Califia's Daughters (27 page)

She lay like a dead thing for fourteen hours, Tomas at her back for warmth. When she woke, she let him out into the snow to hunt, took the rabbit he brought to her into the house's once-grand living room. The scenic wall of glass, mostly broken now, made it into a drafty shell with owls and bats in the high roof beams, but the broad stone fireplace was still functional, and there were plenty of dining room chairs to cook over. She ate, then slept again. The bleeding slowed, turned to spotting, and on the third day stopped entirely. She still had the baby; only time would tell about Robin.

Tomas continued to act as provider, and one day she shot a deer that ventured too close to the front drive. Simon's poor grazing was supplemented by the sealed jars of oats and wheat that she found in a pantry off the ornate and useless electric kitchen. And at night she lay with a small kerosene lamp that was more decorative than illuminating and read from the books she found in one of the bedrooms, children's stories for the most part, familiar and comforting. The days passed, fifteen of them, each one returning to her a degree of strength, if not enthusiasm. And each day saw the same cycle of inner dialogue.

I have to do this.

No, you don't. You're pregnant, that changes everything.

I owe him my life. And Culum's burial.

You don't owe him your child's life. Isaac's child's life.

Robin will die, in Ashtown.

Robin's a survivor.

Not of this.

That's his choice, then. You didn't put him in this position, and just shut up about his not wearing the handgun, that's not your fault.

I can't leave him.

He wouldn't want you to come after him. You know he wouldn't.

I owe him.

If you go, it's because, deep down, you don't want this child. Don't want what it'll do to you, tie you down, change you.

Shut up.

It's true, you know it.

It's for Isa—I mean, for Robin.

Yes, what about Isaac—whatever happened to telling Miriam her people would not be welcome in the Valley? If you go after Robin, who'll be there to warn Judith?

Plenty of time for that. Plenty of time.

What if there isn't?

If there isn't, then Judith will deal with it. But there is time enough.

You don't have to do this. Turn around now, Robin will be fine.

I do. I do have to do this.

The argument went around and around in her head, as maddening as it was unproductive. One night Dian had a nightmare about a maggot-infested otter rising sleekly from its grave and attacking the child she held in her arms, but even that did not turn her completely from Ashtown.

In the end, the decision made itself, just as Dian's initial impulse to follow Robin's abductors had made itself: her feet simply could not imagine moving south, to safety.

         

She waited two weeks, both for the sake of her body and in order to avoid any possible link between her arrival and the party that had preceded her. For fourteen days she lived among the ghosts in the wing of the lodge, and on the morning of the fifteenth day, a gray dawn that declared its intention of snow by nightfall, she saddled Simon and turned his head in the direction of Ashtown.

CALIFíA, QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA, [RODE] TOWARD THEM EQUIPPED FOR BATTLE.

T
WENTY-TWO

D
IAN RODE SOUTHEAST, OR AS CLOSE TO THAT DIRECTION
as the terrain would allow, doubling back in order to join with the main north–south road and appear to be just another Traveler from the south. Once on the road, she was fortunate, for the signs showed a band of half a dozen horses an hour or so ahead, and she was followed by a slow-moving group of wagons, three miles behind at mid-morning, considerably further back when she stopped to rest the animals and take a cold meal at noon.

At three-thirty Ashtown appeared in the distance, and Dian was shocked at the icy stomach and loose bowels that seized her at the sight of its wall and roofs. Simon startled, lost his footing briefly, and distracted her into self-control. She reined in and sat looking at it for some minutes. When she nudged the horse back into motion with her knees, her face was grim.

Five miles from the city she caught up with straggling riders from the party in front, two women on a single horse and leading a gelding gone lame. Dian's first impulse was to drop back, but after watching them undetected for a while she decided that they did not feel dangerous and that the advantages in appearing at the gates as part of a group might justify the small risk that these two represented. She rode on, into a bad moment when the woman riding pillion spotted her and reached for her rifle, but the woman left it half-drawn at Dian's raised and open hands and slid it back into place when it became apparent Dian was alone. Their trust did not extend to wanting a stranger at their backs, however, and they sat and waited for her to come up to them. She stopped twenty feet away and pushed her hat back on her head. The woman on the horse's rump took this as a conversational opening and nodded her head.

“Afternoon.”

Dian agreed.

“You, eh, you alone?”

Dian turned and glanced behind her at the stretch of trampled snow and mud that curved off into the trees.

“Looks like it,” she answered. There was a pause.

“Going to Ashtown?” the woman asked.

“Thought I might.” Another pause stretched out, not tense, but in need of filling.

“You part of the bunch up there?” asked Dian, raising her chin at the road ahead. A flake of snow drifted down, and another.

“Yeah. There's a baby; they went ahead to get out of the cold.”

Dian nodded, and as at a signal both she and the rider in charge of the horse pressed their heels in, so the horses moved northward again.

“You, eh, you don't live in Ashtown, do you?”

“Not yet,” Dian answered. “Heard it might be a good place.”

“Oh, it is, it really is,” the woman enthused. “There's a lot happening there, some good schools—I don't know whether you have kids or not—and it's safe, not like down south—”

“Jesus, Mares, you sound like a chamber of commerce or something.” The other woman spoke for the first time, growling but not unfriendly. She tipped her head to look at Dian. “Name's Dee,” she offered. “She's Maryanne.”

“Dian.”

“And what's that?” grunted Dee. “Baby moose?” She was looking down at Tomas, who walked between his mistress and the strangers, watchful but not overly concerned.

“That's Tomas. He comes from nowhere, he is bound for salvation, for he moves on a holy quest.” Dee and Maryanne looked startled, as well they might.

“What seeks he?” Maryanne finally ventured.

“He seeks the genetic improvement of his race throughout the north. He seeks the creation of a race of superior dogs, great in body and spirit, and has humbly dedicated his life to the cause.”

Dee and Maryanne stared at each other over Dee's shoulder, looked at Tomas and carefully at Dian, and finally decided it was a joke. They burst into laughter, Dee's giggles strangely girlish for such a large woman. Tomas cocked his eyebrows quizzically and wagged his tail, which set the two off again. Maryanne finally rearranged her face.

“It is a just cause, Tomas. May the Heavens bless your—your work,” she spluttered.

“Thank you,” Dian answered seriously for him.

“He is a fine dog,” Maryanne said. “A good head. I'd like a pup, if you know of anyone whose bitch is, eh, participating in Tomas's holy quest.” The two women again collapsed in giggles, somewhat excessively for such a mild jest, Dian thought. Maryanne finally wiped her nose on the end of a scarf, and then tipped her head to Dian in a conspiratorial aside.

“You'll have to watch that kind of joke in Ashtown, though, Dian. They're a little, um, straitlaced there. Not too much of a sense of humor, sometimes.”

“But then, what can you expect,” muttered Dee, “in a city full of guardian angels?” Maryanne gaped at the back of her partner's head, glanced uneasily at Dian, and to Dian's amazement clapped a gloved hand over her mouth and began to snigger. The tips of Dee's ears had gone bright red; the two women looked for all the world like a pair of kids making dirty jokes about the head of the family.

“Shit's sake, Dee,” Maryanne sputtered, “talk about watching your jokes,” and she took her hand from her mouth to jab the other woman hard in the ribs. Dee shrugged, but it was an uncomfortable, tight motion, and she did not look at Dian for some time.

So, mused Dian, it would appear that a person did not jest about certain things in Ashtown, a town where streets were safe, the children were schooled, and jokes that linked sex and religion were considered daring—even these two had been shocked, though they regarded themselves as too sophisticated to show it. Interesting. And what the hell had Dee meant by “guardian angels”? Dian had four miles, maybe an hour, to pump these two and discover where the ice was apt to be thin beneath her feet in Ashtown.

Dee and Maryanne were part of a large family of trader–farmers, twenty-four women, seven men (which numbers indicated that they were a successful family of traders), and a variable number of children. The six now on the road had been part of a group trading in Meijing and south into the Valley when, in August, Dee's cousin had been knocked under a wagon and broken her leg, very badly. They had intended to ride for home in September, but the leg was not expected to heal until October at the earliest. Normally they would have left her, to make her own way home or to be picked up the following summer, but—she was pregnant. It was all extremely inconvenient, and Dee personally thought the woman had known her condition before they left Ashtown in June, but in any case by October she would be six months along, and the healers and midwives all agreed that in view of the accident, she'd be a damned fool to travel. So half the group, five of them, had stayed behind. The baby, a girl, was born six weeks early, in the beginning of December, but was healthy, only slightly small, and ate heartily. As soon as the mother's bleeding stopped they had bought heavy fur parkas and left for Ashtown. They were looking forward to getting home (which at this time of year was a house, or several connected houses, within the city walls) and to seeing the children, one of whom was Maryanne's.

Dian admired the frayed sepia photograph of a gap-toothed, pigtailed child in a summer dress and returned it to the proud mother, commented untruthfully on the resemblance, and asked what the family did in Ashtown during the winter months.

From Maryanne's description and Dee's grunts, Dian pieced together a picture of the town as a beehive of activity under its blanket of snow. Politics—three of the family were on various governing bodies, municipal and school boards, and Dee's mother was a past Mayor. Culture—the city possessed two movie theaters and four live stages; Maryanne's sister played in the city orchestra; nearly everybody was involved in some sort of dramatic society, even if she only painted sets or sold tickets. Education—school for the children was mostly in fall and winter, and public lectures abounded. And for plain entertainment, there were a number of nightclubs and dance halls. Yes, Maryanne loved her city, and even the more phlegmatic Dee seemed in agreement.

“It seems like I chose the right time of year to come,” said Dian. “What about your army?”

The ice went abruptly paper-thin, and Dian could hear the cracks spreading out as Dee looked back over her shoulder at Maryanne and then away.

“What about it?” asked Dee.

“A lot of towns use the winter to practice drills, teach the kids to shoot, that kind of thing,” said Dian smoothly.

The two women looked at each other again and relaxed slightly.

“No,” said Maryanne, “we don't have an army.”

“No army? How do you protect yourselves?”

“We—the city—have an agreement with Queen Bess. She has an outpost only fifty miles from here.”

“Ah. Taxation?”

“Some. Not much, considering the security.”

“I suppose not. And inside the city? Do her troops police the streets?”

“No,” said Maryanne, sounding offended. “We have the—we have our own police force. They're very . . . efficient.” The force's efficiency was obviously regarded as a mixed blessing, and Dian thought she could put a name to the local militia: these would be the city's guardian angels.

“I see,” she said, and did, a great deal: external tribute and an internal police force so effective that it inspired fear even in such prosperous, law-abiding citizens as Maryanne and Dee, coupled with the privilege and corruption that Isaac had fled. . . . “I see. Tell me about the schools. What grade is your daughter in?”

Relief washed over the woman's broad features as she realized that Dian was only asking reasonable questions after all, the sort of questions to be expected from a stranger shopping around for a safe haven for her family. She told Dian about the skills her child was learning, and Dian made interested noises and thought furiously.

Half a mile from the gate, with the snow falling on the roofs and tents that had begun to appear along the road beside them, Maryanne stopped in the middle of a sentence and turned to Dian with the air of a remiss hostess.

“But you, Dian, do you have a place to stay? Friends?”

“Not yet. I'll find work.”

“What do you do? I've been chattering on so . . .”

They waited for her to answer. She could feel their eyes on her and knew what she had to do. She took the role open to her and stepped into it. She would not need to appear as a member of a group after all—indeed, it would be better if she did not. She turned to them with a small, tight smile on her cold lips.

“Truth to tell,” she told them, “I'm a guard.” They reacted exactly as she had expected. Dee's hands jerked on the reins and her stolid face went pale. Maryanne actually swallowed.

“Mercenary?” Dee asked carefully.

Dian neither confirmed nor denied it.

“I got tired of the South,” she said, and chose not to notice that they were not beside her as she lifted her face to the city and rode forward.

         

Under ordinary circumstances, the discomfiture inflicted on the two harmless women might have troubled Dian, but circumstances would not be ordinary for a long, long time, and her mind was very much occupied with other things. She could think only of what she would have to do in the next minutes, while Isaac's past and Robin's present bore down on her and the nervy feeling of impending evil built into the intensity of a toothache.

Ashtown's walls had been modeled on those encircling Meijing, though with considerably less in resources and imagination and no concern whatsoever for aesthetics. Much of it incorporated the backs of buildings, their windows bricked up and the gaps between them filled with a mixture of bound rubble, sheets of rusting metal, and rough logs. It should have looked slapdash and homey, but it did not. It looked brutal, solid, and effective. Although, Dian tried to reassure herself, from the inside the walls would surely not be difficult to scale. Twelve-year-old Isaac had gone over them; so could she.

Holding that cold comfort to her, Dian approached the left of the two entrance portals, the one that declared itself to be for
Strangers.
The guard cubicle was empty, as opposed to
Residents
on the right with its line of tired travelers being harassed by an equally tired-looking woman in a dark blue uniform studded with shiny buttons and draped with scarlet braid. She was arguing with a short, blocky figure in a coat of ratty wolf skin, both of them waving papers. Between them and the gate stood two big women in black, a dull, unrelieved black that seemed to suck the color from anything nearby. The women were standing in front of a smoking brazier, warming themselves and looking bored. Two old but well-cared-for shotguns leaned against the wall, ten feet away. Each of the guards had an odd black tubular object strapped to the outside of her forearm, some nine inches long and slightly thicker than a thumb. Some sort of Artifact, from its appearance, vaguely similar to objects she'd seen on the Meijing guards along the Road—communications device, or weapon?

The
Strangers
door was tightly shut, with neither uniformed official nor black guard in sight. The two women in black smirked at Dian's indecision and ignored her. With that smirk Dian's path was set. She dismounted slowly, feeling their watching eyes. She eased her back and squatted down to dig the ice from Simon's hooves, then did the same for Tomas's paws before rising to rummage through the saddlebags for a couple of half-frozen rabbit legs that she had roasted over the lodge's fireplace the night before. She stripped one bare, giving the meat to Tomas and sticking the bones back into the saddlebag; then, carrying the other leg and leaving Tomas to stand watch over the horse, Dian walked across to the ornately uniformed bureaucrat. The two big guards by the brazier watched her approach. One of them turned her back and made a remark to the other, who laughed through yellow teeth. Dian ignored them both, instead walking straight up to insinuate herself between the paper-waving duo, where she stood, stripping and chewing the meat while she looked from one to the other with undisguised interest. The woman in the wolf skin looked irritated, and the uniformed official stopped what she was saying.