“With a little help from the old crone,” Humility added cynically.
“You will be a master of Kaiel policy before you are ready to be Sieen.”
“Who decides who gets the roles? What if two of us wish to be Sieen the same night?”
“Whim. If there is a dispute we throw dice. But not while Aesoe is looking!”
After dinner six of the girls were singing or playing to relax — but the crone mother did not let Humility relax. When the ancient one was through instructing the orn-Gazi Who Cries for Berries, that pleasant girl appeared and, trying out the ways of seduction she had just learned, gently informed Humility that the respected hag wished to see her.
The old woman sat in her luxurious room on a huge round pillow that she used as a bed. Two beeswax candles burned on her silver inlaid desk. Behind her was a rich tapestry celebrating the pleasure of laughter. Beside her was a small pantry of pale wood. Stoicism was for the young. In the midst of this splendor, Humility was not sure whether she should remain standing or take a cushion.
The crone mother was the oldest se-Tufi she had ever met, surely near death, but it would not be her mind that would fail her, it would be her heart. The se-Tufi had been the longest lived of the Liethe lines until recently and they lived twenty percent longer than the average Getan who died of old age. Someday the se-Tufi would be replaced by a sister line that had their ability and a better blood pump. The Code allowed no less. No line could hope for immortality.
It was macabre to be confronting herself at the end of her life, as if her travels across the Pile of Bones and the Itraiel Plain had taken her on a journey in time to meet herself as she would become. No words passed between them. Finally the crone mother rose, and Humility ached to help her stand on those legs, but one did not help a crone mother unless asked. The woman took her by the arm, on the band of signature, and carefully brought her to cushions near the candles. Her gesture said that discipline deserved pleasure. She poured liqueur into two tiny goblets, carefully, for her hand trembled. Then sighing, she sat down again, offering the second delicate sipper with a smile that carved her face into finer lines than any artist could have wrought.
Humility was tired. She wanted her mat and her cell, she craved the hardness of the floor and sleep, but the unspoken moments gave her time to work the White Mind. The day vanished. Her body relaxed. In the whiteness appeared her urgently central concern and she spoke first.
“The Kaiel and Liethe are traditional enemies.”
The old woman smiled mysteriously. “You are anxious to go to work?”
“What is my assignment to be?”
“My child, your first assignment is patience. Think no farther than the five pleasure points of Aesoe’s penis.”
Humility was somewhat offended. “I am no novice to stand while Geta turns.”
“So I have heard. Your reputation is that you act with consummate skill. But do you know why you do what you do? Be sure in your own mind that it is right. Only you will bear the consequences. Whatever the Liethe do in secret, in public they side with the law of the land they live in.”
“I need only to be competent. I take orders from those wiser than myself.”
The old woman sighed. “Tell me, why are the Kaiel and the Liethe enemies?”
The Queen of Life-before-Death had nothing to say. The enmity was an understood.
“You see, you are Action Without Thought. Aesoe does not even know we are traditional enemies. He thinks of us as mere women for hire and a bargain at the price. He is more fond of us than some men are of their wives. Vengeance is only in the Liethe soul.”
“The Kaiel are mass murderers.”
The se-Tufi crone sipped her drink, and trembling, set it down, emotion shaking her frail body. “Yes? That is something which touches you?” She spoke her question searchingly, as if she did not understand what Humility was talking about.
“The Judgment Feast of the Arant,” said Humility warily.
“That was ages ago. I believe I am correct when I state that there was no Kaiel clan at the time.”
“The rubble under our feet is Arant! This whole city is built on the bones of the slaughtered Arant! Dig down! You’ll find their cellars. You’ll find the treasures they hid before they were wiped from the face of Geta! The Kaiel clan was founded so that the Arant would never rise again! The Kaiel were given Arant territory and Arant coin and they took it, thus they have the blood of the Arant in their bellies!”
“I see,” said the old woman as if she were blind. “Why does that concern the Liethe? We seek only two things: beauty and the power that beauty brings.”
“Have we not avoided Kaiel-hontokae like the poison? It is part of our tradition! It has always been important. Why did you bring a Liethe hive here? I assumed it was to attack.” Of course it was to attack — the hag was leading her on.
“You speak of the Arant rubble beneath our feet. Do you know the old Arant name for this city?”
Humility spent some time accessing an unused part of her mental files. “D’go-Vanieta.”
“What does it mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Repeat d’go-Vanieta. Keep hammering the word with repeats until you break off the rust of the old speech. Change the inflection.”
Suddenly Humility was giggling.
“Ah,” smiled the old woman, “you have it!”
“God’s Vagina?”
“Now recall the passage in the innkeeper’s memoirs when Liethe was confronted by the sailor who brought her to the island of Vas.”
“She said she came from the Vagina of God. But she was only teasing the sailor!”
“I doubt it.”
“You think she was Arant?”
“I feel she was born here, yes. But Arant? No. I’ve been doing research at the various Kaiel libraries. People are willing to tell their inmost secrets to an old woman with smile wrinkles who is about to die.”
“I would not tell you my secrets!”
“And I would not tell you what I am about to tell you but that you are se-Tufi like me and I know you and have foreknowledge of what you shall become. I do not wish to die with my most unpopular opinions unshared.” She paused, wheezing before she spoke again. “I believe Liethe was a servant. I believe she was ugly and unloved by men.”
“Mother!”
The crone was enjoying her minor heresy so much that she took another tiny glass of pale liqueur. “I believe she was an ignorant servant who worked in Arant basements doing routine cloning work, day after day.”
“The Arant never knew how to clone! Only the Liethe know cloning!”
“We have no information about the Arant except what their enemies said, and their enemies all agreed that they were great biologists. In point of fact the Kaiel know how to clone; they have always known how to clone but make minor use of the technique.”
“Where did you find this out?”
“Here in Kaiel-hontokae. You don’t think all I do is suckle young girls!”
“The songs speak of Liethe as the most beautiful of all the Liethe.”
“The songs would. She left no writing, she left no research, and she was abysmally ignorant of genetics. She had no husbands. She spent her time cloning herself and it was not she, but three daughters of her clones who codified our ways. She left us with a page of comment that is single-mindedly obsessed with beauty and power. Think! Who would have a goal to be beautiful and to use her beauty to dominate the most powerful men?”
“A Liethe!”
“That is not the right answer, child. It is an easy riddle.”
“I don’t know the answer.” Humility was slightly antagonistic.
“Consider an ugly woman without charm who is ignored by men. Might not she have a raging desire to create the kind of beauty and image that would dominate the men all women desire?”
“I’m not ugly and I do dominate men!” Humility was defiant.