“Um. Look, maybe I’ll think about that apprenticeship. I’m just not sure about the arrangements, that’s all.”
Calma’s expression transformed and Maia could almost read the older woman’s thoughts.
Aha! The little one is just staking a bargaining position, hoping for a better deal. Maybe I can drop the lesson fee a bit. In exchange for what? A term contract?
“Well,” the older woman said aloud. “We can talk about it whenever you’re ready.” Which Maia immediately translated as meaning Let her slave at the forge another week. By then she’ll accept if we give a point or two.
In fact, Calma’s face was so easy to read, Maia felt she understood how such a talented family never amounted to much in the world of commerce. They might go far in partnership with a businesslike clan. But some families just couldn’t work closely with groups other than themselves. Especially over generations, which was how long many interclan alliances lasted.
Although Maia filed this insight away for future reference, she no longer contemplated sharing such tidbits. Leie’s loss still felt like a cavity within her, but the ache dulled with each passing day. Through it all, she had begun to see the outlines of her future, unwarped by the inflated dreams of childhood.
If she was clever and hardheaded, she might manage to be like Kiel and Thalla, slowly saving and searching, not for some fabled niche, or anything so grandiose as establishing her own clan, but to find a tiny chink in the wall of Stratoin society. A place to live comfortably, with a little security. You could do worse. You’ve seen people who have done much worse.
To pass the second and third evenings Kiel was away, Thalla enlightened Maia on strange customs practiced in the seaports of the Southern Isles. The stocky young woman seemed equally amazed when Maia described mundanities of Port Sanger life she herself had long taken for granted. Then they listened to the radio awhile—to a station playing music, not political commentary—until sleep time came.
Maybe when Kiel returns, she’ll say the coast is clear, Maia thought as she drifted off. She felt no ties to Lerner Hold, but would she be able to tear herself away from her new friends? For the sake of this comradeship, she felt tempted to stay.
Work, and recovery from work, took up nearly all of the next day, from dawn to dusk. Mealtime was a fragrant lentil stew with onions and spices, a supper Maia felt sure Thalla had prepared in expectation of Kiel’s return. But the dark woman did not show. Thalla only laughed when Maia worried aloud. “Oh, we got plans, we do. Sometimes she’s away a week or more. Lerners got to put up with it ’cause nobody’s better’n Kiel at cold-rollin’ flat sheet. Don’t you worry, virgie. She’ll be back presently.”
All right, I won’t worry. It was surprisingly easy to do. In a few short weeks, Maia had learned the knack of letting go and living from day to day. Not even the priestess at the temple had been able to teach her that. Physical exhaustion, she admitted, was a good instructor.
That evening, Maia took their small oil lantern into the ebbing twilight to visit the toilet before going to bed. For privacy, it had become her habit to wait until all the other vars finished. Along the way to the outhouse, she liked to watch the stars, which were beginning to show winter constellations to good advantage. Stratos was slowing in its long outward ellipse, although the true opening of cool season still lay some weeks ahead.
Turning a corner in the warren of laborers’ bungalows, Maia saw someone leaning against the tilted door of the outhouse, facing the other way. Oh, well, she thought. Everyone has to take turns.
She approached and set the lantern down. “They been in there long?” she asked the woman waiting ahead of her, who shook her head.
“No one’s inside.”
“But then, why are you …”
Maia stopped. Something was wrong. That voice.
“Why am I waiting?” The woman turned around. “Why, for you of course, my meddlesome young friend.”
Maia gaped. “Tizbe!”
The pleasure-clan winterling smiled and gave an off-hand salute. “None other than your loyal assistant baggage handler, in person. Thought it was time you and I had a talk, boss.”
Despite her racing heart, Maia felt proud not to show a quaver in her voice. “Talk away,” she said, spreading her hands. “Choose a subject. Anything you like.”
Tizbe shook her head. “Not here. I have a place in mind.”
“All right. Where—”
Maia stopped suddenly, sensing movement. She whirled just in time to glimpse several identical black-clad women bearing down upon her, holding fuming-cloths.
Joplands, Maia recognized the instant before they seized her. She felt their brief surprise at her strength. But the farm women were stronger still. Struggling, Maia managed to dodge the damp rags long enough to catch sight of one more figure, standing a short distance away.
Calma Lerner watched with tight lips pressed together as Maia was taken to the ground and her mouth and nose covered. Black fabric cut off vision. A cloying, sweet aroma choked her, invading her brain and smothering all thoughts.
She roused through a cloudy, anesthetic haze to see stars jouncing about like busy glow beetles high in the sky, and dimly recalled that stars weren’t supposed to do that. Only vaguely in her delirium did it occur to Maia that this might be a matter of perception. It was hard to focus while lying supine, tied to the bottom of a rattling, horse-drawn wagon.
Through the night, Maia drifted in and out of drugged slumber, punctuated by intervals when someone would lift her head to dribble water down a cloth into her parched mouth. She sucked like a newborn baby, as if that primal reflex were the only one left her. Dreams confronted Maia with memories drawn randomly from storage, twisted, and made vivid with embellishments by her unrestrained subconscious.
She had been a little over three Stratoin years old … nine or ten by the old calendar. It was Mid-Winter’s Day and Lamatia’s summerlings had been fed and told to go to their rooms, to stay there till the gong rang for evening meal. But the twins had been making plans. At noontime, Maia and Leie knew all full-Lamai folk would be in the great hall to take part in the Ceremony of Initiation. For weeks, the six-year-old class of Lamais had been excitedly wagering which of them would receive ripening, and which would have to await another winter, maybe two. Among clones, with little to distinguish between them, whoever managed to conceive during her first mature solstice had an advantage over her peers, rising in status as her generation matured, perhaps eventually taking a leading role in running the clan.
Maia and Leie were as one in not wanting to miss this, despite rules putting the rites off-limits to mere half daughters. They had spent many furtive hours discovering the route to use—which entailed first slipping out their bedroom window, then around a dormer and down a rain gutter, along a wall lined with decorative, crenelated fortifications, through a loose window into an attic, and down a rope ladder that they had prehung inside a sealed-off, abandoned chimney …
In Maia’s dream, each phase of the adventure loomed as vivid and immediate as it had to her younger self. The possibility of falling to her death was terrifying, but less awful than the thought of getting caught. Capture and punishment were, in turn, negligible deterrents next to the ghastly possibility that she and Leie might not get to see.
Reaching their final vantage point was the most dangerous part. It meant worming their way along the steep, sloping dome of the great hall itself, whose arching ribs of reinforced concrete held in place huge mottled lenses of colored glass. Crawling the lip so that no shadows would cast into the hall, Maia and her sister finally gathered the courage to poke their heads over a section of tinted window, to catch their first glimpse of the ceremony under way below.
The interior was a swirling confusion of brightness and shadow. The glassy roof poured winter daylight into the chamber, transformed into a brilliance reminiscent of summer nights. Colored panels cast clever imitations of aurorae against the walls below, while others glinted and
flashed as gaudily as Wengel Star, when the sun’s small, bitterly bright companion shone high in the summer sky. A roaring fire in one corner of the room gave off heat the twins could feel outside. The flames were colored with additives guaranteed to simulate the spectrum of the northern lights.
It was a spectacle worth every pain taken to get there. Neither Leie nor Maia would have had the courage to come alone.
Still, it took a while to stifle the tremulous certainty that someone was going to look their way. The kids spent more time nudging each other and giggling than stealing quick glances through the burnished lenses. Finally they realized that nobody below was interested in the ceiling at a time like this.
Dancers wove rippling patterns as they undulated before the central dais, waving filmy fabrics that also mimicked ionic displays. The troupe had been hired from Oosterwyck Clan, famed for their beauty and sensuality. Their success rate was well-advertised and only rich clans could afford their services at this time of year.
Censers emitted spirals of smoke, whose aroma was supposed to simulate the pheromones that best aroused males. Behind a veiled curtain, silhouettes told of the assembled mothers and full sisters of Lamatia Hold, watching discreetly offstage so as not to put off their guests.
Maia nudged Leie and pointed. “Over there!” She whispered unnecessarily. Since the music only reached them as a faint murmur, it was doubtful anything they said would be heard below. Leie turned to peer in the direction she had indicated. “Yeah, it’s the Penguin Guild captain, and those two young sailors. Exactly the ones I predicted. Pay up!”
“I never betted! Everybody knew Penguin Guild owes Lamatia for that big loan the mothers gave ’em last year.”
Leie ignored the rejoinder. “Come on, let’s get a better look,” she urged, pulling Maia’s arm, causing her to teeter precariously on the steeply tilted wall of the dome. “Hey, watch it!”
But Leie had already slithered to where a great piece of convex glass bulged from the arching roof. Maia heard her sister take in a sudden gasp, then titter nervously.
“What is it?” Maia exclaimed, sliding over.
Leie held up a hand. “No. Don’t look yet! Get a good hold an’ set your feet good. Got it? Don’t look yet.”
“I’m not looking!” Maia whined.
“Good, now close your eyes. Move a little closer and I’ll move your head to see best. Don’t open till I say so!”
It was one of those rituals that seemed so natural when you were three. Maia felt her sister’s hand take her braid and maneuver her until she brushed cool glass with the tip of her nose. “Okay, you can look now,” Leie said, suppressing a giggle.
Maia cracked one eye, and at first saw only a blur. The glass had several thin layers, separated by air pockets. She pulled back a bit and an image fell into focus. At least it seemed focused, remarkably magnified from this great height. Still, what she saw appeared more a jumble of fleshy colors—peppered with short black fur that was patchy in most places, but thick where one small pink appendage joined the intersection of two large ones. The latter, she realized, must be somebody’s legs. The small one in between …
“Oh!” she cried, rocking back until she had to flail for balance. Leie grabbed her, laughing at her surprise. Almost instantly Maia was back against the glass, trying again to bring the scene back into focus. “No, let me in now. It’s my turn!” Leie importuned. But Maia held fast and her twin grudgingly moved on to find another place, which she quickly declared to be “even better.” Maia was too intent to notice.
So that’s what a man looks like without clothes, she thought. The magnifying effects of the glass were confusing, and she found it hard to get any sense of proportion, let alone relate what she was seeing to those sterile diagrams she had studied in school. Where do they keep it while they’re walking around? I’d of thought it’d get in the way, hanging like that.
Maia was too embarrassed by her next thoughts to voice them even subvocally. Fascination won a hard-fought battle over revulsion and she peered eagerly, hoping to see when the thing changed. Does it really get bigger than that?
A hand entered her field of view, and reached past the limp appendage to scratch a hairy thigh. Maia drew back so her field of view encompassed the arm and torso and head of the reclining man, resting on silk pillows as he watched the dancers. He turned to say something to another man, lounging to his right, who laughed, then straightened and leaned forward with a more sober expression on his face, as if trying to pay close attention to the show. By their elbows lay piles of food and drink. The first man picked up a wineglass, draining it. He did not seem to notice the enticingly clad woman who moved to his side to refill it, nor others waiting nearby, prepared to move in with privacy curtains, at need.
“C’mere and see the sixers!” Leie called urgently. With some reluctance, Maia tore herself away, leaving her perch to sidle near her sibling. “Over by the north wall,” Leie suggested.
This pinkish pane was flawed by ripples, and the magnification wasn’t as good as back at the clear lens. It took a while to find the right viewing position, but Maia at last perceived a covey of girls waiting off to one side, dressed in pale, filmy gowns. They were made up to look less virginal—and no doubt doused liberally to fool the male sense of smell. Naturally, men were more attracted to older women who had already birthed once or twice. But this ceremony was for sixers alone. It was their special day and the mothers had spared no expense.
Maia did not have to count. There were thirteen of them, she knew. An entire class of Lamai winterlings, all primly, delectably identical, but each one hoping she would be the one reached for, when and if the moment came.
They’d be lucky if two or three made it this year. You didn’t expect much from sixers. At that age, whether you were a lowly var or haughty cloneling, your body only produced the right chemistry for reproduction during the height of winter. Even at seven, your fecund season wasn’t broad. Most women, even when they had the full backing of their clan, never got a ripening until they were eight or more. By then their season was wide enough to overlap some of the summer passion left in males during autumn, or starting to bud in springtime.
Lamatia wasn’t counting on much out of today’s solstice ceremony, but it was important anyway. A rite of passage for newly adult members of the clan. An omen for the coming year.
Now, as Maia watched, Lamai sixers began joining the Oosterwycks in the dance, slipping in one by one with their meticulously practiced steps. Somehow—probably by design—the smoother movements of the dusky professionals seemed to cause attention to flow toward the lighter-haired neophytes. The sixers had studied their moves with typical Lamai care. The dance was choreographed to give each one equal time, sweeping in controlled stages ever closer to their audience, yet Maia saw how eagerly each tried in little ways to upstage her sisters. Somehow, it only served to make them look more alike.
Leaning back to take a wide view of the proceedings, it struck Maia how the men below were in a situation they would possibly have killed for, only half a year ago, when all city gates were locked and guardia patrols kept a fierce eye on those few males allowed passes from nearby sanctuaries. In summer, men howled to get in.
Now, with womenfolk at their peak of receptivity, the male sailors lay there looking as if they’d rather have a good book, or something diverting on the tele. Perched on the edge of the dome, watching things she had only heard vaguely described before, Maia felt a sense of wonder mixed with jarring insight.
Irony. It was a word she had learned just recently. She liked the sound it made, as well as its slippery unwillingness to be pinned down or defined. One learned its meaning by example. This was a fine example of irony.
I wonder why Lysos made it this way … so nobody ever gets exactly what she or he wants, except when she or he doesn’t want it?
“Maia, psst!” Leie waved from the clear, convex section. “Come look!”
“Has one of them gotten big?” Maia asked br
eathlessly as she hurried over, almost losing her footing along the way. She quivered with an eerily enticing mixture of repugnance and excitement as she put her head next to her twin’s.
What swam into focus was not the mysterious appendage, after all. It was the bearded face of a man Maia recognized—the handsome, virile captain of the freighter Empress whose hearty laugh and thundering voice were such a delight to hear whenever the mothers had him and his officers to dinner. Half of Lamatia’s summerling boys wanted to ship out with him; half the summer girls fantasized he was their father.
But the sixers below weren’t seeking fathers for their children. Not this time of year. The same physical act was more valuable in winter than in summer, because fathering had nothing to do with it.
What the sixers sought was sparking, insemination as catalyst to start a placenta forming. Triggering a clonal ripening within. And this captain was said to have sparked seven, sometimes eight or more winterlings some years, all by himself! Like in the nursery rhyme …
Summer Daddy,
sperm comes easy.
Eager Daddy,
makes a var.
Winter Sparker,
sperm comes precious.
Wonder Sparker,
one goes far!
The captain’s eyes narrowed as he followed the movements of the dancers, now gyrating around him, almost in arm’s reach. His oiled, powerfully muscled body reminded Maia not so much of a lugar’s as that of a perfect race horse, rippling with more power than any human ought ever need. His face, hirsute yet full of that strange masculine intelligence, seemed to concentrate on a thought, tracking it intensely. As one Lamai sixer whirled close, he squinted, working his jaw in what appeared to be the start of a smile, a dawning eagerness. He lifted his hand …
And used it to cover his mouth, trying gallantly but in vain to stifle a gaping yawn.
It was dawn before the muddle of dreams and warped recollections gave way to a foggy sense of reality. Dawn of which day, Maia could not tell, since her body ached as if she had been wrestling fierce enemies night after endless night. Only in stages did she come to realize her hands were bound in black cloth, and so were her legs. She was in the back of a jouncing buckboard, triced up like a piece of cargo.