Donald Kingsbury - Courtship Rite

The older man grumbled. “It is useless to believe that we will ever be gaming the Riethe of The Forge of War . That was long ago. Did it not all happen before the Passage? They will have changed. Change is eternal. They will not be the fools who charged against the machine rifles at Vimy Ridge. Those French peasants so weak in kalothi will long have made their Contribution to be replaced by a more deadly breed.”

“Hoemei plans to breed for military talent like we Kaiel are bred for our ability to predict. Every soldier of the clan will be a military dobu.”

“Of what rank?”

“At least the rank of Alexander the Great or Guderian.”

“Then I will back him.”

“But he does not intend to breed for such talent recklessly as was Aesoe’s aim. Such a talent must be balanced. We must predict, before such violence is unchained, what the balancing forces will be.”

They heard the noise of a crowd outside and the older Kaiel went to see. “They’re here,” he said, beckoning.

The three of them had chosen this tavern because the high steps leading to it would give them an excellent view of the wedding procession. All of Sorrow was dressed in its best and jockeying for position. People hung from windows and were crowded onto balconies. Two children had climbed a wirevoice pole. Other children ran on ahead, happier to lead the procession than to watch it.

“Seven!” said the older Kaiel in disgust as the maran came into sight.

Kathein and Oelita led. Kathein wore a robe of red, slit vertically, blue-dyed hoiela wings showing through the slits, and a headdress of hoiela wings with silver inlay for her facial cicatrice. Oelita wore white Orthei lace with a tall crown of white lace and white paint along the ridges of her facial design.

Hoemei followed them in more subdued attire, a black and gray striped ankle-length skirt, and a billowing silky blouse of gray sheen, open at the front in a swoop that flowed under his stomach to show his scarred chest. The blouse was held in place by a decorated spring-clasp at his waist that did not close over his midriff. He wore the bronze helmet long linked to the high predictors with its polished wings that swept so low over his shoulders that he was restrained from tipping his head to either side.

The young Kaiel woman on the tavern balcony thought she saw him turning her way and threw him her bouquet of desert flowers. He was only signaling Oelita, and her heart sank, but Teenae was watching and caught the bee-loved blossoms with a smile, kissed them, and tossed her kiss to the balcony with her other arm.

Teenae wore an elaborate headdress that began with a green jeweled insect crawling down the shaved centerline of her skull on a hundred silver comb-like legs that wrapped her black hair in happy coils. Her neckpiece, in black and white lace, rose to her chin. Her blouse was white and close-fitting with sleeves slit from the back of the shoulder to the wrist and held at the elbow with silver chains. The valleys of her facial cicatrice were dyed black. Her pantaloons were black and flaring around her hips. They, too, were split at the back, from waist to ankle, to emphasize her feminine walk. Silver chains held the pantaloons together. The valleys of the designs on her buttocks and legs were painted in white.

“That giant with her must be Joesai,” said the older Kaiel to his youthful friend. “He looks like he had an Ivieth for a mother and a fei flower for a father!”

Joesai was dressed in what he thought was the court finery of an Imperial Chinese Warrior of the Han Dynasty. It was immaterial that the colored insects embroidered into his blue coat were Getan and not Riethe.

Noe’s hair was wound into a silver cage like a nest for the insect that sat there with lustrous blue-green wings and eight silver legs and four green eyes. The silver motif was repeated in the filigree of the wings. They reached down to rest on her shoulders and rebounded to stretch a hand’s length beyond them, acting as the perch for two more grinning insects. A bolt of the finest white silk hung from the wing’s framework and down between her legs and up along her back to leave her sides bare to show off the exquisite skin carvings along her ribs and hips. Metallic insects, holding hands across her waist and clinging to her legs, held the garment together. She gripped Gaet by the arm.

He wore top hat and tails, a costume he had copied from a picture of Abraham Lincoln. To enliven the effect he had added tassels to the top hat and wore a rubied platinum nose ring and platinum wire, set with tiny rubies, in the valleys of his facial scars. On the ridges of his cicatrice he had let the beard grow to fingernail length and dyed it green. He thought he made an elegant Amerikan groom, a Mormon perhaps.

Behind them came two male Ivieth in their finery, carrying a colored palanquin with Jokain, who watched the crowds with every awareness of his destiny. Teenae’s Gatee clutched the railing of another gaudy palanquin, wide-eyed at the pageantry. Another transported the twins. A tall female Ivieth, bare-breasted and in elaborate skirt, carried Teenae’s new baby who ignored everything in her contentment with the milk of the bosom at which she suckled.

When the procession had passed, the young creche-Kaiel affectionately took the arm of her male companion. “Let’s get married so we’ll have a broader range of topics to fight about!”

He gave her a hug. “I think bachelor Aesoe had the right idea! Once you start this wedding business, where does it end?”

“Seven!” snorted the old man.

WEDDINGS HAD SERIOUS moments but mostly they were times for fun. Six tumblers, three men and three women, slipped into the great plaza of the Temple of Sorrow in mock wedding finery, one malevolently tripping another to be caught by a third to be tripped himself and caught in a cycle of marital quarrel and assistance that accelerated into a dazzling display of body-throwing.

A rustle of attention fell over the audience as the members of the real procession found their seats. Behind the maran and the new brides, the Chanters were grouped on the stairway with the wall behind them to reflect their voices into the crowd. They wore the resonant facemasks that changed the trained human voice into a vibrant instrument able to handle the deepest rumbles or highest trills. Now they sang for the tumbler-contortionists.

These buffoons never stopped their torrent of jokes. Three-husband would flirt with two-wife, and becoming lecherous, would back up to run at her for an embrace, only to crash into two-husband while two-wife stepped aside into the embrace of one-husband while two-husband had to throw three-husband at one-wife to save his robe from the intended fate of the robe of two-wife. Everything they tried ended as a miscalculation but miraculously every disaster landed them on their feet or in some astonished rescuing arms. Their lovemaking was a breathtaking vortex of contortion. Sweet flirtations ended in mayhem. A sly husband ran off with Teenae, followed by three irate wives who tumbled over each other in pursuit, not quite catching him before he managed to kiss her… and so it went, to the audience’s delight.