Motherlines (13 page)
Authors: Suzy McKee Charnas
Tags: #Dystopian, #General, #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic
She decided that Emla’s weakness was her greed. The masseur liked to wait till she thought no one saw and then grab an extra pot of beer or a bar of Elnoa’s own best tea. She tried to be the last one to leave a wagon, and might slip into one while all its inmates were away. Caught, she would say, ‘Sorry, I thought I heard voices inside.’
It was all small-scale pilfering. Elnoa surely knew, but chose not to punish.
All that would be necessary would be to raise the suspicion that Emla had found the hiding place of Elnoa’s private treasure trove. Each of the free fems had a secret cache hidden in the hills. The whole area was planted with belongings of the living and the dead; sometimes fems died without revealing their hiding places. More than one member of the tea camp had been hurt or even killed because of the suspicion that she had found – by accident or by craft —another’s hiding place.
Elnoa surely had the greatest fortune hidden and the most to fear from a thief. It was Daya’s business to know secrets, and she had known for years the location of Elnoa’s treasure cave, though she had never entered it herself.
Pity she could not come up with some really original plan; but old tricks work best.
Elnoa had recently given Emla a bracelet of blue gems set in fine braided leather. It was perfect for Daya’s purpose. It had no catch and tied on. Emla had complained that the knot worked loose so that the bracelet kept dropping off and getting lost. No free fem who found that bracelet would dare to keep if for herself; she would recognize it and remember its august source.
It took three days of careful observation to discover where Emla kept her bracelet. She had wound it around the catch of one of the unused sleeping platforms. Daya pulled out the spare bedding from all the platforms to be aired, and in the process she slipped the bracelet down into an opening in the hem seam of her smock.
Then she left camp early with her herb basket for the part of the hills where she knew the tea cutters would be working that day.
There was no way of knowing just what Elnoa would do if Daya were caught at this. The risk made her heart speed with excitement. The voices of the tea cutters rang in the sparkling morning air. They were catching up with her. She could see their heads bobbing above the tea bushes and hear the blows of their hatchets. A long arm flashed as someone reached for a promising-looking branch.
Daya set the bracelet in a tea bush right over the concealed entrance to Elnoa’s treasure cave, positioned as if it had caught on a branch there. Then she slipped back to camp and waited. Oh, there would be a furor, everyone asking angrily what the owner of the bracelet had been doing out among the treasure-laden hills when she was supposed to be in Elnoa’s wagon, laid up sick with nerves.
The scene later in the wagon began the way Daya had imagined it, right down to the outrage in Emla’s scratchy voice. Emla said exactly the right things, at first – about thieves, a cherished possession never carelessly worn, and how she was too feeble these past weeks to move far from her bed. She hunched up in her blankets trembling, making the most of her weakness.
Elnoa sat amid her cushions with the bracelet on her massive knee, chin sunk on palm. Daya knew Elnoa could not show her full anger and alarm, for then other fems might guess that the bracelet had been found near her own secret location.
No more, Elnoa signed, the bracelet’s blue stones glittering now in her moving hand. You have not always been in my wagon. You have been out.
Naturally Emla had been out; Daya had guessed that too. Emla had certainly pilfered from the cargo of the unlucky wagon. She must have made at least one stealthy trip to her own treasure with her takings. To pretend otherwise was a mistake.
‘I did go out,’ Emla admitted, ‘to see to my own property. But why accuse me? We all look after what belongs to us. I know one person who wanders the hills constantly by herself, no matter how many times people have warned her. She hasn’t lived with us long enough to have amassed any wealth of her own. She’s smart and secret and neither labor fem nor house pet. Alldera the runner has stolen my bracelet and lost it in the hills.’
The unpopular newcomer! Daya had forgotten her completely.
‘I saw her trotting off alone only two days ago,’ someone volunteered anxiously, and suddenly everyone was talking. At Elnoa’s command two of the tea cutters hurried out and brought the runner back with them.
It seemed to Daya that she had a reckless look these days, which did not help. Surrounded by the silent, resentful group, Alldera listened to what Emla had to say. She laughed at the charge. In an angry tone she said, ‘You can’t mean you believe I did this.’
Someone shouted, ‘Why not? You haven’t had time to build up a treasure of your own, except from our belongings. Why do you keep wearing that Marish shirt of skins instead of a good smock from our looms? Maybe you like those pockets they wear in front, maybe they’re handy for putting stolen things into?’
Alldera said furiously, ‘I don’t like to wear a slave smock as if I were still somebody’s property back in the Holdfast, that’s why!’ She stared desperately from face to face. ‘I can’t believe this. It’s as if I’d never left the Holdfast at all – fems spending their lives laboring for someone else’s profit, squabbling among themselves over trifles – ’
They murmured; some faces showed uncertainty. Then Emla yelled, ‘Thief! Where did you get that hair binder you’re wearing?’
‘I traded Lora a bag of pine nuts for it.’ Alldera was looking over their heads now as though disdaining their questions, but Daya saw the sweat gleaming on her face. ‘Go ask Lora.’
Seeing her fully on the defensive now, the fems pressed in, demanding, accusing. Elnoa was obviously just letting the tide of anger roll; Daya, appalled, could think of nothing to do. Now everyone was hostile to Alldera, and the runner seemed unwilling or unable to placate them. When faces grew red and fists were clenched, Elnoa sent for Lora. But by the time word was brought that Lora was out on sentry duty, it was all over. Only the question of punishment remained.
Elnoa signed her judgement: Alldera is confined to camp. No more running at all.
‘Who are you to give me orders?’ Alldera blazed. ‘You’re not my master! I’ve stolen nothing. Prove that I’ve taken anything from anyone!’
Elnoa stared at her. The bracelet of blue stones was wrapped around her thick fingers like a weapon. Go away, she signed. You are lucky not to be treated more harshly. Perhaps you have done this, perhaps not. You are an arrogant young know-it-all. I think you would like to take our goods and run off to be rich among your Marish friends.
Alldera rejoined her fiercely, ‘At least my Marish friends had some notion of right and wrong – ’
Edging closer to her, Daya whispered in anguished agitation, ‘Go, you’re in danger here! You’ve really made her angry!’
Spinning on her heel, Alldera pushed her way out through the crowd. The others shuffled after her, taunting her for a thief.
Now Elnoa’s eyes were fixed on Daya’s face. Clumsy with nerves, Daya began to straighten the floor blankets rucked up by trampling feet. Don’t panic, Elnoa knows nothing, she only suspects, she told herself. The wagon smelled of sweat now, and cushions lay tumbled everywhere.
Emla leaned at ease among her pillows. When she met Daya’s furtive glance she smiled.
Elnoa isn’t through with me, Daya thought wretchedly. She had an instinct about these things.
The next morning she woke early and could not get back to sleep. She crept outside and stood on the back porch, trying to rub the tension out of her neck and shoulders. The wide yard lay empty all around her under a drift of mist, and she could see no one stirring at the wagons in the perimeter. She wondered what she could do so early for distraction from her worries, thought about going back in for a blanket – it was chilly out – but shrank from the possibility of waking Elnoa, seeing that massive, brilliant-eyed face turned coldly toward her in the gloom …
A sound made her look up. A knot of sentries was coming down from the hills behind camp where they kept watch, now that Kobba was home. Two leaned on the shoulders of their companions as if they had been hurt. In the center of the cluster was Alldera, head lolling and feet trailing, being dragged into camp like a trophy.
They brought their prize and their injured to the steps of the back porch. Lexa, head of the watch, rapped on the rail with the shaft of her spear.
Elnoa and Kobba came out. Kobba had a blanket in her hands. She stood behind Elnoa and folded it around the big, soft shoulders. Shrunk into the corner of the porch, Daya noted this indication of renewed warmth between the two. In the quiet she could hear clearly the painful breathing and low groans from the injured.
What do I see here this morning? signed Elnoa.
‘A rebel and a thief,’ Lexa said, shaking Alldera’s slack head by a twist of her long hair.
Free fems had begun to drift over from the other wagons. One asked, ‘What did she steal?’
Listen or disperse, Elnoa signed; and at her shoulder Kobba said forcefully, ‘Listen or disperse.’
Lexa said, ‘She said she was just going running as usual, but when we said no she tried to get by us. There was still mist on the ground. If she’d slipped past us, she’d have been hard to find. She could have looted every cache in the hills and been on her way – ’
‘How did the sentries get hurt?’ Kobba demanded. ‘Were the Mares waiting out there to help her?’
‘She was just going right by us as if we weren’t there,’ Lexa said resentfully. ‘She said we’d had time to dig new holes like the sharu do – that’s what she said, ask the others – so our treasures were safe and she wasn’t going to sit around and get fat because we were afraid.
‘Anyway, poor Soa shoved her back a little, you know, not hard, just a warning. She gave Soa a terrific kick. I think Soa’s knee is knocked right out, she can’t put any weight on it at all.
‘Well, we went at her. Nobody used a weapon, you can see that, but I think she’s got some cracked ribs. She hurt us, and we hurt her back.’
Elnoa signed, Go and take care of your injuries and Alldera’s injuries too. You sentries were right to stop her, but rougher than you should have been. We do not use the master’s ways here.
The sentries turned Alldera over and carried her away by shoulders and ankles. Daya saw the dirt and blood streaked over her face and chest. Her head hung back, eyes closed, in that horrible, loose way Daya remembered from the days when the men of the Holdfast used to bring in captured runaway fems and give them over to be hunted through the holiday streets to their deaths.
The need to make presents to Elnoa was mortifying, but Daya had to do something to melt the frost between herself and her patron. It was weeks now since the bracelet incident.
It did not help her feelings to be stopped on the back porch by Emla, who insisted on sorting through the box Daya was carrying and opening the bottles it contained. These were perfumes that Daya had selected over the years from the best stocks of Fedeka the dyer.
The tea cutters were all out, the camp lay quiet. A few fems tended fresh-cut tea that was laid out on long racks over fires to be dried. A solitary figure sat nearby with a blanket draped over her like a Marish headcloth.
Emla glanced that way too and said slyly, ‘Too bad the runner no longer runs—except to fat.’
What Alldera the runner did these days was drink. The battering she had suffered at the sentries’ hands seemed to have broken her. She moved slowly about the camp, bent as if in pain. Daya heard people say Alldera had brought it on herself, but their hostility was blunted; there were rumors that certain unnamed free fems privately agreed with some of her assertions. A few openly pitied her and blamed Daya, who knew that her part in the affair was common supposition. The whole situation was unjust. It was not Daya’s fault.
‘She certainly is the poorest drunk I ever saw,’ Emla said, turning a small stone bottle in her supple hands. ‘More than a single bowl of beer makes her sick. She is stubborn, you have to grant her that. Did you see her – or rather, hear her the other night? Throwing up and cursing all evening, trying to keep enough beer down to knock herself out! Hasn’t she come begging you for beer? No? She stays away from you, I notice.
‘Ugh, this smells awful, what was Fedeka thinking of?’
‘Why, of you, sweet friend,’ Daya said instantly. ‘She told me especially to give that one to you from her.’ The lie pleased her. She smiled her rare smile, feeling the scars in her cheeks ruck up the skin into hideous lumps, making of her smiling face a fright mask.
Emla recoiled and said venomously, ‘Don’t show that nightmare face to me, Daya. I’ve put worse scars than that on the faces of fems who crossed me.’
Daya deftly snatched the box of scents and stood up. ‘I’ll take these in now that you’ve inspected them.’
The masseur would hardly wrestle with her for the gifts here in front of everyone. She gave Daya a freezing glare and went rapidly in ahead of her, no doubt intent on dropping a nasty word or two in Elnoa’s ear.
Glancing back over her shoulder, Daya saw that the lumpish figure of Alldera had not stirred. The sight of the runner’s pain-cramped body brought back the pain of her own maiming, the desolation of her beauty destroyed.
Other books
Master of Seduction by Kinley MacGregor
Revolutionary Petunias by Alice Walker
Hard Choice by C. A. Hoaks
Her Heart's Captain by Elizabeth Mansfield
Away With the Fairies by Twist, Jenny
Strawberry Wine by Phillips, Kristy
The United States of Vinland: The Landing (The Markland Trilogy) by Taber, Colin
Voices of a Summer Day by Irwin Shaw
Prospector's Gold and Canyon Walls (1990) by Grey, Zane
Alexandria Link by Steve Berry
