“Me of course! Kathein! You’re all alone — with Joesai and Noe up north, and Gaet and Teenae on the coast. I was feeling sorry for you all day, so I’ve come to see you.”
“God,” said Hoemei, rattled.
For the Queen of Life-before-Death, the moment was pain. She had never before hated a woman, and what could be more painful than that? Slowly she lowered herself from her riding position until her breasts mingled with Hoemei’s hairy chest. She gave him one last kiss, a quick one while she stuffed the feel of his body into her memory. “She’s an old love of yours, isn’t she? Let her come. While I hide, she will be fascinated by you, and while you hold her with her back toward me, I will leave.” Humility dismounted, collected her things rapidly, and took herself behind the tapestry.
“Kathein. I’m not dressed,” he delayed.
“That’s the way I want you!”
“I’ll be right there.”
He got up and patted the tapestry, and of all the things he could have done, that pleased his Liethe the most.
“What’s happening?” said Hoemei as Kathein slipped through the door.
“Silly, you’ve dressed yourself!” she admonished him.
“I’m in a state of shock. What are you doing here? Aesoe will have us for rugs!”
Behind the oz’Numae hangings, a disheveled Humility snorted in her mind. He hasn’t learned how to handle Aesoe yet! When will he ever learn!
“I’m tired of making love to Aesoe,” she said sulkily. “He likes to sleep with his head on my breasts — and he snores!”
A sudden knowing smile erupted in hiding. Humility wondered why she was smiling while she was in such pain, and why she tolerated the agony when she could as easily go into White Mind and order any response she desired from her body. It was love. They told her it might happen someday. They told her it happened at least once to every Liethe and that if she were lucky she would be old before it did.
She felt a petulant exasperation. They want me to know why I kill! And I get stuck with being in love! She did not like growing up.
“How’s the new clan going?” Hoemei asked.
“You’re so the intellectual! How’s my clan going,” Kathein mocked. “You know how it is going! I’m surrounded by children who have to learn everything from me. I’m astonished by their speed! But I want people who have lived. I miss you all. I hate Aesoe for sending Joesai out to his death! God Above, what an astronomer he’d make!” She was crying and Hoemei took her in his arms.
Humility stuck her head out and motioned for him to pull Kathein to the cushions. He did so, holding her tightly, locking her into an embrace that generated passion from Kathein. Slowly, Humility tiptoed away, clothes in her arms. She wagged her tongue insolently, pausing just long enough to frighten him, waiting at leg’s length from Kathein’s shoeless toes, a nostalgic look on her face. If she were Hoemei’s wife, she could join him on the pillows now.
Morality! she thought sullenly and was gone, silently crying, wetting her cheeks, anguished that her last meeting with Hoemei had crumbled into such a disaster. It was the first time in her life that she remembered tears she had not faked.
She took the route through the Valley of Ten Thousand Graves to the coast, an arduous journey that one did not make frivolously. She found a proliferation of the strange skrei-wheels and charmed rides from their pedallers in exchange for a hand at pushing on the difficult grades. There was evidence of new roadwork everywhere. A conqueror lays out roads. That was axiom.
Before reaching Sorrow she turned northward through the mountains because a signalman of the Moera clan, who was not a true Moera, worked the great tower atop the Peak of Blue Concern. No command ordered her to find him but he did live along her route to Soebo and there was a standing call for his execution.
Humility first encountered Anid toi-Moera at the inn where he liked to eat, overlooking high cliffs above the sea. She waited and, after dinner, followed him into the wilderness fog. But at the perfect place for murder — a curving trail among huge trees that grew more than two man-heights tall — she hesitated.
Why did he have to die? The accursed Lattice of Evidence was prickling her mind.
The crone said he was a bearer of the foul underjaws to these parts and that he accepted coin for overhearing all messages that passed through his tower. Humility knew nothing more, not who had accused him or how his deeds had been cataloged, just that he was marked for death.
During her moment of introspection, he disappeared.
She slept in the woods to the crashing sound of waves below, stunned by her vacillation. See! It was true that no assassin should seek to understand her target! Orders were enough. The hunt and kill were enough. To be curious meant fatal irresolution.
Wearing modest robe and veil, she spent the next high day seeking Anid again, the empty Lattice of Evidence in her mind like a burr under the skin. Each branch of the Lattice had to be filled before a man was condemned. Who had filled it for Anid? Had some crone mother, at great distance, really satisfied those severe demands? What distortions and falsehood might have entered the judgment?
She found Anid on the road. Boldly she went to him and asked where she might have shoes repaired. He was curious that she would travel alone. She told him that she had a long ambition to see the sea, and truly she was awed by it. He smiled. He was a towerman, he said, and knew the best spots from which to view the ocean’s beauty. For instance, there was a cliff where the moon laid a road of light across the night waters. Please show me, she replied, making him feel that she had long been without male company, and that, though she was modest, she might be seduced by kind attention.
So he led her to a nook above the cliffs where they could be alone. They talked. She probed to hear his view of Stgal and Kaiel and Mnankrei but learned nothing. He had no opinion about famine that would separate him from a thousand others. He did not seem to lust for power or reward. He seemed to be a towerman who took pleasure in seducing wandering women. Her Lattice framework remained empty, an unsatisfying hollowness.
The rustic hideaway he had chosen was grassy, at an awesome height above the beach below, hidden by a rocky rise behind them. The slate was cracked and crumbling to gray age but was of a resistant nature that had held back the death attack of the waves like a great-grandfather watching over his clan.
“You must stay with me here to be enchanted by the moon’s waxing increase as night unfolds,” he said.
“I have no time.” She let her voice express regret, lingering on the mysteries that might come with stolen heartbeats.
“Aw, stay with me a while.”
“Do you really want…”
“I’m dying of desire.”
“If you really want me, I might be convinced.”
“I’ll be good to you.”
“I’m very inexperienced,” she said, dropping the eyelashes that peered from above the veil.
“There is no hurry. The early night after sunset covers much.”
“No. We have to do it now. Keep your back to me. Nothing looks more foolish than a woman undressing herself.”
He obeyed, careful now not to break her sudden mood.
“Promise to close your eyes?”
“They’re closed.”
The stone smashed into his skull, crushing it. She tested his pulse to see if he were dead, surprised how he clung to life. A quick twist of his head broke his neck. Thoroughness was the mark of a superior assassin. Then she pushed him off the cliff. She had been careful to let her feet follow in his tracks so that it would seem he came alone. She left no traces as she retreated, only traces upon a mind upset because it craved more than faith.
She was slightly disappointed to find that, in the end, she was merely a creature of habit.