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“It is my vocation.”

“Do not harm him!” warned the old one severely.

“No.” The Queen of Life-before-Death bowed submissively. “You have instructions?”

“Yes. Obey him.”

A call came from the Temple of the Wind for five dancers to entertain at a feast. They were taken by masked Mnankrei boys to the upper terrace where the walls had been shaped with many slits that spoke in eerie tune with the wind. Humility found that she would be dancing only for males. The Mnankrei women, invisible in the world of pleasure, did not seem to attend their men when they were drinking heavily and speaking loudly.

A veiled crone mother chaperoned her children. She was still almost too young to be a hag, and she was the least of the hive mothers, but she was used to authority, and used to being silent, and to sparing her efforts. Only once did she slow Humility, indicating with the lightest hand a tall Mnankrei. “Winterstorm Master Nie’t’Fosal,” whispered her wise voice almost teasingly.

The wizard creator of the deviant underjaw. The man who experiments with the bodies of unwilling women. The man who has beaten the mask known as Radiance. The man I now fear and love for I am Radiance.

She pretended shock to see him here, the smallest gasp, a hair’s breadth widening of eyes, a toe-length withdrawal. She stared at him for a moment of confused love so that she might have time to fix his face in her mind’s file. She saw a broadly muscled giant whose eyebrows were so thick that they were braided into the design of his hair. His beard hid his face like seaweed growth upon a drowned corpse. He said nothing. She bowed, then propelled herself along the terrace into the friendly arm of another Mnankrei who saw her to the stage where the opening dance was to begin.

Her eyes returned to the Winterstorm Master all through the dances. He was a center of power. Soebo would not fall until he fell. Hoemei was a fool to expect a man like that to crumble without taking the world with him. It was self-deluded wishing to believe that such a ruthless tyrant was primed to destroy himself! Hoemei is only a man, a beloved man, groping in the dark like us all. Such a thought shook her, made her feel alone, almost as if God had failed to cross His Sky.

When their chaperone led them away from the celebration, Fosal appeared and stood between the frightened Radiance and the others. The older Liethe tried to protect her but the Storm Master furled her sails. Radiance, still frightened of him, but wanting to be with him, aided his kidnapping and the crone was left helpless. How easy it was to manipulate this leader of men.

He took her to some male den deep in the Temple and ordered her to bring them all drinks in great crystalline mugs while he played chess with a friend, discussing the Gathering, sometimes seriously, sometimes as a joke. She watched him attack across the board recklessly with his White God and his Priests, penetrating deep into his opponent’s squares, leaving his Child exposed. He’s foolish, she thought, seeing how he could be annihilated.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he growled. “Radiance. You’ve been watching. How do I get out of this scrape?”

You can’t. She put an arm around him. “You’ll find a way.”

His opponent, an older priest with a face which had been half burned away by a fire he had survived, moved his Horse for the kill, covering with the Black Queen, destroying the line of White Farmers. Fosal simply continued his wild attack, having never lost control, and made checkmate in five more moves. It sobered Humility.

He set up the board again. When one of his sons arrived, Fosal ordered Radiance into a pillowed room adjoining the game room so that she might take his son in sex. He had promised her to him.

“But I want you.”

“Later. If you please my Beil.”

He pushed out a Farmer in the opening move of the second game. But he did not finish his attack because he was losing and that bored him. He wandered for a while, muttering to himself of plans and strategy, finally pushing through the curtains to stand over his son while he invented bawdy jokes about the helpless humpings of inexperienced youth. Eventually his joking turned to impatience and he threw his son out and took her himself. Humility was ready for violence but a gentle mood overtook him once he was relaxed on the pillows.

“Are you still mad at me?” she asked with a tremble in her voice.

He laughed the universal Getan laugh. “You’ve been a good girl today. Why should I be angry?”

“I want to be a good girl.” She ran a finger along his nose, then withdrew in fear. He pulled her back to his body and took her. She had expected him to be impotent. He was not known as a womanizer. He had children but no wives, no permanent female companionship. The Liethe had tried to reach him many times before and had never broken through his aloofness, his lack of interest, his active dislike of women. But he was not impotent. His power was prolonged and stable and he even seemed to enjoy his clumsily unself-conscious thrusting.

“I like your dancing,” he said to make conversation.

“Thank you.”

When he was through with her he would not let her go but set her upon a pillow where he could touch her and watch her. “I don’t understand why you like me,” he said.

“I don’t like you; I love you.”

Impulsively he carried her through the curtains into the game room and ordered all the games to stop. He ordered some music, which was quick to arrive, and then ordered her to dance, which she did. He stared at her, smiling, clapping his hands, drinking whisky when he wasn’t clapping. He was too big ever to get drunk. Still, his mind began to wander.

She waved the musicians into a subsiding quietness, a sea calming after a storm. She stopped dancing. He was lost in some aspect of his own world.

“I have to go now,” she said quietly.

That roused him. “No, no. You’re coming with me. I’m not through with you.”

For a while they simply walked in the city streets, bundled against the wind. Then he led her to a tower apartment where Radiance had never been. “I work here. The thinking work. It’s lonely overseeing a city, planning a clan’s next move in a wild game for our rightful place. I cook for myself. I do everything myself here,” he said proudly, showing her. He took out bread and carved off two big slices and laid a brown spread over them, giving one slice to Humility. That, she supposed, was probably what he meant by “cooking”.

“I could move up here. I could help you.”

“It’s no place for a woman. I don’t even have men here. I like to work alone.”

“Am I here because you like me?”

“Very much.”

“May I stay here?”

He ate his slice of bread in one bite. That prevented him from answering her immediately. “You can stay for one more sexing; then you have to go. I have too many worries. I have to be alone.”

“Couldn’t I help?”

“What could you do for me!” he protested, and she knew he had a favor to ask. He was being too mild. She could almost see his muscles tense while he held in his abrasiveness, pleased at her love for it gave him control, but unwilling to test it with further brutality.

“I can do anything you want. I’m that kind of woman. I can at least try.”

“There are things a woman can’t do.”

“What?” she challenged.

“Chase the Kaiel away.”

“You’re worried about the Gathering, aren’t you?”

“No, but I’m thinking about it. They’re coming here to burn us all alive.”

“That’s horrible. I’m frightened. I hear they’ve been murdering folk all across northern Mnank.”

He had undressed and was pouring whisky from a cut glass bottle by a hexagonal window that beamed reddish sunlight over his illustrated body. “The Liethe are priest’s women. Am I correct?” It was a statement, not a question.