Glory Season (32 page)

Maia wrapped a single loop of thread around the clips to bind them into a compact bundle, to keep the cluster from clattering and rattling as she swung it back and forth. Ideally, it would come apart on impact with the balcony, and not at some inopportune moment before. Finally, she had crawled back into the window carrying some curtain material for padding, and a plank with a notch in one end, to use as a fishing pole. Once settled in, she commenced laying out rope.

It was hard to even see the cable’s end when it was hanging straight down. Once she set the pendulum in motion, however, she could make out the makeshift grapnel whenever it passed before a small patch of snow on the ground. Soon it rose high enough to occult a low white cloud bank, veiling one of the moons to the east.

Back and forth … rocking back and forth. Despite her arrangements to let the plank take most of the weight, Maia’s arms were tiring by the time the swinging rope rose high enough to point horizontal, level with the row of storeroom windows. Her heart caught each time the bundle of clips tapped or snagged against some protuberance, forcing her to lean even farther to avoid catching it on the backswing.

“
Come on, you can hold better than that!
” she remembered Leie used to say, back when they were both four and a half, and would sneak out at night to paint mothers blue. After the third time a statue in the Summer Courtyard had been defaced, the clan matriarchs had locked all doors leading to the yard, and sprinkled marker dust around the monuments, to trace anyone who stepped in it.

That did not stop the incidents.

“
I’m doin’ as best I can!
” she had hissed back at Leie on
the night of that final foray, gripping one end of a rope made of bedsheets, the other wrapped around her sister’s feet. Lowering Leie from the roof, with paintbrush and bucket in hand, had been easier on prior occasions because there were crenelated battlements Maia could use for leverage. But that last time it had been just her own, preadolescent muscles, battling the insistent pull of gravity.

Now, over a year later, as she struggled to control a distant weight that jerked and fought like a fish caught at the end of her line, Maia moaned, “I’m … doin’ … as best I … can!” Her breath whistled as she held on, letting out and taking up slack, trying to force momentum into a pendulum that seemed reluctant to rise much past horizontal and kept yanking at her burning shoulders on each downward swing.

Under questioning the next day, Leie had insisted she was acting alone. She refused to implicate Maia, even though it was clear she could not have done it without help. Everyone knew Maia had been the one with the rope. Everyone knew she had been the one unable to hold on when a tile broke, loosening her grip, causing Leie to go crashing in a clatter of paint and tracer dust and chipped plaster.

After taking her punishment stoically, Leie never brought up the subject, not even in private. It was enough that everybody knew.

Grimly, Maia held on.
Renna
, she thought, gritting her teeth and ignoring the pain.
I’m coming.
 …

The grapnel had now reached the stone balustrade in its highest rise. Frustratingly, it would not go over the protruding lip, though it touched audibly several times. Maia tried twisting the plank so that the rope would come closer to the wall at the top of each swing, but the curve of the citadel defied her.

Obviously the idea was workable. Some combination
of twists and proddings would make it. If she took her time and practiced several evenings in a row …

“No!” she whispered. “It’s got to be tonight!”

Two more times, the grapnel just clipped the balcony, making a soft, scraping sound. In agony, Maia realized she had only a couple more attempts before she would have to give up.

Another touch. Then a clean miss.

That’s it
, she realized, defeated.
Got to rest. Maybe try again in a few hours.

Resignedly, with numbness spreading across her shoulders, she began easing off on the rhythmic pumping action, letting the pendulum motion start to die down. On the next swing, the bundle did not quite reach the level of the balustrade. The one after that, its peak was lower still.

The next cycle, the grapnel paused once more … just high enough and long enough for someone to quickly reach over the balcony and
grab
it, in a one-handed catch.

The surprise was total. Throbbing with fatigue, shivering from the cold, for a moment Maia could do nothing else but lay in the stone opening and stare along the rough face of the citadel, looking upward toward an unexpected dark silhouette, leaning outward, holding onto her rope, eclipsing a portion of winter’s constellations.

Maia’s first thought was that Tizbe or the guards must have heard something, come to investigate, and caught her in the act. Soon they would arrive to take away her tools, boxes, even the curtains she had unraveled to make rope, leaving her worse off than before. Then she realized the figure on the loggia was not calling out, as a guard might. Rather, it began making furtive hand motions. Maia could make no sense of them in the dark, but understood one thing. The person gesturing at her was as concerned for silence as she was.

Renna?
Hope flashed, followed by confusion. Her friend’s cell lay some distance beyond and lower down. Unless her fellow inmate had also come up with an inspired, last-minute plan …

The shadowy figure began moving westward along the balustrade, handing Maia’s rope around pillars along the way. On reaching a spot directly overhead, the silhouette made hand gestures indicating Maia should wait, then vanished for a few moments. When it returned, something started snaking downward along Maia’s hand-woven cable toward her.

Ah
, Maia realized.
She didn’t like the looks of my workmanship. Well, fine. I’ll use her store-bought one instead. See if I care.

In fact, Maia was relieved. She paused to consider going back inside her cell to get … what? There were only four books and the Game of Life set, none of which she cared much about. Except for the sextant, strapped to her wrist, she was free of the tyranny of possessions.

After tying the new rope under her shoulders, Maia inched outward until most of her weight hung from the taut cable. At that point it occurred to her that this could be a trap. Tizbe might be toying with her, while arranging for her death-fall to appear part of an escape attempt.

The thought passed as Maia realized,
What choice do I have?

She braced her feet against the wall, legs straight, and prepared to start climbing, stepping upward while pulling hand over hand. Then, to her surprise, the rope tautened rapidly and she found herself being hauled straight up, directly and swiftly.
There must be a whole gang of them up there
, Maia thought.
Or a block and tackle.

As the balcony drew near, she composed her face so as not to show the slightest chagrin if it turned out to be Tizbe and the guards, after all.
I’ll fight
, she vowed.
I’ll break free and take them on a chase they’ll never forget.

Arms reached down to haul her over the side … and Maia’s composure broke when she saw who had helped her.

“Kiel! Thalla!”

Her former cottage-mates at Lerner Hold beamed while freeing her of the rope. Kiel’s dark features split with a broad, white grin. “Surprised?” she said in a whisper. “You didn’t think we’d leave you to rot in this Perkinite hole, did you?”

Maia shook her head, overwhelmed that she had been remembered after all. “How did you know where I—”

She cut off, upon seeing that they weren’t alone. Standing behind the two var women, coiling rope over one shoulder, stood … a man! Beardless and slim for one of his kind, he smiled at her with an intimacy she found rather forward and disconcerting.

A man’s participation helped explain how just three of them could lift her so quickly, while it raised other questions even more perplexing … like what one of his race was doing so far upland, involving himself in disputes among women.

Thalla chuckled lowly, patting Maia’s shoulder. “Let’s just say we’ve been searching some time. We’ll explain later. Now it’s time to scoot.” She turned to lead the way. But Maia shook her head, planting her feet and pointing the other direction.

“Not yet! There’s someone else we’ve got to rescue. Another prisoner!”

Thalla and Kiel looked at each other, then at the man. “I thought there were just two,” Thalla said.

“There were,” the man answered. “Maia—”

“No! Come on, I know where she is. Renna—”

“Maia. I’m here.”

She had turned and already taken several steps down the dark corridor when the words cut her short. Maia swiveled, peering past Thalla and Kiel, who stood grinning
in amusement. The man moved toward her, on his face a gentle look of irony. He lifted his gaze and shrugged in a gesture and expression she abruptly recognized. Her jaw dropped.

“I should have said something,” he told her in a voice that came across queerly accented. “It slipped my mind that men are the gendered class, here. That you’d naturally assume I was female unless told otherwise. Sorry to have shocked you.…”

Maia blinked. In her astonishment, she could barely speak. “You’re … a man.”

Renna nodded. “That’s how I’ve always seen myself. Though here on—”

Kiel hissed. “Come on! Explain later!”

Maia would not move. “What are you talking about?” She demanded. “How could you have—”

Renna reached out and took one of Maia’s hands. “Truth is, by your standards I’m probably not even human at all. You may have heard of me. In Caria City they call me the Visitor. Or the Outsider.”

A cloud moved out of the way—or a moon chose that moment to suddenly cast pale light upon his face, showing its odd proportions. Not so extreme you would have stopped and stared, on seeing him at a dockside café. Still, when you looked for it, the effect was striking—a lengthiness of jaw and a breadth of brow that seemed somehow unworldly. Nostrils shaped to take in different air. A stance learned walking on a different world. Maia shivered.

“Now or never!” Thalla urged, taking both of them in tow while Kiel skulked ahead, scouting for danger in the shadows. Maia stumbled at first, but soon they picked up the pace and were running past ghostly, empty halls, united by a need to leave this place of stillborn silences.
That’s right
, Maia realized.
Explanations can wait.
For the
moment, she let a rising exhilaration drive out all other feelings. All that mattered now was the taste of freedom!

Later. Later would be soon enough to worry this puzzle—that her first adult love had turned out to be an alien from the stars.

T
he founders of this colony chose an excellent site to conceal their utopia. Partly hidden by dust nebulae, orbiting a strange multiple-star system where most explorers would not bother looking for habitable worlds … Stratos must have seemed ideal to isolate their descendants from the strife and ferment raging elsewhere in the galaxy.

Yet, the Enemy eventually found them. And now, so have I.…

•  •  •

It is a testament to their fierce independence that they never tried calling for help when the foe-ship came. The people of Stratos simply fought the Enemy, and won. The colonists have reason to be proud. Without direct aid from the Human Phylum, they countered a surprise attack and annihilated the invaders. Their victory has become the stuff of legends, altering their social structure even while seeming to validate it.

They claim this ratifies their secession, obviating any need for alliance with distant cousins.

So far, in conversations from ship to ground, I’ve refrained from citing our records, which mention that very same foe-ship, describing it as a broken ruin, fleeing the Battle of Taranis to lick its wounds or die. Stratos has never sampled the full terror stalking the stars. Even in ignorance, it has benefited from protection by the Phylum. No part lives but in reliance on the others.

This will not be an easy concept to impart, I fear. Some of these Herlandist radicals seem to find my arrival more traumatic than that of the Enemy, so long ago. An affront to be ignored if possible.

What do their leaders fear from renewed contact with distant kin?

Negotiations for my long-delayed landing are done at last. They assure me of facilities adequate to launch my aeroshell back into orbit when the visit is completed, so there’s no need to go auto-mine an asteroid and build an ungainly, all-purpose craft. Tomorrow I descend to start discussions in person.

I have never been so nervous before a mission. This
sub-species has much to offer. Their bold experiment may enrich humanity. Too bad, as chance had it, they were rediscovered by a male peripatetic.

The omens might have been better were I a woman.

M
aia was soon disoriented in the stealthy dash through dark corridors and down unlit stairs. Kiel, who led the way, kept rushing ahead and then causing a bump and jostle each time she stopped abruptly to use a small penlight, consulting a hand-drawn map.

“Where did you get that?” Maia whispered at one point, pointing at the vellum diagram.

“A friend worked on the digging crew. Now be quiet.”

Maia took no offense. A few gruff words were nothing compared to what else Kiel and Thalla had done. Maia’s heart was full to bursting that her friends had come all this way, at untold risks, to rescue her.

And Renna
, she reminded herself. As they hurried through the gloomy halls, she tried not to look at the person she had just seen for the first time, whom she had beforehand thought she knew so well. A creature from outer space. Perhaps sensing her discomfort, Renna hung a few paces behind. Maia felt irritated with him, and with herself, that her feelings were so obvious. “Is he telling the truth?” she whispered to Thalla, as Kiel consulted her map again near a meeting of two vast, unlit dormitory chambers. “About being … you know?”