He lingered near the flowers, fragile white petals with red rims, guarded by a stem of poisoned spikes. He sniffed, then followed Noe’s scent, faintly grinning. She was like a flower, herself.
She fixed him an appetizer of baby-liver pate on crunch bread. That was so like her. She always had delicacies around regardless of the expense. “I discharged all of our due-debts today,” she chatted.
“You can slaughter a whole day that way.”
“But I arranged it so that I visited half my constituency while I did the money rounds,” she said smugly.
“What did they have to say?”
“The usual problems. We’ll have to find a means to get more water up to the Kalkenie. And you?”
“How would you kill an underjaw beetle?”
She laughed. “Step on it.”
“Millions of them. You know about such things. I don’t.”
“Why?”
“I’m about to make a fateful prediction and some policy decisions to be registered and witnessed for the Kaiel Archives. The outcome will drastically affect my kalothi rating one way or another. My unconceived children will live or die by this decision.”
She looked at him sharply. “Gaet and Joesai and Teenae should be here!”
“No. The decision has to be made tonight. And you are the perfect person to advise me. You know the rituals of genetic modification.”
“Only what Joesai has taught me.”
“But you are good at it. And your mother ran trading fleets against the Mnankrei. You have a feel for those wind riders.”
“They dominate through trade.”
“Exactly.”
He took her by the wrist and pulled her into the study where he rolled out a map on the table, weighing down the corners with carved ancestral skulls from Noe’s and Teenae’s families. The largest of Geta’s eleven landbound seas, the Njarae Sea extended along a northeastern diagonal one-fourth of the way around Geta, fat to the north, narrow to the south like a poised club. Sorrow hugged the western shore formed by the Wailing Mountains. The Mnankrei islands lay to the north but the Mnankrei priests had generations ago spread from the islands to the northern plain. Hoemei moved his finger down from the Stgal mountain reaches, far south into the Stgal Plain, a distance covered by bad roads and controlled by six loosely confederated Stgal clans.
“There’s famine here.”
“I heard it was a good crop.”
“It was. Plagues of underjaws are eating the wheat.”
“But they die when they attack the Sacred Food!”
“These don’t.”
“Oh my God!” The idea was terrifying. It was a disorienting event, like God falling from His Sky. “A mutation?” She couldn’t imagine a mutation that drastic.
“No. I’ve had my men on it. We’ve been in constant contact via rayvoice. They haven’t got the equipment they need but one of my women is of the creches and she’s a brilliant microbiologist. You wouldn’t believe the shortcuts and sidestepping she can do. The underjaws are manufacturing some human enzymes. And other such strangenesses.”
“They are carrying human genes?”
“Exactly.”
“Now that is a Violation of the Rules,” she said, awed by someone’s audacity.
“Could it be done? That’s what I want to know.”
Noe retreated into a deep scan of her knowledge. “We made your mother.”
“Yes, but she’s human in her way. I didn’t think it was possible for sacred and profane cells to operate together.”
“I could think of ways. It would be difficult.”
“Then it is the Mnankrei who have unleashed this plague.”
“Not the Mnankrei I know.”
“Look. The rayvoice has given me an immense vista.” He swept his hand up the map. “The port watchers are sending us data on every Mnankrei ship movement. Relief ships loaded with grain left the islands for Stgal Plain harbors before the plague even started. And now they are departing for the northern ports. A grain ship set sail for Sorrow even today. It is like carrying honey to a beehive. The harvest is due.”
She picked up the skull of her great-grandfather, carved in swastikas and leaves. “What would you say, Pietri?” He said nothing. “Pietri died in defiance of the Mnankrei, so goes the family story. It was a famine. The Mnankrei offered food in exchange for control. My great-grandfather offered his body at the Temple to keep the Mnankrei away.” She smiled ruefully. “I think he was skinny.
The Mnankrei came anyway. They come during famine. Food for control. Always, always, always. My grandfather wedded himself to the sea as a free merchant to take their hand from his wrist. That’s where the seamen on my mother’s side of the family come from.”
“Food for control,” said Hoemei darkly, “and now famine to create the need for food.”
“I can’t believe that of them. How could they face God?”
“We have to believe it of them. They are moving in to take over the land we have been granted by the Council. Our children’s heritage. We’ll be disgraced.”
“Joesai is there.”
“It’s bad. Joesai will make it worse. It was a mistake to send him. We’re going to need this Oelita woman. Her position will be weak when the famine comes. It is easy to tolerate a Godless heresy when the crops are good but the day the famine hits, they’ll spit-roast the lot of them. Teenae can temper Joesai, maybe.”
“If you think Joesai shouldn’t be there taking care of our interests, go yourself!” Noe flared.
“With Kaiel-killing ogres lurking behind the bushes? No thank you. I intend to be a feast for my great-grandchildren. I respect people able to kill Kaiel with impunity. I show my respect by staying away.”
“You’re a coward!”
He laughed the great laugh. “Sometimes.” Then his shoulders sank in dejection. “Have you seen Kathein?”
“She won’t speak to me.” Noe’s voice was pain.
“I saw her today and it was as if I had absently walked into a wall.”
“Come eat with me. We’ve forgotten all about the meal I was making!” Her eyes flirted with him while she retreated from the study.
Noe was like a magician, he thought, changing a knife into a flower right before your eyes. And she always got him. Out of nowhere came this desire to bed her and forget the decisions he had to make. He watched her cook for a while, wondering what delicacy he would prepare for her when it was his turn. He couldn’t resist the lushness of her hips. He felt compelled to go over and hug her.
“Away from me, you insect!” she teased. “This is a very serious evening. I’m thinking how the Mnankrei would justify the creation of famines.” She turned her head and brushed his cheek sensuously before walking away with the soup. “You know what they say: ‘A Mnankrei always has meat on his table.’” That was a reference to the sea clan’s practice of continuous Culling. The more common Getan belief was that meat was a famine food.
Hoemei grinned. “The version I heard was, ‘A Kaiel always has meat on his table.’” The creches kept Kaiel-hontokae supplied with meat, a custom found nowhere else on Geta.
“That’s not the same,” she said petulantly. “Babies are only bodies.”
“You have a delicious body.”
“I don’t think you want my advice. Your blood has all gone to gorge your loins. I won’t say another word!”
“Yes, I want your advice,” he said, kissing her on the cheekbone.
“Well,” she went on, totally ignoring the kiss, “if I sent a man of low kalothi to the temple for Ritual Suicide when the silos were full, you’d call that murder — but the Mnankrei would only call it Culling. So why shouldn’t they create a famine? It would only be another form of Culling to them.”