“Tisshah’el,” he murmured. Beloved stranger. A word like a sigh, full of so much longing, and so much grief: the word her people used for someone caught in adultery, a crime they sometimes punished with death by flaying, or castration. Sometimes he wished she wouldn’t use it, even though she appreciated its poignant irony more than he did.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him, finally.
“Humbaba wanted to see me,” he answered, noncommittal.
“Why?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, I’ve been rotting out here for half an hour—” He broke off. “Why are you here?”
“He asked to see me also.” “Why?” he said, tensing, suddenly feeling afraid. “Gods—do you think he knows?”
“I don’t know.” There was no concern on her face. There never was. Her thoughts were like the depths of a pool; he was never allowed to see below their surface. Sometimes he wanted to shake her, to force some reaction out of her Sometimes he was certain her perfect calm was only an act. Sometimes he thought it was just the resigned fatalism her culture bred into its women, … And then he wondered if it was his potential violence that attracted her to him; if all she wanted from him was just another suicidal asshole, like the men she had always known. And then he would tell himself fiercely that he was more than that, and so was she—
The doors to the inner chamber opened, with a soft sucking sound like a kiss, He turned, feeling her turn with him; she covered her face quickly with her veil. Stepping back from each other until there was a neutral distance between them, they walked together through the doorway and into Humbaba’s presence.
Reede’s vision recoiled, as it always did, as his eyes found Humbaba’s face—still refusing to believe, after all these years, that what he saw was real. Humbaba came from somewhere on Tsieh-pun, and he’d heard the local customs had merged into and gone beyond the usual underworld tattooing. They had traditionally scarred their faces, the uglier the better, because it intimidated their enemies and their underlings. Cosmetic surgery had given them stomach-turning possibilities far beyond the original, primitive scarring. Ugliness meant strength, power. … If that was true, Reede had often thought that Humbaba should have been the most powerful man in the galaxy, because he had to be the ugliest. He looked like he was wearing his intestines on his face.
Reede swallowed his disgust, along with his sudden, unexpected unease, and pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead in a salute. “Sab Emo.” Beside him. Mundilfoere made the same obeisance.
Humbaba turned away from them, toward his aquarium, peering in at the fish that moved like glinting shadows through its green-lit depths. Reede could see Humbaba’s face reflected in the glass, huge and grotesque, with their own two figures tiny and distorted in the background. Behind the transparent wall, the fish peered back at them curiously; their faces were a wad of distorted flesh that matched their master’s. They came from Tsieh-pun too, where for some segment of humanity ugliness had even become beauty. Reede kept the grimace off his face, telling himself that it made as much sense as anything else humans did. And from a bioengineering standpoint, maybe it was even true.
The ever-lengthening moment of Humbaba’s silence stretched Reede’s nerves like time on the rack. At last Humbaba turned away from the green, peaceful world of the hideous fish and faced them again. “They have given me so much pleasure …”he murmured. His voice was perfectly normal, a deep, pleasant baritone; as was the total unselfconsciousness of his manner—another incongruity he used to good effect. “As you have, my jewel.” He nodded to Mundilfoere, and she bowed her head in acknowledgment, her bells singing softly.
“And your work has brought pleasure to millions, Reede.” His voice took on an ironic amusement. He reached out, his thick, blunt fingers hovering over a long side-table covered with what Reede realized suddenly was a banquet of drugs—all of his creations. Humbaba selected something from the display, popped it into his mouth and chewed it like a sweetmeat. “And put millions into my accounts, which pleases me even more. Our mutual working agreement has served us both well.”
Reede said nothing, shifting uncomfortably, sure that this round of empty compliments was not the reason for their being here. He could tell nothing from Humbaba’s expression, which was always totally inhuman.
Humbaba turned back to them abruptly. “But something has come to my attention that does not bring me pleasure. In fact, it causes me more pain than anything has since I lost my beloved mother.” His small, black eyes seemed to flicker, as if he was blinking rapidly inside the mottled piles of flesh. “How long have you been lovers’?”
Reede froze, left groping for words by the bluntness of the unexpected question. “We aren’t—”
“Since before I brought him to you, my lord,” Mundilfoere said quietly. “Since the day I first saw him.” Reede shot a disbelieving look at her as Humbaba moved slowly forward, his massive body dwarfing her.
Humbaba reached out, taking hold of the veil that covered her face, his fist tightening, as if he were about to rip it off. But he lifted it almost tenderly, as he stood staring down at her. “Are you saying you seduced him, in order to ensure his loyalty to me—?”
Reede watched her, unable to take his eyes off her; suddenly needing to know her answer more than he needed to go on living.
She glanced at him; her eyes lingered on his face, before her gaze flickered downward. “No, my lord. That was not why.”
Humbaba’s fist tightened, muscles bunched in his arm. “Damn you,” he said. “Why won’t you ever lie to me? I even gave you the lie myself—”
She glanced away, up at him again. “I have never lied to you, my lord. You know that. That is why I have been your First Wife for so long.”
He snorted, and wattles of flesh quivered. “I’d like to know what else you never bothered to mention to me, though, my jewel,” he said sourly, his hand leaving the veil aside, to close over her jaw until she winced. “I trusted you. in ways I never trusted any other woman … and perhaps more than I ever trusted any man—”
Reede’s hands tightened impotently; his chest ached from the breath he was holding. “So,” Humbaba murmured, “you like pretty young boys the best, after all—’? How many other have there been?’”
“None, my lord,” she answered, with difficulty. “Only him. Only you—”
He snorted again, with derision, letting her go. “You know the penalty for adultery among your people, Mundilfoere. 1 could have the skin peeled off your face until you looked like me.” He shot a glance at Reede. “I could cut off your pnck and make you eat it, Kullervo.” Reede grimaced. “I always wondered why you had no interest in sex,” Humbaba muttered. “I offered you women, all you wanted, or men, or boys—you remember?” Reede nodded numbly. “But you always said no. I thought maybe you were getting it in town. But you were getting it right here. I gave you everything. But you had to take the one thing you were not offered.” His heavy fist rose, stopped just short of Reede’s face. Reede flinched involuntarily. “Why”
“Because when I met her she made me forget everything else.” Answering only with the truth, too, Reede found the voice to speak; but the voice hardly sounded like his own. He felt like a man in a bad dream, trying to wake up. How did you find out? He almost asked it, couldn’t force himself to. Knowing that the details didn’t matter. Knowing it should have happened years ago. Nobody could keep anything a secret in a place like this; it was like living in orbit. It was only his frequent trips around the planet and offworld, and Humbaba’s, that had kept them safe this long. He had always let himself believe that even if they were discovered Humbaba would look the other way, because he was indispensable, and Humbaba knew it—