“Joesai!” Teenae screamed up at him, “you’ll scare the neighbors out of their skins!”
“This lonely exile welcomes you home, beloved!”
He rushed downstairs to meet her. Teenae was directing the placement of her basket and flashed him the open smile that had addicted him to her. She waited until the basket was safe before she hugged him. “Your bathwater is hot,” he said.
“Don’t you ever think of anything besides giving me a bath! The world is falling apart and all you can think of is having a wife on your pillows who doesn’t smell! Oh Joesai, I’m too exhausted for even a bath! To think I once walked over the mountains!”
“With a little help from our tall friends.”
“I’m heading straight for the whisky and I know where you hide it!”
He followed her to his room, where she poured herself an amber gulp, downed it, undressed, and began to sponge her body with cold water. He tried to help. She pushed him away. “Keep your hands off me,” she said almost angrily. “You know how I am when I haven’t been with you for a long time. I have to get used to you again. You’re so big!” Her pregnancy was showing, her belly just beginning to swell with child. Hoemei’s this time.
“Where’s Gatee?” Gatee was her baby daughter by Gaet.
“I left her in the mountains with relatives. Noe or Gaet will pick her up when they come out. I thought I’d have you all to myself for a while before Noe arrives to distract you. Hoemei is coming, too. I hope. I practically had to put a ring in his dong and haul him here by chain. There’s trouble in Kaiel-hontokae and I want him away from it.”
“I’ve heard nothing.”
“Because nothing is blabbered over the rayvoice. I’m too tired to talk about it.” She sank onto the pillows, her profile outlined like stitching in a quilt, her last bit of energy used up. He smiled warmly, just happy to have her with him again, relishing every ridge of the cicatrice design that flowed down her back and up over the hills of her rump. The best of the artistry was the wheat stalk of the Heresy that she had put there to fill the last gap on her body to defy him, to tell him that she was a finished woman and no longer a child bride who had to listen to him, a decision which led to her swinging upside down from the yardarm of a Mnankrei ship for a whole night.
He touched Oelita’s slim book that he had bought from a man who did not know Joesai as the priest who had cast the Death Rite upon his prophetess. It was a present for Teenae. She had a special place in her heart for Oelita. But he took his hand away from the cloth binding. Tomorrow, when she was rested.
Teenae shifted her legs and looked up at Joesai. “I’m not asleep yet. Hug me a little. Don’t be shy. You know I’ll be madly in love with you again by about the time Scowlmoon goes into eclipse, which isn’t too long to wait. Lover.”
Much later they made love with a sleepy passion. Her half-awake sighs faded back to unconsciousness but when he tried to leave, she held him. So he waited for a while, enjoying the warmth of her, before he brought some simple food to their bed. He sat on the pillows while she ate and with his lather and knife shaved the centerline over her skull from forehead to the nape of her neck. He rubbed his nose in her hair, smelling the black silkiness of it. They chatted.
“Gatee has teeth and she has decided to bite everything!”
“Did anyone ever restore the masonry on the north face?” He was referring to their mansion in Kaiel-hontokae.
“Long ago.”
“I miss the city.”
“I, for one, am glad to be away. Hoemei has finally split with the Expansionists and you can’t believe the uproar that caused! Aesoe is after his hide and when two-husband goes to the Palace he avoids Aesoe. He’s furious at the blindness of the Expansionists. He’s pulled in a whole group to support him. Aesoe calls their proposals and predictions Stomach Thinking because Hoemei’s basic policy is Digest First, Eat Later. The conflict is dangerous because the split is basically along creche and non-creche lines.”
“That’s been coming for a long time.”
“You Who Were Born of the Machines are in the minority.”
“That won’t last.”
Teenae frowned. “It is not logical. The Expansionists want to move out rapidly and the only ready source of the priests they must have is the creches and that means they must sharply curtail the mortality rate of the Trials, but if they do that for long the creche children will be in the majority.”
“Aesoe will be dead by then and won’t care. And remember, his children will mainly come from the creches.”
Teenae gestured impatiently. “I don’t even think that is the real issue. Kathein is seeing Hoemei, more and more openly — she moons over him publicly, and makes no secret of her sexual interest in him. That drives Aesoe wild and he is about to exile Hoemei, too, or worse. I sent Gaet to talk to her, and she was her usual sweet self, but distant and uncommunicative. Hoemei thinks he is reaching her and will bring her back to us, but I think she is using him in some way I cannot compute.”
“She loves and hates Aesoe,” said Joesai. “I caught the breath of it when last at the mountain observatory. We were discussing finances. I carried a gold bar as gift from the Mnankrei for the new sky-eye.” He paused. “I was telling her of my policy of supporting and adopting Mnankrei children who have shown an aptitude for the priesthood and how that was paying off in good will. And she was telling me how she gets coin, bags of it, from Aesoe.”
Joesai threw his hands up in despair. “Aesoe is mad. He is so possessed by her that he strains all projects to please her whims. Thank God her whims are in line with the goals of Geta. I’ve come to see her as a religious fanatic. She is determined that in her lifetime our son will rise to meet God in a rocket. Everything to that end. It drives her. She hates Aesoe but he is the center of power so she loves him in order to get what she wants. I no longer know her myself. I’ve tried to seduce her but she won’t have me. What am I to her? An exile who wanders the beaches.” He smiled. “Remember how shy she used to be? And how the least encouragement would bring the kalothi power welling out of her?”
“She has placed Hoemei in great danger.”
Joesai laughed. “I see that Kaiel-hontokae hasn’t changed a bit since I was last there.”
“Kathein knows that Hoemei will be the next Prime Predictor and she is damming the mountain waters at both ends.”
“You think Hoemei has even a chance at that exalted position? He is creche. The non-creche would never permit it.”
Teenae rose to a straight sitting position with a fury that made her breasts point like fists. “The succession is not an issue of votes! It is a matter of an audit of the predictionsl Such is in Tae’s constitution!”
“And have the Kaiel ever hesitated to break the rules?”
“I’ve called a family council. We’ll all be here, in one spot, for once. I don’t know what we’ll talk about. I did it to get Hoemei out of the city.”
Joesai laughed the great laugh and threw Teenae around his neck like a shawl. “The world is one big creche.” And he took her to her room to see her new furniture.
“It’s here!” exclaimed a delighted Teenae.
The wood was the finest desert Okkai, planed and oiled to show a black grain. The surfaces were inlaid with polished Mnankrei leather, lead pebble holes and all, and was bordered with carved squares from the skull of Tonpa.
“Sorrow’s craftsmen are good,” he said.
She wiggled in delight. “The next low night we spend here! I’m so pleased! When I make your child it will be in this room!”