The Wraeththu Chronicles (98 page)

"So, you're looking for work," he said, after Astarth had explained how I'd arrived. I murmured some assent. "Thank you, Astarth," Jafit said meaningfully, and Astarth backed out, closing the door gently behind him. Jafit offered me a drink and I poured myself gracefully into a chair. I could see the spinner-light crashing round Jafit's eyes like a cash-till while he looked at me. He handed me a glass of tart wine. "And where have you worked before then, er, Calanthe?"

"Oh, in Wesla, Persis . . . places like that."

"You are familiar then with the advanced practices of chaitra and pelcia?"

Astarth had told me to say yes when Jafit asked me that. "I've had no trouble before," I answered carefully.

"Forgive my asking, but how come you're so far east? I detect a trace of Megalithican in your accent. You don't look like a kanene. I get the feeling that you're the sort of person who doesn't need to be one, either!"

I shrugged, pulled a wry face. "You flatter me. I did come from Megalithica originally, yes. There are reasons why I'm doing this work, which I'd rather not go into. But they won't cause you any hassle, I can promise you that."

Jafit grinned. "They'd better not. I don't relish the thought of angry pursuers materializing on my doorstep. You'd better tell me now if you're in any kind of trouble. That doesn't mean I won't give you a place, so don't he frightened."

"I'm not in trouble," I said. "Nobody's after me."

"Good." Jafit slapped his legs and stood up. "OK Calanthe, I admit I like the look of you. I'll let Astarth take you over the rails for a week or two and then you can come to me. If you pass my test, and it's rigorous, I promise you, we'll set you to work. Payment is seven spinners a week, plus bed and board. You'll live here, of course. There won't be any need for you to do domestic duties, we have a staff for that, so you can sit and rub lemon juice into those torn hands of yours every night to get them soft again. One thing; don't abuse the staff! They have to work for a living too. Don't get cigarette burns in the furniture. Don't waste fuel or food and don't go poking around in any areas of the house that are off limits to you. Got that Any other rules of the house, Astarth can tell you about. Learn as you go along; they're mostly a good bunch here. They'll help you. Any questions?"

I shook my head. "No, it all seems clear."

"Good. Now one thing, Calanthe, that I have to say to all newcomers and I only say it once, so remember it well. I look after my hara. I look after them very well. So you work well for me, do you hear? If anyone pulls a fast one on me, they're dead. No questions asked. Got it?" I nodded. Jafit reached forward and shook my hand. "I'm sure you do, Calanthe, I'm sure you do. Now, once a week, I like us all to have dinner together, so I'll see you again then. Listen to Astarth; he knows his job. You'll learn well and quickly from him. I make sure my kanene are the best around here." He waved a hand at me and I stood up. Jafit didn't speak again.

I went out, my mind reeling. What had I got myself into? Jafit's little empire. What, in the Aghama's name, were pelcia and chaitra?

Astarth was waiting for me in the hall. He asked no questions, but told me that I would have to wait a few days until I could have a room of my own. Apparently, all the spare rooms were in varying states of decay, so one would have to be redecorated and furnished for me. At my request, Astarth reluctantly took me on a tour of the house. It is much larger inside than it appears from the front, and rather haphazard in design. It is constructed in a rough square around a central courtyard. Three-storied on two sides, where the main rooms and living quarters of the kanene are to be found, and two-storied on the remaining sides, which comprise the kitchens, domestic quarters and the stables. I heard that it could all get very fragrant out in the courtyard come summer. Refuse collection is not one of Fallsend's strong points. What community council exists is more interested in feathering its own nest rather than the welfare of the people, or so Astarth told me. I can believe it. In fact, I was rather surprised that Fallsend had a community council at all, however corrupt.

A bitter wind worried round the courtyard as Astarth and myself, standing in a kitchen doorway, studied the rear vista of Piristil. Astarth wanted to make it brief. Shivering and exclaiming, he began to close the door. "Wait!" I said, staying his hand. I pointed out into the gloom, toward the right of the house. There, the top story's windows were shuttered, in a disturbingly permanent-looking manner. Several were reinforced with iron bars. Light was leaking around the shutters.

"And what's kept up there?" I asked lightly. "A mad consort of Jafit perhaps? A deranged kanene?"

"What do you mean?" Astarth responded frostily.

"Well, you have to admit, it does rather look as if something's being . . . kept in up there, or hidden at least. Very gothic, Astarth, a nice touch."

My laughter did not amuse him however. His face had assumed a curiously blank expression.

"You must be tired, Calanthe. Sleep is what you need now, I think," he said, and the door was firmly closed.

That first night in Piristil, I succumbed to an exhausted slumber, stretched out on the floor in Astarth's room. In the morning, I awoke with my feet uncovered, freezing cold, my neck complaining fiercely because I'd rolled off the pallet in the night and slept on the hard floor. Across the room, I could see Astarth looking blissfully comfortable, up to the ears in thick quilts, his head buried in a mound of white pillows. As soon as I looked at him, he woke up. He has the instincts of a wild animal.

"Well, I'm glad you look different. You were telling the truth, it seems. You are beautiful," he said.

Normally, such words would be taken as a compliment, but Astarth delivered them without feeling. Nothing for me to work on there!

"You will never catch me lying," I said.

Astarth ignored this remark. "At least your training will be that much more pleasurable, well bearable, for me. As a rule, ugliness revolts me," he said profoundly. His conceit amused me. Piristil was certainly a little world of its own.

"Training," I said, without inflection, somewhat affronted, somewhat amused. I didn't know Astarth's age, but I estimated that he was anything between thirty and fifty years younger than me; a second generation Wraeththu har. "It will be interesting to see what you can teach me." The matter would clearly have to be dealt with on a scientific basis. Astarth didn't answer. Secure as a princeling of his own little kingdom, he sat up in the bed and lifted aside the curtains to glance out of the window. "Rain again," he said. "Well, what a surprise!"

"I would like to live in a warmer country, but Jafit thinks I would find it uncomfortable," he continued vaguely. "Orpah will be bringing our breakfast in soon. You'd better dress. You don't want the servants seeing you in that state."

I groaned and lifted my cursing body off the floor. Astarth brushed me with a fleeting glance.

"Oh, scars," he said.

"A few. Will that increase or decrease my value?"

"Neither."

"I hope I'm not going to regret any of this," I said, in a cheerful tone, pulling a shirt over my head.

"Hmmm," Astarth said.

"Have you?" I asked. "Regrets I mean . . ."Astarth stared at me. I had offended him, asked a question he did not want to answer. I put up my hands in a gesture of apology.

"I don't intend to stay in this place for long," I said. Astarth was silent. He rose from the bed, crossed to the mirror, touched his face, stretched.

"Jafit is impressed by you," he said.

/ am Uigenna. This is the tribe that took us in. Uigenna. We had no way of knowing one tribe from another; we did not know they have different beliefs, different ways, different breath. Inception was ghastly. A fire-lit cellar, leaping flame shadows on the walls, a stink of filth. Inception room. Their hienama wore feathers and fur, stripes daubed across his face and chest. He took glass, a shard of glass in his hands. Someone held me down. I felt the painless, sickening kiss of sharpness against weak flesh. A transfusion of Wraeththu blood. We 'd heard it was something like that. Hienama and me. His blood into my veins, humanity dripping out of me onto sand and sawdust, with a halo of whimpering. I heard Seel crying, far away, nearby, in my head. Yes, in my head. Seel would not accept inception to this tribe. I had already made up my mind. The past was powerless to persuade me otherwise, whether through love or hate. Even in my pain and fear, I did not regret. Not once. Not ever. For the next few days, whilst my body churned and changed, it was that one, fierce thought that kept me alive. It was what I wanted. I would face death to get it; and I did. And now is the time ...

Now is the time for this virgin body to flower. I have arisen, shining, from
  
althaia to a waiting hunger. The leader of this Uigenna tribe is known as Manticker the Seventy. This is because he once slew seventy armed human soldiers in one frenzied outburst. I can believe it. He is scarred and muscled,
  
his femininity betrayed by his temper, his inner strength. I have only been here
 
for a short while, yet already it is clear Manticker is being rivalled for control
 
of the tribe. His contender is one Wraxilan, a great favorite of the warriors.
 
He is rash and careless, but fearless and strong and quick. He carries few
 
scars. His blond hair is shorn at the sides of his head, but as the rest of it is
  
so thick, he still carries a splendid mane. He is also known as the Lion of Oomar, which is how our branch of the tribe is named. Wraxilan has the broad shoulders of a man, the slim hips of a dancer, the hands and neck of a graceful Amazon, the shapely legs of a whore. He laughs nearly all the time. Like all the others, I am passionately intrigued by him. Slightly afraid, yes, but that is a wise precaution. Now, I lie waiting in the straw, by the light of a single candle, in a dank cellar. I am waiting for the one who will come to me, awaken my new, female crevices, seal the pact that I have made with Wraeththu. As he comes toward me, it is his hair that I recognize first. "You,"
   
I say, and in my voice I hear the echoes of welcome and fear.

"You think I would let anyone else have you, Cal?" he answers, smiling.
   
"You're the best we've had for a long time. Lie back. I will make this good
   
for you."

The Lion of Oomar. He says, "I am your first. You must remember this. " "No," I answer, "you are not the first. It was Seel. "

He laughs and cups my chin with his hand, squeezes hard. I wince.

"No, my darling, that was before. All that is gone, do you hear? I am your first. Me!" As he says that, he plunges into me. Ouana-lim, the phallus of Wraeththu. Bone and petals, with the tongue of a snake. He enjoys my weeping. He licks the tears from my face, and even in pain, I cannot resist the rising delight of aruna. That is the way of it. Irresistable. At the end, he takes my head in his hands once more.

"What am I?" he asks, and through a haze of tears, half-delirious, I say, "You are the first. The first."

"And will you ever forget that?"

"Never. I swear it. Never."

He pushes me back into the straw. Stands up. Rearranges his clothes. As I lie there with tears falling down my face into the straw, I can hear him whistling as he strolls away from me .

Breakfast in Piristil is necessarily a light meal. This is because most kanene rise late in the morning and the mid-day meal follows soon after. It is customary for most of the kanene to meet at lunchtimes, in the dark and elegant dining room on the ground floor. Astarth told me I could use his cosmetics until I had some of my own.

"Is it really necessary at this time of day?" I asked.

"It is always necessary," Astarth replied in a stony voice. "You had better get into the habit of it quickly."

He was strangely modest about displaying his body and even reprimanded me about my own carefree attitude toward nakedness. "Your body is the tool of your trade," he said. "Get used to the idea that it is to be flaunted only in the presence of paying clients. If you like, this is a psychological exercise in maintaining a certain mystery about what we do."

I did not bother to argue. It was a minor point.

About an hour later, we heard the chime of a gong from downstairs. "That is for lunch," Astarth said. "Come on. Hurry up." I was still fighting with my hair in the mirror, not possessing Ezhno's quick knack of arranging it. I followed Astarth downstairs. It is quite amusing how the kanene look upon themselves as creatures of quality. All day, they maintain this genteel code of manners and behavior that would have been more at home in an upper-class girls' boarding-school of perhaps a century before. They are obviously not blind to their station in life, hence the need for a pretense of class and etiquette. Downstairs, I was formally introduced to the other kanene. Several of them were natives of the fabled land of Jaddayoth. Salandril and Rihana, languid creatures, came from the cat-worshiping tribe of Kalamah in eastern Jaddayoth; Yasmeen, Nahele and Ezhno from the gregarious Hadassah; and a gaunt, forbidding-looking creature named Flounah from the Maudrah.

After polite greetings, I took my place at the table, between a delightful imp named Lolotea and Ezhno. Of course, as before, the usual ways of starting a conversation were taboo, and it seemed my presence inhibited the sharing of gossip, so I opted for a safe subject, and one in which I had a deep interest: Jaddayoth. Nobody was loath to talk about it. I learned that there are twelve tribes of Jaddayoth and, from what I could gather, they were all equally eccentric in one way or another. Most of them had formed from groups splitting off from the Gelaming, who wanted to develop their own brand of Gelaming philosophy and lifestyle, whilst others had grown from bands of refugees fleeing Megalithica at the time of the Varrish defeat. Of course, during that time, many hara were reluctant to live under Gelaming rule. This would, naturally, have meant their giving up such practices as murdering, looting, raping and conquering, and most of the hierarchy of the Varrs and their chief allies, the Uigenna, did not welcome the prospect of a world of peace and plenty. Their rituals were too steeped in the previously mentioned depravities for that. In Jaddayoth, such a vast and empty place, they had been able to hide and lick their wounds, eventually emerging as new tribes. The Gelaming, true to their all-powerful reputation, do keep a cursory eye on what goes on in Jaddayoth. Several of the tribes are, in fact, still closely allied to Almagabra, but on the whole, it is still an unsupervised country, where new societies can blossom unmolested. All natives of Jaddayoth are surprisingly patriotic about the place, even those who, for dark and untold reasons, have obviously had to leave it, such as the kanene. Obvious too was the fact that Jaddayoth is a rising star in terms of affluence and trade. In Piristil, we eat Gimrah meat and vegetables off Hadassah plates. Our perfumes and cosmetics come from Kalamah, our oil and carpets from Emunah, our wine from Natawni. It didn't take long for one clear and radiant idea to settle within me. Once I'd saved enough of my immoral earnings, Jaddayoth was the place I'd go. Privacy and freedom; what more could I want?