“Who will ever know? Perhaps. My spies tell me they are fearless. But so are the Mnankrei. And I would not turn my back on a man who smiles at me as the Stgal do.“
“You are telling me that we must stab with a three-pronged fork: destroy the heretics, destroy the Mnankrei, and destroy the Stgal.”
“Not at all. Your father Tae, who was my personal teacher, was a man of great wisdom. We conquer by making friends, not by destroying. If you are feared, you must fear. You maran-Kaiel were chosen for this mission because Gaet has a certain way with people and he never makes an enemy. He forgets though. Out of sight, out of mind. You’re the administrator, the one who remembers to provide continuity.”
“Gaet never makes an enemy because he doesn’t have to. He uses Joesai for all of his dirty work.”
“True. The making of friends often requires an open smile and a covert hand.”
“So the treacherous Stgal teach us,” said Hoemei ironically. “But how do you make friends with a heretic who rejects all your values?”
Aesoe sipped from his goblet and laughed the great laugh so enjoyed by the Getan population. “Heretics are never as different as they seem. They are like genetic mutants. A mutant shares most of your genes. A heretic shares most of your ideas. Most mutations manufacture the wrong proteins. Most heresies are false. But then — we Kaiel are heretics.” And he laughed again.
“And how do you make friends with the Mnankrei and the Stgal?”
“Is that necessary when it is the heretics who control the hearts of the people?”
Hoemei became pensive. “You are instructing us to weave together the common goals of Kaiel and heretic as the way to take over the Valley of Ten Thousand Graves?”
Aesoe laughed. “My instructions are much simpler. You are to marry their women. Your family, for instance, is missing a three-wife.”
“We court Kathein pnota-Kaiel,” said Hoemei warily.
“No longer. I have given the orders. I have the votes. You are to marry Oelita the Clanless One who has single-handedly created this heresy.”
“And she knows of this?” asked Hoemei, his voice delaying while his thoughts raced.
“Of course not.”
“We are to take a Kaiel-killing heretic to our pillows?”
“It is to be so.”
“I don’t like it.”
Aesoe flared at this rebellion. “I have thirty families such as yours to deal with this week. Your personal problems are petty. I see the whole. I do what I must do for the clan. Without the clan you are destroyed. Therefore you will do what you must do. Some other day I’ll argue.”
Hoemei felt his love for Kathein like a stab of warm pain passing down his spine. He thought of a time once spent with her in the garden, her black hair in his lap, while he chattered as if she had suddenly drilled an artesian well into his unconscious with her gentle questions. Ah, how loss makes us feel our love. He stared at Aesoe, careful not to speak, for tears would have been an improper response to this order.
3
The Gathering of Ache marched into the Wailing Mountains to meet the challenge of the Arant. The Arant heresy proclaimed that the Race was created by machines in the caves of the Wailing Mountains. Arrogantly they stated that the God of the Sky was merely an inner moon — but they died by Judgment Feast while the God of the Sky orbited over the land He had found for the Race. And the Gathering created the Kaiel to guard the Wailing Mountains from falsehood.
NOE, ONE-WIFE OF GAET and Hoemei and Joesai, came out on the stone balcony of the inner courtyard only after dressing. She smiled down at Gaet. Teenae hurried up beside her, a full head shorter than her co-wife, to stare anxiously at Gaet with huge eyes that glowed beneath dark eyebrows.
Bathing his feet in the atrium’s pool, Gaet looked up. Such beauty allowed him to dismiss his anger for a moment: Noe with her hair carefully braided into a helmet of excellence, Teenae with her hair shaved down the middle and flowing like liquid night upon her shoulders; Noe in a soft drape, her breasts scarred in a lazy hontokae, Teenae in casual trousers stitched together out of hundreds of saloptera bellies and hung from a wide belt of the cured hide of her favorite grandfather, her breasts carved in the mathematical spirals that the o’Tghalie often sported.
Gaet was proud that he had found these worthy wives. He had even discovered Kathein, now to be denied them as three-wife. His brothers were shy with women, to their genes’ disgrace.
Noe was a Kaiel — her mother the organizer of trading fleets on the Njarae Sea that tested the might of the Mnankrei, her father architect of the Kaiel Palace.
Teenae he had bought from the o’Tghalie clan when she was still breastless and pliable. He smiled. She had shown too great an interest in mathematical matters and the o’Tghalie men had rid themselves of her, for they brooked no competition from their women, a difficult convention when both sexes share the same genes. Teenae could do sums and products in her head as fast as you could give her numbers, though she had no training. She was a marvelous addition to their family councils — no one was better at uprooting the inconsistencies which crept into their group logic.
“Peace fights with your anger,” said Teenae, watching Gaet, “and your anger laughs.” Her voice was gentle.
Gaet broke into a grin. “How can my dark gloom survive the rising of Stgi and Toe?” The two brightest stars in the Getan sky belonged to the mythology of love and Gaet often used their names affectionately in reference to his two wives.
Joesai came to the balcony, towering beside his wives, his body scarred in intricate designs of unorthodox curve whose meaning lay outside of the conventional symbology. “Ho. What is it?”
“Aesoe has denied us Kathein as three-wife!”
“Cause for anger! What compensation does Aesoe offer?”
“Little. He orders us to wed a coastal barbarian.”
“There are no Kaiel on the coast.”
“True.”
“What clan is she?”
“She is clanless.”
“Aesoe has gall! And why should her genes host in Kaiel bodies?”
“He vouches for her kalothi,” said Gaet.
“There are many ways of surviving! There are many kalothies! Our way of surviving is to organize. Answer my question: why should her genes be allowed to host in Kaiel bodies?” His body loomed above the railing.
“Aesoe is impressed because she has more than two hundred friends personally loyal to her.”
“Impossible!” snorted Joesai.
“… to one as ugly as you!”
Teenae soothed the hand of her largest husband without looking at him. “Is that true,” she asked of Gaet, “that this barbarian commands loyalty so easily?”
“I have no reason to doubt Aesoe.”
“Then the order is logical,” said Teenae. “The Council has deeded our family the Valley of Ten Thousand Graves all the way down to the Njarae Sea. But another clan jealous of the Kaiel rules there. A constituency of two hundred in that location would give us power. We cannot logically refuse this order.”
“You give up Kathein so easily?” prodded Noe.
Tears burst upon the smaller woman’s cheeks and ran down along the ridges of her facial cicatrice. “Not at all easily.” Teenae loved the Kathein she had never seen enough of. When a family was already five in number it was difficult to find a co-spouse who could love and be loved by them all. Some families never grew past five. Kathein could make Joesai laugh. She could make the taciturn Hoemei talk. She could dominate Gaet.