How cruel to keep monsters alive in the name of mercy, thought Teenae through her pain.

The artwork continued. The story continued. Teenae ceased to be aware of either. She endured the pain. She struggled to stay conscious. She breathed deeply. She tried to crush the rods in her fists. She left teethmarks on the hardwood bit. Sometimes she screamed through clenched teeth. She could not stop the tearless sobs. Somewhere in her mind she thanked the God of the Sky that she was a woman now, a full-grown woman because there was no more blankness upon her body. The littlest girl, who had all of this still to experience, kept patting her head compassionately and when it was over, she was there, directly in front of Teenae, smiling.

Zeilar swabbed the wounds gently and bandaged them. Two of his wives came up the ladder. They had been preparing Teenae’s swimmers. They fed her the raw brains and gills. Pain sharpened the taste buds, they said, and now was the time for delicacies. The remains of the swimmers they had packed to rot in little jars so that the meat would be ripe in a week.

“You’re spoiling me,” she said when the women began to sponge the sweat from her face and body.

“We welcome you to our bond,” said the younger woman.

Teenae had saved her most important question until exactly the logical moment. “Will I ever get to meet her?”

“Yes,” said one-wife.

“Of course,” said three-wife.

“She is in hiding now,” said Zeilar, “because the Mnankrei have challenged her by Death Rite.”

“I’d heard a rumor like that. It frightened me.”

“Her wondrous kalothi will protect her and so they cannot win, but still she must be careful. You will meet her.”

“Why can’t people just leave each other alone!” Teenae spoke with adamant anger against Joesai, though it seemed that her anger was directed against the sea priests.

“Oh, but she welcomes the challenge. When the Mnankrei lose they will owe her a Great Favor.”

Yes, you will owe her a Great Favor. Teenae savored the coming victory over Joesai. Logic was better than tradition.

13

HOEMEI HAD LEFT a message and she had not replied. To meet him was forbidden by clan edict. Even to speak to him was forbidden. Why did he persist? Those maran-Kaiel were shamelessly bold! Did they not fear Aesoe? Was their love so small they would endanger her?

Yet how could she just forget them? She folded her arms crossly above a belly so large that it indicated a baby near term. Life was grief and anguish. Was a refusal morally correct? She had not refused Joesai. It had overwhelmed her with surprise the way Joesai had approached her after the interdiction, pushing through the social barricades so casually. Love that strong was difficult to resist. Since then duty and fear had hardened her. Being forewarned by Joesai’s behavior and no longer surprised, she had refused when Hoemei had first tried to see her. She had been cold, she had ignored him — and yet in his shy way he persisted. Her loneliness was weakening her resolve.

She wanted to see Hoemei. She desperately wanted news of Joesai — and Teenae, too. I will not see him! But what could Aesoe do if she spoke to him for a moment? Suppose the meeting was carefully clandestine, how could he even find out about it? The thought frightened her. Kathein was afraid of Aesoe.

I’m not brave. Her mind paused. I’m weak! she added furiously. It was their boldness that had attracted her to the maran-Kaiel when they had decided to court her. She was conventional. She stayed on the roads and only wondered about shortcuts. Gaet and his cavalier way with all that was sacred had fascinated her from the day they met. How did he survive? When he had brought her home she had expected a conservative family to balance his impulsiveness, but the whole family had turned out to be equally free of what seemed to Kathein to be the irreducible constraints. They were freer than Kathein had ever wanted to be.

She knew she talked boldly. She had a witty line. She knew she was charming. But there had never been boldness in her actions. At first Hoemei’s shyness seemed like tradition personified but when she coaxed from the man his deepest feelings, he was a catacomb of heresy. No safety there. Joesai talked of concepts so comfortably worn that they had the feel of a temple touchstone. He had seemed like a safe person. Then he had taken her and made love to her one day without so much as a token gesture to the rituals, a presumption so surprising she had been unable to find a way to say no. The whole family frightened her but their reckless ways had been a heady experience that had infused her personal life with the same thrill she got from physics.

And yet how like her life that they had been taken away. Here she was ready to bear her first child and there was no family to share her joy. She missed Joesai. If only she could cry out her grief with Noe. But now she was more afraid of them than she had been on that first wondrous evening.

Aesoe was watching.

She did not want to be another sweetmeat at the maran funeral. Yet how she loved to dive into the depths of Hoemei’s wariness and break surface having flushed a smile he had been hiding. How she loved to relax his worried frown. How she could use his smile right now!

There were friends who would be glad to celebrate the birth with her, and who would take care of her, but she wanted her family, and if she couldn’t have them she was going to bear the baby alone. The first contraction hit her, almost too faint to notice. The baby jerked. I’m all alone, she thought and closed and opened a hidden switch that triggered a chime in the servant’s quarters. It was a silly foible of hers. A rope and bell was just as adequate and didn’t need a fussy electron source.

Yar appeared in the stone archway. “You belled?” She stood awkwardly, a youth from the creches who was not yet accustomed to the strangeness of her good fortune. She lived with a boy whom Kathein had picked for her. They were lovers and the nucleus of a new family and they served Kathein while they studied physics.

“What could we do to make my hair beautiful?”

“You’ve decided to see him?” asked Yar excitedly, though she was more interested in the lectures on lightning and momentum that always went with the hairdressing.

“No. It’s for myself. If Hoemei comes it will be your duty to send him away.”

“I’d be so awed I wouldn’t be an obstacle at all!”

“You could tell him how wicked he was.”

Yar giggled. “I could hold out my skinny arms to block the way. I’d rather bake sweetworm cookies. How shall I do your hair?”

With a toss of her head, Kathein strode to the mirror and sat down but, suddenly gasping, clutched the arm of her chair.

“Mistress!” cried Yar.

“It’s all right. The labor is beginning. It will go away.”

“Lie down.”

“No. My hair is important,” she said stubbornly, as if ordering the world to follow the morning’s written plan.

But the contractions did not go away. Their intensity persisted, building for many hundreds of rapid heartbeats before fading. “They’re gone,” said Kathein. “We’ll do my hair now.”

“They’re not gone. I’ve seen the machines at the creches give birth. I’ll get the midwife. You go to bed.”

“No.”