Comfort insisted on providing the recipe for the celebration feast. The camp was being taken down around them but eating was a constant of life. She rushed between the wagons, serving the Kaiel, seeing that everyone was well fed, making sure that there were no leftovers. Joesai she found busy in the old farmhouse organizing the march and she had to sit beside him and feed him or he would not have bothered.
Much later, when the camp was already asleep, the watches stationed, Comfort returned to the farmhouse, waiting to sweeten his mat. When he felt his way down the ladder, tired, ready for oblivion, she massaged him, relaxing the cramps that came from stooping over a torch to do his papers, working his muscles with experienced hands, limbering them.
“What’s it like to be married?” she asked, returning to her favorite subject.
“Hectic.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything. Life is hectic.”
“Try a few husbands someday and find out.”
“No,” she said. “I’ve taken my vows. Who’s your favorite wife?”
“The one who is on my pillows.”
“Will I do as a substitute?”
“I’m not complaining. You take better care of me than Teenae or Noe ever did.”
“Thank you.”
“You have a magic about you.”
“Why do you stay married? Why don’t you just wander from woman to woman? That would make life more interesting.”
“Why should beginnings be more interesting than middles or ends? I know my wives and husbands. We’re the kind of team it takes a lifetime to build. Without them there would be no other women; I would be dead. Beginnings tell you very little. I didn’t even like Noe when I first met her. I thought she was altogether too flighty for us. I wanted a serious girl from the creches, not one of those soft Kaiel who come from a family. So beginnings aren’t always where the fun is. I didn’t really get to like Noe until we started to go sailplane gliding together.”
“And Teenae?”
“How can you resist a child who worships the very ground you walk on? I was rough and uncouth with her and laid her without much thought to her own pleasure. It was a long time before her fierceness and brilliance tamed me. I found strength in her. She planted tolerance in me and ruthlessly tore at the inconsistencies I was so prone to have. All these things take time. They are not for beginnings.”
Comfort sighed with faraway eyes. “I feel so lonely with you. I suppose that’s because I haven’t known you long enough. I’m not at the middle yet.”
He pulled her to him, pleased with the warmth of her small body, feeling less lonely than he had for all the time he had been on Mnank. He caressed her. There was nothing he could say that was really appropriate. “A man should not talk to a Liethe of his wives.”
“Nonsense,” she replied sadly. “I have to know everything.”
Joesai wondered why, on the eve of every great event, the talk was so trivial — of gossip, of past events, of the shape of breasts, of how much whisky a man could hold before he fell over, of love and loneliness. She had lapsed into silence, words gone from her.
“Hi there,” he said.
“I don’t want you ever to forget me.” She took him then.
It was still dark when fever woke him. He tried to move and couldn’t. He could hardly open his eyes. The pale face of Comfort was staring at him. She was fully dressed in her brown travelling robe.
“You’re sick,” she said.
He tried to move his tongue and it was like moving a mouthful of dough.
“The paralysis isn’t part of the sickness. I’ve poisoned you with the juice of ei-cactus so that you won’t be able to kill me for having given all your judges the sickness.”
He tried to lunge at her by sheer will and managed only to fall on his own arm and pin it. Ponderous grunting noises came from his mouth.
She rolled him into a more comfortable position. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do it. You were not wise to trust me. I arranged the escape of your friends with Nie’t’Fosal. So that you would not question me.” And she was gone.
He could still think. Thoughts came with an unfamiliar despair. I’ve made the one mistake I’ve never been allowed to make. He was dead and the Advance Court was dead and Joesai maran-Kaiel was an idiot. Aesoe had won, as usual. Joesai had been a foil to bring out the most deadly counterthrust of the Mnankrei and now they had made it and Bendaein would know what he was up against and respond to that, Bendaein the Cautious. I’ve disgraced my family. He could still cry though he could not wipe the tears from his eyes.
Hoemei had trusted him to wait, and he had grown impatient and gone to the city and brought back the pestilence as a lover. Noe had warned him. Teenae would have shot Comfort at a hundred man-lengths. Gaet would mourn him as he had Sanan — and then go find another husband. Fever began to take the coherence from his mind. Kathein’s child, bearing his genes, would give whatever kalothi he possessed one more risky chance but Kathein’s face faded into Joesai’s last image of Oelita — mad with her sudden belief in God. He had driven her to her death and now the Liethe were returning the favor.
Joesai’s most horrible loss was that there could be no Funeral Feast. No one would share his flesh. He would be cremated, unclean.
52
Why should a government which is doing what it believes is right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons.
THE STORM GALE lashed in from the sea, driving the spume off the wave tops. Teenae’s spies ducked into the hut and told her that the Mnankrei vessels had arrived. There hadn’t been enough warning because of the fog. Cursing, she scampered to the observation station just in time to see the three ships breaking into the relative quiet of the bay. She shouted orders in her first moment of confusion and then relaxed. Tonpa would have to delay unloading until the storm had subsided. She had plenty of time. The surprise would be hers. She waited.
A full day it took for the two smaller double-masted ships to dock and begin disgorging their wheat and casks of famous Mnankrei whisky. A flat barge shuttled loads of grain from the bigger three-masted vessel, Tonpa’s command. Curious boats surrounded the flagship. One of them was Teenae’s. Through a lens she watched the Stgal greet their saviors who would have the Stgal for snacks once their usefulness was done.
She gave orders for her rifles to take up position. Each of Tonpa’s men was assigned a double tail — an inconspicuous heretic and a Kaiel rifleman. Poor Gaet was probably hiding somewhere. He would not touch a rifle and he was not fond of violence. She had three portable rayvoices in operation and a whole system of rooftop flag stations, except she was using people and coded costumes instead of flags.
The first important message she received was that her bomb had been attached to the bottom of the flagship. It had two fuses, one a clock, already set and ticking, the other a sonically activated switch. The Mnankrei knew nothing of war.
The second important message she received was that the fire bombs for the smaller docked ships were in place. The Mnankrei knew nothing about the fate of the Spanish Armada.
The third important message she received, from a horrified runner, was that Gaet had taken it upon himself to negotiate with the Mnankrei and had been forcibly removed to the Temple and was now a prisoner of the sea priests and the Stgal.