Glory Season (22 page)

I plan to
, Maia answered in her thoughts.
I’m planning to run, not walk, out of this valley just as soon as it’s safe, and never again set foot near a piece of coal, ever!

But Calma was likable enough, and Maia had no wish to offend. “I’m just saving up to move on,” she explained.

The Lerner shook her head. “I thought you came here ’cause of what we talked about that day in the wagon. You know, studyin’ metallurgy? If that wasn’t it, why’re you here?”

This line of inquiry Maia didn’t want to encourage. So far there had been no sign of Tizbe or the Joplands looking for her here. They must have figured she’d head west, toward the sea. But inquiries by Calma, or even loose gossip, could change that.

“Um. Look, maybe I’ll think about that apprenticeship. I’m just not sure about the arrangements, that’s all.”

Calma’s expression transformed and Maia could almost read the older woman’s thoughts.

Aha! The little one is just staking a bargaining position, hoping for a better deal. Maybe I can drop the lesson fee a bit. In exchange for what? A term contract?

“Well,” the older woman said aloud. “We can talk about it whenever you’re ready.” Which Maia immediately translated as meaning
Let her slave at the forge another week. By then she’ll accept if we give a point or two.

In fact, Calma’s face was so easy to read, Maia felt she understood how such a talented family never amounted to much in the world of commerce.
They might go far in partnership with a businesslike clan.
But some families just couldn’t work closely with groups other than themselves.
Especially over generations, which was how long many interclan alliances lasted.

Although Maia filed this insight away for future reference, she no longer contemplated sharing such tidbits. Leie’s loss still felt like a cavity within her, but the ache dulled with each passing day. Through it all, she had begun to see the outlines of her future, unwarped by the inflated dreams of childhood.

If she was clever and hardheaded, she might manage to be like Kiel and Thalla, slowly saving and searching, not for some fabled niche, or anything so grandiose as establishing her own clan, but to find a tiny chink in the wall of Stratoin society. A place to live comfortably, with a little security.
You could do worse. You’ve seen people who have done much worse.

To pass the second and third evenings Kiel was away, Thalla enlightened Maia on strange customs practiced in the seaports of the Southern Isles. The stocky young woman seemed equally amazed when Maia described mundanities of Port Sanger life she herself had long taken for granted. Then they listened to the radio awhile—to a station playing music, not political commentary—until sleep time came.

Maybe when Kiel returns, she’ll say the coast is clear
, Maia thought as she drifted off. She felt no ties to Lerner Hold, but would she be able to tear herself away from her new friends? For the sake of this comradeship, she felt tempted to stay.

Work, and recovery from work, took up nearly all of the next day, from dawn to dusk. Mealtime was a fragrant lentil stew with onions and spices, a supper Maia felt sure Thalla had prepared in expectation of Kiel’s return. But the dark woman did not show. Thalla only laughed when Maia worried aloud. “Oh, we got plans, we do. Sometimes she’s away a week or more. Lerners got to put up with it
’cause nobody’s better’n Kiel at cold-rollin’ flat sheet. Don’t you worry, virgie. She’ll be back presently.”

All right, I won’t worry.
It was surprisingly easy to do. In a few short weeks, Maia had learned the knack of letting go and living from day to day. Not even the priestess at the temple had been able to teach her that. Physical exhaustion, she admitted, was a good instructor.

That evening, Maia took their small oil lantern into the ebbing twilight to visit the toilet before going to bed. For privacy, it had become her habit to wait until all the other vars finished. Along the way to the outhouse, she liked to watch the stars, which were beginning to show winter constellations to good advantage. Stratos was slowing in its long outward ellipse, although the true opening of cool season still lay some weeks ahead.

Turning a corner in the warren of laborers’ bungalows, Maia saw someone leaning against the tilted door of the outhouse, facing the other way.
Oh, well
, she thought.
Everyone has to take turns.

She approached and set the lantern down. “They been in there long?” she asked the woman waiting ahead of her, who shook her head.

“No one’s inside.”

“But then, why are you …”

Maia stopped. Something was wrong. That voice.

“Why am I waiting?” The woman turned around. “Why, for you of course, my meddlesome young friend.”

Maia gaped. “Tizbe!”

The pleasure-clan winterling smiled and gave an off-hand salute. “None other than your loyal assistant baggage handler, in person. Thought it was time you and I had a talk,
boss.
”

Despite her racing heart, Maia felt proud not to show a quaver in her voice. “Talk away,” she said, spreading her hands. “Choose a subject. Anything you like.”

Tizbe shook her head. “Not here. I have a place in mind.”

“All right. Where—”

Maia stopped suddenly, sensing movement. She whirled just in time to glimpse several identical black-clad women bearing down upon her, holding fuming-cloths.

Joplands
, Maia recognized the instant before they seized her. She felt their brief surprise at her strength. But the farm women were stronger still. Struggling, Maia managed to dodge the damp rags long enough to catch sight of one more figure, standing a short distance away.

Calma Lerner watched with tight lips pressed together as Maia was taken to the ground and her mouth and nose covered. Black fabric cut off vision. A cloying, sweet aroma choked her, invading her brain and smothering all thoughts.

She roused through a cloudy, anesthetic haze to see stars jouncing about like busy glow beetles high in the sky, and dimly recalled that stars weren’t supposed to do that. Only vaguely in her delirium did it occur to Maia that this might be a matter of perception. It was hard to focus while lying supine, tied to the bottom of a rattling, horse-drawn wagon.

Through the night, Maia drifted in and out of drugged slumber, punctuated by intervals when someone would lift her head to dribble water down a cloth into her parched mouth. She sucked like a newborn baby, as if that primal reflex were the only one left her. Dreams confronted Maia with memories drawn randomly from storage, twisted, and made vivid with embellishments by her unrestrained subconscious.

She had been a little over three Stratoin years old … nine or ten by the old calendar. It was Mid-Winter’s Day and Lamatia’s summerlings had been fed and
told to go to their rooms, to stay there till the gong rang for evening meal. But the twins had been making plans. At noontime, Maia and Leie knew all full-Lamai folk would be in the great hall to take part in the Ceremony of Initiation. For weeks, the six-year-old class of Lamais had been excitedly wagering which of them would receive ripening, and which would have to await another winter, maybe two. Among clones, with little to distinguish between them, whoever managed to conceive during her first mature solstice had an advantage over her peers, rising in status as her generation matured, perhaps eventually taking a leading role in running the clan.

Maia and Leie were as one in not wanting to miss this, despite rules putting the rites off-limits to mere half daughters. They had spent many furtive hours discovering the route to use—which entailed first slipping out their bedroom window, then around a dormer and down a rain gutter, along a wall lined with decorative, crenelated fortifications, through a loose window into an attic, and down a rope ladder that they had prehung inside a sealed-off, abandoned chimney …

In Maia’s dream, each phase of the adventure loomed as vivid and immediate as it had to her younger self. The possibility of falling to her death was terrifying, but less awful than the thought of getting caught. Capture and punishment were, in turn, negligible deterrents next to the ghastly possibility that she and Leie might not get to
see.

Reaching their final vantage point was the most dangerous part. It meant worming their way along the steep, sloping dome of the great hall itself, whose arching ribs of reinforced concrete held in place huge mottled lenses of colored glass. Crawling the lip so that no shadows would cast into the hall, Maia and her sister finally gathered the courage to poke their heads over a section of tinted window, to catch their first glimpse of the ceremony under way below.

The interior was a swirling confusion of brightness and shadow. The glassy roof poured winter daylight into the chamber, transformed into a brilliance reminiscent of summer nights. Colored panels cast clever imitations of aurorae against the walls below, while others glinted and flashed as gaudily as Wengel Star, when the sun’s small, bitterly bright companion shone high in the summer sky. A roaring fire in one corner of the room gave off heat the twins could feel outside. The flames were colored with additives guaranteed to simulate the spectrum of the northern lights.

It was a spectacle worth every pain taken to get there. Neither Leie nor Maia would have had the courage to come alone.

Still, it took a while to stifle the tremulous certainty that someone was going to look their way. The kids spent more time nudging each other and giggling than stealing quick glances through the burnished lenses. Finally they realized that nobody below was interested in the ceiling at a time like this.

Dancers wove rippling patterns as they undulated before the central dais, waving filmy fabrics that also mimicked ionic displays. The troupe had been hired from Oosterwyck Clan, famed for their beauty and sensuality. Their success rate was well-advertised and only rich clans could afford their services at this time of year.

Censers emitted spirals of smoke, whose aroma was supposed to simulate the pheromones that best aroused males. Behind a veiled curtain, silhouettes told of the assembled mothers and full sisters of Lamatia Hold, watching discreetly offstage so as not to put off their guests.

Maia nudged Leie and pointed. “Over there!” She whispered unnecessarily. Since the music only reached them as a faint murmur, it was doubtful anything they said would be heard below. Leie turned to peer in the direction she had indicated. “Yeah, it’s the Penguin Guild
captain, and those two young sailors. Exactly the ones I predicted. Pay up!”

“I never betted! Everybody knew Penguin Guild owes Lamatia for that big loan the mothers gave ’em last year.”

Leie ignored the rejoinder. “Come on, let’s get a better look,” she urged, pulling Maia’s arm, causing her to teeter precariously on the steeply tilted wall of the dome. “Hey, watch it!”

But Leie had already slithered to where a great piece of convex glass bulged from the arching roof. Maia heard her sister take in a sudden gasp, then titter nervously.

“What is it?” Maia exclaimed, sliding over.

Leie held up a hand. “No. Don’t look yet! Get a good hold an’ set your feet good. Got it? Don’t look yet.”

“I’m not looking!” Maia whined.

“Good, now close your eyes. Move a little closer and I’ll move your head to see best. Don’t open till I say so!”

It was one of those rituals that seemed so natural when you were three. Maia felt her sister’s hand take her braid and maneuver her until she brushed cool glass with the tip of her nose. “Okay, you can look now,” Leie said, suppressing a giggle.

Maia cracked one eye, and at first saw only a blur. The glass had several thin layers, separated by air pockets. She pulled back a bit and an image fell into focus. At least it
seemed
focused, remarkably magnified from this great height. Still, what she saw appeared more a jumble of fleshy colors—peppered with short black fur that was patchy in most places, but thick where one small pink appendage joined the intersection of two large ones. The latter, she realized, must be somebody’s legs. The small one in between …

“Oh!” she cried, rocking back until she had to flail for balance. Leie grabbed her, laughing at her surprise. Almost instantly Maia was back against the glass, trying again to bring the scene back into focus. “No, let me in
now. It’s my turn!” Leie importuned. But Maia held fast and her twin grudgingly moved on to find another place, which she quickly declared to be “even better.” Maia was too intent to notice.

So that’s what a man looks like without clothes
, she thought. The magnifying effects of the glass were confusing, and she found it hard to get any sense of proportion, let alone relate what she was seeing to those sterile diagrams she had studied in school.
Where do they keep it while they’re walking around? I’d of thought it’d get in the way, hanging like that.

Maia was too embarrassed by her next thoughts to voice them even subvocally. Fascination won a hard-fought battle over revulsion and she peered eagerly, hoping to see when the thing changed.
Does it really get bigger than that?

A hand entered her field of view, and reached past the limp appendage to scratch a hairy thigh. Maia drew back so her field of view encompassed the arm and torso and head of the reclining man, resting on silk pillows as he watched the dancers. He turned to say something to another man, lounging to his right, who laughed, then straightened and leaned forward with a more sober expression on his face, as if trying to pay close attention to the show. By their elbows lay piles of food and drink. The first man picked up a wineglass, draining it. He did not seem to notice the enticingly clad woman who moved to his side to refill it, nor others waiting nearby, prepared to move in with privacy curtains, at need.

“C’mere and see the sixers!” Leie called urgently. With some reluctance, Maia tore herself away, leaving her perch to sidle near her sibling. “Over by the north wall,” Leie suggested.

This pinkish pane was flawed by ripples, and the magnification wasn’t as good as back at the clear lens. It took a while to find the right viewing position, but Maia at
last perceived a covey of girls waiting off to one side, dressed in pale, filmy gowns. They were made up to look less virginal—and no doubt doused liberally to fool the male sense of smell. Naturally, men were more attracted to older women who had already birthed once or twice. But this ceremony was for sixers alone. It was their special day and the mothers had spared no expense.