“I’m sorry. I wanted to figure out another way. But no one helped. I didn’t know how. Why do we always use the solutions of our training? You too!” she scolded. “I don’t want to kill people. I want to love them!” She touched her lips to the still-warm lips. “You were a great man and I loved you and I’m mad at you!”
She tried to surround his cooling body with her body to give him warmth.
But in the morning she woke beside a statue of Aesoe done in alabaster, a low relief of symbols carved on its surface. She ran her fingers along the cold stone and there were no more tears.
61
Brilliant by night, bright enough to be seen by day, God passed seven times between sunset and sunset for two hundred days to watch my Trial, to guide me across the roadless Kalamani for I had no maps. The Kalamani is no place for man. I slaked my thirst by distilling the juices of insects. My comrades died and there was no one to honor their flesh but me. Life was chewing the sun-dried strips of their life. All honor to my comrades!
MOST OF KAIEL-HONTOKAE seemed to be at the Funeral Feast. The tables of food at the Temple of Human Destiny would have ended a famine. The great gongs never stopped sounding. Aesoe was the steaming centerpiece, below the stained glass, skinned, dressed, decorated, roasted, no longer human. The entertainment that whirled around him never ended. His three Liethe danced for him a mourning song that crawled from the blacks and browns of a dirge to the ebullient roses and reds and pinks of birth. Aesoe’s little children fluttered about being important, serving the food, keeping order.
Men gave speeches and men wept, cooks rolled in carts of food, choirs sang, whisky flowed, robed Kaiel flowed about their temple like trapped floodwaters from a sudden melt.
The Queen of Life-before-Death found herself huddled under a table to avoid the crush, savoring her own small strip of Aesoe, dreaming dreams, feeling his strength. She saw a black and purple robe pass by and grabbed at its legs. The wearer of the robe looked down. She peered out smiling.
“I’m Honey — just in case you didn’t recognize me.”
“Who but Honey would be hiding under a table?” grinned Gaet.
“That’s a hat you’re wearing?” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?” she asked breathlessly.
“I thought Polite Form required my presence. Travelled my bum off non-stop by skrei-wheel. God’s Laugh if I won’t be bow-legged for weeks! Wasn’t sure it was safe for Hoemei to come. Joesai is in the bush somewhere chasing his tail and Teenae didn’t even want me to come.”
“Did Kathein reach Sorrow safely? Aesoe was so upset!”
“If it didn’t give him heart failure! Kathein’s arrival was a surprise! There will be a wedding when Joesai and I get back. This unfortunate Feast makes it easier.”
Honey pulled Gaet’s head down to her ear level. “You’re such a hypocrite,” she whispered. “Why do you say ‘unfortunate’ when you mean ‘fortunate’!”
“Not ‘hypocrite’; the word is ‘diplomat’,” he corrected. “Let’s get out of here. They’ve run out of meat. Funerals are a pain when there are more than twenty people. Never get enough to eat.”
“May I just go with you? Just like that?”
“I give shelter to the unemployed. Or shall I be your private escort to the hive?”
“Not there!”
“My humble home?”
“God yes. Is it still standing?” she teased. “I thought the Expansionists might have burned it down by now.”
Halfway there she couldn’t resist the question that was dominating her mind. “Do you think they’ll make Hoemei Prime Predictor?” She was clinging to Gaet’s arm.
He grinned and bumped her hip affectionately. “I think you like my brother.” He was teasing.
“I want to know!”
“Yes. It is checkmate. Hoemei was blocked every which way by Aesoe. Aesoe was the key piece. So the Black Queen took him off the board and now it is a new game and I believe Hoemei has control.”
Gaet escorted her through the maran’s darkened city mansion, straight to his room. He brought out gold coin and gave it to her without any preliminaries in repayment for the sexual favors he was obviously expecting. She stiffened. Suddenly their camaraderie was gone and she felt alone in the whole universe. “That’s not the way it is done,” she said coldly. “All money matters are handled by the crones. A gift as bonus might be welcome if I were to please you enough.”
He laughed while he undressed. “I offer my apologies,” he said without being the least contrite. “I’m used to the way wives handle their husbands.”
“I’m not your wife.” She was surprised at her anger.
He was staring at her as if she was a child on the auction block. “You could have been. Hoemei really loved you. He wanted me and Joesai to love you, too. We were very short of a woman then. It is hard for two women to keep up with three men.”
He was making her more angry. “The Liethe never marry.”
“I know. So does Hoemei. He’s a family man and not an old reprobate like me.”
She pushed his money back across the table.
“I was just cutting out the middleman. The crones will never know. Keep it. Consider it an advance. You’re coming out to Sorrow to dance at our wedding. My invitation. I know you want to see him.”
The anguish was there again, and indecision. She knew she would do anything to see Hoemei again, just to pass him in the halls of Sorrow’s Temple, anything. She’d walk across a world to spend an evening with him.
Gaet threw up his hands. “I can’t argue with you. Not now. I’m dead on my feet. I didn’t think I’d make the Feast.” He turned around and fell like a collapsing building onto the pillows and was sound asleep, still half dressed.
She stared at him, no longer angry. Perhaps he thought I was out of a job and needed help. He would not comprehend the ethic of the hive. She wasn’t used to friends. She moved the gold coins with her fingers. Impulsively she tidied the room. Gently she finished undressing him so that he would not wake. She put his things away. She put her own gown away, and the money with it. By the time she found courage to sleep with him, he had the pillows well toasted. It was cozy under the covers. It was good to sleep with a warm body again.
62
The multiple apparitions of futures fight their spectral game on the deadly field of the present, destroying one another, until, heartbeat by heartbeat, the victor comes alive, takes on substance, mass, inertia, the glory of a summer form or the cancerous monster of some mad being, the very warmth of his solid body dissipating the wraiths of the lost futures — to reign in ephemeral glory for a day before twilight makes of him the corpse upon which the next phantom battle begins to rage.
FOG HAD BEEN CRAWLING through the cracks between the hills so that there was no sea to be seen, only the pale cleaver of Scowl-moon hanging in the whiteness. Noe found them beside the road and parked her skrei-wheel next to theirs where they had been resting and eating bread. She crossed her arms to warm herself against the flowing fog.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t home when your wirevoice message came through.”
She was glancing at Honey. Gaet could sense her distress. He rose. “You forgot your cloak. You’re cold.”
She shrugged, a shiver warming her. “I thought you were alone.”
“I brought Honey to dance at our wedding. She’s been a good friend to Hoemei, more loyal to us than to Aesoe. Somehow with his death it seemed appropriate to bring her.”
“You have a flair for complicating matters.” Noe’s voice was the sting of a bee.