Three restlessly seeks another mate like water seeks the sea, but a triumvirate is the freest of all marriages from conflict. A chair with three legs does not wobble.
Four is the threshold of emotional wisdom. Only masters of the four phases of love and the four nodes of loyalty can juggle a marriage of four without losing a ball. The Four is a game for the players of the game of love who have won.
Five, like Three, is sensually unstable but transmutes more opulently in the harmonies of its shiftings. The Five is an energy amplifier of great power based on loyalty, love, experience, communication, and flexibility. Mates of a Five are adepts at conflict resolution. It is said that a clan is in safe hands whose leader has achieved a Five.
Six is the marriage of completion. The children of the Sixes shall inherit the stars for the symbol of six is the star.
RELAYS OF IVIETH kept the palanquin moving at a run. Gaet remained awake on this last lap of their journey, though Oelita dozed beside him. He held her and let her sleep against his shoulder. The White Wound was behind them and they were back on the staggering road, sometimes passing one of the strange skrei-wheels. It was over his shoulder, after a jolt, that she first opened her eyes and saw Kaiel-hontokae spread across the rolling hills. The city seemed enormous to her if only because of the size of the aqueducts that marched toward its distant roofs.
When they arrived, Oelita thought she should be happy, but she became sick with fear in the maze of buildings, broad streets, stairways, and alleys that turned her around so badly she was dizzy. It did not even smell like sea-perfumed Sorrow, this slight tang of urine and decay. The fear was worse than before. She trusted Gaet, yes, but all about her the Kaiel were swarming like the tiny halieth fliers that rose from their acres of burrows during mating day. In all her life she had never imagined such a city! There were many clans she did not recognize, angular faces, costumes, types.
Their palanquin passed a market of stalls larger than the market at Sorrow and still the city went on. Palaces, temples, apartments, hovels, hives, factories, stalls, mansions, parks. Gaet stopped their hurry once to indulge her, telling the Ivieth to wait. The inside of the building he showed her was full of printing presses spewing out pages. A boy passed with a cartload of books for the bindery. It made her feel lost. She would be lost in all that printed chatter and no one would ever hear her voice. Once she glanced around and Gaet was gone. She panicked but he appeared again almost immediately with two cups.
“A little juice for us. We deserve it.”
She sipped while they continued. The hill of mansions which held Gaet’s home on one of its winding streets amazed her. She had not realized he was rich. Strange emotions were overtaking her. She felt like bowing at his feet — and she never grovelled before anyone! With effort she kept her head erect. It did not suit her image of herself to be so awed by splendor. He took her by an arm through the massive wooden door into the inner patio. She had never seen such luxury outside of a temple. It could almost be a place of Ritual Suicide.
He cocked an ear. “I think we have this mausoleum to ourselves.” Then he raised his voice. A great warble came out of his mouth that would have carried across a mountain valley. He cocked his ear again. “Even the servants are out. Well, let me offer you Greetings.”
“I’m most honored to be your guest.” She bowed and smiled at him.
They heard footsteps. “Gaet! You brought her!”
“My one-wife Noe,” he announced, “taking her time as usual.”
Oelita bowed stiffly.
“So you are the one who has been causing us so much excitement.”
“Isn’t she a feast for an empty stomach?” he extolled.
“One-husband has a vulgar sense of humor,” answered Noe warmly.
“Hoemei must come home tonight if we can reach him.”
Noe’s eyes twinkled. “We may never see him again. He has been caught by one of Aesoe’s Liethe.”
“God’s Leer!” roared Gaet. “Hoemei? You can’t be right! Is he sexing her?”
“He’s been suggesting some very strange positions to me in our recent lovemaking.”
“I’ll have to go over to the Palace and fetch him after our bath.” Gaet was laughing. “Rescue him is more like it.”
“Who are these Liethe?” asked Oelita. “I’ve seen them following our Stgal at five paces, but I know nothing about them.”
“The Stgal they would follow at five paces. Anything to please a priest.” Noe’s voice held veiled contempt for a woman who would try to please a man who would require her to walk behind him. “For our men they dance naked.”
“Only when we least expect it,” insisted Gaet defensively. “The last time I was at an Aesoe party they danced the Sunset for us and I don’t think we got to see a thumbnail’s flash of skin!”
“But you looked!” teased Noe. She turned to Oelita and explained. “The Liethe Sunset dance begins with the dancers in pale blue. They change costumes on stage, with a magician’s cleverness, so that you are never fast enough with the eye to see how they do it. The costumes go from sky blue to yellows, to oranges and brilliant streaming reds, then fade to purple and finally spangled black. The men, of course, jockey for position to steal what glimpses of flesh there are. If all he saw” — she poked her husband with an elbow — “was a thumbnail-sized patch of breast or thigh, poor Gaet got the worst of the jockeying.”
“One of these days,” said Gaet darkly, “I’m going to sell you to the Liethe.”
“No you won’t! You love me too much. Besides they wouldn’t buy me. The Liethe bodies are undecorated.”
“They might need you for leather and soup.”
“The Liethe don’t scar their bodies?” Oelita was scandalized. “And they show themselves to men like that?”
“It is a wicked city, my little coastal barbarian.” He turned to Noe. “Do we have hot water?”
“Come with me. You’re both filthy.”
The bath house was already steaming. Oelita marveled that pipes brought the hot water to the raised stone tub. Gaet was smiling broadly. “I’m relaxed already,” he said dipping his finger into the water while Noe began to pull off his boots.
It was almost frightening for Oelita to undress in such luxury — as if this were to be the final bath. The room was entirely done in tiles of earthy browns with a rough texture that promised safety even with soap underfoot. The pipes were burnished bronze. There was a huge carved kaiel to hold the towels, its hontokae inlaid in gold. Oelita, trembling, began to disrobe.
But she stopped in embarrassment when Gaet signaled covertly that she was breaking ritual. These Kaiel! she thought furiously. Do their rituals never end! She was ashamed that she was ashamed, that she did not know the ritual. Noe had not noticed her mistake.
“Guests do not undress themselves,” whispered Gaet, coming to help her with gentle hands.
“You have fine artists on the coast,” Noe said, admiring the lines which enhanced the womanliness of Oelita’s body.
Noe had shampoos ready, and perfumes, and delicate soaps made from rare beetle oils, and sponges of a scrubby texture so delightful that Oelita vowed she was going to abduct one. Noe took great familiarities with her husband’s body and when he tried to sass her she stuffed soap in his mouth so that his laughter produced a shower of bubbles. Oelita felt put out, cut off, watching them. Noe was his wife, for sure, but she, Oelita, was his lover!
She did not care what the rituals were! She took a sponge and began to wash Gaet herself. He was hers, too! Noe took no offense but transferred her attentions to Oelita. The washing was a casual caress, an easy intimacy. Noe even kissed her lightly on the back of the neck. It was a strange feeling. She felt shared.