“We’re just talking because we are afraid of each other. Why don’t we just shut up and you can hug me and I’ll hug you.” She put an arm across his neck, and shoved his head until their noses touched.
“Where did you learn to win arguments?” he asked.
“No last words!” And she was hugging him. “You have such big ears. I could get lost in them. What does a wife whisper in a husband’s ear?”
“Usually she tells him to shut up!”
She kissed him, wondering about the trace of restraint she felt from him. “In case you didn’t know, I’m ovaet,” she whispered to reassure him.
“Ah,” he said, reassured. The ovaet was a genetic trait possessed by four out of five Getan women that allowed a woman to self-abort if she did not wish a conception to take.
“When I’m on the pillows with a gentle man like you, being ovaet makes it easier to keep my vow never to be a mother again. I would have difficulty being celibate.” She rubbed her cheek against his. “I can feel your concern. It’s nice.”
“Aesoe never told me that they taught barbarians how to flatter a man.”
“Barbarian! We call you people The Hill Barbarians,” she retaliated. “Do you want to hear a Kaiel joke?”
“I’ve heard it.”
“Why does a Kaiel take his sandals off before entering his house?”
“You got me.”
“So he won’t get them dirty!”
He cuffed her. They were already lost in the pleasure of their lovemaking. She bet herself that Hoemei would go to sleep as soon as they peaked and he did while Oelita stared at his dark image, wide-eyed, smiling, with her head in her hands and her elbows embedded in the pillows. She decided that she liked to play at being married. She had two men now who loved each other and were bonded to her. Two men in a strange and hostile city were always better than one. Under the quilt next to her body, the hot warmth of him was safety. If he loves me, he’ll save my people.
She dreamed that her body was illustrated with shifting tattoos and that great scholars came to study her both by sunlight and by candlelight and went away shaking their heads in wonderment. She took her message to the catacombs, to evil cities on the other side of Geta, and through the temples and into the hells of the desert. The desert was hot, boiling her in her skin while the tattoos shifted. Moaning, she worked her way out of the quilt and let the breeze evaporate the sweat from her, then dozed back to sleep, holding Hoemei.
The dreams went on, mutating. Her body began to tell lighter stories, frivolous ones even, stories of casual love and humor. She snuggled up to her man. He was patting her buttocks affectionately, and she reached around to stop him, half awake now, and the hands were not Hoemei’s hands. They were big and hairy. She was screaming before she was half awake, trying to drag herself against the wall away from the huge monster.
“Where did you get such a beautiful bum?” said the monster.
“Oelita!” said a tiny Teenae in the doorway, round-eyed.
Oelita didn’t stop screaming. Hoemei had her in his arms by now, comforting her. “It’s only Joesai.” He was stunned. Teenae was hugging him and squeezing him. “It’s me! Remember me! I came back! And I love you and am I glad to see you!” The screams brought Gaet and Noe flying out of their bed to collide with Teenae, who had heard them coming. Teenae clamped her arms on Gaet’s neck while her feet crawled up around his hips to grab him vicelike in their embrace. “My beloved lost lover!” she crooned. “Aw, Teenae!” he said happily. Hoemei was bawling in relief. Joesai and Noe just stood grinning in the middle of the chaos. Oelita, backed against the wall in shock, holding the quilt to her breast, tried to understand the revelation that these people comprised a single family. In avoiding Joesai her terror had taken her straight to his co-husbands and here she was thrown into this room with him and there was no more safety.
31
In an open game like chess a player hides his moves behind complexity. In a covert game like five-card hunter a player hides his moves by withholding the face of three cards. But how does one play a game which is itself hidden? The opponent never speaks, is never seen, and never gloats. During that single unexpected moment when the magnitude of your loss is revealed, who has won?
HUMILITY WAS WRAPPED in the robes of the Miethi desert clan that inhabited the edge of the Swollen Tongue. Her face was veiled and her fingers clothed to the second joint. She poked in shops, wandering, sucking on flavored mountain ice. For a while she watched a street funeral. Women of the Tunni, red flowers in their hair and naked children underfoot, flirted with their black-robed men who manned a spit that roasted the skinned corpse of some deceased elder. A cart brought musicians and bowls of food.
Nothing was as refreshing to Humility as these brief sun-heights of freedom from the men she obeyed, these moments away from the hive discipline, from purpose and thought. It was pleasant to amuse that secret person within herself, the Queen of Life-before-Death.
At the shop of a coppersmith she picked up some pieces she had ordered and, farther on, a thumb-sized jar of chemicals. She found a man-height of lace fabric she needed at a weaver’s stall but did not buy it — tomorrow perhaps; today it was enough merely to imagine the lacy costume. Subvocally she hummed the piped tune of a dance and her ghost feet jigged while her real feet plodded an idle path down the street of Early Wings, now deserted as if she had planned to be alone. Such a street was seldom empty.
As she had been instructed, the jeweler-merchant was there, cooped in his narrow room that was hardly wider than his heavy door. Yes, the pale man was of the Weigeni, a merchant clan spread over half of Geta though rare in Kaiel-hontokae. He had the rectangular carvings in his skin and the nose ring. She was his only customer. He stared at her, not speaking, not thinking much of her, for the Miethi bought little except beads to weave into their robes.
She asked him shyly for beads, some rich green ones, and smiled at the man with her eyes, then readjusted her veil so he could see less of her. He brought the beads from a drawer. While he was stooping and she had her eyes cast demurely toward the door, she yanked a wire loop around his neck so quickly that he died without even surprise on his face. The body dropped behind the counter.
Why did the old crone want this particular Weiseni dead? She did not know. The old crones were too old for men so they played politics on a grand scale. A leisurely moment later Humility had closed and barred the door and drawn the shutters as if her victim were gone on some errand as jewelers were wont to do.
She listened. Then she returned and quickly cut the dead man’s throat. For artistic completeness she slashed his arms as if he had defended himself from a clumsy knifing. She stabbed him viciously, as one would who knew no anatomy and bore the strength of a large man. After a careful review of the imaginary fight, she tumbled a counter to imitate a recoil against a stagger heavier than the counter could bear. For a moment she glanced at the jewelry. The emeralds pleased her, but she did not take them. She took the larger, flashier stones that were nearly worthless, and some gold. Even a fool would recognize gold.
Dusk was a pleasant time of day. She disposed of the jewelry while walking and sat washing her knife at the pool in the Bok of the Fountain of Two Women. Dead insects floated on the surface of the water. A hawker was selling hot spiced soybean curd to passers-by for copper coin. She felt delight that others were enjoying the dusk, too. A small o’Tghalie woman was strolling with two of her men, holding them one on each arm, smiling to her left and teasing with her hip to the right. Magicians, those o’Tghalie. They could tell you how the electron demons would fly along the shapes of metal that the coppersmith had made for her.