Glory Season (31 page)

Maia’s own experience remained theoretical, and in this area Leie was no bolder. The twins had certainly felt
intimations of warmth toward others—classmates, kids they befriended in town, some of their teachers—but nothing precocious or profound. Since turning five, there had simply been no time.

Now Maia felt something stronger; and knew well what name to use, if she dared admit it to herself. In Renna she had found a soul who knew kindness, who would not judge a girl unworthy, just because she was a lowly var. It hardly mattered that she hadn’t rested eyes on the object of her fixation. Maia created a picture in her mind, of a savant or high civil servant from one of the faraway sophisticated cities on Landing Continent, which would explain Renna’s stiff, somewhat aristocratic way of speaking in text. No doubt she came from a noble clan, but when Maia asked, all Renna said was

MY FAMILY MADE CLOCKS, BUT I HAVEN’T SEEN THEM IN A WHILE SEEM TO HAVE LOST TRACK OF TIME

Maia found it hard always to tell when Renna was joking or teasing, although clearly she never meant it in a mean way. Renna wasn’t much more forthcoming about how she came to be a prisoner in this place.

THE BELLERS TOOK ADVANTAGE OF A LONELY TRAVELER

Bellers! The family Tizbe belonged to! The pleasure clan that did a profitable side business carrying goods and performing confidential services. So Maia and Renna had a common enemy! When she said as much, Renna agreed with what seemed reluctant sadness. Maia tried asking about “CY” and “GRVS,” who must be Renna’s clanmates or allies, but her fellow prisoner responded there were some things Maia was better off not knowing.

That did not prevent them from talking frequently about escape.

First they must work out their relative positions in the stone tower. Crawling into the stone casement, Maia craned her head around and saw a continuous row of slit windows like this one, presumably illuminating other storerooms, girdling the citadel’s circumference five meters below the grand gallery of columned patios she had glimpsed on arrival, that first day. Comparing the positions of certain landmarks, they ascertained that Renna’s window lay just around the bend, facing due east while Maia’s looked southeastward. Turning in the opposite direction, Maia could just make out the gate-ramp of the unfinished sanctuary, forlorn and covered with prairie dust.

Maia was full of ideas. She told Renna of her experiments unraveling carpets, learning how to weave a rope. While approving her enthusiasm, Renna reminded Maia that the drop was much too far to trust a bundle of twine, amateurly wrapped by hand.

Looking at her handicraft, she was forced to admit Renna was probably right. Still, Maia continued spending part of each day unwinding lengths of tough fiber and retying them into a finger-width strand, trying to imitate by memory the weaving patterns used by sailors aboard the Wotan.
It’s something to keep busy
, she thought. While Renna kept up her midnight attempts to radio for help, Maia wanted to contribute something, even as futile as winding string.

She was careful to hide all signs—of both ropemaking and talking to Renna—from her jailers. During meals, Maia told them how fascinated she was with the Game of Life, and how grateful to have been introduced to its world of intricacy. Their eyes glazed as she expected. All the Guels wanted was the comfort of routine. She happily let them have it.

So it came as a surprise when she heard the rattle of keys in the middle of one afternoon, hours before dinner-time. Maia barely managed to throw a rug over her work and stand up before the door swung open. On entering, the two Guel guards appeared tense, agitated. Maia saw why when a familiar figure stepped between them.

Tizbe Beller!
The former baggage-car assistant looked around the storeroom, hands folded behind her. An expression of faintly amused disgust crossed her young face as she perused the sweat-stained towel hanging by the cracked washbasin, and the covered chamber pot just beyond. Her nose wrinkled, as if meeting odors a coarse var could not be expected to notice.

Maia made herself stand tall.
Go ahead and sneer, Tizbe. I’ve kept myself fit and civilized in here. Let’s change places and see you do better!

Her defiance must have shown. Although Tizbe’s amusement continued unabated, her expression did change. “Well, captivity doesn’t seem to have hurt you, Maia. Not where it counts. You’re positively blossoming.”

“Go to Earth, Tizbe. Take your Jopland and Lerner friends with you.”

The cloneling feigned a moue of shock. “Such language! Keep this up, and you’ll be too rough for polite society.”

Maia laughed curtly. “You can shove your polite—”

But Tizbe got the better of her again, simply by stifling a yawn and waving a hand vaguely in front of her. “Oh, not now, if you don’t mind. It’s been a hard ride and I have to leave bright and early. We’ll see though. Before that, I might have a chance to drop in again and say goodbye.”

Then, to Maia’s shock, she turned to go. “But … aren’t you here to—”

Tizbe looked back from the door. “To question you? Torture you? Ah, that would be just the thing for one of
those trashy novels I’m told you’ve been reading. Villains are supposed to gloat and rub their hands together, and talk to their poor victims a lot.

“Sorry to disappoint you. I really would try to fit the role if I had the time. Honestly, though, do you have any information I could possibly want? What material benefit would I gain by questioning one more Venturist spy?”

Maia stared at her. “One more what?”

Tizbe reached into one of her sleeves and drew forth a tattered, folded sheet of heavy paper. After a moment, Maia recognized the leaflet she had accepted in Lanargh, from the hand of that earnest young heretic wearing eye-glasses. So, her captors had gone to Holly Lock and sifted through her things. She did not even bother acting offended.

“Venturist … you think I’m one of them, because of
that
?”

Tizbe shrugged. “It did seem unlikely for a spy to carry around blatant evidence. Throw in your comm call from Jopland, though, and it’s reason enough to take precautions. You’ve turned official eyes this way sooner than expected, for which you’ll pay.” She smiled. “Still, we have things well in hand. If it weren’t for more urgent matters, I’d not bother coming all this way.

“As it is, I felt behooved to check on you, Maia. Glad to see you not all wrapped in self-pity, as I expected. Maybe, when everything’s settled, we’ll have a talk about your future. There may be a place for a var like you—”

Maia cut in. “With your gang of criminals? You …” She searched for phrases she had heard over Thalla’s radio, at Lerner Hold. “Inheretist exploiters!”

Tizbe shook her head, grinning. “Showing our radical colors at last? Well, solitude and contemplation can change minds. I’ll have some books sent to you. They’ll show the sense in what we’re doing. How it’s good for Stratos and all womankind.”

“Thanks,” Maia replied sharply. “Don’t bother including
The Perkinite Way.
I’ve read it.”

“Oh yes?” Tizbe’s eyebrows lifted. “And?”

Maia hoped her smile conveyed indulgent pity.

“I think Lysos would have liked to study sickies like you under a microscope, to see what she did wrong.”

For the first time, the other woman’s reaction wasn’t another tailored mask. Tizbe glowered. “Enjoy your stay, var-child.”

The guards followed her out, trying not to meet Maia’s eyes as they closed the door, then fastened it with a hard, metallic clank of Lerner steel.

Tizbe didn’t give a damn about me. I’m just an irritant, to be stored away and forgotten.

It was just one more blow to Maia’s pride, confirming what she already knew about her insignificance in the world.

So it wasn’t me that brought her all the way out here, but something “urgent.”

Maia realized with sudden certainty—
It’s Renna!

The possibility of danger to her friend terrified Maia. She rushed to the wall, where the game board was already plugged in, but then made herself stop. The distance between their cells was not great. Tizbe could be at Renna’s door by the time Maia tapped a warning, and if Tizbe heard the clicking, it would let on that the prisoners had a way of communicating. Maia imagined what life might be like, if she found herself cut off yet again. The gaping sense of threat and emptiness felt like when she had first come to realize that Leie was gone.

Sitting in front of the game board only enhanced Maia’s feeling of impotence. She got up and climbed her pyramid of boxes to crawl into the window, where she poked her head beyond the rocky lip to peer toward the
front gate. There Maia glimpsed several figures tending a string of tethered horses. The Beller’s escorts, presumably.

She clambered down again. To avoid pacing uselessly, Maia sat down and resumed plaiting her rope, keeping her pencil handy nearby and anxiously hoping for the clicking sounds that would tell her Renna was all right. The long, hard quiet stretched on and on, until a rasp of keys caused her to throw a rug over her work once more. She stood up as the guards entered and put her dinner on the rickety table. Maia ate silently, hurriedly, as eager for her jailers to leave as they were to be gone.

When they left, she hated the return of solitude.

What if Tizbe has already taken Renna away?

Several times, Maia interrupted her work to go to the window. The third time she looked, the horses and escorts were gone. A panicky chill arrested when she saw no traffic on the road. As twilight settled and temperatures dropped, they must have all gone inside, where the empty halls offered plenty of room for women and mounts.

Maia climbed down and resumed worrying, while her fingers plaited fibers together.
Tizbe said they’d be leaving tomorrow, but she never said whether or not they
—

The first clicks from the wall plate sent her heart leaping.

Renna! She’s safe!

Maia threw her weaving aside and picked up her notebook. Soon it was clear that Renna wasn’t sending any ornately planned Game of Life scenario, but a rushed series of simple Morse dots and dashes. The message ended. Concentrating, Maia had to guess at meanings for several of the letters and words. Finally, she cried out. “No!”

•  •  •

It can get bitterly cold on the high plains, especially on early winter evenings, to one lying perched up high along a precipice, exposed to the wind.

There was barely room to stretch prone in the window niche, whose gritty, chill surface rubbed Maia’s shoulders on both sides. Using a plank from the broken box as a sort of fishing rod, Maia still had to lean out so the rope hung properly, to keep its burden from scraping against the rough cliff face. The leverage helped as she rocked the plank gently left to right, back and forth, pumping gradually until the rope began to swing like a pendulum.

It took concentration not to let her shivering interfere. Nor was the shaking due entirely to the cold. By moonlight, the ground looked awfully far away. Even if she had a rope long enough—one made by master craftswomen, not hand-twined by an inexperienced fiver—she would never have been able to get herself to climb down all that distance.

Yet, look what you’re trying to do, instead!

After getting Renna’s message, there had passed over Maia a wave of utter panic. It wasn’t just envisioning months, perhaps years, stretching ahead in loneliness. The loss of this new friend, when she had still not gotten over Leie, felt like a physical blow. Her first impulse was to curl up under piles of curtain material and let depression take her. There was a sick, sweet-sour attraction to melancholy, as an alternative to action.

Maia had been tempted for all of thirty seconds. Then she got to work, searching for some way to solve her problem, reevaluating every possibility, even those she had previously discarded.

The door and walls? They would take explosives to breach. She turned over in her mind ways of calling the
guards and overpowering them, but that fantasy was also absurd, especially with them at their wariest, and Tizbe’s escorts to back them up.

That left the window. She could just barely manage to squeeze through, but to what purpose? The ground was impossibly far. Turning left, she could make out more storerooms, visible as slit-windows stretching away on both sides. They seemed almost as out of reach as the prairie floor. Besides, why trade one prison cell for another?

Looking about desperately, she had finally twisted around to look upward, and saw the pillared loggia overhead, part of a grand patio girdling the sanctuary, five or six meters higher.

If only somebody would drop a rope down
, she had fantasized ironically.

Desperation led to inspiration.

Could I send one up?

It would be a gamble at best. Even if it was possible to swing a rope and bob the way she had in mind, she’d still need something to act as a grappling hook. Yet, it mustn’t interfere as she oscillated the rope back and forth along the wall, giving it momentum to rise and—if all went well—catch on the railing overhead.

She refused to think about the last drawback—trusting her weight to the makeshift contraption.
Cross that bridge when we come to it
, Maia thought.

Back inside, she had started by ripping apart her supply of notebooks for the springlike clips that bound loose pages inside.
Maybe I can rig some of these to pop open when they hit.
 …

It was difficult to put into practice. First she had to tear the clips out and then use a wooden plank to lever them into the shape she wanted. Tying several together at the end of her rope, she practiced on the sill of the window until she felt sure the improvised hook would catch,
two times out of three. The short section of cable used in the trial held her weight, though trusting her life to the improvised gimmickry seemed lunatic, or desperate, or both.