Gaet ignored it all, ignored his neighbors’ villas. Furious, he even neglected to say hello to a passing Ivieth porter. He pushed through his gate, strode across the courtyard of his home, around the fountain pool, while his surprised two-wife Teenae scampered to follow him.
“Troubles on your soul! Give me troubles!”
“Where’s Hoemei?”
“At the Palace. Joesai is home.”
“And one-wife?”
“Noe sleeps. What is it?”
“Aesoe has forbidden us to marry Kathein.”
Teenae stopped in shock, then turned away. “I will wake and bring Noe!” She bypassed the stairs and leaped for a pole which extended from the courtyard wall, flipping herself up over the railing out of sight.
Gaet seated himself by the pool, having foreknowledge that one-wife would make him wait. Noe was not a woman to be hurried. He thought blackly of the orders Aesoe had given him, which were in direct conflict with his own plans. Images of a marriage feast passed before his eyes, the Call of the Bonds, the giving of the Five Gifts.
It did not suit him to relinquish Kathein in favor of a woman he did not know. It did not suit him, this idea of setting up residence along the coast. It did not suit him to leave the ever-fascinating struggles of the city of Kaiel-hontokae while he was still forging his family’s Place.
Should he obey Aesoe and go to the coast to meet this heretical stranger and charm her and bring her home merely to gain the favor of Aesoe’s Expansionists? Or should he send Joesai to kill her?
2
The God of the Sky gave us a harsh land because we are a rebellious Race. We wandered across the Swollen Tongue and He watched us. Ten Thousand died in the snow of the Wailing Mountains and He did not speak to us. We planted our crops by the Njarae Sea and He ignored us. West and east and south and north, deep were the graves carved into the merciless stone. Here are their names: the Graves of Grief, and the Graves of the Wailing Mountains, and the Graves of the Blind Eye, and the Graves of the Losers.
It is chanted that a Savior will be born of she who spills her blood deep in the Graves of the Losers. We have founded Our City upon that hallowed catacomb. All power to the Kaiel! The city of Kaiel-hontokae shall give birth to the Savior Who Speaks To God.
HOEMEI MARAN-KAIEL WALKED across the flagstones that led to the first huge ovoid of the Palace. He stopped to chat with Seipe, an old woman he often dealt with because he was spending large amounts of money and she was Watchman of the Coin and never believed in spending more than the Kaiel could collect in taxes. Even Aesoe could not shake her.
“I did not give you permission to put the rayvoice tower on Terrible Hill,” she chided.
Hoemei grinned. “I put my own money into it and I’m charging toll.”
“I’ll have to find a way to tax you.”
“I’m making sure that the tower has no profit. It has expenses,” he laughed.
She changed the subject to do business that would save her a runner. “You are invited to my villa on the fourth high day of the Amorists’ Constellation. Bring Teenae.”
“Teenae will be pleased,” said Hoemei affectionately.
“I know; that’s why I want her there to help me. She’s younger and quicker than I am. We will gossip while you haggle with your competitors.”
“Is someone after my share of the tax money again?”
“Your money? It’s my money!” said Seipe with a great laugh, using the private possessive form as if the clan’s coin were part of her own bones.
They held hands, each overlaid upon the other, as Getan friends did before they parted. “God sees you,” he said.
His careful humoring of the Watchman done, Hoemei returned his feet to the flagstones and his thoughts to Aesoe. Aesoe was getting greedy. The power that the Prime Predictor smelled in the growing rayvoice network was as whisky to the nose of a drunkard. How he drives us with his visions! He’ll have more work for me.
Hoemei wandered into the Palace maze within the main ovoid, distracted for a moment by the uncommon electric glow that still amazed even he who knew its magic and knew how it was fabricated in the basement workshops of Kaiel-hontokae. Aesoe saw an electrified Geta. That was foolishness. There was no end to the things Aesoe saw. These wild visions were afflicting even Hoemei’s dreams.
“He’s waiting for you,” said a friend who was passing.
Hoemei stopped him. “What’s his mood?”
“I think he just found a way into Seipe’s vaults. Or else the woman of his dreams materialized from the steam of his morning tea.”
“He’s in good spirits then?”
“A tug on his hair would lift off his head at the smile line.”
“Ah, then I’m not up for skinning.” That was a relief.
He paused at the entrance to Aesoe’s lair, removing his shoes. When Aesoe did not notice him at the high doorway, he walked forward and seated himself upon the pillows, then looked straight at the Prime Predictor, waiting. Nothing would have induced Hoemei to interrupt the overpriest of the Kaiel clan. Old Aesoe sipped a drink, speaking to his scribe and to his personal o’Tghalie mathematician. He sipped again, brought out a map and put away some papers.
“I have already spoken to your brother Gaet.”
“One-brother has not yet seen me, sire.”
Aesoe shrugged. “You know your family has been given the Valley of Ten Thousand Graves down to the sea.”
“Being the central route to the sea through the Wailing Mountains it will add to our wealth, but also to our burdens. Many have refused this gift.”
“… and will not rise to power within the Kaiel.”
“Which is why we accepted the gift, though it is not the Kaiel’s land to give.”
Aesoe snorted at such pious morality. “Do you know why this valley exists as an unconquered sliver in our side?”
“All Kaiel who settle there are murdered.”
“Have you speculated upon the nature of the murderers?”
“I deal in facts,” said Hoemei.
“Ah, but we who make policy can lose the game if we wait for facts. Speculate!”
“My guess would be the Mnankrei.”
“Why not the Stgal? The Stgal would have more to lose. It is their land.”
“The Stgal are cowards. They fear us. The Mnankrei covet the lands of the Stgal as we do. These sea priests have been known to advocate violence and their Storm Masters range up and down the Njarae unhindered in their billowing ships.”
Aesoe cleared his throat. “Our spies tell us that a village called Sorrow was the scene of the murders.” He pointed out Sorrow on the map, a small harbor of the Njarae Sea. “The Stgal have a great temple there. It is also a center of heresy. Heretics, recruited from dozens of the underclans, tolerate their Stgal, finding priestly weakness useful. The Stgal tolerate them because they oppose us and oppose the Mnankrei.”
“It must be a new heresy.”
“Very new. But its basis has been latent in the region for some time. Priestly weakness generates heresy.”
“The heretics were the murderers?”