Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [593]
‘I shall sing for you, Luterin,’ said Yaringa. It was her speciality.
Lourna’s expression changed. She sat more upright in her chair. ‘And Evanporil tells me that you are countermanding the new Act to destroy all phagors.’
‘We could cull them gradually. Mother. But to lose all six hundred at once would be to disrupt the working of the estate. We are hardly likely to get six hundred human slaves to replace them – apart from the greater expense of human slaves.’
‘We must obey the State.’
‘I thought we would wait for Father’s return.’
‘Very well. Otherwise, you will comply with the law? It is important for us Shokerandits to set an example.’
‘Of course.’
‘I should tell you that a foreign female slave was arrested in your rooms this morning. We have her in a cell, and she will go before the local Board when they meet next.’
Shokerandit stood up. ‘Why was this done? Who dared intrude into my rooms?’
With composure, his mother answered, ‘The servant you had ordered to attend the slave woman reported that she went into a state of pauk. Pauk is proscribed by law. No less a personage than Priest-Supreme Chubsalid has gone to the stake for refusing to comply with the law. Exception can hardly be made for a foreign slave woman.’
‘In this case, an exception will be made,’ Shokerandit said, pale of face. ‘Excuse me.’ He bowed to his mother and aunt and left their rooms.
In a fury, he stamped through the passages to the Estates Office. He relieved his anger by bellowing at the staff.
As he summoned the estate guard captain, Shokerandit said to himself, Very well, I shall marry Toress Lahl. I must protect her from injustice. She’ll be safe, married to a future Keeper of the Wheel … and perhaps this scare will persuade her not to visit the gossie of her husband so often.
Toress Lahl was released from the cell without trouble and restored to Shokerandit’s rooms. They embraced.
‘I bitterly regret this indignity imposed on you.’
‘I have become used to indignity.’
‘Then you shall become used to something better. When the right opportunity arises, I will take you to meet my mother. She will see the kind of person you are.’
Toress Lahl laughed. ‘I am sure that I shall not greatly impress the Shokerandits of Kharnabhar.’
The feast to mark Luterin’s return was well attended. His mother had shaken off her lethargy to invite all local dignitaries as well as such Shokerandit relations as were in favour.
The Esikananzi family arrived in force. With Member Ebstok Esikananzi came his sickly-looking wife, two sons, his daughter Insil Esikananzi, and a train of subsidiary relations.
Since Luterin and Insil had last met, she had developed into an attractive woman, though a heaviness in her brow prevented true beauty – as well as suggesting that tendency to meet fate head-on which had long been a quality of the Esikananzis. She was elegantly dressed in a grey velvet gown reaching to the floor, adorned by the sort of wide lace collar she favoured. Luterin noted how the formal politeness with which she covered her disgust at his metamorphosis studiedly emphasised that disgust.
All the Esikananzis tinkled to a great extent; their hip-bells were very similar in tone. Ebstok’s was the loudest. In a loud whisper, he spoke of his bottomless sorrow at the death of his son Umat at Isturiacha. Luterin’s protest that Umat was killed in the great massacre outside Koriantura was swept aside as lies and Campannlatian propaganda.
Member Ebstok Esikananzi was a thickset man of dark and intricate countenance. The cold endured on his frequent hunts had brought a maze of red veins creeping like a species of plant life over his cheeks. He watched the mouths, not the eyes, of those who addressed him.
Member Ebstok Esikananzi was a man who believed in being unafraid to speak his mind, despite the fact that this organ, when spoken, had only one theme to sound: the importance of his opinion.
As they demolished the maggoty fists of venison on their plates,