Joesai softened as one of his major worries evaporated. “You could have told us,” he said gruffly.

She watched him with a mischievous glint. “And would you have permitted me to poison your entire camp? What if I had told you that you would be vomiting and shaking in your weakness and also delirious with sunfever? You did not even trust me!”

“I trusted you because you helped me free my men from the Temple of Raging Seas.”

“You shouldn’t have. Besides I didn’t even know if the Liethe antidote would work. It was very hastily concocted.”

Joesai yowled as if stung by an angry bee. “Women like you make bitter soup.”

“Untie me, please.”

He cut her bonds. “And what news from the city?”

“The greatest minds of the Swift Wind have been murdered. Mobs are already out, shouting, gaining courage from the visible reassurance of other like minds.”

“Murdered? By who?”

“It is not known.”

“And those I left behind?”

“I know that one of your Kaiel will be leading a mob to the Temple of Raging Seas. They will find the mindless women in whom ’t’Fosal’s disease is grown and that will feed the rage and fear. The city is headless. It is yours.”

“It is not my hope to frighten the city.”

“I will introduce you to the High Wave tu’Ama. He is a just man. If you deal with him and no others, he will become leader of the Mnankrei and salvage what is left of that clan.” She paused. Studying Joesai’s mood, she took his arm affectionately as if she were about to ask for another Palace of the Morning. “Take from them their priesthood, but leave them their ships and the city will be soothed by your mercy.”

“It is a strange scene you paint. I will send men forward to confirm. If true we will move in today.”

“Strike today,” she said.

He kicked a stone. “Will the children bring me flowers?”

“Of course. And tu’Ama, the coward, will offer me to you as a present and pay the coin I cost from his vaults.”

Joesai stepped aside and gave orders. He walked for a long while beside Humility, deep in thought, absorbing some surprise. He laughed and spoke. “My brother Hoemei has vision. I would not have believed it. He told me that if I waited patiently enough, I would walk into the city unopposed.”

“A man only has vision into the future if he has friends who care enough to share his vision and make it real for him.” Hoemei taught me that, she thought, wishing she could say it. “May I ride on your shoulders?” she cajoled.

He laughed and three riflemen who had been keeping their ears cocked also laughed. “I’m the tired one,” complained Joesai. He lifted his leg and climbed onto her shoulders so that she buckled and he had to walk along on tiptoes with her head between his legs.

“You’re mean!” She was outraged.

“All right, little undecorated child.” He picked her up and threw her legs around his neck. She grabbed his hair and stooped to whisper in his ear. “When do I get my Palace?”

TIME SWEEPS AWAY all things, and though the annexation of Mnank by the Kaiel had fascinated the whole Race, that was part of the past. Now the clans of Geta were concerned with more important matters such as the rayvoice, the revelations from The Forge of War, steam engines, rockets, kalothi among the stars. The millennium of the Savior Who Speaks to God was at hand. In the Era of Silence, how had the Great Danger evolved?

A cool wind was blowing in over the beaches near Sorrow at the back of a hardy native girl who ran toward the tall Kaiel priest through the sand that retarded her by sinking under her feet. “I want a ride on your shoulders! You gave Saiepa one last time and you didn’t give me one!”

She came up to about the height of his hips and her nakedness was undecorated except for scarred stripes that ran from her knees to her ankles, the universal symbol of the money-lending Barrash clan. “Ho!” glowered the giant called Joesai, “and who says priests are fair?”

“You have to be fair or they’ll send a Gathering after you to make themselves some shoes!”

“In that case, since you insist that I ride on your shoulders…” And he swung a foot over her head and pretended to ride her, marching along on tiptoes in the sand.

“I didn’t say that! You have sand in the wax in your ears! I said: give me a ride on your shoulders!” She tried to squirm her head out from between his legs.

He squeezed his legs.

“Hey, you’re pushing my ears into my brains!”

He reached down an arm and pulled her out from between his legs by the feet, hanging her upside down, one large hand around each ankle, her long hair sweeping the sand. “And now what, little beetle?”

“Put me on your shoulders or I’ll get a nosebleed,” she threatened.

He flipped her up and placed her carefully around his neck.

“That’s better! Run! I like it when you run!”

And Joesai, in lucent folds cut like the chitin cover of an insect, the hontokae emblazoned in blue on its front, was suddenly thrown back to that immortal day long gone when he had entered Soebo with his Advance Court. He smiled at the ridiculous image of himself staggering into the city at the height of the insurrection like a common Ivieth with a Liethe whore riding his shoulders, having just bought Soebo with a palace he did not own.

Those had been strange days compared with his exile now. He had been in control, not because he could have done anything with the mobs, but because the mobs did not want the power they had usurped — they were traditional folk, shocked by their own rage and fear. It had been a time of rushed juggling, marathon talks with every clan leader he could find, speeches at the flaming cremation for the diseased host women taken from the Temple of Raging Seas, and the consecration of 170 Ritual Suicides. The city came back to normal after six sunsets. Two weeks later Bendaein hosa-Kaiel arrived and took over. The life of the exile was very different.

Joesai often wondered about Comfort. Rumor said she had been given to Bendaein. If so he kept her out of sight at some country estate. She never wrote. The last he had ever seen of her was a surprise visit on the docks when he and Noe were leaving for Sorrow.

“Why do you live alone in that big house?” asked the girl on his back.

Joesai laughed. “I don’t live alone. You haven’t known me long enough. Two-wife comes tonight from Kaiel-hontokae to stay for the birth of her second child. And you can be our three-wife if you learn to bake cakes.”

“I’m not Kaiel; I’m Barrash. But you can be my eleven-grandfather.”

“I’m not old enough to be a grandfather.”

“You have gray hairs.” She pulled one out and showed it to Joesai.

“That’s because I owe your three-father so much coin.”

“One-mother says you are in prison. Are you a debtor?”

“My family visits me but I do not visit them in Kaiel-hontokae because I am in exile. Exile is not prison and my nose is firmly on my face.”