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Still wearing his Mnankrei robes for the sheer humor of it, Joesai began to brief his men, exploiting their euphoric sense of immediate loyalty. His attack plan on Soebo was now clear in his mind. Passionately he explained the strategy behind the plan, developing action modules and assigning roles as he went along.

“What drives the resistance against us in Soebo? It is fear of Kaiel ferocity!” He struck the Pose of Lurking Death, then spoke again. “It is old memories of the fate of the Arant!” He tossed his hand and demons sprung from his palm. “It is the remembrance of the fate of the clans who served the Arant!” His hand sliced to his wrist in the symbol of execution.

He continued his oration to an alert audience. “The main strategic thrust of the Advance Court has to be to establish trust among the underclans. We cannot simply try to convince them that it is the Mnankrei who are the ferocious fei flowers of the sea and we the bees who make honey through a steadfast policy of bargaining. Would they believe strangers?”

“No!” roared the unanimous answer to his rhetorical question.

For a moment Joesai moved about the warehouse, mimicking the alienness of the stranger — his slight unsureness, eyes that noticed what was too common to be noteworthy, a queer walk. “Nothing a man lives with daily is ferocious to him. It is the stranger who seems ferocious. We will not be able to convince these people that there will be no overnight change of laws with the coming of a Kaiel government, no confusion, no retroactive Contribution for laws invented today. They will think we lie to gain their favor so that we may have their skins. All logic reaches one conclusion: without trust, no argument is effective. Trust must be the key word of our strategy.

“What then is trust? Trust is the emotional residue of contracts entered upon and fulfilled. We have no time to make elaborate contracts that must persist weeks or seasons before completion. But we can do one thing. Human beings innately understand the nature of bargaining and they trust the bargaining process wherever it appears, whether from little children or from old enemies.

All of you here know how to bargain. That is the Kaiel tradition. So that is what we will use.

“Selected underclan spokesmen have already been contacted. You will meet them covertly. Begin bargaining immediately. Establish the needs of your assigned clan in detail by means of the opening move of the Tae Bargaining Ritual:

“ ‘What desired event has failed to happen?’

“ ‘What has happened that should not have happened?’

“The mere act of delineating the differences between their ideal world and the real world will generate the crucial preliminary trust. You will then know their most pressing needs. Match Kaiel strengths against these needs and make your offer. Do it formally. The first offer is to contain no lies, no fantasy, no promises you know the Kaiel cannot keep. Write down their first offer. Then haggle.”

He smiled. “Within six sunrises I want the main clans of Soebo to be in awe of Kaiel skill at the bargaining game. They will be impressed. The Mnankrei do not make social contracts by bargain. Do as much as you can before I come again. Do not stop talking! Build a constituency!”

For the first time Joesai introduced the odd phrase “Will of the People” into his exhortations. He had picked it out of The Forge of War, thinking that it perfectly expressed Kaiel notions of obtaining the loyalty of the underclans. Was not the function of a hereditary ruling clan to sense the thousand conflicting wills of its people and artfully shape that force into a single Will?

Joesai had found himself bemused by the context in which the People of the Sky had used the phrase. But they never spoke words in simple ways. The Amerikans wrote “Will of the People” into their Constitution to justify slavery as if the Black clan itself had devised slavery to promote the Greater Will.

Even more peculiar was the use of the phrase by the Russian Tsar, Lenin the Terrible. Joesai had been intrigued by certain passages in The Forge of War suggested to him by Teenae. Lenin, dismayed by past losses of Tsarist property to the expanding Capitalist clan and outraged by Socialist calls for land reform in which former state slaves would be awarded the farmland they had tilled for generations, had, immediately after his coronation, begun the extermination of the Capitalists by mass terror while, simultaneously, conniving from within the Socialist clan to restore all property to the Tsar by systematic liquidation of every Socialist within his realm. In retaking the land for the state he justified the mass murder of peasants as the Will of the People because it was the peasants who had given the Tsardom to Lenin and therefore was it not their Will when he ordered them destroyed rather than relinquishing to them the land which historically was his?

Joesai said it another way. “Let bargaining forge from the will of the clans the Will of the People. Then when I return to Soebo shall we not have a new city?”

The Liethe woman followed him out of the old Soebo. She was a brown shadow, indistinguishable from any other traveller. For a while they walked boldly by road in a direction too westerly to be connected with the Gathering. He was impressed by Comfort’s strength. She was too small, tiny even, but if he slowed out of sympathy she was soon ahead of him, cautioning him about branches, picking their path.

She wilted first, though. Fondly, he took her packsack, and then she was holding onto him. She never complained. He was not sure if she was really tired, or whether she simply wanted an evening alone with him. He would have continued all night but, pleased with an excuse, he found a campsite.

“We’ll have Scowlmoon to ourselves,” she said, building a small fire. She had brought water from a brook and was making broth.

He let her — why fight her need to serve a man? — but to busy himself, unrolled their mats. Her essential things amused him. A comb; a blue glass bottle, probably perfume; eye shadow; the leaves of the olinar, a powerful contraceptive. “Your clan knows the Mnankrei like few others. They are hardly real to me except for a priest who once hung my smallest wife from a yardarm. I was angry for a while.”

“Did she survive?”

“Yes, but he will not! She never forgives. To this day she reproaches me for acts I cannot remember committing.”

“Do you miss her?”

“Yes. She’s small like you.”

“Tonight you shall have me at halfmoon. You’ll forget her for a moment. What will I get in exchange?”

“Ho! I see I spoke too much about bargaining!” He tried to read her smile in the darkness. “I’ll carry your packsack,” he said to make her offer seem casual.

“I want your nose for an amulet,” she said to tell him that she was priceless.

Idle fingers picked up a rust red stone, flecked by copper green. “How about a jewel instead?”

She brought him his bowl of broth and kissed his nose. “How about Soebo’s Palace of Morning? The cupola at dawn is enough to break a girl’s heart.”

“And a man’s purse!”

“If you promise me the Palace of Morning I’ll massage your back.”

“Give me a sample to see if you’re worth it.”

“Hug me first. You have to be tender, or we won’t let you into the city with your ridiculous Court.”

The desire was on him. He tugged at her sashes, and found buttons, and lifted her body so that he could get her clothes off. Then he laid her on the mat, head in his lap, and whimsically put his stone in her God’s Eye, which was what Getans called their navel. For a moment he was content to look at her. “I’ve slowed down,” he said. “Nothing seems to be such a hurry anymore.”

“It’s better that way.”

“Are you tired?” he asked.

“I sleep better when I’ve ridden a man who loves me. You’ve been kind to me. I’ll dance for you all when we reach camp.”