A flash of flesh moved at them and they had to react quickly to stop her. They made kembri noises and she hissed back. There was a rapid exchange of words and then she attacked again, first one, then the other. Kathein gripped her chair. She expected the girl to be killed, for she was often thrown, once with a cracking thud, but she always rolled and flipped to a standing position. Finally she stopped, exhausted, the sweat rolling off her unscarred body, still grinning happily. The men were grinning, too.

“Cairnem uses the kembri form ‘otaimi’,” Suesar explained, “which can be executed by small women but not by men as large as us. She is good.”

“But I lost three to one. And they gave me handicaps.”

“Two against one is hardly fair,” bowed Kaesim, “but your form of insult gave us no choice.” His grin had not left his face.

“My dance teacher was trained in the kembri arts by Niel of the kembri-Itraiel.”

“Ah, yes? Niel!”

Cairnem was all Liethe grace now and she had an arm for each of them. “I’m part of the hospitality. You may have me this evening.” She turned to Aesoe. “I lost to them after insulting their genitals and it is obligatory that I pleasure their egos. So give me permission.” She looked Aesoe straight in the eyes.

“And if they had been defeated?” Aesoe queried.

“Why, then they would have had to pleasure me.”

“I see that I have lost my warriors for the evening. The bargaining will continue tomorrow.”

Tonight I will tell him, thought Kathein.

But when they were alone in his bedchamber, she hesitated and found other things to talk about. He was light and witty, having chosen to forget her tardiness, and she found it easier to joke than to confront him. I’ll undress him — like she had seen Sieen do so many times — and when he is warmed by my fingers, then I will tell him. But she couldn’t go near him.

“I’ve made a major decision,” she said. She was huddled by the window.

“Yes, you want to start building that proton accelerator, or is it something less grandiose?”

“The maran-Kaiel are all in Sorrow.” She stopped. She couldn’t go on.

“I gave them the Valley of Ten Thousand Graves. Sorrow is where they should be.”

“I’m going to Sorrow.” She took a deep breath.

“I know you are fond of them. Is it necessary to keep telling me?”

“I’m going there to… marry them.”

He didn’t even react. It drove her crazy, the calmness of that man, except when it was something trivial. Then he would rage.

He pulled out a hair from his nose. “You are already married.”

“I intend to divorce.”

“Ah, so. Divorce,” he repeated. He flicked the hair onto the floor. “You are sure that the maran even like you anymore?”

The tears were running down her cheeks because she wasn’t sure.

“You’re leaving for Sorrow?”

“Yes.”

“I will stop you.”

“You can’t.”

“But I can.” His voice told her that he would say no more. He switched off the electric torch.

She began to imagine the things he could do because he wasn’t going to tell her what he would do. He could have them all killed and she would be to blame. “Aesoe,” she pleaded to the darkness with its phantoms.

“Come to the pillows,” he said.

He could cut off the money. He could destroy her fledgling clan. She went to the bed, ran a finger down his chest, played with the hairs there, gently. “I want you to love me,” she said.

He pulled her to him, misunderstanding what she meant. She let him. What was the use. He took her. Such drive for an old man! Hoemei. She saw Hoemei with his throat cut, lying there, his arm flopped lifelessly, dripping blood from the fingers. The thrusting began. She let it happen. Joesai. Joesai had gone to Soebo. Aesoe had intended for him to die. And the Mnankrei had reached out to kill him, and when they touched him, the electron river flowed back from him and lit all of Soebo by the spit fires of roasting Mnankrei. If Aesoe tried to kill Joesai, would it be the same? would the electrons flow back from the touch and crisp Aesoe? She rode his thrusts. He was alive. She was dreaming. Life did not have happy endings. She saw Joesai with a lead pebble in his skull sinking to the floor. Teenae. Teenae’s glazed eyes stared at a pool of her own blood. Gaet and Noe. Gaet was dead where he had tried to shield Noe and failed. Would these knifelike thrusts never stop? She moaned and her tears came in little sobs. How I hate you, she thought and clung to him.

She didn’t believe his stories about danger from God’s Sky. That was an excuse for his ambition. The armies of the kembri-Itraiel would march over Geta with their weapons, uniting the planet for the Kaiel — and Aesoe would say that it was for the best. There was danger from the stars and we must unite now, not tomorrow. Hoemei was going to try to stop him and Hoemei would dissolve in the flash of sunfire.

“My honeycomb,” murmured Aesoe.

57

ONCE HE KNEW she was alive, he had been able to find her. That was the legend of Joesai. The clues were minor and unrelated but indicated that the Gentle Heretic was re-establishing tenuous contact with the coast.

A group of trackers followed one of her messengers over the hills to the south and east into a land that grew progressively more desolate, the gray and red rock surfaces harsher, bolder. Scrub retreated to shelter, then fought desperately to defend the shabby havens that chance provided. So much of Geta was like this, so much was far worse, yet who dared the really uninhabitable regions? Even the hermits stopped short of total barrenness. The messenger was taken prisoner just before he reached Oelita.

Joesai sat rooted behind a boulder, caught between the dried branches of a dead bush, watching her through the hand spy-eye made for him by his students at the observatory. He had her. The joy welled in him.

“She seems healthy,” he said to Eiemeni and the woman Riea.

“We observed children yesterday before you came up.”

“There can’t be children here!” Joesai exclaimed.

“Two of them. Very young.”

Joesai continued to watch patiently. She was bringing water to her garden patch. Where did she get it? Presently two little figures joined her. “My God, you’re right! Two! Wait until this evening. Kidnap them when it is darkest. She won’t know you are here. I’ll take care of her.”

He moved in silently, avoiding the line of sight. He was standing by her well, admiring it, before she noticed him. When he turned to look at her, she was frozen.

“You found me.” A stricken anguish filled her voice. He remembered that he had felt like that the moment he saw the dead body of his brother Sanan.

“I persist in my goals,” he said.

“Stay in the hut!” she shouted at the twins who were rushing to her for protection.

“The children will not be harmed,” he said.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“The Death Rite is a test, not an execution.”

“You have two more chances at me. That’s an execution,” she replied bitterly.

“One more chance. I read your last book. You believe in God now. You handled the challenge to your mind quite well. I admire you, Oelita.”

“What will happen to my children?” She was crying.

“Who is the father?”

“Hoemei.”

“My brother-husband’s children are safe.” He said that sharply.

“No they aren’t. You’ll take them to a butchery after you’ve killed me. They have Ainokie’s Curse.”

“No they don’t. I’ve seen them.”

“As a recessive.”

He shrugged. “That hardly bothers their kalothi. There’s a half and half chance that they don’t even carry it. When they are grown and wish children, if they have their children at a creche, that gene can be eliminated. The procedure is becoming standard among the Kaiel.” He glanced at the hut. “Go reassure them. They are frightened. They feel your fear.”