“Don’t compare my life with that wooden barrel you wear for a head!”

A long pause mediated the altercation as they negotiated a razorback outcropping. On the other side he spoke to the stones in front of his feet. “I remember when I started this thing. I was going to deliver to God an inferior upstart. One of my wives asked me how we might be reconciled if, at the conclusion, you were to prove pleasing to God. I said this was no concern of mine because the only way you could survive was to kill me first — there was room in this world for only one of us. Thus I have created a problem for myself. Such is the way of life.” He chuckled.

“And I remember that you were enjoying yourself! I remember drowning in the Njarae while you watched as you might have delighted in watching a pinned spider in a carnivorous feiri hive!”

“Ho! You accuse me of enjoying your pain? It is true that every time I set a trap the grins were upon me, but every time you survived I found within myself this cancerous traitor growing in happiness. You ran from me, but in the end I, too, ran from you. I have never felt such joy as when first I saw you in my spy-eye tending your hermit’s garden.”

Oelita cried when her children were brought to her from Joesai’s tent. At her reappearance, the twins were too stunned to speak but clung to her. The three slept bundled together in the tent. When Oelita woke, she found Joesai stretched beside her, watching her, one young guard outside, and the noises of the eight-man camp. The sense of danger was gone. “What are you going to do with me?”

“I have carefully considered that. I am bonded to you.”

“That could be a nuisance to me!”

“We will be married.”

She rose to her elbows, waking sleeping infants. She breathed. “We will not!”

“Don’t say I wasn’t generous,” he said with Noe’s straight face. “I gave you seven chances to decline the offer.”

She stared at him, amazed. He was teasing her! She groped for words, intrigued by the game. How did one tickle a friendly monster who was known to have a bad temper? “Is this your Seventh Trial: marriage? I think I’ve been very good at avoiding that one.” Suddenly she laughed.

“There was an ominous ring of no in that laugh,” he said.

“Joesai, you’re mad! Of course I shall say no!”

“The Kaiel are bargainers. I will suggest a bargain. You wish kalothi for your children. Some of that mighty stuff is beyond bargain, for part of your children’s kalothi is your own. Some of it comes from their father, and with Hoemei you have made a wise choice, for who is greater? Some of a child’s kalothi comes from within and that, too, is beyond the help of family or clan. But some of this elixir of life is the gift of strength grown under wise protection and that we can give. You saw how vulnerable you were alone? The maran-Kaiel are not alone. And we need a three-wife. Your children will thrive.”

“What of Kathein?”

“She has sold her body and her soul to Aesoe,” he said blackly.

“I was not wanted.”

“Mine was the greatest objection. We maran have a free will. We revolted at imposition from above. Aesoe’s order soured us. But Teenae always loved you, first with calm logic and then with her heart. And Gaet was at least willing to try you out on the pillows.”

“My little ones will piss all over me if I do not take them out to water the flowers.”

At the tent flap, she paused, her backside to Joesai. “I have grown old in the wilderness. I have wrinkles.”

“I have grown old waiting for you.”

“My will crumbles before your words. Have you become so used to seducing women?”

“I have been introduced to women, and women have seduced me, but I think it can be said that I have borne the brunt of this courtship. I have been clumsy.”

“Yes,” she said and was gone. He wondered if she meant yes-I-will-marry-you or yes-you-are-clumsy.

She let Reia play with the twins and returned to Joesai. “It is nice to have a giant slave. I’m already enjoying it. Will you do anything for me?”

“Within reason.”

Her desert-etched lines wrinkled into a smile. “Already you are trying to back out! Cut your nose off for me!”

“I like my nose.”

“Something a little less drastic, then. Kiss me.”

He reached for her and she countered. “Not now!” In fending him off the fingers of her nearest hand closed with his fingers. Male and female hand held the other tightly. “Once when I was a little girl I was at an engagement ruckus in the hills. I had to stand in my father’s lap to see the drunks. I still remember one of the songs. The famine was over and the crops were in. A skinny boy and girl had decided to risk leaving their families. It was an excuse for people to be happy again — to laugh, to make fools of themselves.”

“I use it as a lullabye for my babies.”

“I brought along a bag of whisky,” said Joesai.

She sneaked a glance at the face of the man whose fingers she wouldn’t let go. “Could we have a ruckus and make fools of ourselves? There are ten of us and two babies. Then I’ll kiss you!”

THE NEW LIETHE hive in the city of Kaiel-hontokae was the old Temple of God’s Praises, a mere stroll from the whisky warehouse of the old hive which was kept as a cell block for budding Liethe. In the tower of God’s Praises the notorious crone known as the se-Tufi Who Finds Pebbles poured her tea into a pale blue o’ca cup that sat on top of the oiled goldwood box that was her private wirevoice. “You wish my advice,” she stated blandly.

A woman stood in front of her with the peculiar poise that comes before the discovery of age and after the loss of innocence. “It is more than I can handle,” pleaded Humility.

“It is always more than any of us can handle.”

“I need to make a wise decision.”

“We will live with whatever decision you make.”

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“You have been well trained, and if you fail it is our failure also. Time passes. In the same storm the river that displaces a grain of sand, replaces that grain of sand. The old die and the young grow older. When we were young, the crones did not make for us the critical decision of our lives. Thus we learned to rule before our teachers died. Before I die, I wish to see who you are when you work alone.”

“I’ve always worked alone,” said Humility rebelliously.

“You have obeyed our orders,” said the crone sternly.

Humility changed tactics. “Aesoe is in violation of Kaiel law. The predictions are to be audited and the man with the best record automatically becomes Prime Predictor regardless of his political beliefs or his alliances.”

“It is not so simple. One principle that the Liethe have learned in our parasitic role is that the law is never clear no matter how many noses are grafted onto the public face. The o’Tghalie say that the law is a map and, by theorem, that every map fails to locate at least one stone.”

Humility insisted. “I have done a major gaming of the audit myself with the help of young girls in my class who I am training in Kaiel politics. Hoemei should have been declared Prime Predictor and the policies of Aesoe should be void.”

“‘Should’ is a word with volume enough to paint infinity. A point in case: Tae ran-Kaiel wrote the present constitution of the Kaiel. He refined the unwritten traditions of succession that were no longer working. Indeed, he specified that audits of the Archives must take place and that the best predictor must be elevated to Prime Predictor. But no man challenged Tae in his lifetime. Even Aesoe, Tae’s best student, never came close. Aesoe was declared Prime Predictor only after the audit following the Immortal Funeral Feast. Thus the tradition is not clear in the minds of men, however clear it is upon paper. Does the audit that determines the new Prime Predictor come before or after the death of the old Prime Predictor? May a Prime Predictor be replaced by a rival or must the rival wait on Death?”