“My little ones will piss all over me if I do not take them out to water the flowers.”
At the tent flap, she paused, her backside to Joesai. “I have grown old in the wilderness. I have wrinkles.”
“I have grown old waiting for you.”
“My will crumbles before your words. Have you become so used to seducing women?”
“I have been introduced to women, and women have seduced me, but I think it can be said that I have borne the brunt of this courtship. I have been clumsy.”
“Yes,” she said and was gone. He wondered if she meant yes-I-will-marry-you or yes-you-are-clumsy.
She let Reia play with the twins and returned to Joesai. “It is nice to have a giant slave. I’m already enjoying it. Will you do anything for me?”
“Within reason.”
Her desert-etched lines wrinkled into a smile. “Already you are trying to back out! Cut your nose off for me!”
“I like my nose.”
“Something a little less drastic, then. Kiss me.”
He reached for her and she countered. “Not now!” In fending him off the fingers of her nearest hand closed with his fingers. Male and female hand held the other tightly. “Once when I was a little girl I was at an engagement ruckus in the hills. I had to stand in my father’s lap to see the drunks. I still remember one of the songs. The famine was over and the crops were in. A skinny boy and girl had decided to risk leaving their families. It was an excuse for people to be happy again — to laugh, to make fools of themselves.”
“I use it as a lullabye for my babies.”
“I brought along a bag of whisky,” said Joesai.
She sneaked a glance at the face of the man whose fingers she wouldn’t let go. “Could we have a ruckus and make fools of ourselves? There are ten of us and two babies. Then I’ll kiss you!”
58
To ride on a man’s back, you must have a tight grip on his ears.
THE NEW LIETHE hive in the city of Kaiel-hontokae was the old Temple of God’s Praises, a mere stroll from the whisky warehouse of the old hive which was kept as a cell block for budding Liethe. In the tower of God’s Praises the notorious crone known as the se-Tufi Who Finds Pebbles poured her tea into a pale blue o’ca cup that sat on top of the oiled goldwood box that was her private wirevoice. “You wish my advice,” she stated blandly.
A woman stood in front of her with the peculiar poise that comes before the discovery of age and after the loss of innocence. “It is more than I can handle,” pleaded Humility.
“It is always more than any of us can handle.”
“I need to make a wise decision.”
“We will live with whatever decision you make.”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“You have been well trained, and if you fail it is our failure also. Time passes. In the same storm the river that displaces a grain of sand, replaces that grain of sand. The old die and the young grow older. When we were young, the crones did not make for us the critical decision of our lives. Thus we learned to rule before our teachers died. Before I die, I wish to see who you are when you work alone.”
“I’ve always worked alone,” said Humility rebelliously.
“You have obeyed our orders,” said the crone sternly.
Humility changed tactics. “Aesoe is in violation of Kaiel law. The predictions are to be audited and the man with the best record automatically becomes Prime Predictor regardless of his political beliefs or his alliances.”
“It is not so simple. One principle that the Liethe have learned in our parasitic role is that the law is never clear no matter how many noses are grafted onto the public face. The o’Tghalie say that the law is a map and, by theorem, that every map fails to locate at least one stone.”
Humility insisted. “I have done a major gaming of the audit myself with the help of young girls in my class who I am training in Kaiel politics. Hoemei should have been declared Prime Predictor and the policies of Aesoe should be void.”
“‘Should’ is a word with volume enough to paint infinity. A point in case: Tae ran-Kaiel wrote the present constitution of the Kaiel. He refined the unwritten traditions of succession that were no longer working. Indeed, he specified that audits of the Archives must take place and that the best predictor must be elevated to Prime Predictor. But no man challenged Tae in his lifetime. Even Aesoe, Tae’s best student, never came close. Aesoe was declared Prime Predictor only after the audit following the Immortal Funeral Feast. Thus the tradition is not clear in the minds of men, however clear it is upon paper. Does the audit that determines the new Prime Predictor come before or after the death of the old Prime Predictor? May a Prime Predictor be replaced by a rival or must the rival wait on Death?”
“The law is clear,” said Humility.
“And you are in love with Hoemei. Others are not. The law is what is read, not what is written.”
“I beg you, crone mother, this matter is of some importance. Aesoe’s policies have drastic consequences for the Liethe and for all of Geta, and Hoemei’s policies a very different consequence.”
“Doubtless in a thousand-thousand revolutions of Geta about Getasun it shall seem as the differences between the red and blue flecks of the sandstone of the Dry Bones.”
Humility flared. “It is against the Word of God as revealed in The Forge of War! Shall we be only another star among all stars? Aesoe has succumbed to wicked temptation! He would follow the policies of the Riethe devils and call it defense! Only a week ago as Cairnem I mussed the pillows of two priests of the kembri-Itraiel who have come here to negotiate with Aesoe’s Expansionists, hoping to relinquish their priest status, before they are conquered, in exchange for the role of warrior clan. They would ally themselves with the Kaiel as a fighting arm and with their force unite all of Geta in but one generation. We talked all night and they lusted for more than my body. They lusted for all of Geta, they lusted to walk upon Scowlmoon, they lusted for the stars and I felt their passion to the depths of me.”
“Power will always be with us. It is the way of the human.”
“But this is the very way that God has warned us against! There are many ways! I would take God’s way. I need your help!”
“The decision is yours.”
“Aesoe outreaches Hoemei three to one in the number of his Kaiel allies and two to one by voting strength. Kathein sneaked away from Aesoe for Sorrow under cover of night to take the maran in marriage in open defiance of the law. The maran will be destroyed. I do not have time to make a wise decision!”
“But you contemplate a decision you consider to be unwise and expect me to save you by countermanding it. You would deny the Itraiel their warrior march among the stars in exchange for a gift to Hoemei of one cactus bloom picked at the full fragrance of highnode.”
“Yes. I would do that.”
The eyes of the crone glinted. “The right decision is always best no matter how painful.”
“The right decision!” exploded Humility. “Yours or mine!”
“Neither. This is a test of your kalothi. I give you one week of power over the destiny of Geta for the next thousand generations. See what you come up with. I repeat, the decision is yours.”
“You and your illusions that we dong-kissers rule Geta!” stormed Humility in open rebellion, jerking her finger upward at the tower. “Our rayvoice doesn’t even speak today! At the library I tried to find out the numbers of the Itraiel and no one knows. And you want me to make a decision in the flutter of a heartbeat that God has pondered silently since you were born!”