Glory Season (83 page)

A petulant part of Maia wanted to cling to resentment. But it was hard to stay wary of Naroin. They had been through so much together.
I’d rather be dead than so suspicious I can’t trust anybody.

“All right,” she said. “Till tomorrow.”

Naroin left again. Later, Maia and her escorts were about to depart on the afternoon litter ride when Hullin reached up to hand Maia a second folded sheet of heavy
paper, sealed with red wax. Maia’s heart lifted when she saw Brod’s handwriting. She waited until the palanquin was jostling through the suburban market square, then tore it open.

Maia smiled. Just wait till they get her next letter! Leie would julp with jealousy that she hadn’t met Clevin first! There were other, more serious matters to discuss, but it would be good to report that
one
of their childhood fantasies had actually come true.

Lysos, how she missed Brod and Leie! Maia desperately wished they would come soon.

Maia wondered,
Why does that make me feel jealous?
Now that the secret was out, it only made sense to have scholars investigate the wonders of another age. Perhaps they’d learn a thing or two … even change their minds about some stereotypes.

The litter jerked, breaking Maia’s concentration. The market was unusually crowded today. Peering over the throng, Maia saw a disturbance a few dozen meters ahead. A trio of shoppers were arguing vehemently with a storekeeper. Suddenly, one of them picked up a bolt of cloth and turned to leave, causing the merchant to screech in dismay. Maia picked up the word “Thief!” shouted over the general hubbub. Ripples of agitation spread outward as clone sisters of the sales clerk spilled out of the building behind her. Others converged to aid the shoppers. Shoving and yelling escalated with startling rapidity into unseemly grabbing, and then blows, spreading in Maia’s direction.

The temple wardens moved to interpose themselves while Hullin tugged at the upset lugars, urging them to turn around. They managed to swing off the main thoroughfare into a side alley, the only avenue of escape, ducking awkwardly under a jungle of clotheslines. “Uh,” Maia started to suggest. “Maybe I should get down—”

Hullin gave a startled cry. The fiver’s head vanished under a blanket thrown from a nearby shadowed doorway, drawn tight with cord. The lugars grunted in panic, dropping one pole of the litter, teetering Maia vertigously outward as she grabbed futilely after Brod’s fluttering letter.

Suddenly, she found herself staring straight into the blonde-fringed face of—Tizbe Beller!

Maia had only an instant to gasp before black cloth
surrounded her as well, accompanied by the rough clasping of many pairs of hands. A jarring tumult followed as she sucked for breath while being lugged, pell-mell, along some twisty, abruptly shifting path. It was a hurtful, bone-shaking ordeal, surpassed only by her frustrated helplessness to fight back.

At last, the black cover came off. Maia raggedly inhaled, blinking disorientation from the searing return of sunshine. Hands yanked and pushed, but this time Maia lashed out, managing to elbow one of her captors and catch another in the stomach with her right foot, before someone cuffed her on the side of the head, bringing the stars out early. Through it all, Maia caught brief glimpses of where they were taking her, toward a set of stairs leading upward, into the belly of a gleaming, bird-shaped contraption of polished wood and steel.

An aircraft.

“Relax, virgie,” Tizbe Beller told Maia as they trussed her into a padded seat. “Might as well enjoy the view. Not many varlings like you ever get to fly.”

I
have watched and listened ever since the explosion. Ever since receiving warning of Renna’s desperate gamble. Official Stratoin agencies ’say different, often contradictory things, and all appears in chaos, down below. Yet, at least one thing has been achieved. The fighting has stopped. With the irritant removed, warlike preparations among the factions have subsided, for now.

Was Renna right? Was a sacrifice necessary?

Will it suffice?

It was urgent not to disrupt Stratos any more than we already have. Yet, sometimes duty requires of us more than we can bear.

I, too, must do my duty. Soon.

A
fter the initial tussle, it proved Maia’s most comfortable abduction, by far. Tied down, with no option for resistance, she made the best of things by gazing through a double-paned window at the vastness of Landing Continent. Soon, even her headache went away.

Luminous yellow and pale green farmlands stretched as far as the eye could see. These were combed by long fingers of darker forest, interlaced to leave migration corridors for native creatures, from the coast all the way to mist-shrouded mountains that began to loom in the north. Small towns and castlelike clanhold manors appeared at periodic intervals, squatting like spiders amid spoked roads and surrounding hamlets. Strings of lakes were punctuated by regularly spaced fish farms that shone glancing sunlight into Maia’s eyes.

Stubby barges with gray sails leisurely plied the rivers and canals, while throngs of quick, flittering
mere-dragons
flapped in formations of two hundred or more, warily skirting farms and habitations on their way to fallow rooting grounds. Lumbering heptoids wallowed through the fens and shallows, their broad back-fans turned to radiate the heat of the day. And then there were the floaters—zoors
and their lesser cousins—bobbing in the breeze, tethered like gay balloons to the treetops where they grazed.

Maia had traveled far in recent months, but now she realized that one can only gain true perspective from above. Stratos was bigger than she had ever imagined. In all directions were signs of humanity in rustic codominion with nature.
Renna said humans often turn whole worlds into deserts, through shortsightedness. That’s one trap we avoided. No one could accuse Lysos, or Stratoin clans, of thinking short-term.

But Renna also hinted there are other ways to do it, without giving up so much.

Maia watched the pilot touch switches and check small indicator screens as the plane entered a gentle bank and turned west well short of the mountains. The aircraft interior was a finely wrought mix of handcrafted wood panels and furnishings, accoutered with a compact array of instruments. If she had been in friendly company, Maia might have frothed with questions. Her bound hands were adequate reminder, however. So she kept silent, mildly ignoring Tizbe and yawning when the young Beller tried for the fourth time to initiate conversation. The implication couldn’t be missed. She had escaped Tizbe twice before, bringing ruin to her plans, and thought nothing of doing so again. Maia sensed the attitude upset the Beller clone.

I’m learning
, Maia thought.
They keep making mistakes and I keep getting stronger.

At this rate, someday I may actually gain control over my life.

The pilot warned her passengers of turbulent air. Soon the plane was bouncing, pitching, and yawing in abrupt jerks. Tizbe and her ruffians blanched, turning discolored shades, which Maia enjoyed watching. She helped worsen the symptoms by staring at the Beller courier like a
specimen of unpleasant, lower-order life. Tizbe cursed with flecked lips, and Maia laughed, unsparing in her scorn. Curiously, the tossing didn’t seem to affect her like the others. Even the pilot looked a bit ragged, by the time they finally regained settled air.
The storm aboard the Wotan was much worse
, Maia recalled.

Then a golden light seized her attention, causing her to squint in wonder at what lay beyond the forward windscreen. A shimmering reflection, coming from a spacious, dimpled territory surrounding and covering a cluster of hills at the intersection of three broad ribbons of river.

Caria
, she realized. Maia watched the capital city glide nearer, its skirts yellow with the tiles of countless roofs, its tiara of white stone girdling the famed acropolis plateau. Atop that eminence, twin basilicas swam into view, stately beyond measure. Any schoolgirl knew the pillared shapes at sight, the Universal Library on one side and on the other, the Great Temple dedicated to guiding worldwide reverence of Stratos Mother. All of her life, Maia had heard women speak of pilgrimages to Caria, of venerating in solemn awe the planetary spirit—and her apostles, the Founders—under that vast iridescent cupola on the right, with its giant dragon icon cast in silver and gold. The other palace, built to the same glorious scale, was unadorned and hardly ever mentioned. Yet it became Maia’s focus as the aircraft circled toward a field, south of the city.

Lysos never would have built the Library co-equal to the Temple if she intended a seedy clubhouse for a few smug, savant clans.

She contemplated the grand edifice until descent removed it behind a nearby hill covered with middle-class clansteads. From that point until final landing, Maia concentrated on watching the pilot, if only to keep from helplessly worrying over her fate.

•  •  •

Her kidnappers installed her in a room with floral wallpaper and its own bath, unpretentiously elegant. A narrow balcony stepped down to an enclosed garden. A pair of stolid, servant-guards smiled at Maia, keeping her discreetly in sight at all times. They wore livery with fine piping on the shoulders and a gold-chased letter
P
, for the name of their employer-clan, she supposed.

Maia had expected to be taken to one of the pleasure houses operated by the Bellers, perhaps the very one where Renna had been abducted. From there, perhaps she would be sold to Tizbe’s Perkinite clients, in revenge for what she’d done in Long Valley, months ago. This didn’t look like a business establishment, however, nor did the hills near the rolling compound seem the kind of precinct where one found bordellos. Colorful silk banners flew from fairy turrets, and crenelated battlements rose above the tall, elderly groves of truly ancient estates. It was a neighborhood of noble clanholds, as far above Tizbe’s hardworking family on the social ladder as the Bellers towered over Maia. Beyond the garden wall on one side, she often heard the strains of a string quartet, along with shouts of playing children, all laughing the same, syncopated trill. In the opposite direction, coming from a tower room whose lights remained on late into the night, there were recurrent sounds of anxious adult argument, the same voice taking on multiple roles.

After the landing, and Maia’s first-ever ride in a motor car, she saw no more of Tizbe, or any other Beller. Nor did she particularly care. By now Maia realized she had become a pawn in power games played at the loftiest heights of Stratoin society.
I ought to be flattered
, she thought sardonically.
That is, if I survive till equinox.

At her request, she was brought books to read. There
was a treatise on the Game of Life, written three hundred years ago by an elderly savant who had spent several years with men, both at sea and as a special summertime guest in sanctuary, studying anthropological aspects of their endless tournaments. Maia found the account fascinating, though some of the author’s pat conclusions about ritualistic sublimation seemed farfetched. More difficult to plow through was a detailed logical analysis of the game itself, written a century earlier by another scholar. The math was hard to follow, but it proved more orderly and satisfying than the books provided in Ursulaborg, by the Pinnipeds. Those had emphasized rules of thumb and winning technique over basic theory. It was a mental meal that left her hungry for more.

The books helped pass time while Maia’s body finished mending. Gradually she resumed a regimen of exercise, building her strength while keeping eyes peeled for any chance of escape.

A week passed. Maia read and studied, paced her garden, tested the relentless vigilance of her guards, and worried ceaselessly over what was happening to Leie and Brod. She couldn’t even ask if there were any more letters, since Brod had apparently been forced to smuggle out the last one. The inquiry itself might only give her friend away.

She refused to show frustration, lest her captors gain the slightest satisfaction, but at night the image of Renna’s fatal explosion haunted her sleep. Several times, she awoke to find herself sitting bolt upright, both hands over her racing heart, gasping as if trapped in an airless space, deep underground.

One day the guards announced she had a visitor. “Your gracious host, Odo, of Clan Persim,” the servants proclaimed, then obsequiously bowed aside for a tall elderly woman with a wide face and aristocratic bearing.

“I know who you are,” Maia said. “Renna said you set him up to be kidnapped.”

The patrician sat down on a chair and sighed. “It was a good plan, which you helped snarl, in several ways.”

“Thank you.”

The noblewoman nodded, a genteel gesture. “You’re welcome. Would you like to know why we went to so much risk and trouble?”