He was making her more angry. “The Liethe never marry.”

“I know. So does Hoemei. He’s a family man and not an old reprobate like me.”

She pushed his money back across the table.

“I was just cutting out the middleman. The crones will never know. Keep it. Consider it an advance. You’re coming out to Sorrow to dance at our wedding. My invitation. I know you want to see him.”

The anguish was there again, and indecision. She knew she would do anything to see Hoemei again, just to pass him in the halls of Sorrow’s Temple, anything. She’d walk across a world to spend an evening with him.

Gaet threw up his hands. “I can’t argue with you. Not now. I’m dead on my feet. I didn’t think I’d make the Feast.” He turned around and fell like a collapsing building onto the pillows and was sound asleep, still half dressed.

She stared at him, no longer angry. Perhaps he thought I was out of a job and needed help. He would not comprehend the ethic of the hive. She wasn’t used to friends. She moved the gold coins with her fingers. Impulsively she tidied the room. Gently she finished undressing him so that he would not wake. She put his things away. She put her own gown away, and the money with it. By the time she found courage to sleep with him, he had the pillows well toasted. It was cozy under the covers. It was good to sleep with a warm body again.

FOG HAD BEEN CRAWLING through the cracks between the hills so that there was no sea to be seen, only the pale cleaver of Scowl-moon hanging in the whiteness. Noe found them beside the road and parked her skrei-wheel next to theirs where they had been resting and eating bread. She crossed her arms to warm herself against the flowing fog.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t home when your wirevoice message came through.”

She was glancing at Honey. Gaet could sense her distress. He rose. “You forgot your cloak. You’re cold.”

She shrugged, a shiver warming her. “I thought you were alone.”

“I brought Honey to dance at our wedding. She’s been a good friend to Hoemei, more loyal to us than to Aesoe. Somehow with his death it seemed appropriate to bring her.”

“You have a flair for complicating matters.” Noe’s voice was the sting of a bee.

Listening, Honey pulled her black scarf around her face, like the sheathing of a beekeeper, but imperturbable eyes watched Noe. She did not rise. The Liethe woman’s very demeanor chastised Noe for her bad manners.

With a flicking gesture of impatience at Gaet, Noe turned to sit beside the woman who had been the mistress of her husbands, reaching into her pack for bread to feed both travellers. “I’m not myself. I welcome any guest of Gaet.” Her voice was briefly warm again. “You may have come in vain. There may be no wedding.”

“Eh?” Gaet queried.

“You,” Noe turned savagely to one-husband, “may not even find a family to greet you!”

Gaet was diplomatically inserting himself between the two women. “I see I’m behind on the gossip. Has Kathein changed her mind again?” He laughed.

“Sometimes I despise you!”

Gaet caught her bitter mood for the first time, and the fog clutched his heart. “Someone has died?”

She took his hand and kissed him on the cheek, then compulsively put spread on a slab of bread for the silent Honey. “Joesai is home.”

Gaet grunted. “Since when is that bad news?”

“He brought Oelita with him. He found her in the desert, mothering twins by Hoemei.”

“Ah,” said Gaet. “She’ll be welcome in Sorrow.” There was more to the story. He waited.

“Joesai expects us to marry his Heretic.”

Gaet laughed the great laugh. He could not restrain himself, even to match Noe’s mood. “Did Joesai bring her in tied to a pole and drugged?”

The answer carried deep puzzlement. “She loves him. There is a bond between them. I don’t understand it.”

“God’s Sky!” said Gaet.

“Joesai and Hoemei have been fighting. I’ve never seen rage like that. They’re brothers! I was frightened. Teenae was terrified. She and Oelita ran away to the village and left me and Kathein holding the pot. Kathein wants to return to Kaiel-hontokae and I’ve had to use persuasion to keep her here until you arrived.” Noe was crying.

“Shall I speak to Hoemei?” said Honey with great concern. She reached across Gaet to comfort the sobbing woman. “I have certain catalytic powers.”

“You stay out of this! You’d steal him from us!”

Gaet slipped his arm around one-wife. “Your foul mood staggers without reason. Our Liethe friend will steal no one. They are a gentle clan, and Honey is the gentlest of them. Their place is to serve. The man who thinks to abandon his family and elevate his Liethe always fails. The Liethe are known to be incorruptible in the purpose they have set for themselves.”

“Speaking to Hoemei would do no good,” said Noe, disconsolate. “My husbands have lost their reason.”

Gaet laughed. “Such is the price we pay for having women in our lives. I’d best end my rest and begin the peacemaking process.”

“There will be no peace! Don’t you think we’ve tried?”

Gaet was staring at the wind-shaped trees in the gully beside the road, trees older than any man alive, short trees which had fought off the violence of the sea a thousand times and stayed rooted. “I think it was Hoemei who taught me when we were still in the creches that when a problem is insoluble, then it is essential to change the problem.” He rose. “Noe, I’d best go on alone. Take care of Honey for me, and remember, she’s a little afraid of Kaiel women. Make her your friend.”

Honey rose, too. “I could go with you. I won’t get in the way.”

“No.”

“We could all go together,” Honey pleaded.

“No.”

“It is all right,” said Noe. “We’ll go back to the village and visit Teenae and Oelita. Gaet knows what he’s doing. If he’d been here none of this would have happened.”

Gaet pushed his way through the trail to the maran’s coastal mansion, cursing the bump that had put a wobble in his wheel. Another job, retensioning the spokes! For a moment he stopped to examine the damage, but also to give himself time to think out his attack on his brothers. He turned the skrei-wheel upside down.

The maran were a strange group, viable because of the different substance of their individual abilities. Gaet knew that most of the world saw him as the easygoing lackey of his family. If Noe wanted to go to the theater he would go. If Hoemei had a political deal to make, Gaet would negotiate a resolution of the conflicts. He was known for his pleasures. He was too pliable to be seen as a strong man. And yet this family was his creation and he valued it above all other things in his life.

He spun the damaged wheel and watched it wobble. That was his skill — retensioning the spokes.

Some of his weakness was an illusion of his magic. As a child he had learned to appear to be giving way while he was leading. He retreated into carefully constructed traps. It had been no easy job to weld together the bonds between Hoemei and Joesai. It had taken trickery. They still clashed. They were still rivals, Joesai envying Hoemei’s analytical skill and Hoemei envying Joesai his game with danger. From time to time they had to be played off against each other.