Glory Season (54 page)

Sometime between the Great Defense and the Era of Repose—perhaps more than a thousand years ago—rebellion had raged across the Mother Ocean. Emboldened by their recent high renown, after the repulsion of terrible alien invaders, a conspiracy of males had vowed to reestablish patriarchy. Seizing sea-lanes far from Caria, they burned ships and drowned men who would not join their flag. In the towns they captured, all restraints of law and tradition vanished. Aurora season was a time, at best, of unbridled license. At worst, horror.

When Maia had once asked a teacher about the episode, Savant Claire had smirked in distaste. “People oversimplify. Perkies never talk in public about the Kings’
allies.
They had plenty of help.”

“From whom?” Maia asked, aghast.

“Women, of course. Whole groups of them. Opportunists who knew how it had to end.” Claire had refused to give more detail, however, and the public library posessed but scanty entries. So curious had it made Maia, that she and Leie tried using their twin trick to feign clone status, briefly gaining entrance to a Perkinite meeting—until some locals fingered them as vars, and tossed them out.

During the lengthy ballad, Maia watched attitudes chill toward Brod. Women seated near him found excuses to get up—for another cup of stew, or to seek the latrine—and returned to sit farther away. Even the Quinnish sixer, who had flirted awkwardly with Brod for days, avoided his eyes and kept to her mates. Soon only Maia
and Naroin remained nearby. Bravely, the youth showed no sign of noticing.

It was so unfair. He had had no part in crimes of long ago. All might have remained pleasant if Charl and Tortula hadn’t chosen this damned song. Anyway, none of these vars could possibly be Perkinite. Maia contemplated how prejudice can be a complex thing.

No one said much after that. The fire died down. One by one, tomorrow’s adventurers sought their beds. On her way back from the toilet area, Maia made sure to pass Brod’s shelter, separate from all the others, and wished him goodnight. Afterward, she sat down again by the coals, lingering after everyone else had turned in, watching the depleted logs brighten and fade when fanned by gusts of wind.

Some distance away, toward the forest, Naroin lifted her head. “Can’t sleep, snowflake?”

Maia answered with a shrug, implicitly bidding the other woman to mind her own business. With briefly raised eyebrows, Naroin took a hint and turned away. Soon, soft snoring sounds rose from scattered shadows on all sides, lumps indiscernible except as vague outlines. The coals faded further and darkness settled in, permitting constellations to grow lustrous, where they could be seen between low clouds. The holes in the overdeck grew narrower as time passed.

Without stars to distract her, Maia watched as sporadic breezes toyed with the banked campfire. Stirred by a gust, one patch would bloom suddenly, giving off red sprays of sparks before fading again, just as abruptly. She
came to see the patterns of bright and dark as quite unrandom. Depending on supplies of fuel, air, and heat, there were continual ebbing and flowing tradeoffs. One zone might grow dim because surrounding areas were lit, consuming all the oxygen, or vice versa. Maia contemplated yet another example of something resembling, in a way, ecology. Or a game. A finely textured game, with complex rules all its own.

The patterns were lovely. Another geometry trance beckoned, ready to draw her in. Tempted, this time she refused. Her attention was needed elsewhere.

Quietly, without making sudden moves, Maia took a stick and rolled one of the stronger embers into her dinner cup. She covered it with a small, chipped plate from the supplies left by the reavers, and waited. An hour passed, during which she thought about Leie, and Renna, and the ballad of the Kings … and most of all, about whether she was being stupid, getting all worked up over a suspicion based on nothing but pure logic, bereft of any supporting evidence at all.

Eventually, someone came to sit by her.

“Well, tomorrow’s the big day.”

It was a low voice, almost a whisper, to avoid waking the others. But Maia recognized it without looking up.
Thought so
, she told herself as Inanna squatted to her left.

“Wouldn’t of expected you being too excited to sleep, seeing as how you’re staying behind,” the big sailor said in casual, friendly tones. “Will you miss the rest of us so much?”

Maia glanced at the woman, who seemed
overly
relaxed. “I always miss friends.”

Inanna nodded vigorously. “Yah, we got to choose a mail drop, maybe in some coast city. One time or another, we’ll all get together again, hoist brews, amaze the locals with our tale.” She leaned toward Maia, conspiratorially. “Speaking of which, I got a little something, if you want a
nip.” She pulled out a slim flask that swished and gurgled. “The Lysodamn reavers missed this, bless ’em. Care to lift a couple? For no hard feelings?”

Maia shook her head. “I shouldn’t. Alky goes to my head. I’d be no good when you need help launching.”

“You’ll be no good if you’re up restless all night, neither.” Inanna removed the cap and Maia watched her take a long pull, swallowing. The sailor wiped her mouth and held out the flask. “Ah! Good stuff, believe it. Puts hair where it belongs, an’ takes it off where it don’t.”

With a show of reluctance, Maia reached for the flask, sniffing an aroma of strong mash. “Well … just one.” She tipped the pewter bottle, letting a bare trickle of liquor down her throat. The ensuing fit of coughs was not faked.

“There now, don’t that warm yer innards? Frost for the nose and flamejuice for the gut. No matching the combination, I always say.”

Indeed, Maia felt a spreading heat from even that small amount. When Inanna insisted she have another, it was easy to show ambivalence, both attraction and reluctance at the same time. Despite her best efforts, some more got by her tongue. It felt fiery. The third time the bottle went back and forth, she did a better job blocking the liquor, but heady fumes went up her nose, making her feel dizzy.

“Thanks. It seems to … work,” Maia said slowly, not trying to fake a slur. Rather, she spoke primly, as a tipsy woman does, who wants not to show it. “Right now, how-ever, I … think I had better go and lie down.” With deliberate care, she picked up her plate and cup and shuffled toward her bedroll, at the campsite’s periphery. Behind her, the woman said, “Sleep well and soundly, virgie.” There was no mistaking a note of satisfaction in her voice.

Maia kept the appearance of a tired fiver, gladly collapsing for the night. But within, she growled, now almost
certain her suspicions were true. Surreptitiously, while climbing under the blanket, she watched Inanna move from the fire ring toward her own bedroll at the far quadrant of the camp. A dimly perceived shadow, the woman did not lie down, but squatted or sat, waiting.

I never would have figured all this out before
, Maia thought.
Not until Tizbe and Kiel and Baltha—and Leie—taught me how sneaky people can be. Now it’s like I knew it all along, a pattern I can see unfolding.

It had started with the debate, soon after their internment, over whether to build one big raft or a couple of small boats. Naroin had been right. In this archipelago, a dinghy with a sail and centerboard might weave in and out past shoals and islets with a good chance of getting away, even if spotted. A raft, if seen, would be easy prey.

But that assumed reaver ships were just hanging around, patrolling frequently. In fact, lookouts had seen only two distant sails in all the days since their maroonment. It would take a major coincidence for pirates to show just when the raft set forth.

Unless they were warned, somehow.

Maia found the whole situation ridiculous on the face of it.

Why would they intern a bunch of experienced sailors on an island without supervision? They’d have to know we’d try escaping. Try to get help. Alert the police.

Naroin’s sullen mutterings after the crucial vote had set Maia on the path. There had to be a spy among them! Someone who would guide the inevitable escape attempt in ways that made it more vulnerable, easier to thwart. And, especially, someone well positioned to warn the pirates in time to prepare an ambush.

What’s their plan? I wonder. To capture those on the raft and bring them back?
The failure would surely cause morale to plummet, and hamper subsequent attempts.

But that won’t guarantee against other tries. They must
mean to transfer any escapees to a more secure prison, like where they took Renna and the rads.

But no. If that were the case, why not put the sailors there in the first place?

Coldly, Maia knew but one logical answer.
As ruthless as they seemed after the fight, breaking the Code of Combat and all, they couldn’t go so far as deliberately killing captives. Not with so many witnesses. The men of the Reckless. Renna. Not even all of the reavers’ own crew could be trusted with a secret like that.

But to take care of things later on? Use a small ship, manned by only the most trusted. Come upon a raft, wallowing and helpless. No need even to fight. Just fling some rocks. Gone without a trace. Too bad …

Maia’s anger seethed, evaporating all lingering traces of alky high. Lying as if asleep, she watched through slitted eyes the dark lump that was Inanna, waiting for the lump to move.

It might have been better, safer, to check out her suspicions in a subtler way, by going to bed when everyone else did, and then crawling off behind a tree to keep watch. But that could have taken half the night. Maia had no great faith in her attention span, or ability to be certain of not drifting off. What if it was hours and hours? What if she was wrong?

Better to flush the spy out early. Maia had decided to make it seem as if she intended to stay up all night long. An irksome inconvenience, perhaps causing the reaver agent to feel panicky. Speed up the spy’s subjective clock. Make her act before she might have otherwise.

And it worked. Now Maia had a target to watch. Her concentration was helped no end by knowing she was right.

The dark blur didn’t move, though. Time seemed to pass with geologic slowness. More seconds, minutes, crawled by. Her eyes grew scratchy from staring at barely
perceivable contrasts in blackness. She took to closing them one at a time. The patch of shadow remained rock-still.

Smoke from the smoldering coals drifted toward her. Maia was forced to shut her eyelids longer, to keep them from drying out.

Panic touched her when they reopened. Sometime in the last … who knew how long … she might have strayed—even dozed! She stared, trying to detect any change on the far side of the camp, and felt a growing uncertainty. Perhaps it wasn’t
that
faint blob she was supposed to be watching, after all. Maybe it was another one. She had drifted and now her target was gone. Oh, if only there were a moon, tonight!

If only I’d found whatever she plans to signal with.
That had been Maia’s ulterior reason for performing circuit after circuit of the island, ostensibly studying the hourly tides. She had poked her head under logs and into rocky crannies all over the perimeter. Unfortunately, whatever lay hidden had stayed that way, and now she must decide. To wait a little longer? Or try moving into the woods and begin searching for someone who might already have a growing head start?

Damn. No one could be this patient. She has to be gone by now.

Well, here goes
 …

Maia was about to push aside the blanket, but then abruptly stopped when the shadow moved! There was a faint sound, much softer than young Brod’s stentorian snoring. Maia stared raptly as a blurred form unfolded vertically, then slowly began moving off. At one point, a patch of stars were occulted by something with the general outline of a stocky woman.

Now.
As silently as possible, Maia threw off the blanket and rolled over. She took from beneath her bedroll the things she had prepared earlier. A stave thickly wrapped at
one end with bone-dry vines. A stone knife. The cup containing a warm, barely glowing ember. Following a carefully memorized path, she hurried quietly into the forest, to a chosen station, where she stopped and listened.

Over there, to the east! Pebbles crunched and twigs broke, faintly at first, but with growing carelessness as distance fell between the spy and the campsite. Maia forced herself to pause a little longer, verifying that the woman didn’t stop at intervals, listening for pursuit.

There were no lapses. Excellent. Cautious to make as little noise as possible, with eyes peeled for dry sticks on the forest floor, Maia started to follow. The trail led deeper into the woods, explaining why her surveys on the bluffs had found nothing. It had been reasonable to hope the signaling device was kept where a flasher or lantern might be seen from another island. But Inanna was clearly too cagey to leave things where they might be discovered by chance.

Maia’s foot came down on something parched and crackly, whose plaint at being crushed seemed loud enough to wake Persephone, in Hades. She stopped dead still, trying to listen, but was hampered by the adrenaline pounding of her heart. After a long pause, at last Maia heard the soft sound of footsteps resume, moving off ahead of her. Something lit only by starlight briefly cut across a lattice of trees, disturbing their symmetry. She resumed the pursuit, wariness redoubled.

That was fortunate. As clouds thickened and darkness fell even deeper, it was a faint odor that stopped her short again. A change in the flow of air, of wind. Her quarry’s footsteps took a sudden veer leftward, and Maia abruptly realized why.