Floating Worlds

MATUKO

Before she had her coat off, Boltiko and Illy burst in the door. “What did you think of Vribulo? Where did you go?” They closed around her. Illy took her coat and Boltiko hustled her into the kitchen of her house.

“Did you go to the Akopra? Where did you stay?”

“In the Barn.” She sat on the curved bench at her kitchen table. There were cushions on it, to lift her up to a Styth level. “We went to the Akopra and saw The Dragon.” Boltiko put a steaming cup before her on the table. Illy sat beside her.

“Dragon. Was it good? But you wouldn’t know.”

“Tanuojin said it was terrible.”

“Tanuojin,” Boltiko said. “Was he there?”

“Where is David?”

“Where did you go to eat?” Illy said. “Did he buy you anything?”

Boltiko said, “The baby is asleep. He was so sick before, I walked him up and down all last watch, but he’s better now.”

Paula sipped the sweet tea. Boltiko worried over every cranky cry. “We ate at Colorado’s. What was wrong with him—his stomach again?”

“Colorado’s,” Illy said, blank. “What’s that?”

“A dock,” Boltiko said. “You should have made him take you somewhere nice, Paula.”

The tea was gone. Paula sat back, her hands on her warm belly. “I liked it. All the women were painted up; I felt like a mouse. I guess they’re whores, aren’t they? Saba had some trouble with the Prima—Tanuojin was in a fight in the pit.”

“I hope Saba didn’t get involved?”

“What was wrong with David?”

Boltiko sat down in a chair across the table from Paula. “His tum-tum. Poor baby.”

“Little glutton.”

“Who fought Tanuojin?” Illy said. “Did he win?”

“Oh, yes. It was Ymma, the Lopka Akellar.” Paula watched Boltiko sip from a cup, dainty as a nun. “You don’t like Tanuojin?”

“That man will ruin Saba,” the prima wife said.

“I don’t know him,” Illy said. “My brother hates him.” Her brother was the Merkhiz Akellar, the Prima Cadet, whose cadet was Saba.

“Do you like him?” Boltiko asked Paula.

“No.”

“I knew him—before Saba’s father died, sleep deep, when we lived in Vribulo, Tanuojin practically lived with us. After Melleno fired him.” Boltiko took her cup across the kitchen to fill from the jug on the counter. “He’s low-born, he’s ambitious, and he is evil. I can feel it.”

“How do you know he’s low-born? If nobody knows who his parents were.”

“With those nigger-eyes,” Illy said, “he’s slave-bred. Tiko, me too.”

Boltiko brought the hot jug and filled each of their cups. “He is no slave. He’s deviant. He should have been destroyed at birth. That’s the law.” She sank into her chair. “Instead, some soft-hearted woman protected him. She suffered. Everybody who ever helped him has suffered. Melleno gave him work and a respectable position and he seduced his daughter. Yekaka took him in and he betrayed him to Melleno.”

“Seduced his daughter,” Paula said. “Whose daughter?”

Illy gulped her tea. “Melleno’s. When he was the Prima, and Tanuojin worked for him. Here. I’ll show you how to tell your future.” She turned her empty cup over on the table.

Paula leaned toward the prima wife. “Tiko, you’ve known him longer than I have, but I can’t see Tanuojin seducing anybody.”

“He drugged her.” Illy lifted the cup. A wet ring showed on the tabletop. “See? It’s unbroken, that means my love is true. If it’s broken, that means lovers.”

“He drugged her,” Paula said to Boltiko. The story fascinated her. And Tanuojin would have been much younger, just clubbed, a creepy adolescent.

Boltiko’s round shoulders rolled in a shrug, her eyes watched Illy’s cup, her mouth was pursed. “She was very young, Diamo. Why would a girl like that, sweetly bred, defy her father for a man like Tanuojin?”

“Diamo.” It was a pretty name. I-love-you, it meant. Which seemed a possible answer.

“Drink your tea,” Illy said. “We’ll tell your future.”

In the lake shore market place, the people of Matuko were pressing thick around the open stall selling illusion helmets. Paula went through the mob, David slung on her hip. A roar of laughter went up. Like a flag a pair of white lace underpants waved above the crowd at the end of a long black arm. Paula glanced around her. Sril was waiting in a line to buy Martian cloth. In another direction, she saw three more people she knew coming out of a shop, packages in their arms. She would have to risk being spied on. Going down a lane between two shops, she went through a back door and into a room filled to the rafters with crates.

“Hello, junior.”

A window in the far wall half-lit the narrow open space between the rows of boxes. She went sideways, into the dark. “You’re taking a chance. You’re lucky you gave that message to the right slave.”

He shut the door behind her and switched on a light. “Not exactly. I understand he’s your property.” He crossed the room to pull a shade across the window. Paula sat down on a crate, putting David on the floor at her feet. Bunker looked thin. Neatly he settled himself across from her on a heap of quilted padding.

“Just the same,” she said, “don’t come here. I can get in touch with you if there’s anything I need.”

“How are you getting along?” He folded his arms over his chest. His gaze went to the little boy on the floor. David passed a bit of rope from his right to his left hand. His head was covered with a thin fuzz of hair; in a few days he would be shaved again. He raised his head, looking for Paula, and beamed at her.

“I just can’t connect that with you, junior,” Bunker said.

She laughed. “Look at his eyes.” The crate under her was hard, and she shifted to a pile of packing foam. “What do you want?”

“There’s a difficulty with the Council over the treaty.”

“Why? Saba is keeping the truce.”

“We have trouble convincing people that what isn’t happening is good for them.”

She looked around the crowded storeroom. The sides of the boxes were stenciled with the word BARSOOM and a long number. She flicked at a bit of packing foam on the skirt over her knee. “In one hundred fifty watches they are taking Ybix down past Jupiter. I’m sure if they know he’s coming they can protect themselves.”

“He confides that much in you? Poor chump.”

“He doesn’t confide anything. Is that all you want to know?”

Bunker scratched his chin. His black eyes glinted. “There’s the incident at Luna.”

“Pah. That was your fault.”

“Let me finish. That little exercise ushered General Gordon into the permanent rose garden. Luna is now suffering under General Marak, whose itch is money, not god. The Council says if the treaty works, we should be able to bring Matuko to answer for two ships and eight crewmen and a government.”

“Two ships,” she said.

“Ybix destroyed two patrol ships at Luna, didn’t she?”

David had taken hold of her skirt and was dragging himself up onto his feet. She watched him, remembering what had happened at Luna. “What did you have in mind?”

“The Council says if the Styths are dedicated to peace and law, they’ll be willing to put the case before the Universal Court.”

She put her hand down, and David took it, wobbling on his widespread legs. “Well, maybe they will.”

Bunker’s folded arms unlocked. He put his hands in the pockets of his heavy jacket. “Are you serious? Can you get them there?”

“Can Crosby’s Planet handle a visitation? Send them a subpoena.” She watched her son lower himself down to the floor again. “Not to Saba. He wasn’t even inboard during the shooting. Send it to Tanuojin.” She smiled at David, delighted by a new thought. “Send it by way of Machou.” David let go of her hand and landed with a thump on the floor.

“Will it work?”

“Maybe.” She stood up, stooped, and lifted the little boy up into her arms. “If it doesn’t I’ll try something else. How is Jefferson?”

“Fat Roland is getting old.” He shook his head. “We’ll be in trouble when she leaves the Committee.”

“You’re always in trouble. Send the subpoena.” She went out to the lane between the shops.

She sat on the hard shore of the lake playing her flute. Behind her were the tenements where the fishermen lived. Their ten-foot oars were propped up against the walls and their nets hung off the eaves in loops of mesh. The lake spread out before her like a sheet of carbon. The edge rippled against the flinty shore. She wondered what stirred the water: maybe the motion of the Planet.

Saba was coming along the shore toward her. She stopped playing to warm her hands in the sleeves of her tunic. Although she saw him often enough in the street, he had never seemed to notice her before. He came up beside her.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m just sitting here.” She picked up her flute again. “I like it here.”

“I want to talk to you.”

“Talk.” She blew six quick rising notes on the long black flute.

He sat down on the ground beside her and stared across the lake. She played the dream sequence from Alfide’s Spanish Anarchist. In the lake shallows, fish schooled, no longer than her fingers. They fed on waterbugs, invisibly small. Where the water was deeper, a flat shape stirred off the bottom—a Ybix, which fed on the fish.

“Look,” he said. “I want you to do something for me.”

“What?” She lowered the flute.

“If you do I’ll take you to Vribulo.”

“I can go to Vribulo by myself whenever I want.”

“I’m in love with this girl who lives in there.” His head jerked back toward the tenements behind them.

“Oh.”

“I’ve never felt like this about a girl in my whole life.” His hands rose off his knees. “But I can’t even talk to her. Her husband keeps her locked up. I’ve only seen her face three times. I’m going crazy.”

“Oh.” She turned to look back at the tenements, draped in nets. “Is he a fisherman—her husband?”

“Yes.”

“What is she like?”

“She’s beautiful. And she’s so young, and soft, and—” He rubbed his hands over his eyes. “Ive never felt like this before. Take a message to her for me. You can talk to her without anybody noticing.”

“What message?”

He sat back straight, smiling. “I knew you’d do it. I’ll buy you anything you want.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she said.

In the middle watch she went to Illy’s house, where Boltiko was fitting a dress to the young wife. Paula sat in the fur chair drinking kakine while Illy turned slowly around, her arms out, and the prima wife tacked up the hem. The dress had three sets of sleeves, one snug to the wrist, one slit to the elbow, one open to the shoulder, in three different kinds of cloth. The rest of the dress was black.

“How does it look?” Illy asked Paula, high-spirited.

“It’s beautiful. Tiko, it’s stunning.”

Boltiko said, “Neither of you thinks I can do anything.” Kneeling, she sat back on her calves to look, her moon-face placid with a smile.

“Wait until he sees it,” Illy said.

The prima wife held out one hand, and Paula got out of her chair and helped her stand, her fat hanging in layers off her bones. “He won’t be seeing too much at home, unless I miss the signs.”

Illy’s hands paused, unfastening the clips down the front of the dress. “What?”

Paula curled up in the soft white chair again, her head on the arm. Boltiko said, “He won’t be sleeping with any of us for a while, that’s what. Here, let me have it.” She removed the dress from Illy.

Surprised, Paula watched the young wife’s face drop open with alarm. “He has another woman.”

Boltiko was folding the new dress. Smoothing the cloth under her hand, she laid her gaze a moment on Illy. “Put your clothes on.” She turned to Paula. “Am I right?”

Paula nodded. Illy turned away, one hand out for her yellow robe. Boltiko stood watching her back, her vast face soft with sympathy.

“Child, you will never learn.” Her hand stroked and stroked the dress hanging over her arm. “Well. I have work to do.” She went heavily out the front door.

Illy sat down in the other sling chair. There were tear slicks down her cheeks. “Who is she?”

“A girl in the Lake District.”

“How can he do this to me?”

Paula sat up and filled her little cup again from the jug of kakine. Illy said, “Is she young? Have you seen her? Is she younger than me?”

“Yes. She’s very young.”

The Styth woman’s eyes overflowed with tears. The bright robe hung open. Under it she wore white underclothes like harness. Her body was beautiful, like her face, even crying.

“How can he do this to me?”

“Come on,” Paula said. “I’ll rub your back.”

Illy took her into her sleeproom. The windows were screened off with long panels of silk embroidered with rose-flies, their wings edged in gold. The room was dim as a cave. Illy lay down on the broad bed; while Paula stroked her back, she opened most of the tight white underclothes. Illy wept as if she enjoyed it. Quieting, she lay still and Paula ran her fingers up and down the soft skin of her back.

“He’ll come back to me. He always does.”

Paula bent and kissed her neck. “I think you’re beautiful. Don’t cry.” Paula pressed her mouth to the soft black cheek. “You’re much more beautiful than she is.” Illy turned toward her. Paula put her arms around her and kissed her mouth. “Don’t cry.”

The Styth woman’s lips parted. Saba had taught her how to kiss. The two women lay side by side, their mouths touching, Illy’s skin warmed, her breath came fast. She had no scent. When Paula touched her breast, Illy rubbed against her hand.

“Let me go get the kakine,” Paula said.

She locked the front door, brought the jug of liquor back to the sleeproom, and took her clothes off. Illy watched her.

“I’ve never done this before.”

The room was freezing. Paula climbed onto the bed and pulled the thick cover over her. She touched Illy, who lay down again on her back.

“This is bad, isn’t it?”

“It’s the same as with him.” Paula gave her the jug. She dipped her finger into the thick sweet liquor and drew in green kakine on Illy’s breast and licked it off.

“I never did that with him.”

They painted each other with kakine and sucked and kissed and licked it off. Illy’s skin softened and warmed. Her voice fell, husky.

“I wish he was here now. Don’t you want him?”

“We don’t need him.”

Illy’s thighs stroked together. Her pubic hair was shaved. Her hips were smooth, full arches. Paula spread kakine over her slit and the tiny nub at the top. Illy opened her legs.

“Please—”

“Do it to me.” Paula ran her tongue over the soft folded flesh.

“It tastes bad.”

“It tastes fine.”

“Oh.” Illy moved, offering herself. Her hands slid down over Paula’s legs and rump and her claws worked. Paula drew back.

“Oh,” Illy said. “Don’t stop.”

“Do it to me.”

“I can’t—I—”

“Do it. Use the kakine, if you don’t like the taste.” Paula fingered Illy’s body, and the Styth woman reached for the jug. Paula put her head down between the other woman’s legs again.

Illy balked twice more. Paula thought she liked pretending to be forced. In the end she did so well that Paula sobbed and clung to her through a pulsing climax. Illy lay on her side, shaking the empty jug.

“That’s nothing like with him. He would never do that for me.”

“You can suck him. He might learn.”

Illy called her house slave in to give him the jug. Paula covered herself in the bedclothes, her head near Illy’s knees and her feet on the pillow. The eunuch avoided looking at them. He might tell Pedasen, but he would tell no Styths.

“Could we get drunk like that?” Illy laughed. The slave brought back the jug, full. “I think I’m drunk, a little. Did I do it right? Did you like it?”

Paula smiled at her. Illy moved over and cradled her head on Paula’s thigh. “I liked it.” Paula touched the long black hair. Against Illy’s black skin her skin looked warm: red brown. She put her head down, pleased to be in bed with such a beautiful woman.

In the high watch, Paula went to the rack in her bedroom and found her clothes hacked to pieces with scissors. Pedasen was with her. He picked up a bit of a sleeve. “That low nigger,” he said, under his breath.

“Who did it?” She wheeled on him. He stooped, gathering up the shards of her dresses, the back of his head to her, and mumbled something inaudible. She squatted beside him. “Who?” she said into his face.

“I don’t know, mem.”

He took the rags away. She followed him down to the kitchen. “Why, then? I don’t even know any of the other slaves.”

Pedasen fed the scraps of cloth into the shredder. “Because you keep with the blacks. Going to her like that.” His face was guileless. She realized he was destroying the evidence before Boltiko found it. She watched a long black ribbon disappear between the lips of the shredder.

“How can they hate me when I don’t even know them?”

“You stay with the blacks against your own people.”

Angry, she went away down the hall.

“You’re pulling my hair out by the roots.”

“Everything that makes you beautiful hurts a little.” Illy brushed hard at Paula’s hair. David was in his new crib, in the room across the hall from Paula’s bedroom, and he let out a wail. Pedasen came down the hall from the kitchen to the child’s room. In the mirror Illy’s hands fluffed the bush of Paula’s hair. Illy stooped and kissed her shoulder.

“There. Doesn’t that look better, darling?”

“It looks fine. Can I get dressed now?”

“You’re impossible,” Illy said, and kissed her again. “I guess all intelligent people are a little odd in some way.”

Pedasen was singing to David, in the room across the hall. Paula strained to make out the words in the low voice. While she was dressing, Saba shouted in the front room. Illy clutched her shoulder.

“What is he doing here? You told me he didn’t come here.”

“That isn’t what I said.” Paula poked her feet into her shoes and slid off her bed. She had told Illy that Saba never slept with her. Saba came in the doorway.

“Do you have any more questions? I’m leaving in three hours.”

Dakkar appeared behind him in the hall. His prima son would rule Matuko in his absence. Illy withdrew across the room, veiling her face with one long black hand.

Paula said to Saba, “No—as long as I can use your computer I can figure everything out, I think.”

“Get the contract advances as high as you can,” he said. He ignored Illy as if she were not there. “Remember, one-tenth of it goes to me. Where is Vida?”

“He’s asleep.” She could still hear Pedasen singing to him.

Saba waved his hand at Dakkar, standing in the doorway with one hand on the frame. “I’ve told him to keep watch on you. Make it easy for him, like a good girl.” He turned and walked out of the room, and with a backward glance at her Dakkar followed him.

Illy said, “All those instructions. You must be important.” She ran her hands down Paula’s arms. Her voice turned wistful. “He never once said how pretty you look.”

The collar of Paula’s new dress itched. David lay heavy in her arms. Boltiko stood directly before her, and the mob of younger children before her, blocking Paula’s view of the yard. She knew Saba was somewhere near the bilyobio tree because the steady murmur of voices came from that direction. This ceremony was obviously important, since Ketac had come all the way from Vribulo for it.

This was her family now, these people around her. David made her belong to them, to Boltiko and Illy beside her, the little children, the older boys having part in the ceremony, and the man taking ceremonious leave of them all. She felt no kinship with them. Sometimes she wondered how else she ought to see herself, an alien intruder, a guest, or a glorified slave. Maybe, like the man who rode across Lake Constance, if she saw what she really did, she would die of fright.

Illy turned her head slightly. Her face was covered, like Boltiko’s, only her beautiful eyes showing. Through the tail of her eye she glanced at Paula, and she moved a step backward and took Paula’s hand. Paula squeezed her fingers.

Saba took Ybix away to the Asteroids. Half the rAkellaron wanted contracts to trade with the Middle Planets, and they could not understand why Paula needed more time than a watch to draw them up. She began with Melleno, thinking that he would be easier to deal with because he was Saba’s ally. She was mistaken. He refused to give her information she needed and ignored some of her questions entirely. At first it made her angry, until she realized that he was not being arbitrary. He was simply acting like a man who could recite his pedigree back fifty-three generations to a mythical hero. To get his attention she had to assure him of his family’s glory and remind him of his duty to maintain it, and to convince him that trading with the Middle Planets was the way to do that.

With five cities and four million people under his rule, Melleno could demand three times the advances Saba had gotten, but the mention of money made him very short-tempered. She guessed he was afraid of seeming to be bribed; and anyway it was ignoble to need money. The payments had to be disguised as gifts and tribute, incidental to the real purpose of the contract which was to glorify Melleno among the fifty-three generations of Mellenos.

Tanuojin’s contract was much easier. Yekka was the newest city in Uranus and the biggest bubble in Styth. Only a hundred thousand people lived there, mostly small farmers. Although Tanuojin had been married to Melleno’s daughter, he himself had no family at all. Paula worked with his pitman and the man left behind in Yekka to rule in Tanuojin’s absence and they wrote a contract in plain language and straight terms.

The politics of the rAkellaron were actually simple: they bullied the weaker and obeyed the stronger; but they went about it with the formality of an Akopra. At first she thought that, if she could only find the right key, she could talk directly to the sense; but there was no key. The Styths responded only to the forms. She had to learn their diplomatic language phrase by phrase.

Slowly she grew confident in it. Matuko no longer seemed such a strange place. She walked in the city, she talked to Boltiko and Illy and slept with Illy, and she and Pedasen took care of David. The child was her clock in the timeless city. He walked, he ran, his babbling began to sound like words. She took him around the city with her, but once three or four slaves in the market threw street shales at her and chased her halfway home, and after that she left him in the compound.

“What did you bring for Paula?” Boltiko asked.

Paula looked up; Illy stopped pulling on her new gloves. The three women faced him across the little round glass table of Illy’s sitting room. He fussed with his mustaches. “I forgot.”

“Oh, Saba.”

“I’ll get her something in the White Market.”

Paula folded her legs under her. She sat deep in one corner of the sling chair. She was glad he had forgotten to bring her a present, which put her apart from the other women and the bawling horde of children. He had gotten everything in the Off-World Market anyway, before he left. Illy tugged the gloves off her hands.

“You can have these.” She thrust the soft leather handful at Paula.

“Don’t be silly,” Paula said.

Her arm extended toward her, Illy gave her husband a slashing look. “Take them.”

“Illy, they won’t fit me.” Paula tucked her hands in her sleeves. She glanced quickly at Saba, afraid he would suspect them. Illy’s eyes were liquid with tears. Slowly she put on the fawn-colored gloves. With a low cry she rushed into the sleeproom and shut the door.

“What’s the matter with her?” Saba said. Between them, Boltiko turned toward Paula. Her face brimmed with understanding. Paula stared at the prima wife a moment. Illy’s eunuch brought in a tray of cakes and fruit and set out the little dishes on the table. Boltiko turned away.

“Go ask Illy what she will drink,” Paula said to the slave. Saba was picking up a handful of cakes. Just after one bell he had come back from six hundred watches in Ybix; he had spent the whole low watch in bed with Illy. Boltiko caught Paula’s eye. Her small mouth was clamped shut, as if she bit on something foul. The slave poured whiskey for Saba and Paula and kakine for Boltiko.

“I have something for you,” Paula said to Saba. “A lot of money.”

“I saw Tanuojin’s contract in Saturn-Keda.” She had sent a copy of it with Melleno’s contract, since they were related. Saba swallowed a mouthful of cake. He picked up a white pala fruit. “He’s a little salty you know so much about Yekka.”

Illy came in and sat between them, her face stony. Saba ignored her, intent on the sweet juices of the pala fruit. Paula buried her fists in her lap.

“What does he expect—I can’t go to the Martians without knowing what I’m talking about.”

“If you brought him the five moons in a net he would call you a thief. He thinks you’re the kundra in the Akopra.”

Illy was staring at the table, her profile to Paula, her beautiful mouth swollen, her eyelashes tipped in gold. I use her the same as he does, Paula thought. As kindless as him. She said, “It’s amazing how much you find out—drawing up a contract like that.” Her voice sounded brittle. She cleared her throat.

“Are you keeping everything you learn?”

“Naturally. What happened on your mission?”

“Everything bad. The Martians were all running in convoys. We didn’t take a ship.” He picked up Illy’s hand in the soft skin glove and laid her palm against his cheek. To Boltiko he said, “Come feed me something that isn’t sweet.” She heaved quaking off the chair and followed him out.

Paula sighed. She smoothed her hair back from her face. Illy took off the gloves, her gaze on her hands.

“I nearly let him know about us, didn’t I?”

“Boltiko knows.”

“She won’t tell him.”

“Maybe we should—” Paula tried to judge what he would do if he found out about them. Unpredictable. She would not risk it. “Now that he’s back, we should break it off.”

Illy lurched around to face her. “No. You’re staying with me.” She flung the gloves down on the table.

Paula emptied her cup and put it down. She scrambled forward off the chair. Illy grabbed her sleeve.

“You can’t leave me.”

“You’re worse than a man.”

“If you leave me, I’ll tell him.” Illy gripped her arms. “I’ll tell him, and he’ll take your boy away.”

Paula wrenched loose. She brushed past her to the door and went out to the yard. Behind her Illy screamed her name. She ran back to her own house.

Saba gave David a robot that talked in pidgin Styth when it was wound up. After two watches of its screechy little voice Paula broke off the key. None of the women was talking to any of the others. Saba noticed it and made several remarks to Paula he obviously thought were the fine edge of wit. Everything he said convinced her that he knew about her and Illy. Whenever Paula was in sight, Illy hung on him. Paula could barely eat. Finally he went down to Yekka, and she went limp with relief, and the next watch woke up with a piercing pain in her belly.

The cramps bound her guts so that she could not straighten. She sent David for Pedasen. Certainly Illy had poisoned her. But the eunuch poked at her stomach and shook his head.

“No, it’s just slave-gripe.” He went down to the kitchen and came back with a pot of boiling water and the box of tea.

David climbed onto the bed. “Mama, I help you.” He pulled on her arm. Pedasen steeped the tea in a cup.

“I’m surprised you haven’t had it before,” he said. “Maybe because you spend all your time with the blacks. They never get it.”

“Pedasen,” she said, “don’t lecture me.” She doubled up, groaning.

“Here.” He pulled David away and gave her the strong bitter tea to drink. “You’ll feel better when you have the shits.”

She gulped the tea. Her forehead burst with sweat. David scrambled up beside her. “Mama, get up.” Pedasen lifted him away.

Feet hurried down the hallway, and Boltiko and Illy rushed into the room. They consulted with the eunuch. Paula lay on her side, breathing with pain. Illy sat down beside her.

“It’s all right, my darling, I’m here.”

Pedasen was right. Her guts loosened in a stinking, burning flux. The relief lasted only a few moments. Her body knotted up again. All the rest of the watch she went between her bed and the washroom. Pedasen and Boltiko left, but Illy stayed the whole time. She held Paula’s hand and talked to her, even while she squatted over the hole in the steamroom and gave up her insides in a flood.

She began to feel better. Illy washed her face with scented water. Paula moaned in the new luxury of being free of pain. She felt guilty for suspecting Illy of causing it. She took Illy’s hand and kissed it, and Illy hugged her.

Boltiko watched her hands in her lap. She was weaving a shawl. She sat on the swing in Paula’s sitting room; she had claimed as she walked in the door that she wanted to get away from the children. Paula stood by the window, her back to the window, and folded her arms over her chest.

“All right. You want to talk about Illy.”

The prima wife’s gaze remained on her hands. “I’m very disappointed in you. You know you’re betraying Saba?”

“Saba has other women all the time.”

“He’s taken you into our home.”

“That’s because he needs me. We have work together.”

“I know that,” Boltiko said. “You’ve changed him, you’ve made him think differently about almost everything. I admit I’m jealous of you.” She turned the work in her hands, smoothing the intricate design between her weaving needles. “We all have our lot in life.” She nodded down the hallway. “You are the only person I’ve ever known to tame a kusin.”

The little animal was coming out of the baby’s room. It ran down the hall in the opposite direction, to the kitchen to drink. Paula’s eyes followed it. She had done nothing to tame it.

“That’s a compliment, Tiko. It won’t come in when Illy is here.”

“I still think you’re betraying him,” Boltiko said. “He’ll forgive you, because you’re his friend. Illy he will not forgive.”