“I will work for you.”

She laughed. “Indeed you will! As my boots! I offer you an honorable death. You have violated the Code of Survival. The Race must work as one, not against itself. To atone, you will make your Contribution to the Race so that it may be rid of the elements of the gene pattern that came together as such a vile individual.”

He seemed to study her, testing her implacable feelings for an opening, but finding none, he accepted his fate stoically. He might resist, even try an escape. Then he would die by a stab in the back, a dishonorable death.

Teenae rose. “I have been reading the Gentle Heretic. She is a woman of mercy and very convincing.” She let her expression flow to softness; she touched his arm — to torture him with hope. She wanted to torture him. But when she escorted him to the great tower room, he knew there was no hope.

The high Stgal were there in crimson, stripped of their priestly insignia, watching with terrified unease to see black-clad foreign priests so casually asking for the life of another foreign priest. Gaet stood by, inscrutable. A choir of young Kaiel were there to Chant… and to guard. A young temple courtesan smiled lazily in her gaudy half-nakedness, ready to administer the last pleasures. The tower’s view was awesome: sprawling village blending into sea that reflected a giant moon, and in the other direction, the purple mountains.

Teenae erased her hatred. Gaet said she could not conduct the Last Rite unless she had prepared a clear soul. She was willing to make that sacrifice. Storm Master Tonpa remained pale. He stumbled. Had he ever been fearsome? Had he ever hung her cruelly from the yardarm of his topsail? Had he ever played with her, half drowning her? She seated the large man of the sea before the blood bowl, shackling him there, and began her Rite.

“We did not have kalothi. We died of the Unknown Danger. And God in His mercy took pity and carried us from the Unknown Place across His Sky so that we might find kalothi. We wept when He gave us Geta. We moaned when He cast us out. But God’s Heart was stone to our tears…”

Teenae was barely listening to the monotony of the memorized words. She had a recipe in mind for roast with potatoes and sauce that she would serve to Gaet back in the hills where they could be alone. She knew a tanner and a wonderful cobbler here in town. The boots would be thigh high and flaring at the calf. There would be enough leather left over for a new vest. Perhaps she could wear it with her green blouse and fawn trousers.

She stretched out her arms in salutation, holding the priest’s wooden talismans, the Black Hand and the White Hand. “Two Hands build kalothi. Life is the Test. Death is the Change. Life gives us the Strength. Death takes from us the Weakness. For the Race to find kalothi the Foot of Life takes the Road of Death.”

She forgot her unfamiliar lines for a moment and smiled at Tonpa, then glanced shyly at Gaet. Something giggled inside her at the dour expressions of the Stgal. “All of us contribute to God’s Purpose…”

She was eager to reach the Giving of the Last Delights. The temple woman was beautiful. There would be Chanting and moonlight. Would Tonpa’s fear, visible now, seeping through his pores, be enough to make him impotent?

“… the greatest honor is to contribute Death for we all love Life.” God, the view up here was staggering! “It is with awe that I accept the offering of your defective genes…”

Tonpa was staring at her with rancor. He could not resist a parting snarl. “All of you will die a death of horror!”

53

When masters play, treachery is their least valued tactic, not because the ways of deceit are ineffective but because of long-term consequences. Is not the treacherous player isolated by mistrust during the end game?

HER KILLING MOOD as invisible as her secret name, the Queen of Life-before-Death stalked slowly through the Swift Wind’s victory party in the se-Tufi persona of Sugarpie, a woman who wore gaudy clothes of her own design, flirted without much interest in sex, and was an avid gourmet of gossip. Sugarpie’s smile was quick to say hello and as quick as her eyes to wander in search of people more worthy of her smile. This evening she was spreading colorful rumors of the violent end of Radiance who had turned traitor for the sake of the hairy Kaiel.

There were no Mnankrei wives present. This was Nie’t’Fosal’s victory party, a celebration of male prowess. Everywhere the talk gave the greatest Winterstorm Master of the Mnankrei credit for destroying the Gathering of Outrage as easily as the Red Death tree poisons the swarming gei. The tales were of Fosal’s invincibility. No enemy stood against him! no friend dared betray him! no woman dominated him! He had promised his followers that in time he would snuff out the Gathering as if it had never been. And he had been right! The final fevered agonies of the Advance Court embellished the tales like decoration upon cake.

Humility finally targeted the ideal carrier of her lie. From a distance she saw’t’Fosal at the gaming tables being served by a naked courtesan whose scarifications had been outlined with blue and red paint. This garish beauty left her master for a moment to fetch him a drink and Humility caught her just long enough to tell her of the grim death of her Liethe rival, knowing that the story would go directly to the ears of the Winterstorm Master.

The antidote ’t’Fosal had treacherously instructed Radiance to take after she had infected the food of the Kaiel was no antidote, but a poison violent enough to rip the muscles from her bone. He was not a grateful man. Tonight he would be keyed to hear about that death. Let him feel the elation of total success. An enemy with his belly full was a dead enemy.

As she drifted back through the party, Humility wondered at this madman’s perception of people. He despised women and so he perceived the Liethe as incompetent to perform a simple chemical analysis. Humility herself had done the preliminary toxicity study of his “antidote” as a normal precaution and had been appalled by the crudity of his chemicals as well as his tactics. Only a man who longed to be vastly superior to others needed to see his enemy as a fool who might be persuaded to eat strychnine like candy. Nie was a brilliant biologist lacking understanding of people. He did not even know that to murder a Liethe and leave the slightest trail was an act of suicide.

Moments later Humility was inside the cabin of a small canal boat with an adolescent se-Tufi, changing from the guise of Sugar-pie to the black robes of the night assassin. They chatted about romantic love. The young girl was disdainful and sure that it would never catch her. She was trying to say that she was in love with her brave older sister.

Humility thought only of Hoemei. Scowlmoon, trailing a ruddy scarf upon the canal, was all she had to remember him by. His room in the round ovoids of the Kaiel Palace had looked upon Scowlmoon, night and day, and all the changing moods of that moon had watched the loving of their bodies. Why should she still feel the touch of his hand above all others?

The two identical women, one smaller and less breasted than the other, poled the boat to the buildings of Nie’t’Fosal’s residence where Radiance had been but once. Humility kissed her young sister and disappeared into the shadows, and, from the cover of a silent alley, climbed the walls until she gained one of the slate rooftops that led to the tower lair of her prey. A rope trick and a swift flying fall took her to a parapet of the tower. Another climb found the hexagonal window. Nie had never noticed how Radiance had spent one pensive interlude beside the window. Now the lock broke easily and she entered this place where the leader of the Swift Wind did most of his lonely thinking and some of his chemical trickery. Once inside she reclosed the hexagon.