of love.
“We have to go,” he said.
“I can’t.”
He waited patiently. He waited longer than he wanted to wait. “You’ve shown at least half of the courage you need to get down.”
“If this is a Trial in a Death Rite, you shouldn’t be helping me.”
“I’m not. I’m not carrying you on my back, am I?”
They reached the roof. He lowered the ropes and harness to a strategically placed lackey after being given the all clear signal. Then they jumped. The waiting small crowd had robes for them and they faded into the town. Joesai indicated a gaming tavern up a side street. “Ho! I have thirst after such a climb!”
“No,” Oelita protested, pulling at his robe. She didn’t want to risk it.
“You really think the Stgal cowards will come after you now?”
“They were going to murder me!”
“Never. They were merely working on a ruling to give you special permission to contribute your known Ainokie gene to the Great Chromosome Sink.” Joesai laughed, picked her up and carried her into the tavern, continuing the conversation by whispering into her ear. “And you pissed on them by waving your kalothi while they sat in ponderous debate. They’ll have their heads tucked up their arseholes tonight!”
He set her down on the tile floor while their companions swarmed up the stairs behind them, then made a flourish to the startled customers. “May I present the Gentle Heretic!” And he took her arms roughly, and, stripping the sleeves from them, held her arms up, wrists out, unslashed wrists, in the universal gesture of high kalothi. The barkeep was weeping. Both drinkers and gamers cheered, raising their mugs. An old man went to his knees on the floor. Joesai bought the house a round of mead, courtesy of Aesoe’s coin vaults.
She was sitting at her table with fingers around her mead when Joesai brought her a handful of spiced wheat sticks to help along her thirst. “I don’t understand you,” she said. “I don’t understand your morals. I don’t understand your beliefs, even your loyalties. Why do you do what you do? Is it possible that we might stop your little game and start something simple? Perhaps a friendly bout of chess?”
“I always lose at chess.”
“I noticed. You’re a fool for a set-up — that move where your opponent threatens a piece and you rush up to protect it, and two moves later you have lost your defender.”
Joesai clanked her mead mug with his and smiled wryly. “Then you know I didn’t burn the silo?”
“I wasn’t sure. I told you I didn’t understand you.”
“Life is a race to outwit Death.”
“No it isn’t. Life is peace if you create that peace.” She looked him in his eyes and saw the transit of a dark moon across a green and alien planet. “Peace?” she implored.
He laughed. “Till tomorrow!”
When they took her home, Joesai’s two men commanded a patrol of men who checked out every intersection and alley and doorway before they moved forward. He told her there was no danger but he wanted to be thorough. He offered to lead her out of Sorrow to some strongpoint she could hold.
It was while they were waiting for patrol feedback at a corner that Oelita got impatient and peered around Joesai up the street, touching him, her hands holding one of his arms. She wondered then if she could seduce him. She had always been honest with her favors, not promising what she could not give, and had found that genuine affection with a little physical spice bonded men to her and often changed them. Why not keep him with her for a few days?
Where will I go? She could go to Nonoep’s farm. It was the logical place from which to mastermind a defense against the Mnankrei. Nonoep knew how to extract safe food from all kinds of profane vegetation. They could defeat the Mnankrei that way. But he was Stgal and, for all his rebellious nature, carried their fatal trait of helplessness in the face of large projects.
In a dire emergency Nonoep could probably provide food for ten people, but town-scale production would frustrate and defeat him. He was Stgal, dreamy, amoral, self-centered, finicky about detail to a point where he lost track of deadlines and schedules. He would make a huge batch of jam and forget to have pots to put it in. She laughed, remembering.
Perhaps if Joesai were with her, organization of volume profane food production might be possible. She could keep him close to her. Surely a man could not harm a woman who pleased him. She wondered how Nonoep would receive another man. He was not the domestic type. But she had made love to the glassblower and he had not minded.
Of course Joesai had his woman. Teenae had hinted that there was place for another. She was recovering from her wounds somewhere and he would go back to her. I liked Teenae. Teenae liked me. Perhaps together? Teenae, she knew, would relish humiliating the Mnankrei. Such a ruthless game of kol she played!
Whatever was done, had to be done soon. Once the sea priests came with their wheat and their administrators, it would all be over. It frightened her to be trusting the Kaiel. They were just as violent as the Mnankrei. They coveted this land just as much. What was the difference between Teenae being hung from the mast of a ship, and the way Joesai had fixed her in an iron-reed basket to drown? But I can reach Joesai, she thought. I’ll reach him tonight.
When her convoy arrived home she simply ignored the pandemonium of the neighbors finding her safe and the refusal of her guards to leave her. She showed Joesai the incredible view through pale green windows at the front of the house overlooking the Temple. Her house was built on the high ground above the town. “I love it up here but I chose this building for its safety.”
“You’re almost at the height of the tower!”
“My tower of Life and their tower of Death.”
“Teenae enjoyed it up here.”
“She told you?”
“Yes.”
“Is she well?”
“She’s chattering again. She was telling me about your insect collection and that little crystal you have.”
“I remember that the crystal impressed her. She called it a Voice of God. You Kaiel are such superstitious people.”
“I find it superstitious to think of God as a rock. And dangerous. Could I see the crystal? It is probably just very nice glass.”
Oelita was indignant. “It is not glass!” She went and brought it.
“The place was such a mess when Teenae was here. I’d just moved and didn’t know how to use my space yet.”
Joesai took the crystal reverently and she could see his excitement. “It is a Frozen Voice of God.”
“What does that mean to you?”
They were interrupted by the entrance of the ironsmith who had made the pitons for the tower climb. Joesai greeted him warmly and set down the crystal and took Oelita over to tell her what a great help he had been. “I can’t believe you’re safe,” said the huge man, moved almost to tears. Their eyes locked fondly. When she looked around again, Joesai was gone and so was the crystal.
There was no way he could have passed through to the rear of the house. He had to be on the balcony. Outside she noticed the iron-reed spikes running down her front wall, but only because she had just mastered the descent of the tower facing and walls no longer seemed like barriers to her.
She wheeled around, returning to the house. “That man!” She was furious. “Thief! God’s bane! He’s a liar!” she stormed. “Maiel! Herzain! He’s taken my crystal! Can we catch him! It’s a nothing crystal, but I found it and I want it back!”
One of her friends came forward. He was of the iron-reed dredgers. “No need to chase them. I know where their boat is beached. It’s the most likely place for them to go.”
“I want my crystal back! Can you get it for me?”
“There’s only three of them.”