“Now I ask you — why did they decide to do that? What happened that made them change their thinking about carrying weapons? Something happened. You know what it was. You will tell me.”
“Never!”
“You will!”
Enge lurched forward and seized Vaintè’s arms tight-clamped between her powerful thumbs, her mouth gaping wide in anger. Then Enge saw the slight movements of joy and she released Vaintè at once, pushing her away and stumbling back.
“You would like me to use violence, wouldn’t you?” she said, panting with the effort to control her violent emotions. “You would like to see me forget the truth of my beliefs and sink to your level of desperate violence. But I will not debase myself that much no matter how provoked. I will not join you in your despicable animal corruption.”
Rage swept away all of Vaintè’s reserve, released all of her anger that had been suppressed since her return and fall from favor.
“You won’t join me — you have joined me! These marks in my flesh where your thumbs bit deep, where your nails drew blood. Your treasured superiority is as hollow and empty as you are. You grow angry as I do — and you will kill as I do.”
“No,” Enge said, calm again. “That I will never do, that low I will never sink.”
“Never! You will, you all will. Those who followed Peleinè did. They happily aimed their hèsotsan and killed the verminous ustuzou. For one instant they were true Yilanè and not whining and despicable outcasts.”
“They killed — and they died,” Enge said, speaking softly.
“Yes, they died. Like you they could not face the fact that they are no different, no better than the rest of us…”
Then Vaintè stopped, realizing that in her anger she had answered Enge’s questions, satisfied her imbecile beliefs.
With the realization of the truth all of Enge’s anger had been washed away. “Thank you, efenselè, thank you. You have done me and the Daughters of Life an immense service this day. You have shown us that our feet are on the path and we must walk along it without straying. Only in that way can we reach the truth that Ugunenapsa spoke of. Those who killed, died from that killing. The others saw that and chose not to die in the same manner. That is what happened, is it not?”
Vaintè spoke with cold anger now. “That is what happened — but not for the reasons that you give. They died not because they were better, because they were in some way superior to the rest of the Yilanè — they died because they are exactly the same. They thought they could escape the death of being cast out from the city, nameless and dead. They were wrong. They died in the same manner. You are no better than the rest of us — if anything you are something far less.”
In silence, wrapped in thought, Enge turned and left. At the doorway she paused and turned back. “Thank you, efenselè,” she said. “Thank you for revealing this immense truth. I sorrow that so many had to die to reveal it, but perhaps that was the only way it could have become known to us. Perhaps even you, in your search for death, will aid in bringing us life. Thank you.”
Vaintè hissed with anger and would have torn Enge’s throat open had she not gone at this moment. This on top of her indeterminate status was becoming too much for her to bear. Something must be done. Should she go to the ambesed, go before the Eistaa and speak to her? No, that would not do at all for there might be public humiliation from which she could never recover. Then what? Was there no one she could call upon? Yes, one. One who believed as she did that nothing was more important than the killing of ustuzou. She went out and signaled to a passing fargi and issued her instructions. Most of the day passed and still no one came, until Vaintè gradually went from angry pacing to immobile vacuity, settling into a mindless, thoughtless silence. So dark was this somber mood that she had difficulty in rising from it and stirring herself when she finally realized that another stood before her.
“It is you, Stallan.”
“You sent for me.”
“Yes. You did not come to see me of your own will.”
“No. It would have been seen, Malsas‹ would have been told. I do not need this kind of attention from the Eistaa.”
“It was my belief that you served me. Now you value your own scaled hide more?”
Stallan stood solidly, legs wide-braced, and did not give way. “No, Vaintè, I value my service more. My work is to kill ustuzou. When you lead, I will follow. To the north they crawl like vermin. They need stamping underfoot. When you do not lead, then I wait.”
Vaintè’s evil humor ameliorated slightly. “Do I detect a hint of admonition there, stout Stallan? The slightest suggestion that my energies would be better disposed of if I had simply acted the butcher and slaughtered the nearest ustuzou? That I should not have mounted my great campaign to track down and kill a single miserable ustuzou?”
“You have said it, Vaintè. I did not. But it should be known that I also share your desire to open the throat of this one particular ustuzou.”
“But not enough to pursue him wherever he runs and hides?” Vaintè paced her quarters, back and forth, twisting with anger, her claws ripping into the matting of the floor. “I tell this to you and you alone, Stallan. Perhaps this last attack was a mistake. But none of us knew the outcome when we began, all of us were carried away by the ambition of it. Even she who now will not speak to me.” She spun about and jabbed her thumb at Stallan.
“So tell me, loyal Stallan. How is it that you avoided my presence all this time — yet now you are here?”
“The losses are forgotten. After all, most of those killed were just fargi. Now there is talk only of those Yilanè that were murdered in the forest by the ustuzou, the dead males on the beaches. I have seen to it that many of the pictures that the birds bring back are passed about, pictures of the ustuzou for the Yilanè to look at. The Yilanè look and grow angry. They wonder why the killing has stopped.”
Vaintè crowed with pleasure.
“Loyal Stallan, I wronged you. While I hid here in dark anger you were doing the one thing that will bring my exile to an end. Reminding them of the ustuzou. Showing them what the ustuzou have done and will do again. There are ustuzou out there badly in need of killing. Soon they will come to me again, Stallan, because they will remember that killing ustuzou is one thing that I am very good at. We have made our mistakes — and we have learned from them. It will be calm, efficient slaughter from now on. As fruit is plucked from a tree to feed the animals, so will we pluck these ustuzou. Until the tree is bare and they are gone and Gendasi will be Yilanè across all its vast expanse.”
“I will join you in that, Vaintè. I have felt since I saw my first ustuzou that it will be ustuzou or Yilanè. One or the other must die.”
“That is the truth. That is our destiny and that is what must be done. There will be a day when the skull of the last ustuzou will be hung from the thorns of the Wall of Memory.”
Stallan spoke quietly and with great sincerity.
“It will be your hands that hang it there, Vaintè. Yours alone.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
It became Vaintè’s custom to visit the Gendasi model every evening just before sunset. By then the builders would have gone, their work for the day completed, and she could have the vast, dim-lit expanse to herself. There she would study any changes of the day, discover if the birds had brought back any pictures of interest. It was summer now and the animals were on the move, the packs of ustuzou stirring as well. She saw the packs come together, then break apart until they could not be told one from the other. Because she had no authority now she could not order flights, so had to accept without question whatever information the pictures revealed.