It was Kelly’s cue. He continued to stare blankly off into space, and Durg wondered if he’d been right to place the man in such a permanent alcoholic haze. A thumb jabbed hard into a shoulder blade brought Kelly back to the present. He scrambled from his chair and walked forward to join Blaise.
“They too will fall,” called the bogus Tisianne. “People of Takis, House Ilkazam, hear me. The old ways are dead. A new society dawns before us. I went first to my clan, my House, and offered them the chance to lead this revolution. They rejected and vilified me. Fleeing for my life, I went in search of men of greatness, men brave enough to lead us into that new society. I have broken all custom, all tradition – I have abandoned my House and given allegiance to another. Because I found that brave man.” Kelly laid a hand on Blaise’s shoulder.
Durg could see the hesitation, the minute shrinking away from contact with Blaise. The Tarhiji would miss it. With luck most Zal’hma at’ Irg would as well.
Blaise resumed. “Today I have issued an ultimatum to House Rodaleh. They have until tomorrow to merge with Vayawand. If they refuse, we will carry the revolution to them. Are you with me?” Blaise thrust a fist high into the air, and the assent was deafening. “Then go to the registration centers. Join the House army. Prepare for the fight. All of Takis is the prize. May the Ideal guide and bless us.”
Blaise spread his arms in a final embrace to the crowd, stepped back to Durg’s side. His face was flushed with excitement, his dark eyes glowing. Durg dropped a cloak over the boy’s shoulders.
“Very well played, my lord, but was it wise to raise the longevity point?”
“Hey, it worked great.”
“Yes, but there is no magic serum. The Most Bred live longer because they are bred to live longer.”
“By the time the sheep figure out we’ve lied to them, we’ll rule Takis. That should mollify them. If not, we can kill them.”
Durg bowed his head in assent. “As you wish.” They started down the steps of the platform. “There is another matter. Bat’tam brant Sandiqy sek Buad sek Jul grows too close to the false prince.”
Kelly hesitated at the top of the stairs. Analyzed the remarkable effects of alcohol. It made you both dumb and brave because here he was standing five feet from Blaise trying to read Blaise’s mind.
There were a lot of minds in the plaza of Vaya, but Kelly had gotten better at this telepathy shit. The pressure of minds no longer hurt like dagger pricks against the surface of his brain. They were just irritating, like a chorus of a thousand of cicadas in the bodark trees back home. He had to sift through them all to find Blaise even though Blaise was terrifyingly close to hand.
Kelly had discovered that visualization helped, so he pictured his grandmother bent over the scarred wooden table in the kitchen of the Oklahoma farmhouse, squeezing the trigger of a battered old flour sifter while brains popped through the narrow screen.
Once located, Blaise’s mind was unmistakable. It had a buzz-saw quality. It was primal force with no grace or elegance. It just was. The deeper thoughts were hidden beneath opaque shields, but the surface thought was too strong to be hidden. Blaise was thinking about killing. Killing Bat’tam.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Touch him, bitch, and I’ll cut off your nipples and feed them to your baby!”
Tis hadn’t remembered fainting. Actually she didn’t remember much past the time when they reached the heavy doors of Rarrana. It was then that she panicked, fought, beating at Zabb’s chest and face.
And now she was waking to a threatening voice echoing with the yowl of a back-fence cat warning off interlopers. Raising a hand, she lightly touched her forehead. Felt the residual signature of Zabb. No, not a faint, a coerced sleep. He had subdued her the way a man would tranquilize a frightened animal. Is that how the humans felt when I used my power on them? she wondered.
The sound of receding footsteps, the slam of a door. More distant and less distinct sounds began to force their way to her consciousness. Babies crying, children laughing, squalling, calling to each other in play. The yap of excited hounds romping with the children. Sounds of adult activity – the muted melody of water falling softly into fountain basins, a string quartet rehearsing, the drone of an announcer on the holo commenting on the action in a sporting competition.
There was a prickling sense that let her know that she was surrounded by people – female people by the delicate scent of their perfumes – and then one particular fragrance struck like a belly blow, and for one flashing, painful moment Tis was five years old again. Pillowed on his mother’s breast, screaming mentally because the telepathic communication that he had shared with his mother almost since the moment of his conception had been brutally and suddenly broken. In the background had been the same busy sounds of Rarrana. It had been Roxalana who had gathered him into her arms then.
It was Roxalana who gripped Tisianne’s shoulders now and pulled her into a sitting position. Disoriented by the strength of the memory, Tis murmured, “You’re wearing mother’s scent.” Tisianne opened her eyes.
Roxalana looked not very much different than Tis remembered. She had their father’s tipped-up eyes; they gave her a wicked, calculating look that was undeserved. She was as direct as a knife blade, and often as painful.
But it was Pandasala who jumped in with the sharp, acerbic comment. “For only the past forty years. Outstanding that you finally noticed.”
It was perfectly in character for her. It was said that life with Pandasala had prepared her husband for (or driven him into) the highly dangerous sport of agma hunting.
“Of course you have been gone,” said Cillka.
“Without sparing a thought for your poor sisters,” added Tri’ava.
“And we were supposed to make a baby together,” Melant said.
“We took a terrible drop in prestige when our nearest male relative was a mere regent.”
“Now maybe you’ll understand our plight,” finished Shi’tha.
And there was that rustling, the sideways glances that women exchange when they are hiding tolerant amusement at the foibles of men. Despite Tis’s forced sex change, it was apparent that in the eyes of her sisters arrayed about her that she was still a moronic male. Tis scanned the six delicate faces – Roxalana, Melant, Tri’ava, Pandasala, Shi’tha, Cillka.
They were all varying shades of blond, from the deep burnished bronze of the eldest, Roxalana, to the new minted gold of Cillka, the baby until Tach had come along ninety years later. Tis realized that since her body switch she finally looked like one of the family, an offspring of Shaklan and Ts’ara. She was even the right sex. After seven daughters the House Ilkazam had begun to despair of the Raiyis ever siring a boy child. They had even suggested that Shaklan break his unnatural fascination with his primary wife and try fathering a child on some other appropriately pedigreed woman. Shaklan refused and eventually Tisianne had arrived – male and redheaded, an oddity. Now Tis fit… On the whole she would just as soon have remained a changeling.
Other details were coming into focus. They were in the great star-shaped central courtyard of Rarrana. Directly in the center, beneath a domed skylight, was a bathing pool. Naked women dandled their children in the water or played silly water games. Like all pools on Takis, it was shallow. Takisians were notoriously bad swimmers. For a distance of four feet from the pool the ground was inlaid with beautiful mosaic pictures, most of which were hidden beneath bodies where more women lounged, enjoying the warmth of the heated tiles. Tarhiji servants slipped through carrying food, drink, towels. La’bs both male and female were very much in evidence, massaging the bodies of their mistresses, kissing them, feeding them, reading to them from holos floating comfortably at eye level. Nearby a couple was copulating, and Tis felt her cheeks go red. She quickly looked away and cursed Earth for turning her into a prude.