She grinned smugly. “We already have the underjaw control ritual. It is not yet God smooth, but it will be.”

“That’s fast work!”

“I’m a fast woman,” she flirted. “Why do you think you fell in love with me after one heartbeat?”

“You mean it wasn’t your family money?”

“Don’t you remember? It was right after I offered you that purple drink,” she teased, licking the honey from her fingers. “Extract of slave pituitaries.”

“That’s what you plan for the beetles, to spike their drinks?”

“We need only to synthesize three artificial genes.”

“For what purpose?”

“The underjaw carries up to a hundred tiny symbiotes in its cervical carapace which are its only source of the alalaise it needs to power its wings during migration flight. When underjaws overgraze, the population begins to die. A dead underjaw triggers the sexual phase of the symbiote whose larvae thrive on the corpse. In their winged phase they find living underjaws and as the under-jaws become symbiote-saturated, a migration begins. We’ve found a way to use the human protein in the deviant underjaw to trigger the sexual phase of the symbiote while the underjaw is still alive so that it is eaten alive. The larvae mature and find other underjaws. If the new underjaw is of the Mnankrei-synthesized variety, then the sexual phase begins again instantly. If not, the symbiote establishes a normal relationship.”

“Clever. Who thought of it?”

“Me, you oaf!” She cuffed him. “When I was reading Oelita’s description of the life cycle. Get dressed. I’ll show you.”

“I just got undressed!”

The labyrinth of the Cloister contained perhaps one-third of the entire Kaiel wealth. There were the tapestries and the windows and the gold foil and silver inlay, of course, but that was for show. The major investment was in intricately crafted biochemical apparatus, dust-free and sterile rooms, electron eyes, silvergraphing techniques that could capture the image of a protein string on boron-anate plastics. There were rooms where genetically truncated and modified microlife cells fabricated difficult chemicals. Priest-changed ziants performed much of the necessary micro-manipulation and sensing. Within this labyrinth the ancestor of Gaet’s host mother had been synthesized from human and artificial genes. Even among the priest clans where breeding and biochemistry was a familiar art, the Kaiel were known as magicians.

While Noe took a nap with her head on the desk top, Gaet curiously examined relevant silvergraphs and pondered over hundreds of variations of hypothetical genetic chains that had been inserted in the fast-breeding symbiotes and tested. It was not his field of expertise but he read the group’s work well enough. In the Getan language the same word was used for “priest” or “leader” or “biologist”. Nobody survived the creches who was not a fine biochemist.

“Hey, this one seems to work!”

She woke up and looked to see the source of his enthusiasm. She smiled proudly. “It’s sluggish but my children are optimizing it.”

“You’re still sleepy.”

“I need the mountain winds in my face.”

“How about a run on my skrei-wheel?”

“Is it dangerous?”

It was dangerous so she loved it, clinging to Gaet’s back, flying faster than men could run. The ground rushed under her eyes like that peak-risk moment when a sailplane comes in for a landing, but there was no jolt or collapse of wings — the earth kept slipping past in endless orgasm.

STORM MASTER TONPA was waiting in a skiff behind his ship when the cry came. He could have overtaken her easily but he did not. He kept his oarsmen far enough behind her so that she had hope, but moved them fast enough in pursuit so that her desperate hope would exhaust her.

When he finally took her, Teenae raked him with her claws and his crewmen had to tie her feet while he held her. They fastened the line so that she was hauled behind the boat. Face down. She had to struggle frantically for air. Tonpa gave careful visual attention to the vigor of these splashings. If they ceased it would mean she was drowning and would need revival.

The skiff slapped safely over the waves to the mother ship. There Teenae was reeled aboard by her bound feet, recklessly swung against the hull by the cavalier sailors, and left to hang by the ankles until Tonpa himself had climbed aboard in his own good time.

The sea priest did not bother to speak to her. He ignored his clawed face. Callously he supervised his men while they lashed her into the painful four-quarter rigging, as if her limbs were the four corners of a sail replacing the furled fore-topsail. Up there her husband would be sure to see her at dawn, upside down, silhouetted, perhaps even rosily outlined.

Arap was also lashed to the rigging, but right side up, and lower down. Tonpa told Arap that pleasure set better in the memory when it was framed by pain. And then he laughed. “How else do I convince her to convince her husband that what you told her was whole truth?”

As an extra precaution he moved his ship out of the bay, silently and without running lights, to foil whatever rescue efforts her husband might attempt. There would be no need for a rescue. At dawn they would be back and what was left of her would be returned to her man.

At the fading of the stars, when Getasun was only peeking at the Njarae from behind the mountains, two rough seamen lowered Teenae and slopped salt water on her crumpled body to revive her. They towelled her down, joking cruelly. A taciturn sailor shaved the strip at the top of her head. They fed her. All the while she said nothing. For a long time she was kept below deck, and then they took her up, unclothed, to face Oelita. She would rather have died on the mast. Not only was Oelita there, but many of the townspeople she knew as well. Oelita, in disbelief, made her say what she had to say over and over again. That was a special torture.

Finally Oelita turned to Tonpa and asked with a precise electric force, “Is she speaking under duress? Are you forcing her to say this?”

“Do you imagine that people only speak Falsehood under duress? Yes, she is speaking under duress. Can you imagine this Truth to be pleasant for her? She speaks Truth under penalty of death.”

“She seems to be ill-treated.”

“I have been under no obligation to treat her well.”

“What will happen to her?”

“She loses her nose for slandering the Mnankrei and then we give her to you to do as you please.”

“You will not harm her in any way or I will slander the Mnankrei in ways you cannot imagine!”

The sea priest chuckled. “Ah, the Gentle Heretic who forgives her worst enemy. Flowers for the criminal. So be it.” He bowed. “We’ve been wronged, but yours is the graver wrong.”

“May I speak with her alone to see that she is not speaking what torture has commanded her to speak?”

“Of course.”

On the deck away from everyone, Oelita placed a shawl around Teenae’s shoulders to protect her from the sea chill. “Why? Tell me why?”

Teenae shook her head.

“Why!” Oelita insisted with a storm’s forpe.

“We were proposing to you,” she said in the tiniest of sounds while looking at the deck.

“You were what?” Lack of understanding made Oelita’s voice antagonistic.

“Proposing marriage.”

Oelita stared.

Teenae was in a state of shock. “Our marriage is incomplete. We need another.”

Finally the calm wonder with which one treats the truly insane mellowed the Heretic of Sorrow. “Is that a Kaiel custom, to murder the bride?” she asked as if she was asking about the weather.