“Nayo.”
“I am Salagaum, senho, and I am not ashamed of it. Look at me.”
The leatherman was shaking, every muscle twitching, his neck straining as his head started to turn and he wrenched it back.
“Look at me, leatherman. Are you afraid?”
The leatherman whirled. Mouth stretched in a silent shout, he stared at Reyna, his eyes shifting repeatedly up and down the lean length of the Salagaum’s body.
Reyna smoothed his hands over his breasts, lifted them, let them fall back, soft, heavy breasts, the nipples dark and large, still firm and well shaped though he was past forty now. He slid his hands slowly down his body. He was beginning to get excited, the leatherman had a physical beauty that reached him and a suffering inside that spoke to him.
Leatherman stared a moment longer, then broke. He swung around, his shoulders bent, his hands clutching at the sill. “Go. Get out of here. You. You Abomination! Thing! Get. Out. Of. Here.”
Snatching up his clothing, Reyna went.
› › ‹ ‹
Faharmoy heard the door click shut, then bent over the sill, fighting the sobs that tore through him He was weak! Worse than a woman! Crying. Nayo. Nayo. Nayo. Chumavayal, nayo! He gasped and shuddered as he struggled to expel this weakness from himself. Control. That was the thing. It was loss of control that he raged against. It was loss of control that was the thing. Not the soft weakness he… felt… for that… that creature. Nayo, it was the loss of control. Control. He’d burned it into his bones the past nine years… or so he’d thought. There wasn’t a man his age among the Cheoshim who could outfight him or outthink him on the battlefield. On this other field he was… mired… lost…
The shuddering and the tearing of the sobs he would not let escape him finally stopped, leaving him exhausted. He fell into the chair where he’d been sitting before, stretched out in it with his feet up and his eyes closed.
Gradually he pulled himself back from the situation, viewed it as a disembodied intelligence with no emotions to confuse his logic.
He was not at fault.
What he had felt was natural and good-or would have been if he had not been fooled and betrayed.
The traitor was not that creature. He… she… diyo, she was the tool of Abeyhamal who was always the enemy of Chumavayal, the bitter, bitter enemy, softness against strength, rottenness against purity.
Abeyhamal. Diyo. She and her accursed followers brought the drought on the Land by their sins and their rebellion against Truth.
Abeyhamal set the shape of woman on men and by doing so, betrayed all men. Mocked all that belonged to man.
When the sun pressed over the horizon and its red light streamed into the window along with the growing noise of the city coming awake, he went downstairs and out the back door, ignoring the female slaves scrubbing the stairs and chattering in corners whenever they got out of the overseer’s gaze, slaves who went silent and stared at him until he was past, whose whispers followed him out of the house.
When he stepped frOm the walkway between the Houses, boy shills for the chairmen swirled around him, not touching him but giving him no peace as they shouted out the fees and excellences of their chairs. Irritated, tired, impatient, he strode through them; he wanted to kick them away from him, slap them into silence. To do what he wanted would show weakness, loss of control, so he ignored them. And sighed with relief as he plunged into the Sok and left them behind.
The sun wasn’t fully up yet and there were very few buyers in the Sok. Many of the merchants were still sweeping off their plots and hadn’t yet set out their goods; those with shops were taking down their shutters and replacing their displays. A few of them stopped to stare at him. A walking Mal was a rare sight.
He found the kariam he wanted, moved briskly through the lingering coolness of the morning shadows, enjoying the play of his muscles as he walked, the perfume from the hidden flowers, the sweet seductive whisper of the unseen fountains; the Biasharim could still afford to be lavish with water from the aqueducts.
He crossed the Inner Ring Road and heard instead of water falling, the pounding feet of cadres of young Cheoshim as they marched and jumped to the shouted calls of their Drillmasters. He smiled, his soul expanding with the familiarity of those sounds.
He reached the Outer Ring Road feeling a growing harmony between himself and the world, but he needed more than harmony, he needed to understand the reasons for all this. He hurried along the Ring Road to the Jiko Sagrado where he joined the early trickle of worshipers and suppliants heading for the Camuctarr.
› › ‹ ‹
The Forge Sanctuary was an immense chamber, bronze lamps on bronze chains filling the space with light and shadow, drifts of incense eddying around the kneeling stools.
Anaxoa novices led by the Anaxo Prime were cleaning the ashes from the Forge fire and renewing the coals and aromatic woods that fueled it. The Prime intoned the renewal prayers, swung the censer as he circled slowly about the Firewell; the novices chanted their responses as they worked. One by one they brought the bronze pails of ash and clinker to be censed and blessed by the Prime, then filed out, singing as they walked, their voices strong and deep and filled with power.
Faharmoy knelt at the back, half hidden by an iron column; his eyes shut, his head bowed, he bathed in the sounds and smells of adoration and felt his soul unclench, his mind smooth out.
Some time later Adjoa novices followed an Adjo priest up the aisle. The kneeling stools were filling up with anxious people from the City here to pray for the breaking of the drought. Faharmoy saw the numbers and remembered other morning services he’d gone to in Gom Corasso, services where there was only a small scatter of worshipers; if the drought brought death, it also brought the laggard back to worship. Perhaps that was what it was for, to remind people of their duties. Duties they forgot when times were good.
He closed his eyes again, listened to the service, the ringing of hammers against small personal anvils, a rhythmic ting-tang that was the song of Chtunavayal.
Peace flowed into him and he felt strong enough to return to the aching uncertainties of the night.
He faced himself as honestly as he could, tried to comprehend what had happened to him. He could not accept that she was a man. He had seen, but he refused to believe that an abomination could attract him so powerfully. Why did she pull him to her even when he knew the evil that was in her? That first night… she seemed to understand everything, even what he had no words to say… her gentleness and her warmth… that was it. That warmth. It had to be more than pretense. Diyo, she was a whore. Diyo, it was her business to make him feel good. He understood that. And yet… there was something more… he felt it… she was part mother, part lover, part… he didn’t know. And yet, how could he forget her naked… that tall lean figure… that MAN… that very male man… showing how… how excited he was… the breasts
… the soft female breasts that he ached to touch even now… the thought of touching them brought a sweet agony to his loins… he wondered what love with that creature would be like… and tore his mind away from the images that exploded in his head. It was abomination. There was no one he could talk to about this, no one who would understand.’… who wouldn’t recoil from him in horror.
Adjoa kassos and novices sang the noon praises, beating their small anvils in time with the basso chant, then filed out.
Faharmoy knelt in shadows, meditating, hearing distantly what was happening around him, immersing himself in the cycle of worship, accepting everything without question, bathed in the perfumes and colors and music of worship.
In the afternoon a Biasharim funeral was held, the Anacho Prime himself there to lay the two souls, earth and spirit.