Thendara House (28 page)

“Your
baby
is in her Housebound time, and will take the Oath at Midsummer,” Rafaella returned dryly. “If she can manage to be admitted - she is at the very worst stage in growing up - every time I say a word to her, she bursts into tears! I am really ashamed of her. The business? Well, I have had to turn down two caravans, but we are doing well enough. There is a new maker of saddles - “

“Can you find somewhere else to talk?” asked a tall, slender woman, hair gleaming faint gold, a long apron pinned over her trousers. Rafaella took her friend’s shoulder and shoved her along so that the woman could set plates and bowls along the long table. “Our sister Keitha, she came to us at the same time as your oath-sister Margali,” Rafaella said, and turned to introduce Jaelle. Women were streaming into the hall now, singly and in little groups, standing about and talking, finding seats, amid clattering dishes. There was a good smell of hot bread fresh from the oven, and Jaelle sniffed, appreciatively.

“Real food! I’m starved!”

“What’s the matter, don’t the Terrans feed you? You’ve certainly gained weight,” Rafaella said, raising her eyebrows. “Or is there another reason for that, Shaya?”

Jaelle smiled at the pet name, given her in this house when she was younger than Doria, but drew a little away from Rafi; she didn’t want to talk about that yet.

And yet if I had a child, I could keep it and raise it myself with Peter’s help, I would not need to face the fact that it might be a son whom I must give up when he was five years old. I have always felt that Amazons should not have children; there are enough unwanted girls whom we can take into our homes and our hearts, as Kindra took me.

But I was not unwanted. Mother - mother loved me, I think, though I cannot remember her at all. Sometimes, in the dreams I have been having under those damned machines, I think I remember her a little. And Rohana would gladly have fostered me. Yet I chose to come here…

Magda, coming into the dining hall, felt a sudden wave of dismay and distress, and stopped hesitantly on the threshold. What was happening to her? She was having peculiar small hallucinations all the time now. Was she losing her mind? She looked around the room, saw Rafaella by the fireplace, talking to a woman in a blue dress; but not an Amazon, for the woman’s hair was long and coppery-red, curling at the tips. Then the woman laughed and turned her head toward the door, and Magda froze; Jaelle!

She was sure she had not made a sound, but Jaelle turned as if Magda had called her name, her face filled with delighted surprise.

“What is it, Jaelle, what’s happened, why are you here?” Were they, in fact, discussing her crime? She had been told that the matter must be taken up with her oath-mother. But Jaelle said gaily, “I am not housebound,
breda;
I would have come before, but this was my first chance - I have been very busy, as you can imagine.”

Magda searched her friend’s eyes; there was more in them than a casual visit. The whites of the eyes seemed bloodshot, but she knew how rarely Jaelle cried.
Perhaps
- a nagging, intrusive thought.
Peter doesn’t let her get much sleep
. She dropped the thought as if it had burned her.
You’d think I was jealous
!

“Mother Lauria and I have been discussing the women who can be chosen to learn Terran medicine, but I want to talk with you about that. Not here, though.” The chiming of the supper bell interrupted them; Mother Lauria came in and took her seat, and Jaelle sniffed with delight.

“I am so tired of food that comes out of machines! Real bread, fresh baked - and tripe stew, if I’m not mistaken. Wonderful! Here, let’s sit here,” Jaelle said, seizing her hand, responding to Camilla’s beckoning hand, bending to give Camilla a quick hug and kiss. “Well, Aunt, you look hearty and well, did Nevarsin’s climate agree with you? Come sit by me, Margali, let’s eat and you tell me everything they’ve been doing to you around here!”

Magda laughed. “That would take more than an evening!”

“
Breda
- ” Jaelle said, startled, as if actually seeing her for the first time. “
Chiya
, what have they been doing to you here? “You
have
lost weight,” she scolded, “The housebound season is hellish for everyone, I know, but you mustn’t let it affect you this way!” Then Jaelle took Magda in a close embrace, long and hard and deliberate.

Magda could not see the tears Jaelle hid against her shoulder, though she sensed that Jaelle was clinging to her as if for comfort. But she also saw Janetta’s knowing smirk, and sensed that all eyes were on them. She pulled back a little.

“Don’t, Jaelle!” She could not conceal her unease; the room seemed suddenly full of a ringing silence, as if all the noises of dishes and silverware were echoing in a vast, vaulted chamber from many miles away.

Jaelle withdrew, frowning. She asked, almost formally, “Have I wronged you somehow, oath-daughter?”

“Oh, no,” Magda said, shocked; lowering her voice, she murmured, “It’s only - I didn’t want - I mean, everyone in the Guild House already believes I am your lover…” her voice trailed off. She was half expecting Jaelle to reply sensibly, “What does that matter?”

However, Jaelle only murmured, “I see,” and sat down as if nothing had happened. But her look sent a chill through Magda; it was the same look Jaelle had given her that first night, when Jaelle had rescued her from the bandits bent on rape; icy, detached, verging on contempt. The next moment, though, it was gone and Magda was wondering if she had imagined it, as Camilla and young Doria were hugging and kissing Jaelle and trading around so they could all sit together around the corner of the table.

Jaelle said over Doria’s head, “This is my baby, Margali; she was no more than three when I came here as a fosterling, and she has always been my pet and plaything - and now look at her, all grown up and ready for the Oath! I’m so proud of you,
chiya
!”

Doria glanced at Magda with a tiny shared grin, and Magda thought,
she hasn’t seen us shaking all over at Training Sessions or she wouldn’t be so proud of us! Thank heaven there won’t be one tonight; I couldn’t stand it, in front of Jaelle
! Or, she wondered, was there? Tripe stew usually appeared on the nights of Training Sessions or the almost equally frightening house meetings. She had never lost her distaste for tripe stew; as the dish passed, she shook her head, passing it to Jaelle. Jaelle stared.

“Really? It’s my favorite and I’m starved for it! Well, the less there is for you, the more for the rest of us!” She helped herself liberally. “Sisters, you’ll never appreciate the food here until you have to try to eat what the Terrans call food!” She was exaggerating, almost a burlesque.

“You can have my share, and welcome,” Magda said, trying to hide her bitterness. Here was Jaelle,
home
, feasting and laughing and enjoying herself as if she’d been locked in solitary confinement on bread and water. While in the Terran Zone Jaelle had fifteen choices at every meal, and didn’t even have to help cook them, music from several different planets, all the books ever written, rounds of parties and visiting among Base personnel - as Peter’s wife she would be required to attend most of the official functions - sports, swimming (and in an indoor, properly heated pool at that), and all kinds of games and recreation.
And here I am, struggling with stable brooms, and in disgrace at that… and fed on tripe stew, dammit
!

Magda found a bowl of something which tasted faintly like baked yams or pumpkin - and helped herself. Then someone passed her the leftover dish, filled with some mixture of grain baked with cheese and reheated in milk. “I saved this
just for you
, Margali.” Magda gritted her teeth, knowing that this was intended as a subtle insult; most of the women considered the stuff barely fit to eat even when it was served fresh, but it made its appearance on the table, because it was cheap, all too often since the House had been let in for the enormous cash indemnity by the man Magda had wounded. She told herself not to be hypersensitive - everyone knew how much she disliked the tripe stew - and helped herself without comment. But just last night, the girl who had “saved” it for her had made, just too loud, a comment about how their food budget had suffered, and why.

She was buttering herself a piece of bread when Jaelle said quietly, “You don’t have to eat that
reish
, Margali!”

The word she had used meant literally, stable-sweepings; horseshit. Magda took a spoonful.

“Never mind, I like it, really, better than the tripe stew.”

“You couldn’t! Listen,
breda
, you’re my oath-daughter, you don’t have to take that kind of treatment from anybody! Not in my own house!” Now it seemed that, from the light touch of Jaelle’s hand on her wrist, the woman’s own rage flowed into Magda, she was filled with fury,
how dared they treat her that way
! A grain of sanity insisted in Magda that it was all very silly, she really liked the grain-and-cheese dish as well as anything else they served here, but through her own sanity she felt Jaelle’s fury, a slight to her oath-daughter was a slight to Jaelle as well. Jaelle took the dish in her hand, and stood over the woman who had handed it to Magda.

“That’s very generous of you, Cloris, but knowing how much you like it, we couldn’t possibly deprive you of it!” Jaelle said, eyes flashing, and dumped the whole soggy mess on Cloris’s plate. Magda knew - and Cloris did, too - that she had come very close to dumping it on Cloris’s cropped curls. “A present - from
my oath-daughter
!” She put enough emphasis on the words that Cloris bent her head, color rising in her round cheeks, and put a fork into the mess, choking down a spoonful. Jaelle stood over her, triumphant, for a moment, then came back to her seat, where Magda was pretending to eat the baked-pumpkin stuff, and picked up her own fork.

Slowly, the tension in the room dissolved. Camilla and Doria were asking a hundred questions about the Terran Zone; they spoke a rapid-fire Cahuenga that Magda could hardly follow, but she did sense Jaelle’s anger melting away as she talked on, and after a time it was the old Jaelle, merrily regaling her friends with larger-than-life adventures in faraway places; all the little foibles of the Terrans grew and seemed hysterical.

Magda felt a stab of resentment. Jaelle wasn’t telling them anything she couldn’t have told them, yet she was honor bound, oath-bound, to say nothing about it. She had made the wrong decision. If they had known she was Terran, they might have accepted her differences and blamed her less, they would have excused her blunder in the sword-fight as unfamiliarity with custom, not dishonorable negligence. She had been so proud of her own ability to pass as a Darkovan; Peter had warned her once that it would destroy her! Magda blinked back tears of self-pity, and pushed the food around listlessly on her plate. Jaelle had forgotten her, and the only two people in the house who really liked her, Doria and Camilla, were so wrapped up in Jaelle that neither of them had a word to say to her. The hall, which was large and drafty, seemed colder than ever; there was a cold draft blowing on the back of her neck where her hair used to be, she’d probably have a cold tomorrow, and these people didn’t have a decent antiviral drug in the house!

She rose quietly and slipped toward the door. No one would know or care that she was gone. But as she paused on the threshold, Mother Lauria rose in her place.

“Before you all go off to your evening tasks or to rest,” she said, “Jaelle will be leaving at first light tomorrow; so there will be a few minutes in the music room, if you wish to greet her, before house meeting. Remember, the meeting is obligatory for everyone tonight.” Her eyes locked for a moment with Magda’s, and Magda felt the old tightness in her throat.

House meetings were somewhat less disturbing than the training sessions, whose very purpose, of course, was to upset and humiliate the probationers, breaking old patterns - to teach us, Keitha had said once, to be women, not girls or ladies. Keitha usually came away from them in tears, but Magda had not yet been reduced to tears, though she usually lay awake for hours afterward turning over all the things she knew she should have said, or suffered racking nightmares. The meetings, by contrast, were usually routine affairs - the last one had taken up two hours complaining that the women who cleaned the third floor did not keep the baths stocked with towels or menstrual supplies! But Magda knew that in this meeting, her Oath was to be called into question. Rafael la had all but told her so this afternoon in the Armory. She knew she would never be able to face the psychological assault troops, and remembered Marisela’s words, with dismay. Are they never going to be satisfied until they can get me to break down and cry in front of them all, was that what they were waiting for? Magda shoved the curtain aside and fled, running up the wide stairway, taking the steps three at a time; half sobbing, she stumbled, slid down a couple of steps, scrambled up, and gained the upper hallway, locking herself into the second-story bath by the simple expedient of blocking the door with a stool. She felt nausea rising, the very walls seemed to bulge outward around her, blurring before her aching eyes.