And trouble began with a kameth of Tashavodh who chanced to cross the well-known temper of Mejakh sra-Narach. She killed him.
Mejakh was already aboard Tashavodh in the long purifications before kataberihe. But in rage over the matter Sogdrieni burst into her chambers, drove out her own kamethi, and assaulted her. Perhaps when tempers cooled he would have allowed her to begin purifications again, vaikka having been settled; but it was a tangled situation: Mejakh was almost certainly now with child, conception being almost infallible with a mating. But he misjudged the arastiethe of Mejakh: she killed him and fled the ship.
In confusion, Ashanome and Tashavodh broke apart, Tashavodh stunned by the death of their Orithain, Ashanome satisfied that they had come off to the better in the matter of vaikka. It was in effect a vaikka-dhis, the stealing of young; and to add chanokhia to the vaikka, in the very hour that Mejakh returned to Ashanome she entered katasakke with an iduve of nameless birth.
So she violated purification of her own accord this time, and so blotted out the certainty of her child’s parentage. With the condemnation—taphrek nasiqh—she sent him nameless to the incubators of the dhis of Ashanome—the dishonored heir of Sogdrieni-Orithain.
Of Mejakh’s great vaikka she gained such arastiethe that she met in katasakke with Chaxal-Orithain of Ashanome, and of that mating came Khasif, firstborn of Ashanome’s present ruling sra, but not his heir. Chaxal took for his heir-mate Tusaivre of Iqhanofre, who bore him Chimele before she returned to her own nasul. Other katasakke-mates produced Rakhi, and Ashakh and Chaikhe.
But the nameless child survived within the dhis, and when he emerged he chose to be called Tejef.
Isande’s mind limned him shadowlike, much resembling Khasif, his younger half-brother, but a quiet, frightened man despite his physical strength, who suffered wretchedly the violence of Mejakh and the contempt of Chaxal. Only Chimele, who emerged two years later, treated him with honor, for she saw that it vexed Mejakh—and Mejakh still aspired to a kataberihe with Chaxal, an heir-mating which threatened Chimele.
Until Chaxal died.
New loyalties sorted themselves out; a younger sra came into power with Chimele. There were changes outside the nasul too—all relations with the orith-nasuli, the great clans, must be redefined by new oaths. There must be two years of ceremony at the least, before the accession of Chimele could be fully accomplished.
Death.
The dark of space.
Reha.
Screens went up. Isande flinched from that. Aiela tore back. No, he sent, shielding Daniel. Don’t do that to him.
Isande reached for her glass of marithe and trembled only slightly carrying it to her lips. But what seeped through the screens was ugly, and Daniel would gladly have fled the room, if distance and walls could have separated him from Isande.
“An Orithain cannot assume office fully until all vaikka of the previous Orithain is cleared,” Isande said in a quiet, precise voice, maintaining her screens. “Tashavodh’s Orithain— Kharxanen, full brother to Sogdrieni—had been at great niseth—great disadvantage—for twenty years because Chaxal had eluded all his attempts to settle. But now that Ashanome’s new Orithain was needing to assume office, settlement became possible. Chimele needed it as badly as Kharxanen.
“So Tashavodh and Ashanome met. Something had to be yielded on Ashanome’s side. Kharxanen demanded Mejakh and Tejef; Chimele refused—Mejakh being bhan-sra to her own nas-katasakke Khasif, it struck too closely at her own honor. Even Tashavodh had to recognize that
“But she gave them Tejef.
‘Tejef was stunned. Of course it was the logical solution; but Chimele had always treated him as if he were one of her own nasithi, and he had been devoted to her. Now all those favors were only the preparation of a terrible vaikka on him—worse than anything that had ever been done to him, I imagine. When he heard, he went to Chimele alone and unasked. There was a terrible fight.
“Usually the iduve do not intervene in male-female fights, even if someone is being maimed or killed: mating is usually violent, and violating privacy is e-chanokhia, very improper. But Chimele is no ordinary woman; all the sra of an Orithain have an honorable name, and taphrek-nasiqh is applicable only to paternity: the thing Tejef intended would give his offspring the name he lacked; and if he died in the attempt, it would still spite Chimele, robbing her of her accommodation with Tashavodh.