He was a persistent man. Made wild by the loss of his daughter, never believing that she had died — for had he known her death by eating her? — he sought to find her fate and found memories of things his daughter had said about her man and dark rumors instead. No wall or door kept him out for he was a ship’s smith, and one day, sure that he had found her, he came across a room sealed by glass that he could not enter. Beyond the glass were mindless women whose husks alone had been spared the bliss of death.
Afraid of being found, he retreated. Enraged and broken and deranged by grief he had gone to the house of his daughter’s lover to kill him and had found instead a woman of the Liethe who had soothed him and taken his story from him like hair that falls against the smooth run of a honed blade. She asked him urgently to take her to see the husk women and yet when he was there at the appointed meeting place, ready for such risky venture, he had been betrayed to her lover who had also been his daughter’s lover. The man had taken him to the deepest cells of the Temple, laughing at him that he could have trusted a Liethe. Walls did not keep him and he escaped but watched the low side entrances for weeks, seeing coffins being brought forth and carried away secretly to be burned. He saw Liethe at work there, too.
His madness subsided and when he heard of the Gathering he set across the sea to bring vengeance for his daughter. He believed the stories told of Kaiel ruthlessness, but such stories did not make him cling to the master he knew, as was intended, instead they gave him courage that here were priests violent enough to bring death to the Mnankrei.
Noe pondered the story between all her errands up the coast in their small lugger. Usually she enjoyed the sea, commanding it, for her youth had been spent on the sea. She alone of the maran-Kaiel looked with pleasure to being stationed at Sorrow. She was not a mountain woman, or a desert woman. But now the flapping of the sails and the spray did not reach the storm in her mind.
It had been Kathein, with her sure knack of ferreting out the rule and law of nature from odd happenings, who had taught Noe the secret of a good intelligence procedure. Never meld the incoming data into a general overall summary. Always maintain two lines of report, the optimistic and the pessimistic. One report should weigh the data in terms of the best possible meaning, and the other report should squeeze out of the data the worst possible interpretation. If both reports agreed, the probability of error in the conclusion was small, but if both reports diverged wildly, then careful attention had to be given to the negative nuances that would have been lost in any general summary.
Pieces seemed to fit together, each piece so small that separately they should have been ignored. The Geiniera might be a spy planted here to mislead but then what about that other one-line story of masked Mnankrei burning coffins? It fitted. And Noe, who had worked long days on the genetic makeup of the deviant underjaw, had the final piece that made sense of it all. If the Mnankrei had spent so much time developing one deadly genetic weapon — she used that non-Getan word from The Forge of War — then it was possible that they had developed many such weapons.
Noe’s home base was a farmhouse rented from a family on pilgrimage to their ancestor’s Itraiel domain. Conveniently located near the sea, it was dug into the leeward side of a grassy hill, protected from Njarae storms and hidden from coastal scouts. It ran in three tiers down the slope, built over centuries, its thick walls molded of hillside fieldstone cemented with burned mortar carried in from the kilns of a local quarry. The roofs were of wood overlain by the thick sod of saw grass. On top of the hill was their rayvoice antenna.
She waited until the stars were out. The rayvoice worked best under such conditions. “Raise Joesai for me,” she told her operator. Should she tell Hoemei first? No. He was committed to a fixed plan and would try to hold fast. It was Joesai’s life which was on the blade.
They spoke in code. Dots and dashes and warbles because she owned only a portable rayvoice. The code wiped out the personal urgency she felt.
You must act now.
Are you… cackle, splat. Hoemei will kill me.
Evidence of sacred disease.
??? Repeat.
Genetically engineered micro-life that moves from man to man, killing.
Verified?
No. No time. Attack. Your whole camp may be destroyed overnight.
Not enough data.
This may be deadly. You may have no choice but to sack Soebo.
??? Repeat.
Burn the place! Raze it! Sterilize it!
Drastic.
Your choice. Concentrate on the Temple of the Raging Seas. Attack.
Who is involved?
Any member of the Swift Wind. The Liethe are suspect.
Who?
Your cuddly friends. I have three sources of information pointing to Liethe involvement. How much time do I have? Attack yesterday! May God be with us. May God be with you.
47
A man who has been afraid all his life thinks that fear is the only winning strategy because he has been conquered by fear. Thus when an oppressed mind strikes in rebellion, he becomes the oppressor.
THE LIGHT-HEARTED se-Tufi Who Walks in Humility had been too long independent during the easy life of her lengthy journey between hives. The crones of Soebo were well aware of her loose behavior. They put her on a rigorous schedule to rebuild her discipline.
Mind Control occupied her attention after waking — the Resting Power Positions rebalanced her body and the Oina Thought Frameworks rebalanced her mind. Then, after morning meal, whenever the se-Tufi Who Pats Flesh was available, Humility was drilled in the ways of High Wave Ogar tu’Ama so that she might know the persona of Comfort, a sympathetic woman sensitively aware of the peculiar nature of a widower who had loved only one woman for two-thirds of his life and still grieved.
But Flesh was not always available to train Humility. Flesh specialized in political intrigue and she had lucked onto a bigger game than Ama, who was, after all, only a spokesman for the Mnankrei who did not follow the Swiftness Faction. Winterstorm Master Nie’t’Fosal, of the Central Watch of the Swift Wind, was demanding. She could no longer afford to give Ama the attention the Liethe clan thought desirable but, simultaneously, much as she needed an alter ego, she had little time to be a tutor. Thus Humility caught her when she could, and tu’Ama pined away for a woman who could seldom meet him.
To keep their young assassin under strict crone control, Humility was given other assignments than her Comfort role.
Many of the crones were fascinated by the rayvoice. Their link with Kaiel-hontokae still astonished them. Such magic was arcane and seemingly beyond the powers of the most able seducer of men, but they were not unaware of their extraordinary fortune in having a woman among them who had some small skill with the mysteries of the voice that was everywhere.
Humility was granted a team of ten Liethe, some of them still too young to be apprenticed as courtesans and concubines, but quick and dexterous and patient and accustomed to ruthless discipline, some older and wise in the ways of logic. Two had high jeweler skills, as full in their knowledge of metals and gems as Humility was in her knowledge of death. One of the Liethe knew the working of tungsten, a rare metal which was malleable in its ultra-pure form and a metal more resistant to the depredations of heat than any other substance known to Getan chemistry.